When The Music Stops!
All my life I’ve loved music. Just couldn’t escape it. It’s everywhere. Musicians claim it is a universal language as no matter where on earth you go music is the one thing we all have in common as it crosses through all racial barriers. I think I’ve even heard or read about scientist claiming that we are “genetically predisposed to loving music”. It’s true. Music cuts straight through racial barriers like a scalpel through skin. The one specific genre that shows this phenomenon the best is Jazz. From inception in height of racism, theater houses filled with white people there to watch someone whom surprisingly they thought was inferior and hardly human. And yet they watched tentatively as he hit those beautiful notes on that trumpet while asking them why he’s so black and blue.
I’m getting ahead of myself. This article isn’t about Satchmore nor Jazz. It’s about a genre. A specific genre which is unique to a certain type of individual. If you young and you black and your hats real low, you’re probably reading my mind. Hip-hop, oh, my dear hip-hop. The reason why I have all that jibajaba earlier on about jazz is because if you like jazz, you like jazz. Whether it be neo-jazz vocal jazz, piano jazz, café jazz a proper jazz-man will flip through most these sub-genres with ease. From Vollenweider, Miles, Sample, Butler, Molelekwa to even Matsui. A proper Jazzman will flip from culture to culture with ease enjoying all the notes in variety.
Between all the different musical genres, none are as divided as hip-hop heads. Let me clarify: you get people that listen to hip-hop and then you get hip-hip heads. These are the guys can have a full conversation just quoting rappers. I’m talking about the guys that know where Jay-Z took the line “Can I kick it? Yes you can” on Reasonable Doubt.
I noticed the inconsistency with heads when the inevitable question comes up. Trust me, when you hang with heads, this always comes up. WHO ARE THE TOP FIVE GREATEST RAPPERS??? Depending on who you are, I bet 2pac is somewhere on the list and after that it gets fuzzy. A lot of the times though Biggie and Jay-Z come up but not always. A thought that may shock some heads into cardiac arrest. I’ve talked to some serious heads that think Biggie had had too few albums to be considered such and Jay is just a biter. After Pac, Biggie and Jay-Z It even more fuzzy. All sorts of names come up with some leaving me flabbergasted. Even so, Common, MosDef, NaS, Eminem and Talib frequent the mentions in no particular order. In fact, I saw a poll on Blackmoney.co.za where Nas was voted 2nd greatest after Pac and far ahead of Jigga. Someone once even mentioned Papoose was the greatest rapper ever. I dropped my jaw on tar for that one.
Evaluating all these different views on hip-hop gave me more questions than answers. Left me thinking about how people come up with their lists. What rules are there to decide? Is it based on overall music quality, punch lines, metaphors or just plain popularity? I don’t know but one difference between hip-hop and most music genres is that it’s personal. Very very personal. Rappers tell stories that people relate to. They sell an image. An image people identify with. Maybe it’s this that makes it so confusing. You’ll obviously listen to whoever you identify with the most. Hip-hop is the one genre that artists cant separate their personal lives from. You have to live it to be in it. That has to be why the top 5 spot is so fuzzy. It’s not about sales or popularity. It’s about identification.
With that being said, how appropriate was it when Bizarre from D12 said these words “Music has changed my life in so many ways. Brain has been confused and fucked since the fifth grade. LL told me to rock them bells. NWA said fuck the police, and now I’m in jail. Ninety three! Was strictly R and B. Fucked up haircut listening to Joe-DC… Im going in shock. I got a clip against my head. And the music stops “
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