Demonstrating Hip Hop...
There are a lot of rappers out there these days who get shitted on by the thousands of people out in internet-land. While not a single one of their opinions matter (buh lee dat, son!) the fact of the matter is that the scatter-shot mess of their shitty opinions does form a unified voice that speaks for the Philistinian youth of hip hop- those who know little but have so much at their disposal thanks to high-speed connections.
Today I am going to introduce a novel idea: just because you don't like a certain artist it does not mean that the artist is wack. If you live in Philly you most likely do not like Kobe Bryant (and why would you?). You're from one of the last true working-class cities and you don't like bratty fucks who misrepresent everything you and the home team stand for. But, as you rock your Iverson throwback and reminisce about the days of watching Moe Cheeks on PRISM before it was Sports Channel (and now Comcast) you know in the back of your head that Kobe is a great player and he is one of the few people in the League who can match Iverson basket for basket, board for board, and assist for assist on any given night.
But, you live in Philly so... Kobe sucks!
In more academic terms one does not have to like Joseph Conrad to appreciate his contributions to Literature. I've read almost all of Conrad's work and trust me, it's boring but that doesn't mean it's bad: it's just not for me. Regardless, my opinion is moot until I write something better than Conrad or cross-over Kobe the way Iverson did to Jordan.
Now that all of that is out of the way I'd like to take a moment to ask you to be open minded. Many people think they know something about hip hop or that they are hip hop. Well, you might know a few things but unless you look at it from the perspective of a student or fan rather than a participant (like all of you failed MCs turned message-board commentators) then you will never truly appreciate all that hip hop has to offer. If you can't be open-minded about music then I suggest you stop reading here and go back to whatever you were doing before you were visiting my blog.
The artists I am about to comment on are always being accused of not being hip hop enough for the collective tastes of "fans" today. They needlessly hate under the guise of having "discriminating tastes" in music, but the truth is regardless of what their albums (their art) sounds like to you these guys are hip hop and they always demonstrate hip hop when they rep it live on the radio or at a show.
Live is where hip hop comes to life, where it becomes real and not some simulation of something real trapped on an iPod hard-drive or a noisy bit of data on a CD-R.
Welcome to Demonstrating Hip Hop 101, and I am your professor, Doctor Mustafa Goodprose.
Introducing: NECRO
Remember what I said about people being too picky about Esoteric's cadence now a days when everyone was checking him in 1998? Well, Necro has suffered a similar fate. Back in the late 90s Necro was seen as one of the up-and-comers in hip hop. His crew almost signed to Electra in 1994 (The Goons, which included Necro, Bill, Goretex, and Captain Carnage). On Electra they knew they'd be relegated to doing cheap R&B remixes for the likes of Adina Howard. They were actually asked to make a Hanukah song too, very wack on Electra's part but good for the goons because they held out for establishing their own companies. A lot of people say that Necro is an ICP rip off, that his fans paint their faces, and that all he raps about is killing people and since he hasn't killed anyone he needs to put down the mic.
The truth is that Necro is one of the finest technical MC's out there today. His flows are sick and his structure is waaaay beyond his time. Also, most of his friends did time for serious shit, so his rhymes are very real. Ming did seven, Kid Joe did five years, and Erez Hustler did a hard time as well... all for rather violent crimes.
A lot of people feel that Necro is a distant second in the sibling rivalry that is Ill Bill and Necro. What if I told you that when Necro raps live there are times that his brother, you know... the "better" one... the one you think is much doper, doesn't want to rhyme after Necro because he totally ripped it and he can't come with anything on that level for the time being (Bill, if you're reading this I am not critiquing you, I just want everyone to know how dope your brother is. You're one of my favorites too.).
Peep Necro shredding a verse on Halftime and putting the demon in "demonstrating hip hop."
http://rapidshare.de/files/8653928/08_Necro_and_Ill_Bill_Rep_on_Halftim.m4a.html
When human maggots swarm, the vibe is opposite of warm/
Out of the norm, bang your head against the stage when I perform/
Then, contaminate... every single vein with bud/
Peep the cocaine flood, burry your brain in mud- IT'S REIGN IN BLOOD/
Society hates me, hell awaits me/
I've been possessed, ever since/
I traveled beyond the gates, g/
My darkness brings the Earth light/
To rule the world's my birthright/
Insult me and brain cancer won't even be your worst plight/
I'm bile, with a sicker style than Belial/
Sent to defile and enslave your brain into a crack vial/
You'll smell the coal if Hell's your goal/
Melt a hole inside your skull before you sell your soul so Mephisto can tell you're bold/
NOW! On top of some guy's rotted spine/
A contract is placed so you can sign the dotted line/
I control you potted-mind, follow rules, I insist/
Your flesh, I burn crisp and then lurk with an iron fist/
All non-believer's I'll Nine-Inch Nail 'em/
To a backwards crucifix and mail 'em/
In a wooden crate to Salem/
I get turned on by the danger in death/
Deranged and obsessed/
The angel of death- you can smell the brains on my breath/
.....
That was just the beginning of a verse that lasted for four minutes and at the very end what did Ill Bill say?
"Yo, I ain't even tryin' to fuckin' follow 'dat."
The studio was electric, everyone was in awe. Necro just shut the cipher down with a battle rhyme that was stitched together with his gore-ish bravado. What makes this even sicker is that you can hear Necro making a lot of this shit up as he goes along. Forget the content for a moment- the word choices, vocab in short, and quality of the rhymes by way of assonance makes this verse nothing short of amazing.
Necro is from the same streets that hip hop was born on. It (hip hop) was entertainment, it was intellectual, and most of all it was fun. With this freestyle Necro showed me how hip hop should be. Necro controlled the studio, stole the show from his brother, and actually demonstrated the essence of raw hip hop (not raw in the sense of profane, but raw in the sense that it was freshly cultivated from the street and not polished for uninitiated (that would be all of you who obtained your knowledge about hip hop on the internet, or from MTV, or Rap City after 1999).
If you think Necro kicked nothing but gore for 15 minutes on WNYU you are wrong. He spent three verses making fun of celebrities, pissing on the Golden Girls, and giving props to his favorite actors. That is hip hop, or I should say it was hip hop because in some Platonic way the moment it happened Necro achieved arête, he grasped the Form of hip hop that people try to replicate on their albums (albums are nothing but simulations of the hip hop that comes from the streets, today at least, artful imitation. There is nothing wrong with that, but that is why artists experiment in studio sessions and kick the real stuff live).
Let's look at the portion of Necro's verse that I typed out.
You may not like it, but no one else it doing it and Necro did the concept quite well. It might not be for you but it certainly isn't wack- there are too many redeeming qualities in his verse.
When human maggots swarm, the vibe is opposite of warm/
Out of the norm, bang your head against the stage when I perform/In rock music people head bang to the beat, hip hoppers nod their heads. Necro was getting so busy on the mic that simply nodding your head would be insufficient. This is some braggadocio shit woven into a rock reference, very dope.Then, contaminate... every single vein with bud/
Peep the cocaine flood, burry your brain in mud- IT'S REIGN IN BLOOD/Basically, music is a drug. You bang your head against the stage when Necro performs and bleed but you don't care- the music, the drug, makes you immune. Your sensory perception is through the roof (bud) and you feel invincible (coke). The love Necro feels for his music is bigger than hip hop, it's like how metal brainwashed everyone in the 80s because the edge was so sharp.Society hates me, hell awaits me/
I've been possessed, ever since/
I traveled beyond the gates, g/
My darkness brings the Earth light/
To rule the world's my birthright/
Insult me and brain cancer won't even be your worst plight/Dope battle rhyme with dope syllabication as a filler- you can almost hear Necro thinking of what he will say next, with each breath between the bars you can see the wheels turning- that's the gift of watching hip hop spontaneously demonstrated at a show or on the radio.I'm bile, with a sicker style than Belial/
Sent to defile and enslave your brain into a crack vial/
You'll smell the coal if Hell's your goal/
Melt a hole inside your skull before you sell your soul so Mephisto can tell you're bold/
NOW! On top of some guy's rotted spine/
A contract is placed so you can sign the dotted line/
I control you potted-mind, follow rules, I insist/
Your flesh, I burn crisp and then lurk with an iron fist/As much as Necro loves hip hop he acknowledges that the business side of it has killed the art in many ways. That's why you need to go to shows and bang your head against the stage.All non-believer's I'll Nine-Inch Nail 'em/
To a backwards crucifix and mail 'em/
In a wooden crate to Salem/If you don't believe in Necro or what he is saying right now you are following the path of the devil in the sense that the men and women making commercial rap are "the devil." This will lead you to hell (a stagnant period in hip hop where nothing good comes out).I get turned on by the danger in death/
Deranged and obsessed/
The angel of death- you can smell the brains on my breath/Necro was sent to correct these errors by God, as his gifts are God-given. God's wrath is indisputable and Necro, like all angels, will avenge the wrongs of the world with utter violence. This verse is shaping up to be very reminiscent John Milton's poetry, especially with his allegory on what is the right path and the wrong path to follow in hip hop, not to mention the Hellish imagery.Clearly there is a lot more to Necro that what most people think. Many people describe his work and his persona in terms of a caricature, but the truth is that he represents hip hop in more ways than the average fuckface in Ecko clothing and a mic on his computer. You don't have to like him but you need to understand that the man is far from wack and easily much better at this whole "hip hop thing" than you are (ARE YOU READING THIS HIP HOP SITE).
You can have your "classy" Kobe Bryant, so suave in his suits and so smooth with his jumpshot. I'll take my Iverson in black Timbs and sick crossover, always repping the brutal shit whether on the court or backing down his cousins with the shotty for disrespecting. If you can't follow that then you're lost for good.
Canibus: Hip Hop's version of Danish styling.
There are certain verses that come along every once in a while that just affect you in a severe way when you here them. You pick your jaw up off the floor with two hands. You scream "OH SHIT!" uncontrollably as you try to relive a sick bar spit just a moment ago but are still trying not to miss another dope line because you know it's coming.
Most people felt this way when they heard "Protect Ya Neck" or "You Ain't a Killer" but everyone felt this when they heard some newcomer who rapped last on Lost Boyz "Beasts from the East." The buzz was so big off that one verse alone that ten years after the fact, amidst mounting stacks of disappointing material, people still hold out hope that Canibus can make that once classic we all know he is capable of making.
Everything after 2000 B.C. has been regarded with scorn. "Horrible beats" some say, a "departure" from Canibus' battle steez of his youth, "lack of hooks" some say because he just raps forever on some tracks,
To those of you who feel that way, fuck off. If you think Canibus, or any rapper for that matter, needs a "hook" to make a dope song then you are brainwashed by the corporate hip hop machine that pumps out formulaic songs as they try to find the next hit with their chosen demographic (white girls 11-16 since 2000). Since when was rap about boundaries? It's the music of rebellion, birthed from the streets of struggle where you fought the police or the violence started by your own people, the same streets and the same cops and the same thugs who delivered Biggie and Pac to the other side of the dirt and deprived us of so much. If you really believe that a rap song needs a hook then fuck you, f'real.
Canibus hoped to address his critics with Mic Club. Everyone wanted the man who slayed an old-school Goliath and . Guess what? He never left. he just became and artist.
Hip Hop is Germaine's
art for sale much the same Literature was just something to peddle for Anthony Burgess. Ideas could be buried in a creative expression and sold to whoever else shared their vision and their love for those ideas, not necessarily what the ideas may have been packaged in. Germaine's art was rhyming and relaying ideas from some of the world's greatest thinkers to us in those rhymes: fully taking advantage of the clichéd ideas involving kicking or dropping "knowledge." On Mic Club Canibus dropped two of the dopest songs I've ever heard spit. Are the lyrics incredible? How is the flow? How's the beat? That's not for me to answer. It's the actual act of rapping that is art. Spitting immaculately for four or five minutes, twice on the same album, without botching the verses... that is art. The act speaks for itself and becomes art that can stand on its own. Oratory, the exposition on writing, the internal performance- these classical forms of measuring art (what education is based on) have been embraced by the demonstration of hip hop for our context.
Heavily slept on are two tracks from Canibus' Mic Club. Here are some just a few of the dope lines that he provided for us to ignore, thanks a lot hip hop fans.
"The highest professorship, my English etiquette,
Compels me to not say it if I can't spell it... bitch"
"I read one-fourth of the Library of Alexandria before it was burnt to the floor."
"I talked to Mr. Fuller over the phone,
And he said he had a contract to rebuild Rome,
He said he didn't wanna' do it alone,
I told' em I was busy writin' poems but I'd think about goin',
The process was slow and the dough was low,
But I took it as the perfect opportunity to grow,"Look at that in an allegorical sense! Rome, a city of corruption, built on violence and brutality, has crumbled (rap music) and everyone wants Canibus to rebuild it... but will he? That's how we all feel when he drops an album. Will he return Rome to her former glory? That shit is bugged!
In the studio with James Lipton reminiscing
About the script that was written before the beginning,
All of a sudden the boos turn to applause,
My jaws stronger than a Kenenday Macaw’s,
Can't even count the bars I've expended so far,
...
You wanna' laugh now? and cast your belligerent doubt?
I show you what poetry's really about,
The side effects'll make you pass out
Followed by skin rash itching diarrhea nausea and dry mouth,
You want a time out? you better spit a rhyme out,
Before the community of real MC's die out,
College Students say to me "You ain't smart",
Record label A&Rs say "This ain't art",
These are the contents of the Covenant of the Ark,
Listen to my chest beat tell me this ain't heart,
You gotta be as obsequious as the disciples of Jesus,
This my Master ThesisI'll comment on this later, but Canibus feels that history will judge him in a better light than critics of the present day (those he addresses with the line "You wanna laugh now.."). Listen to it here:
http://rapidshare.de/files/8653234/15_Canibus-_Master_Thesis.m4a.html
We can't forget Canibus' other gem on this album, Curriculum 101. Read this little tidbit of lyrical excellence:
Realms of Heaven and Hell, glowin angelic gel,
spliced wit' bovine leukemia cells,
Demons in hell they call to me, I scream "What can you offer me?"
They reply Techno-Sorcery,
They tell me the meek will never inherit the world cause they're weak
Standing on two 12 inch feet,
I dream quasi-Draconian dreams when I sleep,
A peyote leaf mixed with the blood of a priest,
In a room where the ceiling leaks a crimson grease,
Where the living eats the dead and the dead reek,
Rock bottom transforms human beings to beasts,
Why the fuck you think we got canine teeth?
It's the optical stimuli of watching men cry,
I hope I got time to repent before I die,
Bury me at the beach if the sea is outta' reach,
Cause when I speak what's fluid becomes concrete,
Like a falcon up in the sky at ten thousand feet,
Lookin' down at you bitches lookin' at me,
Phase shiftin' at 45 degrees, I’m too crooked to see,
I memorize the books that I read, HOLY SHIT! Yes, Canibus spends much of his time self-aggrandizing on thie mic but that's why we all felt he was God in the flesh in 1997. He made it clear to us that no one was fucking with him, now he's just taken it in a different direction. Disgusting to some, deadly to many. I can't decide for you.
More incredible is that Canibus kicked both of the songs (Curriculum 101 and Master Thesis) without the aid of studio punch-ins and without pausing for a breath. That is some serious skill, like it or not (and if you don't like it that's because you can't do it yourself). How the fuck do you think anyone else could do that? With an extra set of lungs? Maybe. Why do so many people hate Canibus? He makes that stuff look routine, it looks so easy that we feel he isn't living up to his potential.
"Clumsy and dumb like a hand with five thumbs/ The is Mic Club, Curriculum 101:” http://rapidshare.de/files/8653227/16_Canibus-_Curiculum_101.m4a.html
Yes, 'Bis, the studio is your lyceum. We were privileged to attend, but most of us falter under the weight of our hubris to understand.
Now, my favorite Canibus moment came in 2001. I heard a live show he performed with Pakman in London (at the Subterrania). Canibus tore that shit down, demonstrating hip hop in the flesh, her essence in real like some cocksucker in Chicago once said.
"Yo drop that!"
Canibus cut off the guy hosting the show and just took the club over. The first song he started with had the entire club screaming and chanting the lyrics. Hundreds of fans responding to his calls, finishing his lyrics, and having a great time as he showed the crowd how hip hop is made before their eyes.
The second song? Canibus jumps right into "100 Bars" and spits for five minutes without one slip-up. He did not have to pause for a breath, he just blacked out like it was being beamed into him from a higher source. The crowd watched with baited breath and helped him finish the song out by yelling "go fuck a lesbian!" before responding with applause.
There are great spots in this show throughout but the highlight for me was Canibus freestyling at the end, telling a story about an experience in a titty bar in London and a conversation with a dancer. The exchange was brilliant but it didn't hold a candle to Canibus' delivery and creativity in that particular moment (Phenominonigically speaking). He drops so many references to the UK and London throughout the show in his rhymes, a Shakespearian ode first identified by Puck's apology in the epilogue of
A Midsummer Night's Dream, showing the crowd how much he appreciates them and reminding them that this art is true but also what dreams are made of.
Demonstrating hip hop for you is Canibus:
http://rapidshare.de/files/8654334/Canibus_and_Pakman_Subterrania_London_181200.wma.html
In summary, Canibus and Necro are certainly hip hop regardless of what a lot of people say and think. They bring hip hop to life when they perform and create art when they hit the studio. You don't have to like them, but considering showing some respect for people who do more for hip hop than you ever have.
What is most troublesome to me about the people who dismiss Canibus and Necro is that Canibus and Necro paid a lot of dues. Necro did a ton of shows with BCC and repped it for ten years on radio shows. Canibus out-ciphered nine Wu Tang Clam members in Atlanta and interned at various labels trying to get heard. Those acts of hip hop, doing the shows, going to radio, and putting your reputation on the line are no longer respected elements of the art. The fans don't understand anymore. Watching someone hop into a cipher and tear it down, be it in your own hood or vicariously through radio freestyles, are the kinds of things real fans live for: those moments of hip hop being brought to life, spontaneously coming alive. Most fans have never seen those things with their own eyes and until hip hop is breathed life in front of their eyes they will always be half-informed and prone to criticizing those who are making it happen on a daily basis.
For the record, I feel this way about every hip hop artist who I listen to. You don't have to like Canibus or Necro to be hip hop, but if you don't respect them and their skills on the mic after reading this then you need to start moving in emo-rock circles and rock a Dashboard Confessional t-shirt, it'll match the dick in your mouth... you fuckin' faggots.
