SONG OF THE DAY: I Wanna Go Home

The death of Nipsey Hussle highlighted how absolute legends of the west coast often times don’t get as noticed in the east, or by the hip hop intelligentsia which despite hip hop’s inclusive nature still tends to play respectability politics. West coast hip hop history is deep. Another dude that’s a straight MC legend, though not at the neighborhood savior level that Nipsey was, like not at all, but still is a lot of your favorite rappers’ favorite rapper, is Suga Free. Dude’s mostly been under the mainstream radar all along, but when it comes to the oddball non-traditional flows, of which we have more often than not nowadays, he’s an originator. And the weird thing is it don’t sound all that oddball to me – just different. I Wanna Go Home aka the county jail song is one of his all-time classics. There’s more videos of him performing this in the wild, beating on a table in various documentaries, than there is an actual video of the song when he finally was forced to release it on an actual CD because everybody knew him for it. That’s underground legend status. I love people like that – who are doing big shit in unseen ways. And RIP Nipsey. Dude made a definite mark, one that I hope was deep enough it is sustained in his neighborhood now that he’s gone. Unfortunately a lot of times, movements like that, despite all the token acts of support, rest on the shoulders of a brilliant and motivated individual to keep it moving. I hope he had hella understudies learning from him the whole time who’ll keep pushing that shit forward.