WHAT HIP-HOP MEANS TO ME

At the risk of alienating the small cadre of readers who frequent my blog, I am going to go on today and the rest of the month (at length) about a subject that, believe it or not, means a lot to me.

Rapping. Being an Emcee. Freestyling. Rockin' the mic.

There are plenty of reasons why I want to address this topic, chief among them my quest to turn my good friend Bro Man into a dope MC. Bro Man has a great voice, but is possibly the least rhythmic African-American I have ever encountered. He can't dance, doesn't sing very well, and can't rap to a beat to save his life. Of course, this doesn't make him any less black-- it just means that he comes off, in the eyes of The Other, as an "Oreo".

I've had plenty of fun at Bro Man's expense. A favorite joke of mine was that he wasn't even an Oreo-- "You're more like a Hydrox" I would say, and the fact that he didn't get mad and attempt to beat me down is a testament to both Bro Man's tolerant nature and the irreverent crux of our friendship.

You see, I'm not exactly the poster boy for La Raza either, seeing as I have a tenable grasp of espanol and sound more like the Valley kid that I am than some miltant Chicano. However, I've always identified with black culture, and so rapping and hip-hop music is as important to me as any of the art forms I indulge in regularly.

Oddly enough, I wrote my first rap in 4th Grade... as a homework assignment!

Mr. Watnik, our 4th grade teacher in the Magnet school I attended, was an unorthodox instructor, to say the least. I know I talked about him in the past, but those Archives are long gone. Here's a refresher.

He would play guitar for us on Fridays, handing out lyric sheets so that we could sing along with the hits; he read "The Tell-tale Heart" to us and at the climax of the story he tossed a cow heart into the middle of the room; he had us write parody songs a la "Weird" Al Yankovic; he taught us the "Flea Fly Flow" song and also informed us about "E-O-Eleven" and Warm Fuzzies/Cold Pricklies; he performed Steve Martin's brilliant Flea Circus bit for our amusement, and changed the way we thought of the phrase "I have an announcement to make"; and he invented games with names like "Dada" and told tall tales about finding his twin brother in New York-- he used a poster of Che Guevara to illustrate his point!

In addition, he devoted one semester to teaching us about the properties of propaganda, and another semester dissecting our judicial system... and we were in 4th fucking grade!!

Anyway, Mr. Watnik had us bone up on the U.S. Presidents. To do this, he defined "rap music" for us. Although I'd heard rap music before that time (circa 1984) I had never had anyone break it down to its essentials. Up until that time, I just assumed it was party music, the kind of stuff my older brother listened to, the kind of stuff that got played on the late great KDAY AM.

I think I was one of the few kids in that class who knew about rap music. Mr. Watnik wanted us to write rhyming verses about a U.S. President, and then come into class and recite the rhymes to an instrumental track. We picked names from a fishbowl, and I landed "Tricky" Dick Nixon!

So you see, I've been politically active since grade school...

Anyway, that was the first rhyme I ever wrote. I can brag about rapping since the 4th grade now, and often times I do throw that nugget into my battle rhymes.

Since I have excellent diction and no trace of an accent, people assume that I'm a square. That is my greatest asset when rhyming against foes or with casual friends. Little do they know that years of writing poems and rhymes has given me a vocabulary that can cover all the bases. And my love of all forms of rap music has given me enough ammo to dismiss wannabes and poseurs.

I love the shock that registers on the face of a clown who thinks I can't rhyme. I can't tell you how many ciphers I've been in, where someone thought I was reciting written raps that I had memorized. Of course, to dispel this notion, I would concoct a freestyle verse right there on the spot, and that would put pressure on even the tightest MC. I have lost my share of battles, but I always come away with a smile on my face, because everyone leaves the circle knowing that I can at least bust a decent flow, even if I'm not the best out there.

My hip-hop heroes, in no particular order:

RAKIM-- In my opinion, he is the greatest rapper of all time, but
that's the beauty of hip-hop-- there is no real answer to the question "Who's The Greatest?". Actually, let me take that back-- the only logical answer for any MC is "I Am The Greatest", which is why braggadoccio is a huge part of rapping, and which is why there is no one MC who captures all of hip-hop in one identity. However, if I had to pick one, Rakim would be the man. His voice, his style, his menacing prescence... all MCs after him followed his rough formula.

LL COOL J-- For a while, he was played out, and he hasn't had a decent flow on a track since "Mama Said Knock You Out" which wasn't all that to begin with. But those early albums are some of the wildest, most vicious streams of hip-hop jawing that were ever committed to wax. He calls himself The Greatest Of All Time, and because of his longevity-- and the fact that he has won every rap beef that has been brought to him, from Kool Moe Dee to Canibus --it's safe for him to say it.

KRS-ONE-- The Apostle Paul of Hip-Hop, KRS-ONE went from being a lowlife street urchin/tagger to an up-and-coming take-no-prisoners battle rapper to the philosopher/teacher/elder statesman that he is today. The senseless murder of his Boogie Down Productions partner DJ Scott La Rock sparked a fire under KRS' ass, one that hasn't died down at all. A maddening, walking contradiction at times, KRS-ONE never ceases to amaze me with his knowledge, wit, and pure microphone fury. Also, he has one of the best voices in rap music.

CHUCK D-- When I first heard Chuck D, he scared the shit out of me. Like KRS-ONE, he has a great voice, and his rhyming style is almost Cubist-- the lyrical Picasso. But it was the Red-Black-and-Green politics that caught everyone by surprise. Intelligent, powerful, with a voice that can make you want to burn down a liquor store, Chuck D has never sold out nor has he lessened his rage. And speaking of rage, Zack de la Rocha from Rage Against The Machine owes his whole rhyming identity to Mista Chuck.

MELLE MEL-- I had to take it back to the days of wayback for a bit, but ironically Melle Mel is the one ol' school rapper that most non-rap fans know-- he is the man who authored both "The Message" ("Don't push me'cause I'm close to the edge / I'm tryin' not to lose my head / a-huh-HUH-HUH-HUH!") and "White Lines", a surprise college-radio staple. Possessing a smooth-as-silk voice and a party-loving demeanor, he also was capable of capturing the urban struggle with such lines as "It's like a jungle sometimes / it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under."

SLICK RICK-- A.K.A. "The Ruler". A direct influence on Snoop Dee-Oh-Double-Gee, Slick Rick first caught my attention on a 12" single, "La-di-Da-di" b/w "The Show". Unfortunately, original versions of that classic single are hard to find-- because of legal entanglements, certain sections of the songs where Slick Rick sang lines from old pop tunes have been edited out for good on later pressings. But I still remember the magic of hearing "La-di-Da-di" for the first time, which was only a long, uninterrupted story-rap by Rick accompanied by the superb beat-boxing of Doug E. Fresh. One of the few MCs to make an English accent sound dope as opposed to fey.

ICE CUBE-- While all of my white friends in Junior High were digging on the suburban appeal of listening to Public Enemy, I was getting NWA tapes from the kids in my 'hood. NWA was scarier than Public Enemy or X-Clan, because it was real-- in fact, I think NWA, for all its fantasy violence and mayhem, was the beginning of the whole "keep it real" ethic in rap. You see, if you lived in a bad neighborhood, overrun by gangs and crack dealers, then NWA's "Fuck The Police" was the real rallying cry. Public Enemy had "Fight The Power", but to inner-city youth, the Power was the cops and anyone who was trying to kill you with a choke-hold. Ice Cube emerged from the group as the poet laureate of Los Angeles gang culture, and he hasn't made many missteps since then. One of the most gifted writers in rap, akin to pulp novelist Jim Thompson, he also has an unmatched talent for finding the most potent-yet-offensive way to convey a message in his songs.

THE BEASTIE BOYS-- Okay, before you ride me for being PC or wanting to be all-inclusive, keep a few things in mind. (1) The Beasties did more for rap than a lot of other groups-- they spread the message out past the New York boroughs and into everyone's homes. (2) They were able to say some crazy shit on record and get away with it, because they were goofy whiteboys-- listen to NWA's first album and count the number of Beastie Boys samples Dr. Dre used. (3) More than their mentors RUN-DMC, The Beasties made the rock-rap connection palatable. Ad Rock is still one of my all-time favorite MCs, because of his voice and the cleverness of his rhyming. And yes, I liked To The 5 Boroughs, no matter what anyone else thinks.

RUN-DMC-- If you can call The Beasties the Buddy Hollys of rap, then RUN-DMC were the Chuck Berrys. They wrote the book, tore it up, re-wrote it, and watched generation after generation flip the script up and down. They were the first rap group to look like they were from the streets-- no rhinestone-studded leather pants and fringes for these three Queens natives. They were the first rap group to have a full-length album. They were the first to go platinum. They were the first to rock arenas. They were the first to do almost everything that rappers today take for granted. And, with the recent loss of DJ Jam Master Jay, they have become living legends. I get choked up just writing this entry, because RUN-DMC meant a lot to me, and the murder of Jay was like hearing about the death of a good friend.

Notice that I didn't put many recent MCs on this short list. Not to deny the impact of rappers like Outkast, Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Ghostface Killah, Eminem or 50 Cent, but to quote a decidedly non-hip-hop figure such as Morrissey*, "You just haven't earned it yet baby". Time will tell if someone like Nelly will be either a footnote in rap history or an important voice, but until then I have to focus on the heroes of my hip-hop youth.

Not to mention, I had to leave off a bunch of vets from this short list, such as Q-Tip, Busta Rhymes and Kool Keith. Otherwise, I'd be here all day, writing up a storm, and I have so many things I want to cover in the next few weeks. For you see, this is the topic I'm going to stick to until I get it all out of my system, and that will take a while.

My apologies to anyone who thinks rap music is stupid. I don't think it is, but to each his or her own.

TOMORROW: Playing bass in a live rap group back in 1994...

*=In my old blog archives, I once posted about how I thought Morrissey was the Britpop equivalent of a gangsta rapper, and I deconstructed The Smiths' "The Queen Is Dead" LP through a rap lens.