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Say what you will about Gangsta Rap; sometimes it hits the spot, and nothing else kicks quite as hard as a menacing bass line over fast and furious bars recounting the countless drama filled nights of someone living on the streets of Compton as a soldier. Continuing from where former Compton street legends Dr. Dre, DJ Quik, and WC left off (and where The Game currently blazed a new trail for new school West Coast music) comes an artist that is generating quite a buzz on the West Coast: Nipsey Hussle.
Click for huge resolution picture of album art
His former two mixtapes, creatively named Bullets Ain’t Got No Name Vol. 1 and 2, features copious amounts of gang banging, West Coast street dropping, and references to the wildness of the RSC (Rollin’ 60 Crips) over meandering beats with just the right amount of synths. Delivery is on point, and one can imagine playing this album front to bank while riding in a drop top 67 Chevy Impala in the California sun. If you like his album, buy it! However, Nipsey Hussle did release it for free with the intent for his fans to listen to his new release:
Upon listening to my iPod today (what a great leap from the tape deck, isn’t it?), I hit a string of songs in a row that all had a fantastic beat, and I couldn’t help but start nodding my head like I was constantly agreeing with myself. This had a two-pronged effect: I got a few puzzled looks from my coworkers who probably don’t need any help in thinking I’m weird, and it got me thinking about how important the beat is to a song. In a lot of ways, the beat is both overrated and underrated.
Beatmaking: the hidden science. Picture by ryan.valle.
It is overrated because some rappers can have whack songs on a hot beat, and they’ll shoot straight up the charts – people often refer to these rappers as “ringtone rappers.” I can’t think of an honor more dubious than selling ten times more ringtones than albums. Nearly always, the casual listener will listen to and consider the beat first before anything else.
Beats are also underrated because, well, it IS in the background. Great producers are overlooked in favor of the artist rapping over the beats, and little is known about the art of production. Producers are often masters of several traditional instruments and can be considered geniuses who use a huge variety of sources to paint a melody on a musical canvas. It takes an enormous amount of knowledge about music to craft beats well, and only until Kanye West exploded onto the scene did producers start to get noticed.
Good beats beg you to hit the rewind (or replay, in this age) button just one more time. It implores you to reach for the volume knob because your poor ears have gotten used to where you turned it up before. And, it makes you snap your neck in your car, looking like a fool and not caring, because the bass hits so hard.
Here are three of my favorite beats – from the early 1990s.
Listen to this song – the beat hits you as hard as a speeding train. DJ Premier’s fledging career was defined by this song, and his artistic traits were on full display – a haunting piano loop from obscure jazz samples, a pounding bassline, and cutting spoken lyrics from other songs to form a chorus. The overall result? A gritty, dark beat fitting for the Big Apple. Executive producer MC Serch noted “Primo [DJ Premier] and Nas, they could have been separated at birth. It wasn’t a situation where his beats fit their rhymes, they fit each other.”
One of the defining songs of The Pharcyde’s popular run in the early 90s, Runnin’ was one of J. Dilla’s early masterpieces. J. Dilla always had a habit of having his curious style imparted onto every one of his beats, yet every beat he created was somehow drastically unique. Noteworthy aspects of the beat are the disjointed, almost dream-like guitar samples, mastery of turntable scratching, choice saxophone and maraca cuts, and the way J. Dilla artistically wove this haphazard tapestry together. Also, who could forget the ridiculous verse drop at 3:00 when the beat stops, for just a heartbeat?
I love music that stirs the soul, like a movie soundtrack starring Denzel Washington. Those who listen carefully can hear a stirring, tinkling piano loop, a sinister bassline, and a steadily rising and falling cresendo rising throughout the song, culumating in muted trumpet blasts. Ironically, the iconic (and amazingly addictive) vocal sample comes from none other than Dr. Dre, a giant on the rival West Coast.
I know what the wrong side of the universe looks like – all alien beings must be late and hurried there. I was forced to skip breakfast and was already feeling the effects of my low blood sugar with each roar of my car’s engine. As I was power-walking in the parking lot, I felt that my pocket was unusually light this morning.
My iPod is at home.
Luckily, with the trend of Web 2.0 everything, a delivered breakfast burrito and some interesting online radio choices fixed my morning right up.
Old school radio: demise forthcoming. Picture by Ian.
I will be frank and say that I believe 99% of the radio station out there sucks. I don’t even think my car radio quite works correctly (one of the downsides of installing your own car audio system) – this is of little loss to me because the annoying commercials, low sound quality, and the fact that radio playlists never seem to play exactly what I want irritates me to no end. Don’t even get me started on the songs they choose to play either.
My first taste of online radio was surprisingly great, and refreshing. I stumbled upon a radio station on Live365 that played extremely listenable and varied music, ranging from old school to Afrocentric to forgotten favorites. It felt like someone who knew what he was doing was playing the songs, as opposed to a media pawn or a statistics driven robot. Here is an example playlist:
A Tribe Called Quest – Like It Like That (great Afrocentric old school)
Fatlip – What’s Up Fatlip (Fatlip, from the Pharcyde, released a solo album in 2005 that I had no idea about. ) Afu-Ra – God of Rap (very overlooked old school artist) Grand Puba - Two Thousand, Amazing (see above) Canibus – Second Round K.O. (one of the first, best battle rappers in the game) Outkast - Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (one of the Foundations of southern rap, for you Wayne/T.I. junkies out there) The Fugees – Vocab (A marriage of reggae, hip-hop, and soul earning unadulterated mainstream and critical praise? Never before done!) Kanye West – Get ‘em High (a lost gem among Kanye’s more popular songs, features Kanye, Common, and Talib Kweli going at it hard) Rakim - Been a Long Time (old school legend)
DJ Honda – Straight Talk from NY (surprising find on a radio station)
Has anybody else had a good experience with online radio? Any suggestions?
For those who have been following Jay Rock since 2006, we know what we’ve come to expect: hard lines, hard beats, and tales from the streets from Compton, CA. However, with the recent release of his new mixtape 30 Day Takeover, The Game soundalike is making a name for himself on the West Coast scene.
Featuring 30 raw and hard tracks, Jay Rock has expanded his repitore and sharpened his delivery and wordplay while displaying a wider range of emotion than shown before. A solid album that can be played from front to back on the iPod or in the car – I give this album a 4.5 out of 5.
Some standout tracks include:
The Takeover – Jay Rock flexes his vocals here and sets the tone for the rest of the album
Plenty Money – A nice West Coast G-anthem
Mandatory – K-Dot and Jay Rock are becoming quite the West Coast duo, especially with standout tracks such as this one
What’s my Name – I’m sure West Coast veterans will identity this iconic beat, and Jay Rock does this track justice
Twitter, various local news outlets, and the Internet in general is mourning the loss of one the pillars of 90s G-Funk: Nate Dogg. Nate Dogg (real name: Nathaniel Dwayne Hale) lent his legendarily smooth and pimptastic voice to a huge library of songs in the 1990s and 2000s. In fact, it was practically guaranteed that if you secured a feature with him singing the hook or backing up vocals on your track that it’ll get some radio airplay, commercial success, and love from the streets. After struggling to battle from debilitating strokes in 2007 and 2008, Nate Dogg lost his battle to survive just 30 minutes ago (source: http://www.rap-up.com/2011/03/15/rapper-singer-nate-dogg-dies-at-41/). Cause of death and other details are not yet released. Hit albums include Music & Me and G-Funk Classics Volumes 1 and 2.
RIP Nate Dogg 3/15/2011; you will be missed and you definitely got love from us.
Recently, I read an article (located here) about Snoop Dogg playing a much different role than his usual weed-smoking, pimpalicious self. He was described in the article as a hard-working mentor to disadvantaged kids who works to keep them off the street. Meet: Coach Dogg.
Snoop has gone through a rather drastic metamorphosis throughout the years, with his early success resting on his reputation as a West Coast Crip OG and his latest successes relying on reality show appeal and ridiculous wardrobe. In his early days, however, he was decried as a horrible influence on the youth of America. His rap songs were immensely popular and frequently forayed into the science of pimping out bootylicious hoes and promoting the benefits of smoking a certain green plant.
Despite this though, a hidden aspect of the Big Boss Dogg hasn’t had quite the same amount of promotion: Snoop Dogg is an active child mentor, football coach and philanthropist. I Googled this when I saw a giant blue “Snoop Dogg” football bus rolling through Whittier, CA one day. Snoop Dogg’s program is unique because the benefits really cut away at gang violence at the roots:
1) The league allows ex-cons to focus their energy into a productive cause – too often we do not give those who have been punished for their misdeeds a chance to actually succeed in society
2) A big factor for gang members is that they do not have a sense of family or belonging from their biological families or they do not have a way to spend their free time. The football program instills strong male role models and solves the problem for both.
3) Gang disputes between rival gangs, such as Crips and Bloods, are left away from the field as a sort of peace treaty. If bitter gang members can do what the Democrats and Republicans apparently cannot, that must be a positive sign.
Snoop also enforces a dress code to get “players out of the hood culture” in order to give them a sense of order. The rapper also is approachable, demands no special treatment and tries his best to have the football league be a symbol of what can be accomplished with a little money and PR. Programs in Dallas and Pittsburgh are interested and I hope it catches on. Play on, S N double O P!
