SHOT HOMEBOY IN HIS FUCKIN FACE...

Came across this John Leland review while perusing the Google Books Spin archive, cause Vibe is too high brow and The Source ain't digitized.  His argument that "Go See The Doctor" is anti-woman and anti-sex is palatable; his quibble with the anti-crack message of "Monster Crack" is harder to comprehend.  As far as matters of the glass pipe were concerned, it seems that Leland was an early advocate of the avant-garde need not be moral bromide. 

Did he want something more crack positive?  "Scenario" is the closest such item coming to mind, its endorsement of crack falling second or third in order of problematic content.  "PSK" rips are always welcome.  Good on the Beasties for bringing rap and hardcore as close as providence would allow without damning them to an eternity of manning the La Coka Nostra merch table.  With that said, here is a photo of Adam Yauch and Harley Flanagan.

ERIC VON ZIPPER MUSIC

After reveling in Death Row cliches for a decade and some change, it's refreshing to see a new crop of L.A. rappers discover there's more to rap than street-life brooding and ritualized death.  Nuff respect to tha Row, but their effect on L.A. rap was tantamount to Rollins replacing Dez - all bathos and angst at the expense of fun.

Like the generations of writers damaged by Chandler's vision of L.A. as paradise of the damned, the Death Row babies reproduced a narrow definition and ran it into the ground.  The California of my mind is not merely somber or orthodox.  It's also driving down the PCU smokin some of that loud, just lettin the wind blow thru ya perm as ya oculars drink in the Pacific blue.  All that Katy Perry, and Beach Blanket Bingo, and "I wish they all could be California girls" shit.  There's more to life than Dickies and hydraulics.

Word is YG's cookin up a whole EP with Blanco and the Rap Blog MVP of 2009, DB Tha General, on some unionized "One California" shit. They two for two so far with the breezy summer jams.  DB spreads himself across the track like Bizzy Bone chanelling Rammellzee.   Fiend takes the Nate Dogg role.  AV kick a nice lil verse, and Blanco is at least relatively unobtrusive.  Some might say that five dudes on one song is a sausagefest.  Yet what is a sausagefest but a gangsta party by a different name?  Yo Fiend, bring the crawfish!

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RMH BOOK CLUB: THE BOOK OF LUKE

Maaaaane, put ya money where ya mouf is and go cop The Book of Luke!  MFs be bustin nuts 'bout how Young Thug said, "RIP Mike Brown, fuck the cops" after comin off like a simpleton with the mic in front of him, yet ignore the fact that Luther Campbell, a/k/a Uncle Luke, legally barred from being known as Luke Skyywalker, has been an active citizen in every sense of the word for decades.  My man been doin it.  He don't talk about it, he be about it!  Get up on it.

This being Luke tho, u know there's some nice scandalous shit packed in that codex, too.  Thrill to his tale of gettin blown by a line of Japanese freaks whilst onstage!  Find out what he really thought about Fresh Kid Ice's Chinaman LP!  Learn how MC Shy D puts the shy in sheisty!  Witness Public Enemy bein some hatin-ass mothafuckas!  It's all in here, boyee!

And if the publisher of Fresh Kid Ice's My Rise 2 Fame wants a review, send me some copies my duggalah!

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ALL THE YOUNG ZONA MEN

This supposed to be a Zona Man song, but the first two minutes is Future continuing to be the best crooner of his generation.  Zona Man come in talkin bout, "I eat all these niggas / These niggas is turkey / No beef with these niggas," and you like, "SMDH, someone please get this man to an Arby's."  Then Lil Durk takes the reins and michaelboltons the song to its bewildering end.  The whole effect is like you in bed with two Futures makin sweet love n splashin baby oil all over the motherfucker (Johnson & Johnson, none of that off-brand shit), but when you open your eyes it's not even one Future, it's Durk and Zona Man, and that acid you took was mostly dust.

On to sartorial concerns. Future cuttin such a striking figure these days.  Can't front, he got the best hat game since Ghostface did the domepiece Las Vegas revue in "Mighty Healthy."  Even tho I'd be hatin on his look if it was rocked by the tan rubbery substance constituting Johnny Depp, trust that Nayvadius won't get a pass if he ever drops a P on our headz.  Sidebar: if Future is Hendrix, does that mean OG Maco is Arthur Brown?  "U Guessed It" = "Fire," marinate on that while I inhale the aroma.

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SWAG IS FOR BOYS, CLASS IS FOR MEN

This been out a hot minute, but that ain't nann concern.  Revisitation is some panacea in dis oversaturated media desert.  See that shit from a different coordinate, ya feel?  Parallax or whateva.

Things I like about this song/video.

1.  AOne say, "This that mob shit you nerd *expletives* heard about."  Mane, that really encapsulate the inclusion/exclusion dynamic dat a particular section of the rap-listening audience find so tantalizing.  I be like, "Yeah, I am a nerd, and I did hear about this mob shit!"  Simultaneously flattered and degraded, yadadamean?  Spank me, Aone, I been a bad nerd (nullus).

2.  That table!  What is that, redwood or some shit?  Illest table I ever seen in a rap video, bar none.  And the Wassily chair?  Yo, whoever pad that is got some refined taste!  Interior design on swole, real talk.  When I was a lil kid I got banned from sittin in my boy's Wassily chairs cause I was scratchin my name in the leather, tryin to go all-city on the Wassily chairs and whatnot.  Kinged the Wassilys, did my thing on the Eameses.  And it wouldn't be the last time I was banned from sittin in Wassily chairs, neither.

3.  AOne lookin bummy and fresh at the same time, my standard mode of dress.  It's cool if rappers wanna look like they walked out of a Tom of Finland sketch, but the rest of us gotta do our own laundry and that shit get onerous.

4.  The beat soundin like you rockin the Windows 98 with 350 mhz and that shit glitchin out all frozen and about to shut down and you afraid it's gonna blow up so you take cover under the desk like they taught you to do for the A-bomb.

5.  Jacka with the highlighter Foamposites.

6.  At two mins, it leaves you wantin more.  This what Coleridge n' em was talkin about.  RIP, Jack.

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GENIUS OF LOVE

Downtown in the '80s was crazy man, you had Lee Quinones aerosol-arting Debbie Harry's face on LES bodegas before Chico (a/k/a the $erge of NYC) came in with the strongarm tactics and the deft Norman Rockwell hand.  Shit, you had Fab 5 Freddy paying people to paint soupcans on the iron horse and generally perfecting the sheister activities that made a Suge Knight possible ('cept Freddy was and remains a Classic Man; dig that porkpie, playa).

Boom.  No song embodies that magical era better than "Genius of Love" by Tom Tom Club.  Uptown was meeting Downtown, the boomers was takin us to the promise land, hands interlockin on some United Way logo shit.  They was like the Rascals of the '80s with badass punk chick attitude!

Thank you boomers!  All they had was some pluck, a coldwater loft where they literally had to fight rats for the privilege of shitting off the fire escape, a couple of paintbrushes and some stank doobage, but yo they died 4 our sins.  Giuliani single-handedly buzzkilled the racialized harmony posited in "Genius of Love," but it did become one of the most enduring breaks of rap music.  It's like the "Sleng Teng" riddim in tha sense tht you could literally be goin "skiddely diddely bibbedy bop" on some Scatman shit, and still rock a party.  Y'all can look up its history, it ain't hard to find.  Fuck a service, when I die I want all my peoples getting twisted and listening to a mega-long playlist of "Genius Of Love" derivatives.  Max's version might not be the best, but it is certainly the waviest.  PEace, follow me on Twitter hoez,

DEEPER THAN RAP: READING THE BAWSE!!

Rick Ross is the Eagles of rap.  They are not so much artists as blunt-force arrangers of genre signifiers, assembly-line producers who distill the form to its biggest and dumbest cliches.   They are maligned, justifiably, as commercialized outgrowths of their original genres; and yet there will always be apologists like myself, those of us who can accept the criticism and still appreciate the schlock and excess in the same way one appreciates Imitation Of Life.

That Ross was born in Mississippi matters only in the sense that his music is different from anything else that came out of Miami.  Perhaps this explains why he is less than interested in faithful representation.  Ross's Miami is pieced together from old episodes of Miami Vice, that streamlined fantasy of dangerous living in the subtropics that came to be the lens through which we see ourselves.

As the Eagles simulated an idealized California in a studio, so does Rick Ross with his Michael Bay blockbuster of Miami.  No one has to like them.  In all honesty, no one should like them.  But we should at least be aware of what they are doing.