Do you care where a beat comes from?

So the Haterz Everywhere beat is similar to that of the Love in this Club beat. The Love in this Club beat was essentially made from two garage band sample loops. But do you care where a beat comes from? Does it matter?

I remember getting pissed off when I first heard Just Blaze's beat for Touch the Sky because it was just a simple four bar loop of Curtis Mayfield's Move on Up. But then I realized I wasn't pissed at how simple the beat was - I was pissed that I didn't make it. I think the same is true with Polow's Love in this Club - anyone could've made it, but he did. So the question we now face is does this make the song better or worse? Or even matter?

Personally, I almost feel like this makes the song even more baller cause it's a total slap in the face to anyone who owns a Mac (excuse me, I need a minute...)


Lastly, to be a good producer you have to do more than just make a beat. I'll never forget an interview in which Hi-Tek told Dr. Dre he better get credited as a producer if Aftermath artists spit on his beats. Dre's response? Than come out to Cali and produce.

Making the beat is only the first part of the puzzle. Being in the studio with the artist, guiding them like a director, and helping craft the hook and the song, is what it takes to be a good producer. What's it matter? It doesn't end with sampling a four bar loop or aligning two sample synths - that's where it begins.



As Polow said in response to the criticism he got for Love in this Club - "I made women want to fuck Usher again." Now that's called being a good producer.

Hope for the Summer?

At the begining of a music video there are only two tags that make me drop whatever I am doing to prepare for a flavor flav "wowwww" moment. The first, and best, is seeing the words "story by r. kelly" strolling across the screen. The second, which is almost as equally enticing as the first, is seeing the Jam of the Week label in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

Now, if you watch MTV Jams on a consistent basis you know a good Jam of the Week can literally Beyonce-style upgrade your whole week. In the abyss of shitty video after shitty video you will find oasis in a Jam of the Week that seemingly justifies you having not changed the channel for the last two hours, or in some cases, two years.

This week’s Jam of the Week happens to be one of those songs that renews my interest in the mainstream and not be ashamed to openly admit: yeah MTV Jams is the shit, what's it to ya?

Haterz Everywhere by B.O.B. featuring Rich Boy (originally featuring Wes Fif til the label decided to make the song a single) introduces Decatur's own B.O.B. to the masses. B.O.B.'s choppy flow perfectly fits the wobbly synth beat, similar to that of Love in this Club. The hook, while not being revolutionary in concept - when you are a baller you will have a lot of haters (i feel like this should become a tautology taught in logic classes) - pumps you up in only the way all intentionally bad singing rap hooks with shouted out background knock out counts can.

On the Side: Check out the Wes Fif version of the song. I like Rich Boy but I think it's pretty safe to say Wes Fif's verse has got 'em goin down for the count...1...2...3...

Haterz Everywhere slightly renews my hope for a solid summer but I'm not ready to be fooled into optimism just cause a bunch of MC's who are blowing up the internet - B.O.B., Wale, Wiz Khalifa, Jay Electronica, etc. - are going to blow up the rap game.

Final thought: Something about the idea of having a lot of haters is universal. I feel like anyone who listens to and likes this song will at one point or another look around a room and be like shiiit, haters everywhere we go - once a song has that impact it's got some staying power, or at the very least, Jam of the Week status.

State of the Radio

Well it has been two weeks since my last post. At first I blamed it
on being lazy, then i attributed it to my having to work the last
couple of weeks, and lastly, i blamed the radio for simply not
inspiring me. In hindsight, I can say I've always been lazy, so that
ain't it, i only worked 3 days last week and two this week, now
granted that is 5 more days than I worked in the past two months, but still, that can't be it. So it has got to be the radio's fault for
letting me down.


When I say the radio I mean Jam’n 94.5. As for last summer, Jam’n was a humongous disappointment, the song with the most staying power, that you were guaranteed to hear every hour on the hour, was the extraordinarily underwhelming, Make Me Better by FABO and Ne-Yo. The Timberland beat, stealing the strings from Raekwon's Rainy Dayz, is solid but the rest of the song is garbage.


On the Side: In Make Me Better Fabolous spits "stick with your entre
and get over your side" but keep in mind back in Can't Let You Go he tells it like it really is, "the entre aint as good without something
on the side." So? Rappers lie, nothing new. Also, wasn't Can't Let You go a much better song than Make Me Better? And why wasn't T-Pain in the music video or credited for singing the hook? What happened here?

The fact that Make Me Better was 2007's summer jam of the year is really depressing and when looking at Jammin 94.5's top 20 list right now, I'm not sure we are going to do much better in '08. So with a summer upon us, let's take a look at the state of the radio...

20. Diamond Girl - Ryan Leslie
Actually a decent song, really good beat, solid 50 Cent remix (never
thought I'd say that), and good move turning dime-piece into diamond girl.


19. With You - Chris Brown
Basically, Chris Brown's Irreplaceable in terms of acoustic guitar
heavy beat. Pretty rock bottom song but certainly helped Chris
Brown's movement to cement his status as a R&B superstar.

13. I Remember - Keisha Cole
This may be the most emo song I've ever heard on Jammin but Keisha actually has an amazing voice and looks extremely classy in the video which stands in sharp contrast to her BET reality show - I hope other people watch this show besides me...

12. Dey Know Rmx - Shawty Lo
Easily the best song on the countdown. Every once in a while a rapper comes out and has a voice so unique that the superstars of his time listen to it and go damn, I want to sound like that. In Dey Know, Jeezy and Luda, both attempt to mimic Shawty Lo's flow, but let's be honest only one man can boast "BIG UPS TO ALL MY HATERS!"

------
On the Side: The best example of superstar rappers trying to
sound-like a new-comer I could remember in pre-Dey Know days, hard to think such a time existed, was definitely What We Do by Freeway. What We Do, for me, is easily a top 3 Roc-a-Fella song all time. The beat is definitely in Just Blaze's top 5. There isn't really a hook other than the sample. What We Do introduced Freeway to the public. The first line we ever heard from Free, is also, to me, an all time best stepping-to-the-beat-pre-rap-spoken-intro in "this shit for my kid's my...". Now, Freeway's voice, like Shawty Lo's, is so powerful that Jay-Z, maybe the best rapper of our generation, and Beanie Siegel, certainly not the best rapper of all time but still prideful in his own right, try to imitate Freeway's style. That doesn't happen too often mang...
------

Dey Know certainly belongs to Shawty Lo and his verse holds its own not only with the big ups line but also with I got guns like TI, and like Kels I believe I can flizay, but young Weezie, yes, Mr. Please Say the Baby himself, Lil' Mr. I'm about to release the biggest let down of an album, takes the best line of the remix award simply for referencing a timeless video game with all my kicks fly like Liu Kang.

On the Side: Classic video game references seem to always work and for some reason, probably the large guns, Contra has recently been rap's go to video game. In Black Democrats off Da Drought 3, Juelz (whose verse tells Wayne's to go sit in the corner) boasts "still tote big guns like I was still playin Contra" Now this was easily the best Contra-reference tile Washington's DC 's Wale spit "everybody know me like the Contra code for extra men" on the Nike Boots Rmx - in which his verse also murks Weezie's.

Question: Does the referencing Contra rule-book stipulate that
you are only allowed to if you out-rap Lil' Wayne in the same song?

He Still Got It Moment: Wayne does have a maybe he still got it moment on the Nike Boots Rmx. What Wayne was known for before all the best rapper alive business was being remarkably witty and funny. On Nike Boots he spits:

naked woman rub my back
and ask me how was my night
i say bitch stay out of my business
when we fuck she say
stay out my kidneys

Comic gold while still holding up his money over bitches motto. Also, the stay out my business line really reminds me of Ross' just cause we fuck dont mean you can kiss me line. Both just truly there aint nothing personal about this lines.

6. Touch My Body - Mariah Carey
Vintage Mariah. I actually don't mind this song at all, it's pretty
catchy and I have been known to say I best not catch this flick on
YouTube but it's usually for stumbling as opposed to bagging a
superstar songstress.

5. Sexy Can I - Ray J
Have to say Trump was the first to declare this a legit song and as
far as the beat goes it certainly is. The only aspect that pisses me
off is Young Berg's swagger like he is an elite rapper and if you
ain't down to...then you can watch the tour bus go by. Now if 50 said
that fine, Young Joc, okay, I guess I could see it, but Young Berg, I
mean c'mon.

4. She Got it - 2-Pistols
Yessir.

3. What You Got - Colby Oddonis
Despised this song at first but it has grown on me, what with working 5 days out of the last two weeks and being forced to listen to Jam’n and hear it 3 times a day. I respect the song cause Colby, a
new-comer, could genuinely be pissed off by a girl playing him whereas if this came from T-Pain it would be no one plays me, I'm the shit. So I respect it, I guess...

2. Lollipop - Lil' Wayne
Like the song. Absolutely do not respect it...

1. Love in this Club - Usher ft. Jeezy

All I have to say is there needed to be an ode to not wanting to wait
til you get home or even the parking lot, to bang out. Finally we have that ode. Additionally, I think a new mandatory I Never question has been posed by Young Jeezy, cause I certainly know the next time, and every future time, I play I Never I have to ask: have you ever made love to a thug in the club with his ice on? And I want to see every girl drink.

On the side: Is keeping your ice on the rap equivalent of leaving your sox on? Or are the two unrelated?

So in conclusion, I don't have too much hope for this summer's
mainstream "urban" radio and can't really imagine any hits being more than guilty pleasures - but isn't that really what the summer is for anyhow?

Wow. Just... wow.

According to the nebulous, sometimes-unreliable-sometimes-prophetic internet, this may or may not be the album cover for Tha Carter III. I don't even have anything to say about it; it kind of speaks for itself. I'll just say that I really hope they use it, because anything else would be a crushing disappointment after laying eyes on this masterpiece.

The Everyday Epic

Does this

equal

this?

Yesterday I watched Superbad for the first time since seeing it in the theater. For whatever reason, I was left with the thought that movies like Superbad and Harold & Kumar remind me a lot of the Lord of the Rings...

The value of movies like Harold & Kumar and Superbad is how they turn real life goals (getting fast food and hooking up with girls) into journeys of epic proportions. For Harold and Kumar to reach White Castle, as well as for Seth and Even to bring alcohol to Jules' party, is the equivalent of Frodo climbing Mount Doom.

The beauty of transforming the everyday into the epic is that in real life, the completion of certain everyday tasks feels like monumental achievements. Everybody has moments in which they think that, what just happened right there, to me, in my life, could have been in a movie. Successfully journeying to get the exact food you desire at an off-hour for restaurants or obtaining and transporting a substance you are not legally of age to possess, definitely qualify as these certain everyday (epic) journeys.

On the side: This might just be me, but I constantly confuse Lord of the Rings with Harry Potter and for the longest time thought the eye in the sky was called Lord Voldemort. Just me?



Devil's Advocate: Last year, The Stage Names by Okkervil River, may have been may favorite non-hip hop cd. The first song, Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe (lyrics posted below), stands as an attack against our ego’s tendency to self-aggrandize events in our own life to the point that we think our life could be a movie.

Basically, the song states that the everyday is in no way relatable to the epic. (but at the same time the “or Maybe” in the title of the song means they are open to the idea)

Final Thought: Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman was noted for bringing tragedy, which had been reserved solely for royal figures (ie Oedipus, Macbeth, etc.), to the common man (Willy Loman). Dare I say, Superbad and Harold & Kumar, in the vein of Death of a Salesman, have brought the epic to the everyday? Think I just did.

It’s just a life story, so there’s no climax.
No more new territory, so pull away the imax.
In the slot that you sliced through the scene there was no shyness.
In the plot that you passed through your teeth there was no pity.
No fade in, film begins on a kid in the big city.
And no cut to a costly parade (that’s for him only!)
No dissolve to a sliver of grey (that’s his new lady!)
where she glows just like grain on the flickering pane
of some great movie.
-
Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe

Chain of the Day

Koopa Troopa

Wake up, wake up, it's the 1st of the Month

People ask me all the time how I, as a suburbanite, relate to and love rap. Well...
one of music's greatest gifts is it offers you another vantage point and opportunity to step out of your world - in many ways rap is like a trap closet door in Narnia? (Don't get too excited R. Kelly...)

Now, one of my favorite rap songs that I in no way relate to the premise of or "facts" of, has got to be 1st of The Month by Bone Thugs N Harmony.

The song is about the celebration of the first of the month because once government checks are collected the bone thugs crew be smokin', chokin', rollin' blunts, and sippin' on forty ounces, thuggin.

Now can I, or any other suburbanite, relate to waiting for the first to come around so we can collect a check? Nah. But anyone can relate to the universal aspect of the song, which is the desire for a fresh start and the feeling, no matter how temporary it lasts, of being able to take one day off to breathe life in and chill. (plus, anyone can relate to the feeling of waiting on a check, don't have to be the first)

So whatever April 1 means to you, whether it's a prank you're going to play on someone at work, whether it's one day closer to nice weather (thought it was going to be 60 today, what happened?), whether it's a chance to collect a check, or whether it's simply another day in the life, make it a good one. 100.

Droppin' Knowledge: Nietszche is one of my top five philosophers. He was a perspectivalist, meaning he believed we all look at the world with different sets of eyes, and each of our experiences are unique yet universally relatable. Conclusion? The Nietszche would have definitely fucked with the Bone Thugs Poetic, Hustlers of the Graveyard Shift.

On the side: Remember when the Crossroads video came out? Has got to be top five rap video all time.