"They Diminish, I Replenish": Hip-Hop and Meaning

I think it’s time to radically shift the conversation. We began by discussing ourselves, followed by several weeks of sports talk. The last few weeks have been focused on political issues. Thus, I think it is time to touch on another aspect of our everyday lives.

Zach and Kyle came up to visit us in Montreal for New Years. We had an outstanding weekend of essentially doing nothing, except talking, watching TV while talking, talking and playing board games while listening to music and talking. It was in many ways the impetus for getting this blog rolling. We were in the midst of a contentious game of “Dirty Board” (also known as Tock or Super Tock), which is essentially a more complicated precursor of Sorry, it is not unlike Parcheesi except it is played with cards not dice. For our listening pleasure I put my I-Tunes on random. Now, Alli and I share our I-Tunes and while we have a great deal of common taste, our differences lead to some humorous juxtapositions (think “Rain Dogs” by Tom Waits followed by “Any Man of Mine” by Shania Twain). ANYWAY, a Lupe Fiasco song came on which caused Kyle, Zach and I to fall into a conversation about hip-hop. This conversation revolved around the relative merits and demerits of Lil Wayne and Nas.

The central issue was that Zach and Kyle directed a surprising degree of vitriol towards Lil Wayne. I, on the other hand, was no big fan of the most recent Nas record.

Now, I’m not claiming to be an intense hip-hop expert. I don’t listen to a lot of Peanut Butter Wolf and I won’t pretend to be well-informed about obscure 80’s music. But our differences in opinion got me thinking about the reasons why we listen to music generally and hip-hop more specifically.

The first hip-hop I loved was The Roots. As Mike will recall we had a ritual at the end of each week of summer camp where we would get all the counselors to come into our cabin and blast the live version of “You Got Me” with Jill Scott. I was definitely in the midst of my jam-band hippie phase and The Roots were the ideal bridge between that often vapid genre of music and more thoughtful hip-hop.

The next big hip-hop record I loved was Jay-Z’s “Blueprint”. From “Girls,Girls,Girls” to “Heart of the City” that album is loaded with huge beautiful production, of course it turned out later much of it was produced by Kanye West (who it should be noted also produced the beat for “Get By” which is easily the best Talib Kweli song ever). My interest in the rapping came second, which should be obvious from my referencing of “Blueprint”. For example, Jay-Z let Eminem guest on “Renegade” and Eminem just tears his ass to shreds. That Eminem verse makes it painfully clear that Jay-Z was in the process of losing his lyrical fastball, what makes that record great is the production.

Bad rapping can ruin a good song, however time and time again a great hook can save mediocre rapping (see West, Kanye-career of). Now GREAT rapping can save a weak hook there is no doubt, but unless the flow is outstanding it can rarely carry a song on its own. It is production, not flow, which got me into hip-hop in the first place. I came for the hooks and stayed for the flow and now the flow is at least as important to me as the hook. As such, it is the writing that has impacted my own music

Now, as far as I can tell Zach and Kyle’s main criticism of Lil Wayne was that he was not nearly as great as he thinks he is. I hope that there is more to it then that because that criticism could be levied at nearly every rapper’s persona. But I have to say that much of The Carter III smokes. The record is full of hooks which in some cases save pretty weak songs. I would be hard pressed to find ANY Nas song that I liked as much as “Mr. Carter” and “Tie My Hands” is certainly more moving then anything on “Untitled”. I will say that the album lags badly towards then end, starting with Lollipop (I agree that song isn’t so great) and bottoming out with “Pussy Monster” which is just awful. I will go as far as to say there is no Nas song I hate as much as “Pussy Monster”. Please see the comments for a further note on this song that I didn’t feel was appropriate to put in my main post.

“The Carter III” is really fun to listen to, even as you are cringing at some of his subject matter. However, that has been a central tenant of hip-hop since the beginning, the subject matter is SUPPOSED to make you cringe. My problem with Nas is that too often it is not the subject matter that makes me cringe but his actual flow. I was going to quote extensively from both, but I realized that it is easy to cherry pick good and bad lines. I want to see where this conversation takes us, in order to better refine which quotes I choose.

In Pitchforkmedia’s review of “808 and Heartbreak” they said that Kanye West’s music was always about “the specific experience of being Kanye West”. I think this applies to Lil Wayne as well. He brings a perspective that I find intriguing because he is TRULY a career rapper. This is not a person who has had a normal upbringing. He started making records at 16. He’s been around forever and he’s only 26. As such he has a ridiculous amount of output for someone his age. He has ravaged Nas’ “One hot album every ten year average” already.

Which brings me to Nas. I’ve never liked Nas as much as I would like to like Nas (if that makes any sense). In fact I’m a little ashamed to admit, that while I DO really like “Illmatic”, I still don’t like it enough to listen to it over any number of other records. Just off the top of my head if I was forced to pick five of my favorite hip hop albums “Illmatic” wouldn’t beat out Jay-Z’s “Blueprint”, Outkast’s “Aquemini” and “Stankonia”, Ghostface’s “Supreme Clientele” and “Pretty Toney” albums, The Roots “Things Fall Apart” and “Do You Want More”, Cadence Weapon’s “Breaking Kayfab” and The Streets “A Grand Don’t Come for Free” just to name a few. It is not necessarily that these albums are better (though I would make a strong case for “A Grand Don’t Come for Free”), it’s just that they are more fun to listen to.

Now this obviously weakens my case off the bat. I may not be the best person to discuss what makes a hip-hop album great. There is no doubt that “Illmatic” is among the great hip-hop albums ever made. The problem is that ever since then Nas has been casting about for a new muse. He has increasingly tried to become meaningful and as such his meaning has become forced. “Illmatic” is meaningful because it represents a specific experience. That album is beautifully concise. It has no filler beginning to end, and set a standard of hip-hop albums without mindless skits in between (for which I am painfully grateful). So as an ALBUM it is genius and a lot of the rapping is great. Though with the exception of “Life’s a Bitch” I’m not sure any individual song has ever meant anything to me.

However since then I think it is hard to argue that his output was anything but very weak. “Stillmatic”: ok, but overrated (god bless The Source magazine for giving it a “classic” rating). “God’s Son”: awfully weak. “Hip Hop is Dead” was alright but it’s premise was so obviously flawed as there is still good flourishing hip-hop, it is just that Nas isn’t a central player any more. I won’t bother to critique “Nastradamous”.

All of this brings me to “Untitled”. I think I like the title “Untitled” better then the original album name, which was “Nigger”. The whole brouhaha over the title explains exactly how I feel about the album on the whole. He was going to give it a proactive title, just for the sake of giving it a provocative title. There is no interesting meaning behind calling your album “Nigger”. There was no interesting point to be made that has not been made a million times before. It is not that the word is not awful and offensive; it’s just that this concept has been tackled time and time again. This is precisely how I feel about the subject matter of the album. It attempts to be “meaningful” but his ideas are not fresh or interesting. There is far more interesting music being made about the plight of black-America. In fact I would argue that Ghostface’s “Fishscale” brings this reality to the fore better then the entirety of Nas’ career. Honestly, Kanye West did more in this vein by just saying “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” then Nas did on this entire album.

You guys told me that I just heard the wrong song, but to be honest, I felt the same way about “Sly Fox” that I did about “Hero” and “America”. They are all high on concept but low on execution. None of them had hooks that stuck with me, and the rapping was stale.

I don’t think ideas need to be capital “I” important to be meaningful and insightful.

But that is just me, which brings me to the question I want to discuss this week. What was it about this Nas record that moved you? What is it about Lil Wayne that causes you to discount him? Why do you listen to hip-hop? Do you come for the lyrics and stay for hooks or vice-versa? This week I want to really dig into what it is we like about music.