There’s an itch that rap music scratches that no other kind of music does. For this reason, I have a longstanding love-hate relationship with the genre. But the fact remains; I always come back to it. Once I realized I was listening to it alone, when there was no one around to impress, I figured I enjoyed the form enough to jabber about it sincerely.
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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club, Unfairly Maligned
Hey- you know what? There’s no need to pretend that Marshall Mathers III isn’t lucky garbage anymore. None.
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Can I let you in on a little secret?
Nobody actually likes 2 Live Crew. They stank. They were the kind of fraud that today, would be secretly sponsored by George “Fuck Everything Good” Soros. 2 Live Crew was just garbage.
I don’t know what a “puxxy” is, but I bet if you popped one, it would make a bad smell.
It was humiliating to stock, sell or even see 2 Live Crew albums in the record store. As soon as a customer brought one to the counter, you knew there would be a problem. The customer was always under 18, and thus forbidden to purchase the music; no one older than 18 cared about it. If they enjoyed rap, they had already moved on to something actually good.
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Sampling in hip-hop is important because it can send you backward in time, when it’s done well. It’s crate-digging shared on wax. The best samples offer a window into the mind of the producer, and a peek at the most obscure records in their vault. Since legally all sources must be credited, you can check the liners and draw up a shopping list. The torch of the turntable is carried on.
And oftentimes, forgotten geniuses of the past get their due.
There’s an unspoken rule in hip-hop culture; it’s based in appropriation, so it’s all about forging something fresh out of a juxtaposition of elements. A sample is looped over a beat by a DJ, before the MC begins to rap. The right samples are crucial; they provide the hook of tonal immortality.
The handsome gent in the photo above is David McCallum. He is the most widely-heard yet unknown dude in rap music.
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