MY REGGAE WEIGHS A TON

If Rodney Dangerfield were alive today he'd be bumping reggaeton whilst snorting lines in the back of his limousine, because it gets no respect. You would think being the living product of globalization would earn the bare minimum of critical attention, but these so-called experts stay lookin down on a music they literally don't understand. Why was grime covered obsessively by a US press that acts like a global phenomenon doesn't exist? Gringos, que pinga!? Whether or not reggaeton tickles your fancy, it possesses the same omnivorous capacity for hybridization that made rap the most dynamic cultural form of the past 40 years.

Fortunately, the rap world has not been so shortsighted as to ignore a music you'll hear blasting out of every souped-up Japanese import in any city with a large Latino constituency. Here are some of the mixed, always entertaining results of the rap and reggaeton crosscultural dialogue. You'll notice most of the rappers are from New York. Who said that city had nothing but stagnant, regressive sticks in the mud? Nuff respect to N.O.R.E. for setting the trend again. What I wouldn't give to hear Max B or Cam'Ron bless a manic riddim wit the Spanish guitars goin' full tilt. Young Thug can get it too. If such a song exists, holla at ya cabrón.

50 Cent - P.I.M.P. (Remix ft. Tego Calderón)

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - Take The Lead (ft. Wisin & Yandel)

Cuban Link - Scandalous (ft. Don Omar)

Daddy Yankee - Gasolina (Remix ft. N.O.R.E. & Pitbull)

Daddy Yankee - Machete Reloaded (ft. Paul Wall)

Daddy Yankee - The Profecy (ft. Nas)

Don Omar - Conteo (ft. Juelz Santana)

Don Omar - Dale Con Dale (Swizz Beatz Remix ft. Fabolous)

Don Omar - Reggaeton Latino (Remix ft. N.O.R.E., Fat Joe, LDA)

Ivy Queen - Soldados (Produced by Swizz Beatz)

Jim Jones - We Fly High (Remix ft. Tego Calderón & Don Omar)

Lil B - Gato Gato

N.O.R.E. - Mas Maiz (ft. Nina Sky, Big Mato, La Negra of LDA, Fat Joe, Lumidee, Chingo Bling & Lil Rob)

Pitbull - We Don't Love Dem Hoes (ft. The Game & Tego Calderón)

Plan B - Frikitona (Remix ft. Trina, Trick Daddy, LDA)

Snoop Dogg - Drop It Like It's Hot (Remix ft. Voltio)

Tego Calderón - You Slip, She Grip (ft. Pitbull [Produced by Neptunes])

Tony Touch - Ese Pito (ft. Beatnuts & Voltio)

Tony Touch - Gangsta Gangsta (Ft. Tego Calderón [Produced by DJ Premier])

Voltio - Chulin Culin Chunfly (Remix ft. Residente Calle 13 and Three 6 Mafia)
Wisin & Yandel - Mujeres In The Club (ft. 50 Cent)

HATE IT OR LOVE IT, SPANISH GUITARS IS ON TOP

A man of wisdom once said, "There's only two things certain in this trife life: death and Spanish guitars." When civilization finally annihilates itself, bet there's gonna be some cockroaches carrying on the legacy, one in a sombrero wit his legs splayed out and an acoustic guitar restin on his groinals, the other on the M-I-C talkinbout, "Cockroaches is the hardest species outchea, survivin 'n' thrivin while all these soft-serve mammals got punked by the ultimate wedgie puller."

MAX B - 50'S OF SOUR
This ain't Biggavel's only foray into the exotic delights of sultry strums. There were Max B's before Max B, bawdy Orphic bards spittin da raw and real. Some mistook it for transcendence, but it was actually a finer state of mind known as waviness. Charly Wingate was just the ultimate expression, the final evolution in a process that began with the inception of language. Now Buddens free!

FREEWAY - RING THE ALARM (FT. PEEDI CRAKK & OMILLIO SPARKS)
Finally it ain't a gringo blessin las guitarras. Here's Peedi & co. flippin da Tenor Saw classic boricua style. Maybe da rap bloggers of cockroach Earth will finally give Peedi his due when they typin on they lil cockroach computers wit headphones on the antennae. Big up to Freeway for being an early adapter on that hipster crossover money dat Big Boi now chasing on that album I ain't able to manage caring about.

YUKMOUTH - SAD MILLIONAIRE (FT. PHATS BOSSI & BIG LURCH)
If you wanna make your shit paranoid and world weary, holla at a mariachi band to lace your shit with some Spanish guitars. But if you really wanna put some guac on that chip, do like Yuk and tap a cannibal dusthead for tha hook.

HOT BOYS - NEIGHBORHOOD SUPERSTAR
I always thought Spanish guitars was a New York thing on account of the Puerto Rican influence, but it's really the Bay that had this game on lock. Sixth man of the year tho? That's the great Mannie Fresh!

KANYE WEST - ALL FALLS DOWN
Real talk, Kanye couldn't dress for shit when he came out. Ratty-ass baggy blazers, Aeropostale button-ups, Rocawear jeans-as-sweatpants, and some white Reebok Classics? Mu'fucka was about to rock a straw fedora. Crazy how Ye went from tha I'm so normal and middle class! Look at me, I'm rapping about this college girl's problems! dude when Rhymefest was his ghostwriter, to the grrr i'm so weird and i wear leather pants i like triangles and weird symbols shitty art project he became when Travis Scott turned him into the angular haircut of rap.

SPANISH GUITAR FILES: DEATH EDITION

THE LAST EMPEROR & POETIC - "ONE LIFE"
95% of the time, Spanish Guitars are used to evoke a sense of pathos in the listener.  On "One Life," ex-GRAVEDIGGA Poetic confronts the ultimate horror: slow, painful death.  Sign of the times: poptimism has established such hegemony in critical discourse that traditional underground rap is hopelessly out of style.  Catch me crying into my notepad at the Scribble Jam revival.



A-WAX, WOODIE, B-DAWG - "A REBEL'S PRAYER"
This one's for the boyz choppin meth in the trailer park.  Jersey game on flex, Woodie spittin that realness for all you sheeple. His stilted delivery sounds like a parody of a white guy rapping or EMINEM in Dr. Demento novelty-song mode, yet his white-trash pain was real.  Woodie offed himself in 2007. Rap Game William Cooper.

SPANISH GUITAR FILES: IS YOUNG THUG THE NEW DYLAN? IS DAVID BLUE THE OLD YOUNG THUG?

Fuck all those cats, yeah we doggin in here / That Bentley got brown wood like a Spalding in here

YOUNG THUG rockin a Spanish guitar, but it's through the grotesque Thugger lens, so it's one of those weird Picasso guitars where you like, "You can't be serious, Pablo Picasso, no one can play that fuckin thing. That's ridiculous."  It's introspective, but not enough to fall within the Sensitive Thug ouevre.  I appreciate the way he employs the technique of rhetorical momentum via repetition; i.e., rhyming the second to last word of the couplets while repeating the last word.  BIRDMAN, rap's Brian Epstein, nods in approval as he squirts the bounty of a hands-free orgasm all over his breezy sweatpants.

The irony of Young Thug as symbol of everything wrong with hip-hop is that he is one of the last evolving practitioners of rapping for the sake of rapping.  He is rapping about rapping even when he's not explicitly rapping about rapping.  Young Thug songs are very seldom about anything at all except language itself: exploring new possibilities and defining limitations; stretching that shit like some A.C. saltwater taffy; dislocating a word to the point of absurdity, meaninglessness, and/or unexpected meaning.  Many of his songs are based on cliched premises; the mode of expression is the true subject.  Just cause he's playful doesn't mean his work ain't serious.

SPANISH GUITAR FILES: MEMORIAL DAY EDITION

I revisited The Carter shortly after I started writing about Spanish guitars.  As the mournful yet sultry notes of "I Miss My Dawgs" cut the air, I remembered that this was the song where I first located Spanish guitars as a common feature in a certain style of rap musics.  Although Spanish guitars can be potent signifiers of gettin arriba wit it, they are often deployed when a rapper takes a sensitive turn and acknowledges the ultimate toll of street life.  However, the use of acoustic guitar on such a track does not guarantee the guitar is Spanish.  On paper, Scarface's "What Can I Do?" is a Spanish guitar enthusiast's wish fulfilled, but its thug passion is of a different cultural origin, more Delta blues than flamenco.

2Pac is the ur-sensitive thug, and arguably the progenitor of Spanish guitars as a trend.  Perhaps his time in the Bay was his first exposure to Spanish guitars and their expressive potential.  In the initial log of my Spanish guitar peregrinations, Mr. Si Mane Price of The Martorialist recommended songs by The Jacka, Mac Dre, and Baby Bash as evidence of the Bay's contribution to the oeuvre.  Considering its formidable Mexican population, the Bay is a strong candidate as the ground zero of Spanish guitars in rap music.  The appeal of Mexican culture to the existential thug is easily understood.  The mutual preoccupation with death provides a natural affinity between Mexican art and gangsta rap.  The narcocorridos of today, the anointment of Morrissey as token Anglo amongst Mexican-American youths, only confirm death obsession as a continuing thread within the culture.

The Jacka made music for the thinking thug - arguably better than anyone ever has.  From "Innocent Youth" and "1, 2, 3" to "Gang Starz," he was an active participant in the Spanish guitars subgenre and an architect of its future.  Few rappers have availed themselves of Spanish guitars and integrated them so seamlessly into their artistic vision, as if the Spaniard who first plucked the strings of passion only did so to provide a worthy bed for the Jacka's future raps.

This Memorial Day, as you chug your Miller Lite and suck chicken bones and ribs like a sorry heathen, listen to Jacka rock some Spanish guitars and think about the dead.

SPANISH GUITAR FILES: GROWIN UP WAYNE

Can't front: I didn't start taking Lil Wayne seriously as a rapper until The Carter.  Mea culpa.  He was in my Top 5 from then until The Carter 3, and for a good 2.5 year stretch he was arguably the best rapper in the world.

Some consider the Dedication period to be his best.  It was a great era, before youthful hunger gave way to the excess and self-consciousness of success, but I find myself fuckin most with the wilderness years between the Hot Boys and mainstream respectability.  Maybe it's cause it bridges what was great about his Hot Boys incarnation and the rapper he would become; maybe it's because Pop Star Wayne has made such frustrating artistic choices that it's refreshing to return to the days when he was focused on rap.

Either way, here he is catchin wreck on a Spanish Guitar beat on the overlooked 500 Degreez, courtesy of the Great Man Mannie Fresh.  Wayne sips cachaça from a gourd he then passes to Breno Mello, a rapper and guitarist bearing their souls beneath a drafty veranda in some picturesque favela.

SPANISH GUITAR FILES: SENSITIVE THUGS AREN'T AFRAID TO NEED HUGS

Sometimes I get so angry I have to get nasty on my recumbent bicycle until the feeling passes.  Try as I might to woosa the pain away, it's the feels-y steak and potatoes rap that really does it for me in the end.

Like Boosie, Trick Daddy is a thug in the Tupac-ian sense, which means he isn't afraid to temper the swagger and get embarrassingly real.  Besides allowing me to get all reflective and deeplike, this song features what I, in all my ignorance, have decided to call "Spanish guitars," basically shorthand for any instance of soulful acoustic fingerpicking in the context of a rap song.  "Living In A World" (ft. Society) also boasts the distinction of featuring what sounds like a bouzouki at the 41s mark.  There's also a child chorus on the chorus, proving once again that Trick loves the kids.

Sometimes I love rap music so much it's as if writing about it cheapens the feeling.  But if I didn't write about it, I wouldn't know exactly why I love it.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE SPANISH GUITARS GONE?

A while back I was readin up on Stax Records, and I noticed that a lot of the heavy producers and songwriters were Burt Bacharaddicts.   I already knew "Walk On By" was a Burt joint, but I enjoyed going back and imagining how many of his fingerprints were on Isaac's hot buttered soul.  That's what was ill about these lil' scenes back in the pre-Innanet days.  Isaac probably bugged out on a BB record, pushed it on his collaborators, and slowly the Stax sound incorporated Bacharach moves.

Now we all know The Showboys are the Burt Bacharachs of New Orleans bounce, but how and why did Spanish guitars become a thing in the late-90s/early-00s?  Were they a thing, or am I misremembering their ubiquity?  Magic & Mystikal's "Did What I Had 2" initially brought this schlock back to my attention, and it's also the apex of this micro-subgenre.  On a pop tip, there was "No Scrubs" by TLC, "Maria Maria" by Santana and The Product G&B, and Jay and 'Yonce's "Bonnie & Clyde '03."  Other marriages of rap and sultry acoustic guitar include Black Rob's "Spanish Fly," Nas's "Message," and "Family Business" by The Fugees.   "Slow Motion" has me thinking Mannie Fresh might have fucked with Spanish guitars, but I can't think of anything at the moment.  And while I would have sworn "Flowers For The Dead" had some soulful acoustic flourishes, it appears to have just been some piano tinkles and mournful braying from D'Mingo.

As usual, we can probably blame it all on Wyclef.  Although I wasn't a big fan at the time, I have grown to embrace this cross-cultural exchange for all its well-intentioned cheesiness.   I usually play Jodeci when I'm writing erotic duets in bed with my lover, but I'd prefer dancing inside her to some caliente Latin rap ballads.