The Bubblegum Perspective

Hi,

You guys have written far too much for me to comment on it all, but that's okay because I don't know nearly what you both do about hip hop. Here's my definitive hip hop post:

1. I come for the hits, I stay for the fun. Unlike the two of you, I am a beats, rhythms, melodies and hooks guy first and foremost. I had a really interesting conversation with a girl at a party last night who couldn't even tell her friend recently if one of her favorite albums had drums on it because she is so tied up in the words, what they mean and how they sound. I am completely the opposite way. I suppose I trust Coke Machine Glow not to steer me in the direction of any white power music, because I'm sure some pretty questionable lyrical content could slip by me pretty easily. Anyway, this conversation qualified as "really interesting" because we had both just finished writing long papers about our own character structures, and we were able to look at our preferences in that context and find a lot of meaningful connections between our listening styles and ourselves.

2. One of my main requirements for remaining engaged in hip hop for longer than a few minutes is a lot of variation in sound and tone. My MAIN main requirement for getting really engaged with music in general is the presence of key moments that I can latch onto (I started a blog once about these moments, and it's still sitting there on the Internet. I'm still pretty happy with the writing, especially the Eddie Money article. I can't promise I won't take it up again someday).

My preferences steer me much harder in the direction of Wayne than Nas. Which means absolutely nothing from the hip-hop perspective, and absolutely everything from the pop perspective. Kyle, given what you said about Nas' not caring about the Billboard charts and defying pop hop and that you can't believe what he has dared to include on his album (your admiration of which is the best window among these posts into your process as a real fan, and the one thing here that makes me want to go back and listen more carefully), it makes sense that I wouldn't be hooked as a casual listener. I feel like Ben was right on in saying that hearing one of the newer Nas records is like being preached at for an hour. There's never been a great big hook to make me want to get into his world and explore. It doesn't help that he makes it sound ridiculously easy so much of the time. Wayne lets you know the work he's doing.

Thankfully, I missed out on "Lollipop" completely -- I've never heard the song -- but I heard a LOT of "Got Money," "A Milli," "Mr. Carter" and "Mrs. Officer" last year, all songs with production that really pops, super memorable hooks and most importantly for me, a lot of key cathartic moments throughout. Additionally, Wayne was guesting on like every other track being played on Philly's hip hop station (I'm using the past tense because I had a car last summer, and got familiar with the big hip hop hits as I was driving around). I never got tired of hearing Wayne, because there's just so much joy bursting out of his rhymes. He seems to laugh (well, cackle) at the very idea of feeling ashamed of himself and I think some of that absurdly pure happiness he deals in so well really serves to lift people up.

I used the word "absurdly" on purpose. Because I think it's the key difference between Wayne and Nas: Absurdity versus Reverence. Which rapper you want to hear could be tied to which principle you choose. Celebration vs. Examination. Letting Go vs. Holding On. Maybe?

You could argue that Eminem rose to prominence using a multiple-personality version of this very dilemma. You didn't have to pick.

3. I think we've missed a learning opportunity here. I saw a reference to "ho's" earlier. I notice that no one ever writes about "hos," no, it's always "ho's," with an apostrophe. If only there was a contributor on this blog with the grammatical know-how of an 18th Century English Lord who could enlighten us with the use of the apostrophe in this and other situations where a word is simply written in the plural and not the possessive. If only.

4. Some hip hop albums that I can fully get behind. I notice a lot of different kinds of production and presentation across these records, and of course, tons of killer cathartic moments:

Jay-Z - The Black Album
Outkast - Aquemini
The Streets - A Grand Don't Come For Free
The Streets - Original Pirate Material
Beastie Boys - Ill Communication
Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Kanye West - Late Registration

I never hear anyone talk about The Black Album, but I love listening to it. I never get sick of it. I would probably include The Chronic too, but I only had a cassette copy for a week when I was in high school before it got lost forever.