EWA100 - #55. MC Lyte - Lyte as a Rock

55. MC Lyte - Lyte As A Rock (First Priority. 1988. From the LP Lyte As A Rock)

Raven Mack: I'll be honest... I didn't even remember this song when we did this list (which means I never voted for it, but in our group think system, it ended up this high). I downloaded it for the purpose of pretending I know what the fuck I'm talking about right here, and it's a decent enough song I guess. It definitely shows why MC Lyte was like the only serious female MC for the first 20 years of hip hop. Anybody else (Roxannes, Latifah, I guess Salt-n-Pepa) just sort of moved through as a gimmick. But Lyte was a serious MC, like a dude. That's probably why folks thought she was a dyke and she had to start making songs like that "I wanna a ruffneck" track.
But I can't act like this is the greatest song or anything, because this isn't even close, even upon heavy inspection, close to what I'd consider the greatest MC Lyte song ever. That would be one of her earliest singles, "10% Dis", which my boy Paul - or more likely his older brother - had on 7-inch way back in the day, like when the only rap we knew of was from the shitty AM radio station on Saturday nights out of Farmville that usually just played funk gospel the rest of the week. I saw some bullshit pre-packaged blogosphere-ready collection of "dis" songs the other day on the enter-web, and it didn't even have this track. Shit, I don't even know who she was dissing. In my convoluted mind, I know she was related to Audio Two, and MC Shy D was on that same label too, and Shy D was Miami's original rapper, so I think in the back of my alcohol-ravaged and drug-damaged head, I've always thunk Lyte was from Miami and she was probably dissing Trina.
So yeah, MC Lyte... she wasn't just a woman rapper, she was a for-real rapper... like probably about the 1,079th best rapper ever. Maybe she should've dressed to show off her breasts a little better or something.

Mike Dikk: Anything having to do with ladies doing stuff is always a touchy subject for me to write about, because I’m missing the regular PC filter most people have in their brains that stop them from saying sexist shit. I really don’t mean it, at least I don’t think I mean it, but it just comes out whether I like it or not.
This is also a weird one for me because I’m usually on the side of most other male rap fans that think lady rappers suck or are just too busy rapping about their vaginas for me to relate. I was ready to fluff my way through this one to avoid confrontation, but then I thought about how MC Lyte had a whole gang of songs better than this one. THEN, that got me all confused, because maybe this really is the best MC Lyte song, but I’m too sexist to see that because I like her manlier songs more. Finally, I came to the conclusion that I’m not sexist because I like more than one MC Lyte song and I can recognize them if they were played and to ignore the fact that in the beginning of this song when Milk D is talking, I always thought it was MC Lyte because they have the same voice, possibly because MC Lyte is secretly a dude or even freakier, Milk D is really MC Lyte and that’s why no one’s heard from Milk D in quite a while, kind of like how Michael Jackson and LaToya Jackson have never been in the same place at the same time.
Listen here fucker. I am not a sexist. Sometimes I just think dudes are better at things than ladies. I’ve owned the Hoes With Attitude record, which taught me what a Kotex was, thus making me closer and able to relate to the female species. I also bought that Boss tape the day it came out because that “Deeper” song was the shit, though deep down I wished a man used the beat and not a fake lady gangsta rapper. Nevermind that. I am not a sexist. I just wish “Cha Cha Cha” or “Cappucino” or a number of other MC Lyte songs were chosen so I could talk about how much I loved them like the non-sexist I am. FUCK MAN, WOULD A SEXIST EVEN KNOW TITLES TO MC LYTE SONGS?!?! I THINK NOT.

Download: MC Lyte - Lyte as a Rock

The only video link to this song on Youtube doesn't allow embedding, so here is a clip of "The Hip Hop All Stars" on The Arsenio Hall Show. I believe MC Lyte is in there somewhere.

EWA100 - #56. Ice Cube - It Was A Good Day

56. Ice Cube - It Was A Good Day (Priority. 1992. From the LP The Predator)

Mike Dikk: In an extreme act of typical Expert Whiteboy know-it-all hoity-toityness, I tried my damndest to get “Steady Mobbin’” on this list over “It Was A Good Day”. Content-wise, it’s basically the same damn song to me, except one is more angry than happy, though I can see how this could have been viewed as a subtle way for me to prove how Rilly Rill I am by not bowing down to the single that would propel Ice Cube to mainstream status.
Truthfully though, I understand that if you were to randomly hear an old Ice Cube song, it would most likely be “It Was A Good Day” because it was his one real universal hit (for good reason), but on a personal level, I would most likely end up listening to “Steady Mobbin’” over “It Was A Good Day” because I never listen to the record “It Was A Good Day” was on because it kind of sucks, especially compared to the first two.
See, it wasn’t because of me trying to prove my Rillness, it was because sometimes I get caught up in the fact that I spend most of my time alone on a computer chair not speaking out loud, confined in an office or a bedroom. I tend to forget other people exist because I get so caught up in what I’m doing and depending on the circumstances, like if the specific thing I’m doing really sucks, I’ll zone out to pass the time and forget other people exist on purpose. I’m not saying this in an oppressive way like how, say, a Raven Mack would say it. I’ve grown pretty comfortable in my secure little fantasy land probably because I’ve spent my entire life in cold climates and harsh areas where I don’t really want to go outside too often. Then you add on that, just like everyone else on earth, I have/had issues like my name was Jonathan Davis, and you can understand that my mentality is more “Steady Mobbin’” than “It Was A Good Day”.
In the end, I kind of woke up and put aside thing like how The Predator is a shitty record I never listen to and that cold weather gets to me too much though I tell myself it’s not because I’m mental, but because every single thing you fucking look at in the winter will mention seasonal depression and blah blah blah. Then once I kicked my own self in the ass, I realized that even if I think “Steady Mobbin’” is a great song, I wish I had more reason to listen to “It Was A Good Day” than “Steady Mobbin”. I can’t separate “It Was a Good Day” from nice weather and being happy, even though if you asked some egghead music journalist to wax poetic about “It Was A Good Day”, he would say some shit how the music and tone is in stark contrast to the hardcore reality of the The Hood and all that other happy horseshit, but none of that is my concern.
“It Was A Good Day” reminds me of times before the internet sucking up my soul, and full time jobs and debt and bills, and rapidly getting older and fatter. Times when I could get dressed, go outside and sit on a stoop and play Crazy 8s all day and find the fun in that. Sometimes I try and relive that kind of childish nonsense, but sitting on the stoop isn’t fun anymore, and playing Crazy 8s is even less fun because your senses are constantly being attacked and raped by newer, better technology and I can’t appreciate shit like chilling in the park on an uncharacteristically nice day smoking a joint because I’ve grown content with wanting and needing and consuming every new and exciting thing thrown at me. Though deep down I wish I could erase all this mess and go back to enjoying all the stuff “It Was a Good Day” represents to me, but it’s kind of hard to up and change your lifestyle because you feel like a jerkoff for embracing it. Jesus, this got a bit too heavy for a lighthearted music piece, but it was quite cathartic for me. Thank you, EWA.

Raven Mack: I mostly heard this track on the BET hit video machine, because I also had pegged The Predator as a shitty album, when compared to Ice Cube’s first two. Shit, Amerikkka’s Most Wanted is one of the most underrated albums in hip hop ever, because people don’t fellate upon that like it’s an all-time classic like I feel they should.
This is a great feel-good song though, yet one that got so mainstream that Keith Olbermann used to say on ESPN Sportscenter “messed around and got a triple double”. Now, Keith Olbermann preaches incessantly while wearing a suit about how other dudes who wear suits are not preaching incessantly enough about the right things. That is why Ice Cube is making family movies. He has been assimilated, incorporated, and totally evaporated from his days sporting a jheri curl underneath a hockey team baseball hat.
Man, if I had a dollar for every time in my life I heard a white person say, “and I didn’t even have to use my AK…” in an ironic comedic manner on a beautiful sunny day, I’d have enough money to buy a Greyhound ticket to California, to stand around hoping I’d see the Goodyear blimp say “Raven Mack’s a pimp”, only to end up getting robbed by a pack of teenage homosexual prostitutes.
I remember at the end of this video, there was that change in pace where all the helicopters and cop cars and shit showed up at Cube’s house as he pulled home in his Impala, and I guess that was to be continued in the next episode, but I never gave a shit to see his next video, so I’ve always assumed it was actually a police department led by Common in a funny argyle cop hat that looked like something Rollo from Good Times would wear, and Cube ran in the house and WC and Mack 10 saved him by shooting hard lyrics out the windows for a while, until Common got a beep on his beeper about a thematic down-low party before people knew what down-low really meant to black men, so he split with all the cops, and finally Cube could come back outside, and just in time for him to have a big ol’ yard sale where he could sell his soul to a couple of old Jew dudes who slap-stuck him into some family comedies to squeeze big money out of a small budget flick. Sad thing is, I bet they were country club buddies with Jerry Heller, and Cube never even knew it.

Download: Ice Cube - It Was A Good Day

Watch the video:

PP: Polaroid Project

So after looking at some of Dash Snow's NYC hedonism polaroids, it caused me to dig out my stupid Polaroid camera to start a project, which I promise to annoy you with in the coming months. Basically, the Polaroid camera is a great piece of shit thing because you're just stuck with whatever happens and you click it and know you just wasted over a buck on a blurry pic of your dog eating trash or some shit. So I like that, because for the most part, I'm stuck with everything in my life.
I figured the best theme would be cars or moving rideable machines, which is the theme I chose. I kept my stupid Polaroid in the truck today, and took a few pics, and never got shot just yet. Mostly, it's kinda cool because it gives me an excuse to ask some dude why he pimped out a stationwagon, or why there's a dump truck flipped over in the creek behind his house. Mostly, it also makes me nervous because living where I do, where asking questions and bothering people is frowned upon, I expect to get shot over this fairly certainly before July.
I'll start posting up pics in four-packs later this weekend though, if I remember.
POLAROID! IT'S NOT JUST FOR NAKED PICTURES OF BITCHES YOU FUCK ANYMORE!

(MFMT) Redneck Hippie LPs

(MFMT = Music Format Mini-Tourney)
So what I like to do, to keep my music random to an extent, but without the modern convenience of one of those robot-randomizer beatpod brain cancer machines, is take a stack of records or singles or tapes or whatever – sixteen to be exact – and have a dorkfest drunken double elimination musical elimination battle, just to put certain themes in heavy rotation, and to put certain personal favorites within those themes to test head-to-head to see what’s really the shit that fires up my stupid soulless innards a little.
I pulled out sixteen LPs that I would put in the category of redneck hippie LPs, because I was raised by redneck hippies, who were too ruffian and foul-ideared to be accepted by the trustafarian future IRA recipients of America style hippie, but also too longhaired and open-minded (like sharing a joint with a black dude… ewwww!) to be accepted by the Easy Rider (movie not magazine) style rednecks. I limited any and all artists to only one album in this thing, and I also limited it to studio albums. They went one most recently unplayed side vs. one most recently unplayed side, one-on-one, and the thing took shape like a softball tournament. I sat around drinking beer and listening to this shit and drawing pictures of a comic book idea I’ve been kicking around of rebel Islamic women who unsheathe their bodies to reveal large naked breast packed with explosives that blow up American executives in high-priced Dubai whore clubs. I need to doodle because I’m still working out the kinks in the story. Anyways, here’s the sixteen records and how they fared (I’ll only write-up the top five, because fuck the losers)…

#1: Black Oak Arkansas by Black Oak Arkansas
I never discovered Black Oak Arkansas until a few years back and they quickly became a favorite of mine – bunch of weird longhaired freaks grown in deep Arkansas redneck land making a rock band. This, their first album, is some good good shit. The intro to “Lord Have Mercy On My Soul” is one of the best trippy Jesus complex hippie freak-outs to start a song that probably ever got done, and probably got missed by those who enjoyed that type of shit back then because the hippie fucks stuck to their standard Cali-based acid acts and some shitheel ragtag pack of twangy dudes looking for some hot ass to poke probably didn’t go over so well. And the “When Electricity Came To Arkansas” freak-out rock jam at the end of side B is probably the second best ever, only bested by Alice Cooper’s “Black Juju”. I know this is the internet and you’re only supposed to like brand new shit that no one’s ever heard of, but this record is fuckin’ awesomer than shit, and if you get it on CD or digitized download, it won’t sound right, because it’s supposed to sound slightly fucked-up and scratchy and that makes you want to drink beer. Crisp digital sounds will just make you want to eat pills and masturbate to anime porn.

#2: Tejas by ZZ Top
I feel sorry for people who identify ZZ Top solely with early MTV electronically polished fool’s gems like “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Legs”, because when you get back into their early records from the mid-‘70s, there’s hardly a band that’s existed that’s got a bigger and better pure rock-n-roll catalog. Billy Gibbons has started getting secret props as a true motherfuckin’ rocker in recent years amongst degenerate stoner rock fans, but not nearly enough. Like, if I get one of those cheesy mail order t-shirt things for some reason to one of my fake names that subscribes to magazines, there’s never Billy Gibbons face black t-shirts with some ominous yet good-timed font saying ZZ Top. It’s always a stupid car with little cyber-blings and shit. Anyways, early on in my discovery of hazy, fucked-up ZZ Top, their ZZ Top’s First Album or Rio Grande Mud would’ve been the best ever, but in recent years the pure beauty of Tejas has made that my favorite ZZ Top record. “Arrested For Driving While Blind” and “Ten Dollar Man” have all the self-destructive zen observations of the best of Lynyrd Skynyrd, but somehow Billy Gibbons’ style makes it mellower, even if it’s not really mellow. Then you get to “Asleep In The Desert”, which has recently entered the small list of Songs To Play At My Funeral. If you don’t know 1970s ZZ Top, you should learn about it. If all you know about 1970s ZZ Top is Tres Hombres, you’ve hardly scratched the fuckin’ surface and haven’t gotten close to the best shit yet, so keep digging.

#3: Fire On The Mountain by The Charlie Daniels Band
I will be contrarian here for a minute… There are many who feel the penultimate stereotypical redneck anthem is “Freebird” by Skynyrd. And there are many who feel the penultimate Charlie Daniels song is “Devil Went Down To Georgia”. I am here to say that neither of those statements, though consensus opinion, are necessarily true, at least when it come to for-real dirtbag back roads rednecks. Maybe if you sampled a pack of Starbucks patrons in university towns about these subjects, those would come out on top. But I’m here to tell you amongst the for-real shithead grease monkey drywall dust doublewide dreamy-eyed good ole shot liver redneck, “Long Haired Country Boy” is THE motherfuckin’ anthem. And you throw in other feel-good-about-your-lot-in-life tracks like “Trudy” and “Feeling Free”, and what you’ve got is something to play on a Sunday afternoon through the shitty speaker holding the kitchen window open while you sit at the homemade picnic table smoking a homegrown joint.

#4: Dreaming My Dreams by Waylon Jennings
The process of elimination of these musical tourneys is interesting, because I’d have never picked out a Waylon record to finish highly, because a lot of times I feel Waylon Jennings is one of those great-ass things in theory and story, but in execution, sometimes it’s kinda hit or miss with him. The whole country rock thing sounds a little forced and not too smooth all the time. But I was digging this record a lot, and it made me want to find more shit that Cowboy Jack Clement had a hand in producing, because this was far more raw yet unmuddled than a lot of Jennings’ shit I’d listened to. (That’s in regards to studio albums, not his Greatest Hits record, which is a pretty good starter collection.) It’s funny I wouldn’t be like some giant Waylon Jennings fan being my favorite dog I ever had was named Waylon, but that was only because I was living with a stupid hippie bitch at the time who hated the redneck influences in my life, but she probably didn’t even know who the fuck Waylon Jennings was because he’d never guested on any Wailers songs or opened for the Dead, so I named our dog we got together Waylon in a real pussy passive aggressive move, but sometimes as a man, you have to do pussy things to stay good with the pussy. However, usually pussy like that isn’t worth the trouble.

#5: It’ll Shine When It Shines by The Ozark Mountain Daredevils
I got turned onto all these artists by my folks, and they actually had the CDB record, but I gave that back I think and the copy I have now is mine, but this is the one on this top five that is actually their record that was part of my massive music-jacking during the years after their separation, when my mom didn’t really like music and my dad didn’t really like having possessions. Nowadays, my mom will pitch a bitch and act like every record I own that is any good is actually her’s, but she’s usually wrong. This is a great record, and nothing else I’ve ever found by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils has come close (although who can deny the wonderful joy you feel hearing “If You Wanna Get To Heaven”, imagining Jesco tapdancing on plywood beside some railroad tyes?). I would call this the perfect blending of redneck and hippie because their’s nature themes and the lyrics are lazy as fuck a lot of times, not trying to do much of nothing more than watch the sun go across the sky, out in the middle of nowhere. “Jackie Blue” was actually a decent hit for this group, but the B side set of “Walkin’ Down The Road”, “What’s Happened In My Life”, “It Probably Always Will”, “Lowland”, “Tidal Wave”, and “It’ll Shine When It Shines” is one of the best laid back and wasted album sides that ever got made. I was talking to my boy Embryo the other week about how nowadays with only CDs and ipods and shit, people won’t remember that a release had two separate sides that often times could each have their own separate feel. I think one reason people aren’t as able to make good full-length albums anymore is because the hit mentality is even stronger in the digital age than it probably was before, because it used to be only pop music was hit-oriented, or something with a bunch of stations following that format like country or soul, but now when people download a lot of shit, and oftentimes just by the song, even super-shitty high-specific sub-genres can work for just that one “hit”, at least on their relative scale.
THE REST OF THE FIELD - #6: Workingman’s Dead by The Grateful Dead (only studio album they have that I like, very bluegrassy), #7: David Allan Coe Rides Again by David Allan Coe, #8: You Don’t Mess Around With Jim by Jim Croce (one summer while Greyhounding around American, I must’ve sang “Walkin’ Back To Georgia” like three thousand times), #9: Shotgun Willie by Willie Nelson, #10: Gimme Back My Bullets by Lynyrd Skynyrd (my oldest kid got her name from “Roll Gypsy Roll”, although that can actually be blamed on my wife more than me, believe it or not), #11: Grand Funk by Grand Funk Railroad, #12: Carney by Leon Russell (Haha mom, this IS your record), #13: A Friend In California by Merle Haggard, #14: Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid Soundtrack by Bob Dylan, #15: Whiskey Bent And Hell Bound by Hank Williams Jr., #16: Northern Lights, Southern Cross by The Band

EWA100 - #57. Biz Markie - Just A Friend

57. Biz Markie - Just A Friend (Cold Chillin'. 1989. From the LP The Biz Never Sleeps)

Raven Mack: There's a lot of things out there that make me embarrassed to being born an American, which I of course had no choice in, things like American Idols and Anna Nicole Smith and the way Jeff Gordon talks and how people on TV use the word "blogosphere" when it gets near election time, not to mention the creepy shit like porn obsessions and dudes who like to wear diapers or be forced to watch their wives have sex with other dudes against their will. It's easy to see why a machismo-soaked third world country would want to blow us apart with the effeminate leading men we have on our TV programs, which we force-beam around the world because we are the leaders of the free world - which means commercials for shit you should buy, not some grand philosophical idealogy. And when I get hung up on the major media or look at crappy music magazines with shit like Puff Daddy pretending he's tough and sexy or Fallout Boy looking cuter than most girls I've ever fucked, it fills me with a hate too and were I to believe in some sort of mythical god-figure like Muhammad or God or whoever, I would want them to throw all these fucks off the mountain too, to not clutter my view not so much with their perversions against decent living, because I don't care about that so much, but just to not clutter my view with their unloungingness. My basic philosophical mantra is we should all be able to chill, and shit like that makes it too uncomfortable to chill, or it creates sub-cultures of little identity-less basketcases who latch onto that as their identity.
However, when I remove myself from mass media and the molasses crawl of suburban sprawl, cars stalled out at endless red lights in front of chain stores with branded logos I can get on credit, I remember things like junkyards full of wrecked cars and old ladies frying up chicken and people like Biz Markie. It makes me sort of proud to have been accidentally born where I by chance was born, because no other country has such large stacks of junk cars or Biz Markie, and if they have old ladies frying up chicken, those old ladies don't talk in a way I find understandable. But seriously, Biz Markie is like the biggest, ugliest dude you could ever meet, but he's a goofy fuck who has carved a steady cashflow for himself.
"Just A Friend" is like the most shining example of Mr. Markie at his most Bizness. This is one of those songs - maybe one of only like two or three that I can think of - that when you hear it, not only do you want to sing along but you want to yell along as loud as you can, obnoxiously but in a good-natured way. It brings you happiness inside. If we could export material culture like "Just A Friend" but filter it into local dialects, I think the world would think so much higher of us Americans as opposed to knowing us as the land of double penetrations and Jessica Simpson's stretched tarpaulin face.

Mike Dikk: If there were to be one of those Myspace-styled dumbass surveys personalized to be exclusively about me, one of the questions could be: What song is Mike most likely to hand drum on a table?. The answer, of course, is “Just A Friend”. It’s kind of a trick question though, since it’s the only song I can competently air drum and still sing along to outside of “We Will Rock You” by Queen, which doesn’t count because you’d have to be brain dead to not do that. Like Raven said, this song was made to be yelled to anytime you hear it, or in my case, if you feel the need to air drum on a table, which hasn’t really hit me since high school when I was chilling with Boyz II Men and they needed something to acapella to.
The video to this song was also a very important first for me. It was the first video where I saw an article of clothing blurred out. The article was Biz’s Nike sweatshirt that he’s wearing on the park bench, which is only blurred out in the scenes where it’s really noticeable. I never understood what that was all about, but I imagined that maybe instead of NIKE it said FUCK or maybe there were titties discreetly drawn in there somewhere. I guess Biz and co. just didn’t want to risk getting sued or something, since this took place in the days before sneaker companies looked at rap music as a highly lucrative investment. As we all know, now every rap video ever has something blurred out in it, because all those rappers are always up to no good, showing the ladies inhumanly jiggling their asses and rolling marijuana cigarettes right in the videos. Why can’t they wait until after the video is over?
Also, the extended version of the song features Biz and his crew telling mama jokes at the beginning which was easily my favorite hobby at the time. I was really banking on telling mama jokes becoming a legit sport so I could be a millionaire by now. You may know the foreigner from That '70s Show hosts a show on MTV now called “YO MOMMA”, which features possibly the worst mother jokes ever to be told in the history of comedy, and the sad fact is I’m most likely too old, fat, and ugly to be chosen on that show and clean up. Though I think the winners only get $100 and a steak dinner, and I also heard that most of the people on that show are actors with agents and shit, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of me wanting to participate.
Annnnyhoo, If there was ever a song to universally bring dudes scorned by trifling bitches together, and let them laugh about the whole thing, it’s this song. Unfortunately, I think most people view Biz as a loveable loser getting shot down because he’s an ugly fucker, and not because women are trifling bitches and play that “Just A Friend” card with everyone, not just ugly fuckers.

Download: Biz Markie - Just A Friend

Watch the video:

EWA100 - #58. De La Soul - Me, Myself & I

58. De La Soul - Me, Myself & I (Tommy Boy. 1989. From the LP 3 Feet High And Rising)

Mike Dikk: I tend to read a lot of lists pertaining to music. Hell, I tend to make a lot of lists pertaining to music. It’s just what I do. I’m only capable of writing well in blurbs because of this whole I WANT MY MTV A.D.D. generation I’m a part of that makes my brain stupid. Anyway, if you’re like me and you read a lot of lists in bigger, mainstream magazines, specifically about hip hop, you’ll notice a lot of them are made solely to put either 3 Feet High And Rising or Paul’s Boutique in the top spot. Some more progressive lists will even throw DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing in there too, depending on the criteria. Any average moron can tell you what these three records have in common. They all rely heavily (in Entroducing’s case, completely) on samples. In fact, 3 Feet High... and Paul’s Boutique came out a mere eight weeks apart from each other. Both records shared similar ideas and Paul’s Boutique was supposedly recorded and finished before 3 Feet High..., but De La Soul beat them to the punch and got most of the initial acclaim for their sampling technique while most people panned Paul’s Boutique until years later.
Even though all three albums share a gigantic common bond, 3 Feet High And Rising stuck out the most to me. Simply because it’s the only record out of the three that I “Got” when it was initially released. Like most people, I wasn’t too keen on Paul’s Boutique when it first came out because it didn’t sound like Licensed To Ill and I was too young to understand that sometimes musicians had to evolve. Even to this day, I don’t think that record is as great as everyone makes it out to be. Yes, it’s good, but it’s mostly good because it sounds so unique and it’s something that can’t ever be legally duplicated. Endtroducing, on the other hand, I think is a phenomenal album and one of the all-time greatest records of any genre, but it took me at least three years to wrap my head around it. I didn’t understand what the fuck was going on when I first heard it. It was supposed to be a hip hop record but there were no lyrics and the songs were well over six minutes long. There was no way to logically dance to it or even rhythmically nod your head.
However, 3 Feet High... hooked me from the beginning. It was the first time I actually cared about the how the music was made. Before then, you could have told me that there was some super computer hidden in the Swiss Alps that generated beats from old James Brown records and randomly handed them out to people interested in rapping, and I would have believed you. Once I heard this record that was not only using a billion samples per song, but some were even recognizable to me and my novice ears, I had to get to the bottom of it. It’s why I’m such a big fan of Prince Paul to this day. When this record was blowing up, Prince Paul was interviewed on BET I believe, and they asked him how he came up with such weird shit for the record. He said that there were beats everywhere and you had to look hard to find them. He then threw some Mickey Mouse Club 45 on a turntable and played it backward, and sure enough, there was a beat.
There are very few records I care to physically own. This is one of them, just because it means so much to me, and it kind of led the way to me being a smart ass know-it-all music nerd, on top of providing me a soundtrack to 6th grade. In all honesty, I like De La Soul and all, but this record was more about Prince Paul than De La. The whole hippie Daisy Age vibe never phased me because I wasn’t paying attention to the lyrics. Also, Hip Hop as a whole was in such a creative and experimental stage at that point in time that every rap record sounded different from one another. It was many years later that I found out this record kind of sparked the whole dorm room rap movement that we all know and love today.
The song “Me, Myself and I” really holds no significance to me though, outside of being the first De La song I heard and being their most well-known single from that record. I could have chosen any number of songs from the record to take this spot, or an even higher one if I had my way, but it makes everything easy and uniform when you pick the big single that everyone knows.

Raven Mack: I bought the 3 Feet High And Rising tape at a truck stop back when truck stops were infamous for selling bootleg tapes. Oddly enough, I think I got Paul’s Boutique at the same spot. 3 Feet High And Rising was great shit when I was in high school, because with my predominantly black school where thuggishness was a badge of honor with too many people, the potential to get your ass kicked over something stupider than the white dude stepping on the peanut-faced dude’s shoes in Do The Right Thing was always there. So 3 Feet High And Rising sort of caused certain more goofy-natured potential-thug brothers to adopt that puffy crooked hair style and wear goofy necklaces, although nobody I remembered really got full-on into the stupid shirts and shit too. It toned down the potential for violence, ever so slightly.
I never disliked 3 Feet High And Rising until I went to college and was forced to realize there were completely clueless white kids who had only grown up around other white kids and only hung out with other white kids and would only know other white people and were predestined to have white kids running around white cul-de-sacs driving white SUVs and voting for white people to keep things smooth and interest-laden for their collective white futures, and I guess I was tripping on the acid at a party full of those kids (seriously, it may be hard to believe, but growing up a piece of shit white kid in a piece of shit half-black/half-white piece of shit part of rural Virginia, I had no idea that shit existed) and watching them be them and this one dude played 3 Feet High And Rising like seven times that night and it all just made me sick to tripped-out stomach.
I also feel that everything De La has done, studio album-wise, since then, has been overrated as misunderstood genius music. I’m not saying it sucks, but it’s definitely music that holier-than-thou know-it-alls are apt to get up in arms and act like it’s the best shit ever and you’re ignorant for not making a separate playlist for it on your ipod, even though you don’t even have an ipod.
As for this song being here instead of any other De La song, I think back to the single-oriented nature of a lot of the black kids I grew up around. They didn’t go collecting records like white kids did really, or if they did, they didn’t keep old shit forever, which is probably a good personal habit. But this was the big single off that album, and were you to have an old school throwback show on Sunday afternoons blaring over some loudspeakers up in the trees at whatever public park in your city that folks go to to wax their cars and Armor All the tires, this De La Soul song would get more people to go “OH SHIT!” than any other song off 3 Feet High And Rising. And that is the essence of the Hip Hop Jam basically – if twenty years later it can create that nostalgic euphoria in random collections of people. I know this list is listed upon the internet where it’s more important to highlight your misunderstood genius status and make a list of the best 100 songs ever and have like German-released EPs by The Artifacts and England-only b-sides to Paris singles and shit, but all that doesn’t mean a goddamned thing on a Sunday afternoon to Mr. Old School Dude cleaning his Cutlass up just right at the park with a pint of gin in a cooler in the trunk.

Download: De La Soul - Me, Myself & I

Watch the video:


BONUS VIDEO! Here's a 7 minute documentary/short type thing that acted as an introduction to De La Soul. This is where I saw the thing with Prince Paul playing a Mickey Mouse record. He doesn't actually play it backwards though. That was just my retarded memory kicking in.

MNZ: Wresting Observer April 2, 2007

This was the issue getting all serious and delirious about the merger between the UFC and Pride. You know, MMA could be the next big thing, and it's a ton of fun to drink beer and watch, but I know of far too many wresting dork fags who have gotten into MMA as the cool alternative to being a wrestling dork fag in recent years. And if you are a dork fag, just because you move from wrestling to MMA (or anime or graphic novels or whatever), it doesn't remove you from being a dork fag. And if I knew I could go to a bar and stand around drinking beer watching MMA and it was gonna be with some regular dudes and all, I'd be down. But I'm afraid if I went, it'd just be dork fags, and then some regular dude I knew would walk past and look in the window and see me hanging out with a bunch of dork fags and it'd be like when Grady saw Rollo and Lamont come out the gay movies in that one episode of Sanford & Son. I ain't trying to go out like that.
Also, this issue talked of Tito Ortiz boxing match, and made mention of Tito Ortiz and Jenna Jameson being a couple. Hard to believe how much of a bad ass Tito Ortiz was like five years ago. Now he's a washed-up fuckface, and his girlfriend is a skeleton with skin (according to recent pictures) who's fucked a million dudes. When Jenna Jameson still looked halfway decent, she was acceptable enough to overlook her career choice of having dicks stuffed inside of her, but now that she looks like The Cryptkeeper's little sister in a dress, it'd be hard to accept that shit, even for novelty's sake.
I bet there's a bunch of wrestling dork fags who would love to eat other dudes' cum out of Jenna Jameson's snatch though, and maybe MMA is sorta fixed and her relationship with Tito Ortiz is just a front to draw more wrestling fans to MMA.

MNZ: New York January 15, 2007

I have learned not to get New York magazine out the free bin at the library, because I am old enough to feel good about who I am, which is not a full of shit city fuck. (Of course, I realize the hypocrisy, because I am a full of shit semi-rural fuck, and far more self-aware than most semi-rural fucks.) New York magazine has entered the realm of mags that I flip through to see if there's an interesting article before I take a free copy of. But I took this one, because the cover story about NYC's new bohemian artists intrigued me.
This one guy, Dash Snow, who's name sounds made up, is some sort of Neil Cassady type, or so this article paints him out to be. His art consists of Polaroids of his fucked-up lifestyle, and pieces that are clippings of New York Post headlines about corrupt cops that he masturbates across. This, in itself, would be enough for me to judge him as full of shit (though I'm a sucker for Polaroid projects, I do admit, so not completely so), but on top of this he is some sort of disavowed heir to some super-rich art collector family. This means, no matter how hard he has been disavowed or clipped his family's tethers, he still comes from shitty rich people. Which means his Bohemian bullshit is like my kids putting on play clothes from the play clothes bin to pretend they're princesses.
You can't shake your lost in life, no matter how hard you try. You might be able to move a couple steps up the ladder and hope your offspring do the same, but you can't shake the tethers of your birth position. And some fucking fruity rich kid, even if he is slumming it up in NYC doing coke off other dudes' dicks and shit, can't jump far enough to escape the fat comfortable branches of his family tree. Fuck a Dash Snow. I bet his real name is far more stupid than that.

MNZ: Down Magazine Spring 07

Down Magazine's cover says in standard downloadable graffiti font that it is "dedicated to south (behind Mike Jones' head) & culture". I would bet it says "ern hip hop" behind his head, but who knows? We are in some shitty times in rap music. On the table of contents page, I was immediately forced with something I hate in rap thug style now, and that was Mike Jones having "ICE AGE" tattooed on his hand, facing out for others to see. Were I to get something tattooed on my hand in cursive handwriting, I would almost definitely get it tattooed to read easily to my eyeballs, because seriously, fuck the world.
Anyways, much like the entire shitty rap mag genre (Ozone, Murder Dog, so on and so forth), there's tons of noteworthy shit to remark upon, but I told myself I'd only comment on one thing or so per magazine for this faggot blog, so I will limit myself to the Devin the Dude interview, where he's sitting beside a volcano vaporizer, which was when I first finally understood why his album is called Waitin' to Inhale. In the interview, which was early before final mixing was done, the song Devin talked up was that "Almighty Dollar" song, which has become my favorite by far off that CD. Yet the ad in the mag hypes up the standard hired guns tracks of "What A Job" (featuring two really famous fuckers in Dre - the weird gay one not the doctoral one - and Snoop) and that girl lost gone bad song (featuring two really flavor of the month rappers in Bun B - who is awesome - and Lil Wayne - who is the rap Sanjaya). Still, a funny magazine and unlike Murder Dog and Ozone, whoever does this has not purposely broken the spell check on their laptop yet.

EWA100 - #59. Redman - Time 4 Sum Aksion

#59: Redman - Time 4 Sum Aksion (Def Jam. 1992. From the LP Whut? Thee Album)

Raven Mack: CRAZY HYPE! DRINK DRINK DRINK, STOMP IN BIG BOOTS THROUGH CITY NIGHT TIME HYPE! HYPER-AGGRO ROCK-N-ROLL, YET BLACK DUDE IS COMICAL MAKING HIM LESS SCARY TO WHITE FOLKS' EARS HYPE! Seriously, this is one of the greatest songs ever to adrenalize to and get stoked up to whoop ass metaphorically. And Redman comes across as one of the best guys ever in hip hop, with songs like this and "Supaman Lover" (which I always loved, over-analysis-wise, because he's a superhero who just flew across the city, but he has to take the back steps of the projects because the elevator was broke; you've gotta be extra-retarded to think up shit like that), and then you see him just act a fool through his career and have dollar boxes and his gold record leaned against the wall behind the couch his cousin is sleeping on on MTV's Cribs, and you just know Redman is straight up Redman all day everyday. So that just makes you feel good about the dude, so not only does "Time 4 Sum Aksion" get you all stoked-up, but you feel good about it, which is what coffee would be like if it was stronger and punk ass shoppes didn't rip you off on some beanwater in a cup and if it didn't taste like ass. And plus, Redman doesn't eat up your stomach and make you shit.
Back when I was making like three mixtapes a week, I think I used this song forever on tapes, doing that Cypress Hill song leading into this line and then jumping into this one, but I was a dual tape deck mixmaster with the pause button, stop, pull the tape back a touch of a turn so the sounds would blend and not have that harsh stop button sound. And sometimes, you could jump into the Black Sheep song at the end, but they were so soft-sounding coming after Red getting all crackbaby on the tape for the three-and-a-half minutes previously.

Mike Dikk: This is the best non-EPMD beat Erick Sermon ever hooked up. It’s not even up for debate. He did his best job to channel the Bomb Squad to form this amalgamation of pleasurable and intense sounds. It’s like an aural equivalent of putting a plastic bag over your head before you cum or punching yourself in the dick or whatever else weird pervos do to get off. It completely sold the whole rap Incredible Hulk gimmick Redman was doing on this record.
Since this whole list is about being Da Rillest of Da Rill, it goes without saying that Redman is one of, if not the realest dude out there. He’s the kind of guy who would turn down an industry party because he just bought Madden and wants to go play it with his boys. I know that whole Cribs thing was cool and all, and I’ve always wondered if at least some of it (especially the cousin sleeping on the floor thing) was a little exaggerated for the cameras, then I think of all the other wacky stuff Redman has been rumored to do and all the retarded shit he’s come up with to rap about, and it clears any doubt in my head. I’d like to share some of those rumors for the people who may not have heard about them or read them in something else more popular.
I can’t remember if it was for his sitcom (which I never actually saw, and sometimes think it was a big hoax, but he mentions it in that “Greedy Bitches” song, so I guess it was real) or for How High, but supposedly Redman was pissed that they expected him to wear clothes from the wardrobe department and he wanted to wear his own clothes. I wish there was some reality television show following him around when that went down. I’m not sure if he ended up getting his way and got to wear his own clothes, but something tells me he did. That’s just one of those admirable kinds of things the everyman can look up to and give a glimmer of hope that if you ever accidentally become famous or hit the lotto, you can still be down to earth enough to only feel comfortable in your own clothes.
There was also a rumor that I definitely didn’t read anywhere reputable that Redman rolled up into Queens alone, without a gun or any other kind of scary weapon and punked out Mobb Deep and their whole crew because of the little beef they had with Def Squad for a minute. Again, I can only believe this because it’s Redman, and I wouldn’t fuck with Redman no way, no how. Back to the Cribs thing, any dude who has been rapping since I was in 8th grade has enough money to live in a suburb somewhere. If that dude is content living in a shitty, barely furnished house in a terrible part of New Jersey, he is most definitely content with fucking you and your boys up with his fists and Timberlands.
Lastly, this isn’t so much of a rumor, but when I first found out about entire blogs dedicated to the hip hop, I read some story about how the author was on a plane with Redman around the time his first LP was out. He had the toilet paper up his nose and everything. That’s not the best part though. He was sitting on the plane with his walkman on rapping along to his own record. Someone who can do that without it being an ego thing is clear from being talked badly about. I’ll admit to not being that into Redman’s last... several... records, but I never look at it as his fault. I’m just not too into the beats. The dude is still rapping like he rapped from day one way back when I had the red and black lumberjack, with the hat to match. If you can’t respect that, better yet, if you can’t appreciate that, then we can’t be friends.

Download: Redman - Time 4 Sum Aksion

Watch the video:

EWA100 - #60. Diamond D - Best Kept Secret

60. Diamond and the Psychotic Neurotics - Best Kept Secret (Mercury. 1992. From the LP Stunts, Blunts And Hip Hop)

Mike Dikk: I’ve been sitting on this blurb for a while now because I can’t think of anything that sensational to write about this song. Don’t get me wrong, you can count me as a fan, but this record came out during a time where the ratio of good records to terrible records was exceptionally higher than any other time in hip hop. So much so, that the album was kind of lost in the shuffle until recently when the good ol’ internet resurrected it and dubbed it a lost classic.
Rapping-wise, Diamond wasn’t going to set your ass on fire, but with Diamond, it was definitely more about the beats. The beats are total boner mania on the whole damn thing, and it’s hilarious to think one of the biggest complaints about it at the time was the length. There were just too many songs! Now I would give an appendage for a hip hop CD with this much quality music on it. Actually, that’s a lie. As much as I like music, I enjoy my limbs a lot more.
“Best Kept Secret” was the lead single (I think so; if not, perhaps a nerd can correct me) and it was definitely the standout of the record along with “Sally Got A One Track Mind”. I remember it was a staple on mixtapes back then. Not like homemade ones, but actual DJ mixtapes when those existed. Outside of that, the only thing at all interesting that I can say here is that I was in the city (for those of you not from the northeast, “The City” always means “New York City”) this weekend with my roommate, and he was wearing an Ultimate Force sweatshirt, which I guess Ultimate Force had printed up a year or so ago for a reunion that may or may not have happened. Anyway, some stylish looking grubby bum told him that it was a very eye-catching sweatshirt, mainly due to the neon orange highlights on it, not because he was an Ultimate Force/Diamond D fan. Of course I could be wrong. Maybe bums know more dumb shit about rap music than us normal people with computers.

Raven Mack: I can’t front… I know I’m an old head and you have to put forth this know-it-all level of comprehension of your chosen field of dorkery when you dabble in the internet or even zine world, but I completely slept on Diamond the first time around. I guess Mike’s right, that was a heavy time for good hip hop – so much so that I was probably immersed into some individual branch of it at the time this first Diamond LP rolled out. It’s the consumer mentality to wrap yourself up in the fabric of a specific flavor of something, so you can feel like some misunderstood genius (internet and zines are full of those types) because I know so much about something so little. It’s how a dude who collects action figures moves onto being an anime dork moves onto eventually owning the soundtrack to Hair in nineteen different languages.
My man Born King used to speak highly of Diamond, though we’d usually just listen to some shitty rock-n-roll when sitting on the couch out front of his apartment building playing huvna. But it was around that time that I found myself non-unemployed for a good steady year or so, which is pretty amazing considering how much of a drunkard and unmotivated I was back then, and since I was sharing a trailer with a dude at $200 a month, I had mad extra spending loot. So of course, I got back into hitting the record store every Friday, buying up all the shit that even looked interesting. This was probably the last flourish that hip hop had, with Rawkus first jumping off, me copping the first MF Doom single without even knowing the story at that point of who he was or what he’d become, and I got the first single off of Diamond’s second as-yet-unreleased LP. That single was bonkers. Back then, since I did a lot of driving, I’d make a 100-minute mixtape every Sunday afternoon, like clockwork, so new shit from Friday had a chance to get listened to to make the tape, and the best shit from previous weeks would be on there. The stupid kid in the first trailer in the trailer park was selling dubs of my mixes and shit too at his stupid faggot richboy college, even though I wasn’t really mixing anything, just doing dual deck cuts and moving the tape back a touch of a finger turn so there were no hard popping cuts… straight up retard science, but still, retard science is a major influence in hip hop (“power from the streetlights made the streets dark…”). Immediately, I bought up all the new Diamond that came out, including that second LP, and I know Diamond gets not much love as an MC, but he’s got that perfect laid back flow that’s definitely brought up in that “party people” era, but more grown folks sounding.
Once time passed and buying records at the record store no longer became part of my life, and I had internet so you could just ask somebody to steal something for you if you couldn’t steal it yourself, I got the back catalog of Diamond, and yeah, he’s always been awesome. This song is great, but no greater than almost every other Diamond song. I guess this was the famous one or something from back when I was looking in a different direction.
I also remember reading in The Source way back that Diamond, who was originally Diamond D, had to drop the D because some whiteboy rapper had trademarked that name. I never saw a whiteboy rapper named Diamond D, although I often get Milkbone images in my head when I try to remember if I ever heard of him. I bet that fucker runs a Foot Locker or something now, that old trademarking-assed whiteboy called Diamond D. He probably just goes by Doug nowadays, and poor Diamond has just accepted being just Diamond. It’s one of those instances where bullshit legal matters gets in the way of what’s right. The law is here to protect business interests, not the Rill Shit.

Download: Diamond D - Best Kept Secret

Watch the video:

MNZ: Atlantis Rising May/June 2007

They offer up a free subscription to someone who doesn’t live within 100 miles of you with a paid subscription, and this is the last issue of my free subscription that someone gave me. This is all new age hokey nonsense, with flashy covers and no substance. Promises of secret sects and genetic freaks from the cover usually result in nothing much if at all and a ton of stupid DVD ads. In fact, in a whole issue of getting this thing, only two good things have ever came from it… Once, I met a dude named Stephen Buener because I was painting a house and he told the people I had a good aura and the house wanted me to paint it, and it was all true. And secondly, I used a couple issues of this during visits from the mother-in-law to occupy her schizophrenic-tendencied mind long enough to not bother me with the same shit she bothered me with about two hours earlier.

MNZ: Wrestling Observer March 26, 2007

The Wrestling Observer is a dork wrestling fan newsletter that’s poorly printed, but probably at a copy shop with no punk rock chick hook-up, which is why stupid Dave Metlzer wants like a thousand dollars for a year’s subscription. He should hook-up some roller derby bitch who works the second shift at Kinko’s to steal him some copy cards or something.
I usually only enjoy the Observer when it’s about someone who died, because the old stories of the way faggot wrestling used to be is not so gay. I’m sure there’s tons of people who love the backstage banter and booking politics of all sorts of whatever promotions, but I’m kinda not too interested in that. Plus, I don’t even know a third of the fuckers he’s talking about anymore, which is a great feeling to have removed yourself from some form of pop culture you had been too heavily immersed in, but usually you just throw yourself into some other stupid shit, so it’s not like we get any better.
This issue was right after they had named some wrestlers’ names in that steroid doctor scandal, which is not very surprising, nor do I care. But there’s the dead guy write-up for Arnold Skaaland, who I never knew as anything other than the old fucker who threw in the towel for Bob Backlund to lose to The Iron Sheik. Turns out, dude was a reliable old carny fuck who could kick many an ass if necessary, but was also a rarity in someone who could be trusted to actually drop the right amount of money off at the bank after the gate was collected. Reading about wrestling being so shady and fisticuff pugilist brown derby cigar smokish is great, because it’s so goddamned glossy and homo-erotic half the time now. Rest in peace old dude, and thanks to my internet benefactor from way back who hooks me up with this shit. Peace dog.

MNZ: National Geographic April 2007

My mother-in-law got me a subscription to Natty Geo for Xmas, and being I love rummaging through stacks of old copies, I falsely assumed this was some sort of relevant magazine to this day. I was wrong. It has plenty of purty pictures, but goddamn, it’s fucking stupid. This issue has a really shitty article about how there’s gonna be no fish left before long because broke ass people eat them all for protein and rich ass people demand large market for the deeper sea shit that the broke asses don’t over-harvest. Me personally, all this no more fish and global warming bullshit doesn’t scare me, because it’s all survival of the fittest anyways. No matter how much we try to save each other, motherfuckers will have to die to maintain balance. And if it ends up I have to teach my grandkids how to boil up illegal Mexicans for Sunday stew, then so be it. Of course, with the whole strength in numbers thing, I’m probably more likely to get sautéed up and spiced with some cumin seed in such a scenario.
Also, there’s perhaps the shittiest article ever written about Hip Hop in this National Geographic, but I guess mostly 64-year-old white people read it, so it probably was very informative to them. Also, I’d like to hear anything by any of the artists listed in the “international hip-hop” section of their big 3-page flow chart: X Plastaz (from Tanzania), Doble Filo (Cuba), Gokh-bi System (Senegal, which means I might have that shit because for some odd reason I have like a stack of Sengalese rap mixtapes from when my wife was over there learning drumming bullshit), Che-Fu (New Zealand, which means it must be awesome because it’s probably like The Sheepherders – all violent and crazy and missing teeth), and Castro the Destroyer (from Ghana). MC Solaar was on that list too but I’ve heard quite enough of him.

EWA100 - #61. Fatlip - What's Up Fatlip?

61. Fatlip - What's Up Fatlip? (Delicious Vinyl. 2005. From the LP The Loneliest Punk)

(Originally released as a single in 2000.)

Raven Mack: Man, talk about a shot in the dark. Pharcyde had been busted up, that one producer is a crackhead, Fatlip is rumored to be crackhead, the dreadlocked dude was dating that fake Hindu white girl from Real World... fame had tore them apart from their humble goofballs-in-the-ghetto roots. And all of this is why this Fatlip track is one of the best ever, because rather than making a comeback with inflammatory self-hype brimming with tongue-in-cheek confidence, he's straight up about to commit suicide on the mic. But he's not, because it's that self-deprecating humor, so you kinda sense he's cool with everything, but he also knows how fucked up his life has become. This is the teenager time machine shit, where if the you of when you were 17 met the you of now, would they think you were a piece of shit or cool. The rest of the album this came off of is not so good, and I saw Fatlip live and he did a bunch of Pharcyde hits, and we were waiting for him to do this song at some point, but he went off for a minute about how he really wasn't a crackhead despite all the rumors to the contrary, then he did a couple more half-assed Pharcyde songs and stormed off the stage for some reason or another. It was awesome. Just having one fuck-up Fatlip making hardly any music but hitting that high point for a "What's Up Fatlip?" is worth more to me as a rap fan than a hundred Dipsets or Def Juxes or G-Units or whatever's the biggest bling shit or nerd shit that kids in dorms from Villanova to UVA rock out in the comfort of not having to realize how full of shit they are. That's the motherfuckin' thing, life is fucked, and you sit around and feel like you've got a grasp on the gold dust for a weak-ass moment, but then the car blows up or you've got cut-off on the light bill or somebody breaks an arm and you ain't got no insurance, or just all the regular everyday bullshit of life will put a damper on that Friday night hype you can feel in those hot moments with a pocket full of cash and a fresh shirt wrapped around your beer belly. Rap music is this grand illusion that life is nothing but Friday night hype, and the thing is, for some artists, it is, but it's all done on credit, so that they have nothing but Friday nights for like three years straight, and then the rest of their life, after the music industry has squeezed every dollar downloaded ringtone it can out of the so-called artist's fresh style, they're cast aside for a lifetime of Monday afternoons, because on Monday afternoon, when the suckitude of life has stepped back onto your throat, you are not far removed from remembering how great a Friday night hype feeling can be. "What's Up Fatlip?" is one of those rare Monday afternoon blah songs, but that's a big part of life, sometimes it seems far bigger than Friday night hype in the equation, and that's why this song is so goddamned awesome. And fuck you if you disagree.

Mike Dikk: Rap music is so serious most of the time that it’s really refreshing when you find someone telling it like it is in a funny way. Fatlip did what most rappers would never think of doing: tell the truth about his situation. Over the last couple of years, we’ve been privy to a lot of unneeded hip hop comebacks, and they’ve all kind of sucked. Actually, they more than kind of sucked, they did suck. Why? Because dudes are coming out from hiatus after ten years talking about how they’re still ballin’ and shit. I understand it won’t sell you any records if you talk about how over the last ten years you had a couple kids, took a normal full time 9 to 5 job and watched a lot of reruns on Nick At Nite, but telling me you’re still a Big Kahuna making all that scrilla is as believable as the dudes who say the same shit on their first single that’s accompanied by a video and a bunch of plastic whores who could give a shit if your name is Lil Dookie or Yung Pu Pu Platter. That’s why this song is on here. Fatlip took a horrible situation and made it into one of the most refreshing songs of the early '00s. (For the record, This song came out a while back. I’m not sure if it was 2000 or 2001, it was just that the full length kept getting pushed back.) It was kind of obvious since his verse on “Passin’ Me By” that Fatlip was the standout star in the Pharcyde. Just like every other great musical genius, it went to his head and his star faded as quick as it came. Instead of coming back on the solo tip with a song about how he’s still the shit and how he has a chip on his shoulder and fuck those other Pharcyde guys, he drops possibly the best Sad Sack lyrics over the Saddest Sack beat/chorus combo ever, while still keeping his familiar humorous style. Seriously, that beat and chorus conjures up visions of hobos with a handkerchief tied to a stick flung over their backs walking down the railroad tracks to their makeshift shack to eat a can of beans. If there was any song on this list that you may not have heard, it could very well be this one, and I think it’s one of the songs you most need to hear, especially if you’re the type of person that hates rap for all the obvious reasons. If you have heard this song before, you’ve most likely listened to it around fifteen thousand times because it’s that good, but if you missed the “Making Of” video documentary that was on that Spike Jonze DVD a few years back, it’s more than worth tracking down. Reality really sets in when he’s in his own neighborhood telling some kids that he’s a rapper shooting a video and all they ask him is if he can get them Snoop Dogg’s autograph. This song, and the documentary are the closest look you’re going to get into a rapper that’s already been chewed up and spat out by the industry, unless of course you take a ride in Cappadonna’s cab anytime soon (props to him for making that his rap gimmick now though, even if it isn’t nearly as self-deprecating as this song). Luckily in Fatlip’s case, it lit a serious fire under his ass and made him hungry again. Unluckily, his insanely pushed back debut solo album kind of sucked. In all honesty, I listened to it a couple times and wasn’t into it and never went back to it. This one song is way too good for me to ever want to tarnish it in my mind with a mediocre full length.

Download: Fatlip - What's Up Fatlip?

Watch the video:


Here's a link to the documentary, but it's cut up into an annoying amount of parts.

EWA100 - #62. Three 6 Mafia - Sippin' On Some Syrup

#62: Three Six Mafia (feat. U.G.K.) - Sippin' On Some Syrup (Loud. 2000. From the LP When The Smoke Clears)

Mike Dikk: I know I shouldn’t tell you my tricks of the trade, but I only get by with this writing shit because I can get extreme and absurd when it comes to writing about stuff I hate, and at the opposite end of the spectrum, I tend to over embellish and verbally fellate something I really enjoy. With that off my chest, I have no problem telling you that “Sippin’ on Some Syrup” was the most important rap single of the 21st Century.
I was familiar with Three 6 before this single, but I wasn’t in love with them or anything. I bought the CD once I heard they had a song celebrating the recreational use of codeine. I read an article years earlier in The Source about kids in Texas ghettos getting crazy with the syrup. I tried it myself shortly after that article and heartily approved. Once I read a review of the single in The Source, I knew I had to have it. Of course, it lived up to all expectations and then some. Three 6 has made writing songs about drugs into a bonafide art form. This single and the rest of the album would eternally change the way I felt about southern rap music and what drugs I indulged in to get my swerve on.
That’s not the reason it’s the most important rap single of the 21st Century though. I don’t think anyone, even Three 6 Mafia themselves, expected this record to go platinum. The song got very little airplay up north, but a lot of people up here still bought it. I heard it played in cars from its release until well after the follow-up LP came out. The song had serious lasting power, even with its questionable subject matter. I don’t know how it is in the south, but it’s still not a real common thing for people up here to get high off of cough syrup. DJ Paul and Juicy J are production geniuses though, and that’s all it takes.
When The Smoke Clears was their first real major label debut, and if it had failed, I highly doubt they would have had a chance to release The Unbreakables with major label backing. Again, another Three 6 record with an amazing lead single that got very little airplay. It sold more than When the Smoke Clears and basically opened the doors for the initial wave of Lil Young rappers and to an extent a newfound interest in U.G.K. It wasn’t until The Most Unknown Unknowns that they got yet ANOTHER amazing lead single, but this time with a whole shitload of airplay. Of course, by this time, there was already a gigantic swarm of popular southern rappers, so to the novice hip hop listener, it may have seemed like these Three 6 Mafia guys came out of nowhere, but they basically paved the way for whatever horrible fucking music your little sister is grinding her crotch onto some sketchy guy to. Oh yeah, they also won an Oscar. It was like their worst song ever, but they still won an Oscar.
To sum up, without “Sippin’ on Some Syrup”, Paul Wall would still be some goofy looking dude playing Super Nintendo in his mom’s basement and Chamillionaire would just be an ugly man born from an immigrant family, and Slim Thug would be working at a car wash. God bless you, Three 6 Mafia. You’ve brought so much beautiful music into my headphones that we can all forget all the stinky sacks of shit you inadvertently let invade our television sets and mainstream payola consumed radio stations. You are the only music group I would ask for an autograph and me and a few friends of mine contemplated getting the date you won the Oscar tattooed inside our lips, but we ultimately bitched out. The thought was still there though.

Raven Mack: No doubt. The Oscars are like this big over-hyped nonsense that I think only homosexuals and Star magazine subscribers actually care about, and I've never watched it... seriously ever. Except that year when Three Six was on there. This was the group that was called Triple-Six Mafia and did crazy shit over weird beats that were like Spacemen 3 got born in the projects in Memphis. This was the group that did the too-hype song about tearing up the club, literally. They flashed gold grills before it became "grilles" because motherfuckers love to misspell thangs. And undoubtedly, through this song, they popularized drinking cough syrup. We called it robocopping, because usually you'd drink Robitussin, and I guess we never thought to add it to soda because usually you'd just drink a bottle of syrup along with a forty and it'd induce great mild hallucinations. There's all that talk about how it rots your mind and shit like that, but fuck, life rots your mind in a slow death manner anyways. You might as well beat the general soul suck of everyday life to the punch, take away their pleasure of having their foot up your ass all day long forever.
So yeah, I half-paid attention to the Oscars that one night, just to see Three Six on major TV, never thinking they'd win. I mean there was a song about transsexuals by Dolly Parton or something, and that seems far more up the liberal alley of your average Judeo-Scientologist Hollywoodian. Except somebody forgot to make them people know that Three Six does songs about child support and drinks codeine out of baby bottles.
It's made me think two disparate things, the success of Juicy J and DJ Paul. One, it could be a sign of the American Dream not being the smoke and mirror deception I've always tried to convince myself it is, to justify my own lack of success in life and make it seem like the chips are stacked against me from the get-go. But on the other hand, there's a steady stream of former members of Three Six who have beefs and bad feelings towards Juicy J and DJ Paul, so perhaps they're no different than the Jewish dudes who owned R&B labels in the '60s, and DJ Paul and Juicy J have just ripped off a steady stream of creative people and made fat stacks of bank account interest statements off of them.
Either way, the whole Three Six Mafia story aside, this is seriously one of the greatest songs ever, and easily the absolute best song about doing drugs that hip hop has ever made. And the beat is still one of the all-time best. DJ Paul and Juicy J don't get the credit for their beats they should, probably because they've got like a thousand beats and will give them to absolutely anybody who'll sign a cashier's check for one. It's not like they're high artists saving up certain beats for some masterpiece of an endeavor. They whip 'em out, throw it together, and ship it to the distributors. But like Mike said, every CD has a crazy first single. None like this though.
On the off chance you are a sheltered non-rap fan white person reading this because of how you came upon this list (more likely in the zine format than the internet dork format), you owe it to yourself to get into Three Six, starting with this song. When it is summertime hot, cooling down on a Friday night and you've got a few extra dollars floating in your pocket after buying money orders for the electric and water bill, and the phone's not past due, and you just want to get FUCKED UP and slouch all over on the porch by the end of the night, they can be your perfect soundtrack.

Download: Three 6 Mafia - Sippin' on Some Syrup

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EWA100 - #63. Outkast - Player's Ball

63. Outkast - Player's Ball (LaFace/Arista. 1994. From the LP Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik)

Raven Mack: Man, remember this shit? Back before Dre was a 3000 model and looked like he might still be apt to slap a gold front onto an incisor tooth or two. I am all for tolerance and the general accepting of other people's idiosyncracies, camouflaging personal mental issues as alternative lifestyles, but if in doing so I am encouraging a whole generation of potential "Player's Ball"s to turn into a slew of "Hey Ya"s that get Jackson Pollock-effected metrosexuals with white belts to get all gleeful, then I don't do not don't no can't allow it want to tolerate that shit.
This song is by southerners and mentions Cadillacs. There is something about the humidity of the south that has warped the way my brain thinks, sort of like a record left on the front seat at the end of July all day long with the windows up and no stupid sunblocker cardboard thing in the windshield, and because of this slight warping, songs by people who drawl rap and talk about Cadillacs will always entertain me. I even like that stupid Richboy song "Throw Some Ds". Plus Richboy looks like a fetal alcohol syndrome kid with his eyes too far apart like a mountain goat. Dre was such a good-looking promising youngster, and he and Big Boi perfectly complemented each other, with similar flows but different angles, like a good back court tandem during weekend basketball tournaments. But then Dre went Badu-pussy juice crazy and decided he wanted to go play double A baseball instead, which in this analogy means he wanted to be crazy black dude white people love making weird music ala Prince or Sly Stone, except Dre's weird music is not so varied, just basically a dude playing piano and talking about how shit stinks, literally, and hoping that's enough to get over.
And it does. You know why? People are retarded. So Andre is the greatest rapper ever then probably, because he is homogenized and palatable and has a very patented voice that'll go from making cartoons to jingles for Honda Hybrids to eventually doing the aural part of interpretative art performances with Shepard Fairey graphics and concrete sculptures by Lee Quinones or some other full-of-shit aging graffiti dude.
I have "Player's Ball" on 12-inch single, and I pull it from time to time and can't seem to enjoy it because of what Outkast is, but also love it too much to go get some coin off ebay for it. Outkast is a tough one in the Expert Whiteboy Analysis dissection, because it's pretty obvious to even the most amateur of whiteboys that Outkast's greatness has decreased almost with each album, but most definitely from the start of their career to now, with them for some reason getting more and more Spin music critic jockriding the shittier they get. But well-educated mulattos love them some Outkast, I think because Andre might be the voice of the well-educated mulatto generation, with him referencing Whole Foods and foreign countries and shit like that, and with the whole point of being an expert whiteboy knowing Tha Rillest hip hop there is to know, mulattos - regardless of how white they may act from their affluent upbringing - sort of have a trump card in Tha Rillest quotient with whatever bit of black blood they have in their arteries.

Mike Dikk: This is kind of a hard one for me to write about. On one hand, it was a song at the time that really broadened my horizons to southern rap music outside of The Geto Boys and Rap-A-Lot. On the other hand, if you were to hear this song for the first time today, it might sound, dare I say, dated. Not in a bad way. More in the way that since the release of this song, there’s been a good number just like it, making it not as special as it once was.
When I first heard it though, it was completely different from anything I was used to. Sure, it sounds faintly West Coast, but not to the point where you would ever think it was an actual West Coast rap song. I never got around to buying the full length, or the single for that matter. I never got around to saving up enough lunch money, but I was still a fan.
Listening to this now, it’s hilarious how far removed Outkast and more so Andre 3000 is from their humble beginnings. I mean, Big Boi is basically the same dude, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if his current beats were as laid back, soulful and funky as this one. I never really thought about it until right now, but Outkast has a seriously fierce instrumental catalog. Even if you delve into their ever-evolving Futuristic Outer Space Blaxsploitation phases, most of that shit still knocks.
You know, that could really be the Expert Whiteboy’s real problem with Outkast. I like a ton of different music. Some of which I keep a secret from most people, just because I feel if I told people in real life that I liked a certain thing, they’d think I was just saying that to be eclectic or different. I try to let my actions define me as an asshole, not my musical tastes. I don’t like the song “Hey Ya” one bit, mainly because it’s presented as some sort of hybrid rap song, because it was made by someone who is most famous for being a rapper. If you were to strip the vocals and tell me Four Tet or Nightmares on Wax did the track, I could probably get into it though. Such is the peril of the Expert Whiteboy. Always contradicting themselves and kicking their own asses.
I got way off topic since this was supposed to be about the song “Player’s Ball” and not a deep look into how I can off-handedly defend my appreciation of Outkast without sounding like your average cracker. Chances are you’ve heard “Players Ball” before though. It’s most likely your mom’s least favorite Outkast single, which should help you figure out which one it is.

Download: Outkast - Player's Ball

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EWA100 - #64. Camp Lo - Luchini (This is it)

64. Camp Lo - Luchini (This Is It) (Profile. 1997. From the LP Uptown Saturday Night)

Mike Dikk: Camp Lo’s “Luchini” makes me afraid of the future and aging. You see, I love this song to a point where disliking this song is a totally foreign concept to me. I don’t know if people really exist that don’t think “Luchini” is the greatest jam to start a party off with, but if they do, I don’t want to meet them.
That’s where my fear sets in. Even if the current pro-Luchini approval rate is at 99.9%, I know it won’t be that way forever. Over the years, people will forget about how great the song was. Outside of “Luchini”, Camp Lo isn’t known for much, if anything. I can’t help but imagine that in 30 years they will be a blip on one of those all encompassing “Best songs of the Late 20th Century” compilations. You know like the ones they have now for the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s? Where it’s usually a couple songs by people that had legitimate careers and then a bunch of shit by people who you kind of remember, but not really without hearing the hit song first? I just know that’s where they’ll end up. It’s like, I have no clue who originally sang “My Boyfriend’s Back” and I don’t know if the answer is common knowledge for your average music scholar, but that song was way before my time. Even before my mom’s time. I’d bet that most people my age could sing along to that song but have no idea who actually sang it and most likely could give a rat’s ass if they ever found out.
I fear that I will be an old man on Planet Earth listening to “Luchini” on my The Target-Walmart Corp. Presents: Famous Oldies From the 1900’s Ronco Mp7 Compatible Implantable Data Chip (This will be the most common media format in 30 years of course.) while all the young earth people migrate to Space Disco Planet 7x in the Alpha Sector, which is the planet that named Pharrell Supreme Emperor of Disposable Club Bangers in 2032. Please God, let global warming kill me before it comes to this.

Raven Mack: Here's some quick facts before Mike DIKK's words get me totally tweaked out... Camp Lo, at least one of the dudes, was from Danville, Virginia, which is a gutted-out textile factories with plywood windows piece of industrial shit drug-addled town, and according to my man Boomer, you can see one of those dudes, or maybe even both, down in Danville at bars every now and then using their brief legend status to be a baller, a shot caller, with twenty inch rims on their Chevy Impala type. That is the American Dream to me, using your fleeting fame to get hooked-up with all sorts of crap you really don't need in your life, and exploiting that one coincidental chance where everything fell into perfect place and you were a God, for at least three-and-a-half musical minutes. Which brings me to the other interesting fact about Danville, Virginia. It's where Clarence 13x was born and raised, who had some other name I can't remember, and moved to NYC, and he fell out with Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam because it didn't allow Gods to get drunk and smoke reefers, so he founded the Nations of Gods and Earths, which is all that 5% hoodoo that is deeply entrenched in the rapping music. When I worked with a big weird black dude who called himself a "domestic terrorist crazy fuck the president type nigga" who had been in prison in New York for ten years telling me about 5%, it was good word-of-mouth legend. But now that you can read about that shit in stupid RZA books and on the internet, it's just regular shit that any dork can find sitting around bored. Not that I feel I'm better for my experiences, but I enjoyed that time sitting in some shithole house with this weird dude trying to tell me how chicken and rice was a "Rastaman lunch" and just the general interaction of another weird-assed human being as opposed to google searching your way into experience.
Which is brings me back to the paranoia Mike has planted in me. This is one of those awesome songs that's feel good and initiates interaction with your fellow motherfucker, making us all together Party People, who were oftentimes in the place to be back in the day, at least according to popular lyrics. And this club-banger society, which I can see growing and growing, and this doom forecast Mike speaks of, these are not Party People. But they think they are. It's the Glitteratus Conspiracy, where the chosen offspring of 33rd Degree Freemasons - Paris Hilton-style drunken socialites - get to handpick the Chosen - like Pharrell and that Travis Barker fucker, to create a master race of entertainment-based opium for the masses, who have no means of actual access to that lifestyle, unless somehow one of the inner circle drunken socialites become infatuated with your penis, which won't happen because they only date Greek shipping heirs or Parisian boy models or pop punk singers. Us and Star magazine, strip club songs, VH1/MTV reality shows, and Carmen Electra's dance instruction tapes are different forms of this process, and it's sad when you see a brainwashed Manchurian Fat Joe throwing dollar bills around in a blank-eyed growth from his earlier form. We are doomed. It is why I voted for George Bush in 2004 because if the world is bound to be fucked, I'd much rather it just go ahead and be fucked as fast as possible instead of taking baby steps towards every waking minutes being mental torture.

Download: Camp Lo - Luchini (This is it)

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