THANK F**K ITS FRIDAY: 2ND EDITION

REDMAN: DARE IZ A DARKSIDE (1994)

 

Like the somewhat juvenile spin on words would suggest, this album brings a jovial side not often associated with the grave messages found in most rap. That said, who doesnt like the oppertunity to every once in a while take their mind off the trifles that seemed so important throughout the week with something as simple as Dare Iz A Darkside.

The album is far from being sloven when it comes to production quality however, with a team that included Reggie Noble. Struggling as they may be economically, it still takes some prowess to grab the attention of Def Jam and Redman held it with this playful ensemble in 1994.

The album peaked on the Billboard chart at 13, with key tracks including the smooth Rocafella (by far the lyrical highlight), the hilariously surreal We run N.Y and Cant Wait.

Redman will never answer your unsated questions on Existentialism in working class areas of Harlem, nor will he preach to you of the destitution every young youth had "selling rock" for them brand new pair of Timberlands. How the album resonates with it's audience is through drawing (possibly unconscienciously) on the desire within each one of us  to have the inocuous "lovable character" to maintain our bright spirits.

Dont expect the album to change any of your fundamental views. Just relax, safe in the knowledge that you will feel slightly more upbeat having listened to it.

Where Morals Resurrect

Death lingers around the Rap industry like a phlegmatic nihilist to his unjustified sense of the world as a dark abyss.

While the graves of urban intellects such as Big L, Nate Dogg and Big Pun flake with moss, the nay- sayers they depart from all too easily revert to the pedantic ideology that some sort of moral justice has been done for the corruption they brought to our world.

I shall now step out of my taciturn comfort and give voice to the blatently obvious fact that elements of rap encompass fundamental moral messages in strict contradiction to those so eager to soil the legacy of our genres great names.
Without getting complex ( after all stupidity, which I adore, is guiless) the best place to start is with a familiar dilema of racism.

In a 2009 interview on Oprah, Brooklyn's very own Jay-Z was asked the inevitable question by the corpulant (sorry Oprah) lady as to why he uses the "N" word in his songs.
Without any hesitation the man with 13 albums to his name gave her an answer that to this day still resonates with me. He said (not verbatim) that the people who use such a word for negative connotations need it in order to feed their idea of superiority over a person therefore by taking such a word and featuring it in his lyrics he was eliminating any sort of evil power it had the potential to create.

If Prometheus stole fire and brought it to earth without Zues' authority, similiarly the wisdom of Jay-Z's  work brings with him the water to douse the inferno of racism, whether the boffins agree with it's method or not.
The song Punish Me by Big Pun contains the lyrics "A boy needs a father that's the most important part of his life. It comes from the mouth of an overweight Peurto Rican and it holds about as much credibility as Kid Cudi-Soulja Boy collaboration. However take the basis of the same idea and put it in the writing of one Sigmund Freud, who described how a boy will always base his image around that of his father, we are suddenly facing a world renowned philisophical argument (given by it must be said a most indecent man in his own regard, but people tend to cut and paste the facts to render their choices appropriate).

There is also the idea amongst many that Rap has a dependancy on swearing in order to express itself and to that I would tell them to begin by sitting down and opening their ears to an infamous little song called Express Yourself by N.W.A, which was purposely written in order to prove this teory wrong and contains not a single swear word. In addition to this any idea of swearing being "the lowest form of vocabulary" often comes from people with the lowest vocabulary anyway, so they can f**k off!

Any idea of doubting morality within rap should begin with a look at the same element within yourself. It is easy to take something that breaks from the linear such as rap and question its morals when in actual reality it is aversion from your own personal demons harboured within.
Even the immoral lyrics of someone like Tupac such as "I wonder if heaven has a spot for drug dealers?" carry some credibility. It shows more sincerity in its repentance (and later in the same song its self deprecation) than any of us care to admit about ourselves.

So came the wise men to hear his call and duely he delivered, that was not a quote more a false sense of grandeur I hope I may have partially obtained through the writing of this brief articale!

Feud For Thought- East Coast vs West Coast: The Origins

After much deliberation it would appear impossible to avoid some element of criticism regarding this dive into the labyrinth of our beloved genre. It is a question that frequently pops up when we listen to various artists, yet it rarely takes on a greater form than a senseless shout of loyalty towards a particular coast. Bearing that in mind, we shall take the coloured flags out of both sides of our Khaki’s and determine what it is that makes the United States a coast-coast superpower of rap.

The dawn of a new era began in the late 70’s and in hindsight may safely be regarded as the calm before the storm. It would appear both coasts began on a level par, adapting the fundamental elements of a genre which was about bare it’s proud posture to an unsuspecting world still coming to terms with the idea of punk rock. New techniques such as Beat-Boxing and MC-ing spread simultaneously on both coasts like wild fire, and were utilised by early groups such as Uncle Jamm’s Army in California.

 

Just as Napoleon had his triumph at Austerlitz, rap’s “finest hour” came with the turn of the decade.  In 1983 from the humble surroundings of his dorm room in New York University, Rick Rubin founded what would become Def Jam Records.  The Goliath of production set the East Coast on the map, employing the talents of LL Cool J and The Beastie Boys as their early releases to be sampled by a still reluctant society. Proliferation in employment on the West Coast was aided by the establishment of Rapper’s Rapp Group in 1981, which aimed to breed new hip hop groups modelled around the early example of Grandmaster Flash.

What proved indispensable to the growth of Hip Hop, giving the West Coast an early advantage over their adversaries, was the colossal work of Greg Mack on his afternoon show The Mack Attack on radio station KDAY. The shortwaves that transmitted out of Redondo Beach, California turned a then unknown group called N.W.A into the Panzer tanks of the Rap Reich they are to this day.  

The 80’s was the bedrock of Hip Hop not only as a Genre but as a business and stylistic schisms began to appear between the two coasts which would become candid during the cornerstone era of the 90’s.

East Coast’s answer to elite Hip Hop groups such as NWA was none other than the Wu Tang Clan and is possibly the best starting point for our determination of what made East Coast rap different.

I have always found it easiest to approach this question by asking, what East Coast rap isn’t? Whilst early Aftermath productions from Dre placed emphasis on the encapsulating beats of Yela, this played a secondary role in the music of the Wu Tang. Each song from the infamous ’93 album Enter the Wu Tang: 36 chambers focuses on the grit of lyrics and the velocity of each bar, often accompanied by a simple Hip Hop beat. It is the raw lyricism of the early Harlem scene that can be found in every 90’s powerhouse, including Big L as he pushed the microphone to the test with Lifestyles of The Poor and Dangerous (not to take anything away from the tremendous MC prowess of D.I.T.C member Kid Capri).

The domination of the once held and cherished Dre trait, “street knowledge”, came to fruition on the East Coast. The emergence of rappers such as the young group Mobb Deep, the infamous Nas and Biggie Smalls, Lord Finesse and Big Pun to name a few caused a catatonic increase in Rap popularity (and disapproving mothers). That does not reflect a flaccid nature in the West Coast scene; after all, ’93 did see the formation of a little group called Thug Life under some guy named Tupac Shakur whose’94 album Thug Life: Volume 1 went Gold.

 

It was also an era which seen certain “interlopers” like Nas  go West and release an album with Dre’s Aftermath Productions, worth noting if we are ever to acquire that harmonious blend of wise lyrics and phenomenal beats.

Nowadays as the Rap industry has been established for “We, the future”, it is hard to tell which way the Pendulum swings. A level of ubiquity has occurred, which allows artists such as Soulja Boy to gross $7million in 2010 when he should have been swiftly escorted off the premises of any producer’s headquarters.

I will stick my neck out and make a bold call. Although it was the aforementioned emphasis on lyrics in the East Coast scene that nourished my love for Rap, I feel the greatest signs of growth these days come from the West. Hip Hop giant Dre continues to work tirelessly on production with artists such as Compton born The Game and the explosion of Adolescent Odd Future and their by- products Hodgy Beats and Tyler the Creator onto the scene  are reminiscent (whether they like it or not) of the success the Wu Tang Clan shared years before them.

The one area I do feel the East Coast has never possessed is an element of excess or baggage, no time ever seems wasted listening to an East Coast rapper. The die is certainly not cast on this age old debate and it is only with eager anticipation we shall await the next twist.