"Up to date / state of the art / take part, get taken apart as I make my mark"
Welcome to the South Easy
Fuck. Shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck, right?
I’m white. I don’t have much to say about race that’s worth hearing, except sometimes you have to just shut up and listen. It’s been one of those weeks, right? Sorry for the detour into political waters, normal service will be resumed shortly. Sometimes you don’t have a choice, right? Sometimes you just have to join in the chorus cos if you’re half-civilised all you can manage for a few days is foul, like: fuck. Shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck, right? One week you’re so modern, the next it’s time to party like it’s 1963.
• Hip-HopDX has a good roundup of Twitter comments posted by rappers in the immediate aftermath of George Zimmerman being found not guilty of Trayvon Martin’s murder. Reef The Lost Cause feels that his son is ‘marked for death’. Several say there’s no justice in the verdict. Big Boi just says ‘What the Fuck !!!!!!’ The piece then goes on to recap both the case and rap’s response to several earlier high profile trials in the hip-hop era: the killing of Yusef Hawkins and the beating of Rodney King.
• HHDX also reports that Immortal Technique is saying the verdict “wasn’t so much about racism as it was about people who had the ability to use those connections they have in a court system.” Or, in translation, it wasn’t so much about racism as it was about institutionalised racism.
• A few songs you might want to check out: Plies, We Are Trayvon (Trayvon Martin Tribute) “You can call me nigger all you want, you ain’t s’posed to treat me like one”; Young Jeezy’s It’s A Cold World; 3D Na’Tee’s Dear Mr Zimmerman; Raheem DeVaughn and Styles P’s Triggerman.
• It’s hard to laugh at The Onion, sometimes. When they’re just a little bit too spot on. Then again, it feels refreshing to read an article headlined Zimmerman Found Not Guilty Technically, But C’mon. Shame it’s not on a tabloid in the local supermarket.
Anyway. Time to get back to the music. Some good stuff out this week.
Footnotes
• Times like this are sadly the best time to remind people why the sound of black people rapping about being indestructable and having lots of money still sounds really bloody cool. A good week for Master P to release a typically rudimentary headbanger I Need An Armoured Truck, then. Listen to it and contemplate why Robert Downey Jr made such a mediocre Tony Starks.
• Hipster sexual violence corner #1: Not sure there’s going to be enough entries here to make this one a series, but this one intriguing example of sexual violence caught my ears this week and it’s a catchy title, so I thought I’d throw it out there. It’s on Dying In The Pussy by Antwon, a song I heard first on noted corporate hipster website Stereogum. Antwon’s lyric ‘lay down on that bed, got my hands over that throat’ got me wondering whether he was describing a consensual act of sexual violence or one of the bad kind. Cos if it’s the bad kind obviously someone’s going to have to call for a boycott, like with Rick Ross. I’m sure Antwon’s got some endorsement deals going on, he better clarify that quickly or this might cost him big. As he says, that punani is potent.
• How could a new track by E-40 featuring Danny Brown not be disappointing? Of course you’re going to hit play hoping for a cross between Dusted And Disgusted and Pac’s Blood, of course it’s not going to be anywhere near as good as either of those tracks. That’s not to say All My Niggas is bad. It was never going to be that either, not when it’s got the same minimalist but effective post-hyphy booty shaking beat E-40’s used about two hundred times over a dozen albums in the last four years and Danny Brown acknowledging ‘I got all my game from Charlie Hustle’. And some guy called Schoolboy Q, too. I hear he’s popular with the kids these days. Miracles aren’t always necessary for enjoyment, I suppose. In the end it’s good to hear the new generation pay homage.
• Madlib. Freddie Gibbs. Two minutes of nervous speedy punk-funk energy. Not elements I’d ever considered squeezing into the same paragraph before now, but the duo’s new single City is something else. Maybe my prejudices were all wrong. Amiable stoner waffle from Madlib? Mafioso posturing from Gibbs? Perhaps, but this is snarling, confrontational, shockingly so. Maybe someone stole their weed.
• Cap-1 has hot butter for you scampi niggas in Fish Grease. Motherfucker? You’re a shrimp. I wonder if you can guess what he rhymes with ‘shrimp’, motherfucker? Haters will want to stick around for the comedy turn at the end where they pretend to get bawled out by their boss for shooting a video at work and try to make out like the whole thing was shot on a phone. Their effortless comedy panache is sure to have lesser talents seething with jealousy. If there’s any justice in the world they’ll have their own sitcom by the end of the year.
• I sometimes wish I’d had the foresight to ignore everything Lil Wayne‘s recorded over the last four or five years, but every now and then he shows signs like it might just be time to start paying attention again. At one point in the first verse of recent single with T.I. Wit It he compares himself to a bloody tampon and I’m reminded of how awesomely oblivious he used to be. Y’know, like dignity is for losers. You don’t like what I’m saying? Deal with it or scram.
• I’d like to make it clear that I in no way identify with the sentiments of Kevin Gates‘ new single with Juicy J, Thinking With My Dick. I’d like to make that especially clear if my wife is reading this. Except maybe the bit about his shit being dumb, I can identify with that.
• Ringo P
"Up to date / state of the art / take part, get taken apart as I make my mark" 