GREAT MOMENTS IN GAY RAP VIDEOS

The Cash Money kiss will go down as rap's version of Jerry Lee Lewis's cousin-bride, and subsequent viewings of the "Still Fly" video wouldn't placate the puritanical outrage directed at a father/manager figure who just wanted to kiss his contractually obligated son on the lips, is that really so much to ask for?  The market still hasn't welcomed an openly gay rapper, so who knows what Baby was thinking when he tried kicking the doors open for NAMBLA.

Whereas the kiss was a disquieting glimpse into Cash Money's tourbus ca. '96, the eros of "Still Fly" is a playful wink wink in the direction of the Paul Lynde school.  It's a great video for many reasons, but its progressive stance on gay relationships was unique for the time.  Baby and Mannie live next door to each other in adjoining houses.  In the course of the video, they wear at least five matching outfits.  Big Tymers on some Bert & Ernie shit, 4 real (obviously Mannie is Ernie). Maybe it's a New Orleans thing?  Jazze Pha gets in on the fun and rocks a pith helmet with his urbanized safari gear, proving once again that videos were better in those days.

On a side note, if Mannie used ghostwriters to the extent commonly believed, it has to be one of the most successful examples of such a relationship: collaboration rather than ventriloquism.  His personality is represented to well for him to simply be reading a script.  We at Reap Music Hyseteria could give a fuck about a ghostwriter, but that's a different story for a different day.

TRE+19 YEARS

If Tre+6 are remembered at all, it's probably for their appearance on the best song of last decade.  Other than that, they put out a promising LP on Slip-N-Slide that never got a follow-up even after some profile-raising appearances on Trick Daddy's commercially successful early-mid '00s albums.  Trick blames Slip-N-Slide's Ted Lucas for that, and I been inclined to take his word since the Cribs episode where he sold a generation on the hygienic virtues of wet wipes.

Tech Life suffers from the same thing that has plagued most Miami rappers since the demise of the bass scene, namely the lack of a definitive regional sound.  While the underground cribs moves from the drill scene and Hypnotize Minds YouTube playlists, the aspirants on South Beach drink whatever Jim Jones is putting in their flute (pause?) or follow the MMG corporate handbook to the point of sterilization.  But despite obvious debts to the West Coast, Money Mark (no piano) and C.O. (no Rohzay) were building toward something they never saw through.

Video courtesy of Money Mark's YouTube channel, where the curious will also find his recent work.  The VHS dub is v "authentic" if u into that, but ya boy can never be mad at a quality take on the "Genius Of Love" sample.  I be watchin this video seein overpasses and shit and I'm like, "Yo, that's my overpass. We made it, son!"

Bonus beat: Da godz flip Metallica's "Fade To Black," I reach for my Spanish Ibanez.

THROWBACK INEPTITUDE: THE ATLANTIC JUST KINGED THIS CLICK-HATE SHIT!

Sometimes everything's goin OK in my life and I think, "Yo, I could really use a nice shot of rage mainlining thru the bloodstream."  This afternoon I seent an Atlantic article touting ASAP Rocky's new album as prog-rap or some shit, with a tagline that had me pissin driblets I was so mad: "Rocky’s previous work has proved influential and other buzzed-about rappers have lately been name-dropping acid, so maybe the culture’s moving on from molly and its revved-up, day-glo aesthetic."  Oh no you didn't, Atlantic!

I held off reading it cause I wasn't about to start throwin bows in polite company, but now in the comfort of my padded cell I can bounce off the walls n shit without fear of hurting old ppl (still wear my helmet tho, safety first).   This shit is a minor masterpiece in its own way, mainly as a callback to an older era.  The Internet changed tha music writing game with all its hyperfragmentation, an incalculable advancement in terms of quality.  Back in the day tho, there were fewer voices in this wonderful rainbow, O, this gossamer tapestry!, of conversation, maybe one or two pop music critics at ya local paper, usually middle-aged white guys who loved the era's version of Wilco, and their shitty coverage had the gravitas of appearing in newsprint.

The Atlantic is bringin that back, boy!  This mufuh talkin bout how ASAP Rocky's new album is proggy because drugs, even though it is obviously the rap equivalent of melodic post-grunge (cf. Hum, Superhog, Cracker, Smashing Pumpkins, Toadies, New Radicals [tho they ain't real post-grunge if we bein strict about it]).  Dis article seems deliberately engineered to rub anyone with a more than casual interest in rap the wrong way, so Ima tell myself it's a "happening" like the Dadas used to do before they were hunted into extinction by the Native Americans (p/k/a Indians), otherwise I would let an automatic drill burrow deep in my brain. Yo Atlantic, sign me up! I got a great idea for a thinkpiece on Kanye as the post-racial Bob Dylan! Y'all wanna see my essays on Beyonce's secrete feminism?

Related question: Has ASAP Rocky switched his focus from rapping to being a bottomless resource of enraging news stories?   Maybe he's the true media prankster!   Cloud-rap will never die, beeyoch!  Catch me in the pit wit my cloud-rap vest on, I'll trade u my Main Attraktionz patch for your Yung Lean iron-on.

PILL'S "TRAP GOIN HAM" REVISITED Y'ALL!!!

We movin' in time so fast.  Sometimes I feel like da recent past is at a further distance than the recent past's recent past was back when the recent past was the present.  The chasm of time is widening, the unit of the year is expanding, 365 days has stretched, a day is inflated, an hour in 2015 is longer than an hour in 2009, ya feel???  I know u do!

Case in point, the "Trap Goin' Ham" video, released to much fanfare and controversy in 2009.  Pegged as a descendent of Juvenile's "Ha," the footage received the usual accusations of exploitation and poverty tourism from well-meaning scolds.  The kerfuffle was such that Killer Mike, erstwhile weed carrier trying his hand at ownership by subcontracting to Pill, felt compelled to defend the video when asked about it.  So did the Gray Lady's Jon Caramanica, who wrote, "teeming with substance-addled folks acting erratically, it’s the sort of document that was once de rigueur in hip-hop and now feels appealingly anachronistic."

Da fuck?  I say that with empathy, 'cause I agreed with him in the '09.  Just speaks to how quickly and profoundly YouTube changed the whole game.  Back then we was still accustomed to all them polished post-Hype videos, so the "griminess" and "authenticity" of early YouTube vids like "Trap Goin Ham" was something refreshing.  We wasn't used to any mothafucka with a digicam bein able to upload whatever fuckin visuals they wanted to accompany their dumb music.  Now every other trap video follows the exact same script, which also speaks to the fact that trap wasn't really a thing at the time.  The concept was well established, sure, but no one called it that, and it hadn't yet tipped over into cliche.  A few dilweeds tried pushing terms like trap-hop and trap-rap when Jeezy came out and Clipse were gettin hoovered by the meeja, but God was good then and shot that shit down with great mercy (amen).  I blame EDM for bringing that blight-word back, cause I blame EDM for a lot of my problems.

Who was shocked by this video anyway, unpaid interns from the boonies of Massachusetts?  Let's see.  We got some fat bitches, poor ppl, Yelawolf, dancing old ppl, drunks, marijuana enthusiasts, and an angry bum throwing juice.  Look like the usual krazy kharacters in any low-income urban neighborhood south of the Mason-Dixon.  Only thing missin is the tranny hooker tryin to sell u her booty.  Other than that it's just regular-ass people and the crumbling concrete edifices common to the urban Souf.  The most "shocking" thing is da bitch smoking crack, and that shit make me yawn itz so banal.  Cuttin off a fuckin head and wearing it as a mask, now that would be shocking.  Betta yet, show me a man I need, am I right ladieeees?!?

I miss Pill.  He could rap.  Last I heard he was making decent guap selling aluminum siding in Alpharetta, so good for him. At least he can rest easy knowing his video gave birth to Noisey's ghetto-gawkin' reportage.

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.

I'M GOING TO DIE ONE DAY: 50 CENT'S DECLINE IS UR DAD GETTING BEAT UP

Well this is sad.  50 was the Biff of mid-'00s rap, and time is a McFly punking him in the end.

The '00s were a good time for heels. Fif, Cam, and Jones all donned the black hat with aplomb, doling out wedgies as Jay incubated his increasingly self-important corporate incarnation. Well before that, 50 perfected the art of shitting on careers as a perverse form of entertainment, blackballing Ja Rule and The Game with a charisma that made hating someone look like the kind of fun you wanted to join. Ironically, The Game now assumes the role of rap's Sandman Sims, a transparent attempt to make up for the hiding he took as 50 just flashed his gap-toothed pearlies, but the sense of fun is absent from his witch hunts.  He's a sourpuss licking his paws.

50 wasn't just the bad guy, he was also a pop culture phenomenon.  He was Andrew Dice Clay selling out the Garden in 1990, a commercial titan whose extreme divisiveness couldn't be explained by rote formulas of high and low culture. There was no snobs vs. slobs logic to the feelings he inspired.  But after years of fading gradually, he's now mired in his Bless This House era.

"Get Low" is more of the same.  His use of autotune is a midlife crisis on wax, as awkward and embarrassing as Jonathan Lipnicki in his studio gangsta period.  The overreliance on features - T.I. and 2 Chainz, Jeremih on the chorus - has the desperate air of a failing restaurant trying out promotional gimmicks for a last resort bailout.  It's a shit song made worse by excessive cosmetic surgery: Jeremih's the fake tits, 2 Chainz the butt implants.

I hope 50 gets his Blue Jasmine one day, as much for myself as him.  His decade-long slide into irrelevance is a most unwavy reminder of my own mortality. Everyone wants to see the mighty fall, but 50's descent seems to have no end.

A SMALL STEP TOWARD BREAKING THE COLOR BARRIER

I like to think I'm an open minded guy.  Outside of rap, I like everything from John Mayer to Jason Mraz.  But despite that, I've always been a vicious racist when it concerns rap music's mayonnaise coalition.  In the contemporary "smells like wet dog" scene, A-Wax is the only devil I can get behind (nullus), and even then he had to put out a record as perfect as "Maury Dance" to overcome my intolerance.  Can you blame me? Whiteface stooges like Machine Gun Kelly and Asher Roth have set their people back at least 15 years. By co-signing that, I'm co-signing hate :(.

This kid Pouya appears to be of Caucasian extraction (con sabor latino), but the eyeball test is not conclusive proof of Pouya's T.R.I.B.E.  Maybe he got 1/128th of aborigine like Sista Azalea does.  In his favor, he looks like the kind of creep who cleans up used paper towels in a porno theater.  He is also associated with the remnants of Raider Klan, a crew that typically rubbed me the wrong way.  In most cases they seemed to take the reblog aspect of Tumblrcore a little too seriously, but maybe that's what happens when your leader plays out his complacency of influence on record.  If we talkin nadir, their druggy sub-Based sketches are on some "Let me tell you about my mushroom trip" hippie shit.   Cocaine raps are the only drug raps for me.

His South Side Slugs mixtape is a mixed bag of familiar associations run thru a bedroom filter: quotations of trap bangers, Raider Klan generica, obligatory nihilism.  A skinny white nerd making any form of rap music is something I am predisposed to hating, but I fucks with "Suicidal Thoughts In The Back Of The Cadillac," cause it strays from the usual '90s Memphis/Based God axis that so much Raider Klan material revolves around.  The raps aren't quite there yet, consisting mainly of the Bone Thuggery and Lordly Infamy one would expect, but the songwriting makes this'un stand above the others.  It's the kind of hook-driven country-blues rap that the James Vances and Raymond Belknaps of today might blast as they blow off their heads. Catch me in the hoopdie bumpin this n tattooing disembodied E cups on my arm with a stick 'n' poke.