SONG OF THE DAY: Living Legend

Hip hop is such a force across the Earth, after only like half a century of existence. Doe is a local rapper, and wild ass dude, and this song is such a fuckin’ jam, like on its own even if you’re not from this place. But the beauty of how far hip hop has grown is that so many places have these amazing scenes percolating beneath the surface, that mainstream world doesn’t know about. Doe has a line in here, “You don’t wanna be a target, catch your grandma coming out Reid’s market” which is the actual independent grocery store here in the Ville. I get chicken feet from there regularly (lol, for real). When all these little scenes have the capacity to make great art that is immediately relevant to local people’s real life, I don’t know, maybe I’m getting old but I feel that’s more important to some extent than blowing up. Everybody wants to go global, be a worldwide superstar. I see that with local dudes too, putting these airs on social media like they’re jet-setting, staying in hotel swimming pools all the time… and I’m not mad at nobody for dreaming, but damn, that’s not real. And I guess it goes back to the system too, because local people don’t support local music or artists – they support famous shit. That’s what we get fed. And even if you do have local systems put in place, a place like Charlottesville has so much institutional racism, they’re looking for reasons to shut down any club that has hip hop shows to a predominantly non-white, non-affluent crowd. Which makes me think the whole thing is so fucked up and annoying that I just wanna escape.

That takes me back to the beginning though – you escape through good art, and this song’s a fuckin’ classic. How many living legends are out there in all the various scenes, that most of us don’t even know about? The mostly unknown living legends who fuckin’ do it, blessing their corner of the world. I love that shit, way more than the people that blow up. A lot of moral compromise and exploitation of self goes into blowing up. But you can happily not give a fuck about all that, and be a local living legend, and ain’t no shame in that. In fact, it should be seen as a great success, even if there ain’t a lot of dollars behind it.