DA GAME OF WHAT IF'S IS TO BE TOLD, NOT TO BE SOLD

The 17 1/2 year old I adopted last week be tellin me this is what the kids call a #FBF (I love you, Raul. Ima give my all to provide for you and watch you grow into a man! #ProudDad). Always wack, Terror Squad turned utterly charmless once Big Pun fell through the floorboards of this mortal coil. The chipmunk soul of the Cool & Dre/StreetRunner co-production is crying out for Diplomatic Immunity-era Dips or the 'Ye of College Dropout, but cruel fate delivered it unto the grubby hands of Fat Joe and his clown car. Against all odds, the fantastic hook elevates "Take Me Home" to a poor man's "Hey Ma."



This week Cam'ron dropped his own cocktease in the form of the Contraband EP. As a lactose intolerant dairy fiend will suffer gaseous pangs for an oz. of fire gruyère, Bay Area rap fans have learned to stomach Berner's rap fantasy camp turns to get to the good isht. Berner must be slangin that fuego cause his manner is so flat and devoid of aggression it sounds like he's been chemically castrated, or underwent the same treatment as Mr. Burns on that one Treehouse Of Horror. Berner is a rapping potted plant, but his apparent aptitude for networking and overseeing a project suggest he would make an excellent A&R man. If only he'd drawn more on his Bay/Akron connects instead of wrangling Weed Rap 101ers like Devin The Dude and Wiz Khalifa. The Ampichino feature calls to mind bittersweet notions of what could have been paired with more simpatico running partners. Put the bong down, Bernie, and dial up Hus for the next outing!

STILL THE GREATEST USE OF A SWIZZ BEAT

Though paling in comparison to Jay-Z's transformation from Brooklyn's finest to the multimedia equivalent of modern lobby design, Swizzy's move from Casio bungler to minimalist visionary stands as one of the more impressive PR turnarounds of the era.  Maybe it was just displaced New York nostalgia in the age of Atlantan overthrow, but around '05 Swizz finally started getting respect from snobs who derided his tinkering style for being more "Chopsticks" than Rachmaninoff.  Of everything on Confessions of Fire, "Glory" is the earliest hint of the artist Cam was on his way to becoming; even better, you got N.O.R.E. what what!-ing on the hook.

Not for nothing, but the cover for Confessions of Fire look like something you would find behind saloon doors at a Chelsea video shop ca. '98.  You got Cam shirtless in leather overalls, lookin all pouty and airbrushed, holding a sledgehammer on top of a vat pouring out a money shot of smelted iron.  Add a few yellow guys in jean hotpants, and it's an average bacchanal at The Anvil.   Was the art director having a laugh at Cam's expense?  Whatever the truth may be, it's beginning to look like "no homo" was invented to make up for delicious past indiscretions.

BATTLE RAP REVISIONISM: SKITZO GOT ROBBED, BUT WE STILL BANGIN HIS SHIT IN THE 1-5!

Forget about Cassidy and Freeway, the best rap battle of the '00s was Jin vs. Skitzo!  This was back in the days of Jin's Freestyle Friday reign of terror on 106 & Park, before he won the Ruff Ryders deal and got his Charlie Chan on with "Learn Chinese."  Jin had his 15 minutes and we ain't gonna debate the politics of his brief media blitz. Nah, we here to shed light on a rapper who, at least by Judges Mannie & Baby's reckoning, lost the rap battle, but whose subsequent contributions to the game won the rap war!

Now I loved when Jin compared his dingaling to dumplings and an egg roll, but like Chinatown in July, something don't smell right in this particular instance of corporatized battle rap fury.  Word to God, only thing Jin won that day were sartorial points for his baby blue sweatsuit and matching hat combo.  Skitzo ethered the god with lines like, "You fake Eminem / You should be on the Tampax Tour with Free, cause you act feminem!"  I thought duke was steppin outta line and dissin the host with that zinger, but Free thanks him for the acknowledgement when he's done.  I guess she was out on tour slangin da bloodclot at the time?  He then says he got naked pictures of Jin's sister, gettin his Carrot Top on like a true showman and pullin out the ill censored pin-up that look like it was printed in a high school computer lab circa 1997.  But yo, the coup de grace is when he channels Radio Raheem and asks, "What you wanna do / Battle me, or sell me dollar batteries?" pullin out a Duracell 9 Volt to complete the hip-hop/prop comedy cipher.

Jin will go down in history as the Wat Misaka of rap, but Skitzo went on to produce extensively for Cam and Dipset, including none other than the certifiable, undeniable, mad styleful classic "Get 'Em Girls."  Now he back behind the mic gettin his Rap Game Billy Joel on under the Rod Rhaspy alias, playing pianos in the Uptown outdoors like Jones and his mans in the "Purple City Byrdgang" video.

BONUS JOINT: Skitzo recounts his road to Freestyle Friday fame, and Jin catching feelings, around the 5 minute mark.

I'LL WRITE ABOUT K. CAMP'S DEEP CUTS NEXT WEEK: RAP IS STILL THE ONLY MUSIC THAT MATTERS

Though the artist may leave politics alone, thinking they are no real concern of his, politics may not leave the artist alone...
- Henry Moore, 1938

30 years ago, there were no black cops!
-KRS-ONE, 1993

Although he did it to himself, it's a great tragedy that KRS-ONE's contemporary image is a caricature: hectoring pedant, crackpot doomsday preacher.  While his blowhard routine deserves all the derision it gets, I keep thinking back to one of his songs every time a black man is killed by police.   With respect to the overseer/officer alt-etymology, "Sound Of Da Police" is more agitprop than nuanced critique.  "Black Cop" might be myopic in its focus, but it addresses issues of representation, enfranchisement, and power structures better than any of the more cathartic "fuck cops" raps we rally behind.  Stroll around Brooklyn and it's hard not to see the parallels between Operation Impact and military occupation, an issue writ larger in areas that are gentrifying in the most lopsided socioeconomic terms.  Who exactly is being protected?  Is everybody in the community being served?  Answer: it took a demographic shift before Fort Greene even got decent garbage pick-up.

Cam fucked up when he went on O'Reilly.  "Stop Snitchin'" could have been a great opportunity for dialogue if anyone had bothered to explore the underlying grievances behind the attitude.   Instead, he took an opportunity to give mainstream America a credible definition and made a publicity stunt out of a cheap soundbite.  He let the media run with sensationalism at the expense of real injustice.  Like its spiritual predecessor Warna Brotha, it was irony as defense mechanism, a way of laughing so you don't cry for lives lost to heavy gavels.  Ultimately, "stop snitchin" wasn't some comic-book gangster code of ethics or a petulant justification of criminal activity.  It's a reaction to a history of brutality and corruption, excessively punitive sentencing and tactics that prioritize surveillance and containment over protection and real change.  In a perfect world, "We Don't Talk To Police" would have got the same attention as Cam, but that shit ain't meme-able.

Here's where rap pundits decry the dearth of political rap, which is usually just coded nostalgia for Public Enemy's heyday.  But the beauty of rap is that it encompasses so many things.  It sustains itself on contradiction.  Toni Morrison insists that all good art is political; while I think that's too clever for its own good, I'm inclined to agree.  All good rap is political, but that doesn't mean all political rap is good.  Drill music is some of the most political shit to come out in years, so don't underestimate the subversive.  We don't need more Immortal Techniques in the world.  We could use some more Ices T and Cube, artists who responded to the Reagan-Bush I regime as citizens rather than ideologues. History repeats itself.  Let's hope our generation responds in kind.