SONG OF THE DAY: Santeria

Most of Virginia’s most notable contributions to hip hop have come from the Hampton Roads area, and have been pop-based. Neptunes, Pharrell, Missy Elliott, Timbaland… that whole slew, which to be honest doesn’t feel much like the Virginia I know, so has never been something I’ve been hyped about. Virginia itself is kinda fucked up and like five different states – Northern Virginia (all suburbs of DC, almost a separate state tbh), Blue Ridge/southwest Virginia (beautiful, but fucked, kind of like a less doomed West Virginia), Southside Virginia (forgotten, my homeland, like squashed flat Appalachia), Tidewater Hampton Roads (which itself is sort of segregated into a military industrial/affluent white pseudo-NoVa and then non-white Hampton/Norfolk/etc), and central Virginia/Richmond (which likely just contains southside VA as well but I am overglorifying my homeland’s importance). The entirety of Virginia’s hip hop influence on the larger world has come from one portion of the state, and a portion that’s highly segregated culturally as well.

This is why almost every head from Virginia still has some level of love for Pusha. He’s remained in the middle of shit, and remained with an edge, despite being all wrapped up with the aforementioned pop shit, and being implicated in Kanye’s existence, and all sorts of other fake world shit. When his tape dropped, I bumped the fuck out of it, and still do to be honest, some tracks like this one. Also I took the Drake diss to try and lobby my children to stop giving Drake a pass.

The music industry is so fucked up. A guy like Pusha somehow is pulled through by Pharrell, and passed onto Kanye. A guy like Drake, buttersoft pop as they come, somehow got filtered through Rap-a-Lot Records and Baby. I’m sure each executive entity takes their percentage, and fuck, when you think about the fact Drake is a manufactured sound with team of ghostwriters, I wonder what the overhead is on a Drake album? I wonder how much it has to sell to break even? What a sketchy ass industry? Anyways, despite my recent trip causing me to want to disappear to Salinas, California, or Montevideo, Uruguay, I’m still from Virginia, where ain’t shit to do but cook. I’m making saffron rice and red beans tonight actually, maybe sautee up some baby bok choy too.