By John Vanderslice, Pitchfork
Since 1988, when my brother and I dropped Public Enemy's Nation of Millions on our Technics turntable, rap has nourished and inspired my own music and creative life. Rap's focus on lyrics, its tendency toward narrative and story, and its culture of wordplay and verbal invention has encouraged writers to push the boundaries of what's been said in song. Generally speaking, rap has also given a free pass to marginal and dangerous ideas, bringing radical politics back into popular music. Rap has given the world a lot of damn good music:
1. "I don't rhyme for the sake of riddling."
Artist: Public Enemy
Album: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Song: "Don't Believe the Hype"
"Remember there's a need to get alarmed
Again I said I was a timebomb...
Rock the hard jams - treat it like a seminar
Teach the bourgeois, and rock the boulevard."
The rapper as teacher, revolutionary and entertainer... my soft suburban ass had never heard such words before. It changed my life, changed the way I felt about music. Understand, I was a rabid prog fan. Also understand that after the opening twitches of "Bring the Noise," Tales of Topographic Oceans was deemed irrelevant and entirely unlistenable. It changed everything.
2. "What, where, why, or when will all be explained like instructions to a game."
Artist: Boogie Down Productions
Album: By All Means Necessary
Song: "My Philosophy"
Vocal: KRS-One
"Boogie Down Productions is made up of teachers
The lecture is conducted from the mic into the speaker
Who gets weaker? The king or the teacher?
It's not about a salary, it's all about reality."
This list could easily have been Top 10 KRS-One Moments from "My Philosophy." Laurence Krisna Parker is a fascinating writer: surprising, unnerving, and funny as shit.
3. "Straight out the fucking dungeons of rap."
Artist: Nas
Album: Illmatic
Song: "N.Y. State of Mind"
"I'm taking rappers to a new plateau, through rap slow
My rhyming is a vitamin, hell without a capsule
The smooth criminal on beat breaks
Never put me in your box if your shit eats tapes.
Illmatic is a towering masterpiece, chronicling Nas' life as dealer turned rhyme-pusher, a survivor of NY's crack-era mean streets, where "each block is like a maze full of black rats trapped."
4. "I'm ready to put the world on a milk carton."
Artist: Prince Paul
Album: Prince Among Thieves
Song: "What U Got (The Demo)"
Rapper: Sha
"So who mad? You grab and ransom
And I'ma pierce his soul and touch the heart of his grandson
Cause my lyrics are like being food poisoning injected through the ear
Fuck what you heard, this is what you need to hear.
If you aren't familiar with Prince Paul's ambitious concept record about a rapper who has to sell crack to pay for studio time, I highly recommend tracking it down. After two decades of obligatory bravura in rap, it's hard for today's thug to make convincing claims of superiority, but here the supremacy of our narrator is both cross-generational (the heart of his grandson!) and likely to cause serious illness.
5. Neve vs. Mackie
Artist: Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek (Reflection Eternal)
Album: Train of Thought
Song: "Too Late"
"My sound fat like a Neve while you thin like a Mackie."
The things you find in these songs! It took me a while to pull this lyric out; Kweli is dense, rapid-fire, and at times, esoteric. Neve was, along with Helios and API, one of the premier recording consoles of the 1970s, rightfully known for its superb low end; Mackie is a mass-produced consumer board. Score one for Talib.
6. "So wear a vest on your chest and the rest stand still"
Artist: Paris
Album: Sleeping with the Enemy
Song: "Bush Killa"
"Cause all I wanna see is motherfucking brains hanging
Another level when it's me and devils gangbanging
So don't be telling me to get the non-violent spirit
Cause when I'm violent is the only time the devils hear it
Paris' sprawling, messy Bush-assassination fantasy had a huge impact on me. Paris struggles in these songs between Old Testament-style vengeance and the need to mobilize a real political revolution. This record is a pure product of the late 60s East Bay: crossing Oakland's Black Panthers with Berkeley's Free Speech/Anti-War Movement to create a confusing, contradictory, and compelling narrative. If Bush, Inc. re-invades Iraq, Paris will once again make perfect sense.
7. "Woop-Woop! That's the sound of da police! Woop-Woop! That's the sound of the beast!"
Artist: KRS-One
Album: Return of the Boom Bap
Song: "Sound of Da Police"
"Overseer, overseer, overseer
Officer, officer, officer, officer!
Yeah, officer from overseer
You need a little clarity?
Check the similarity!
The overseer rode around the plantation
The officer is off patrolling all the nation
The overseer could stop you what you're doing
The officer will pull you over just when he's pursuing
The overseer had the right to get ill
And if you fought back, the overseer had the right to kill
The officer has the right to arrest
And if you fight back they put a hole in your chest
(Woop!) They both ride horses
After 400 years, I've got no choices."
KRS-One spews those first two lines in a staccato storm, until the seam between overseer and officer is gone. The power of making an interesting point (they both ride horses!) under the swelling crunch of DJ Premier's beats is tremendous.
8. "I'm stubborn as a thousand born-agains avoiding questions"
Artist: Aesop Rock
Album: Labor Days
Song: "Daylight"
"Life's not a bitch, life is a beautiful woman
Your only call her a bitch because she won't let you get that pussy
Maybe she didn't feel y'all shared any similar interests
Or maybe you're just an asshole who couldn't sweet talk the princess."
Aesop Rock's lyrics are thoroughly surreal, packed with inscrutable phrases and absurd metaphors. But his overarching theme is always about self-transformation and overcoming.
9. "Listen to this, plus my Roland?"
Artist: Public Enemy
Album: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Song: "Caught, Can We Get a Witness?"
"I found this mineral that I call a beat
I paid zero
I packed my load 'cause it's better than gold
People don't ask the price 'cause it's sold"
Chuck D's fascinating meditation on copyright violation was written at a time when sampling and home recording were forcing revisions in US law. Chuck was already suspicious and hostile of its enforcement: "Caught, Can We Get a Witness?" likens recorded tracks and beats to natural resources, and makes the point that sampling records may fall under fair use. Unfortunately, US copyright law has gotten a whole lot worse since '88!
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, a gift to the RIAA and other industry lobby groups, has severely undermined fair-use provisions. With the passing of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, which primarily benefits film, music and publishing industries, Congress has overstepped its constitutional authority to issue copyrights and patents "for limited times" to "promote the progress of science and useful arts." As Chuck says: "I rebel with a raised fist." Yeah, me too.
10. "Bleeding heavily, part of me leaving steadily."
Artist: Prince Paul
Album: Prince Among Thieves
Song: "Pain"
Vocal: Breeze
Our hero, Tariq, has just been shot by his best friend (and rival) Tru:
"Getting me, wetting me, crimson drenched
In my mind son, I find some hymns entrenched
A lot of mournful faint humming
Tomorrow's dawn, I swear that shit ain't coming."
Tariq is a struggling musician torn between commerce and art, a double bind that leaves him shot in the alley. But music is still there, and the "mournful faint humming" of childhood hymns provides the soundtrack to his death.
There's so much I forgot to make room for: De La Soul, Ice Cube, Eminem, The Coup, Blackalicious, NWA, Black Star, Aceyalone, Wu-Tang, Tribe Called Quest, the list goes on...