Marc Moulin - ‘Aria’
taken from Placebo Years 1971 - 1974 (EMI , 1999)

It’s Sunday. I’m feeling lazy. Is there any better accompaniment to lethargy than this?

Power Of Zeus - ‘Sorcerer Of Isis’
taken from The Gospel According To Zeus (Rare Earth, 1970)

Having stuck simply to funk for fodder for this series so far, I thought I’d mix it up a little today and throw a rock joint at you for your percussive consumption. However, in terms of supplementary info on this particular break I’m afraid it’s going to be a little light on this occasion, as Power Of Zeus are a group who I know next to nothing about and wouldn’t ever profess to.

As far as I can tell ‘Sorcerer Of Isis’ is taken from their only studio album The Gospel According To Zeus which saw a release on Motown offshoot label Rare Earth. I’m yet to hear the LP in its entirety but ‘Sorcerer Of Isis’ is pretty cool for what it is, although bear in mind that this is coming from somebody who knows next to nothing about psychedelic ’70s rock. It’s also easy to see why it’s been adopted by beatmakers, as the beautifully clean hats, kicks and snares during the opening passage of the song are divinely ripe for the chop.

This only covers a fraction of it. Keep those ears trained for the snare hits in some of your favourite beats and ignore the fact that snare-spotting is pretty much as geeky as it gets: embrace that shit. I know I have.

Keep a hold of those trousers bro. You don’t wanna make yourself look silly now, do ya?

According to Dallas it’s Weezy’s birthday today, so given that there was a decent response to my previous post and I’ve had a chance to think about the issue at hand a little more, I thought I’d extend my musings on Weezy F. Baby a little further. Man, I love myself a lazy Sunday afternoon.

However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you in the direction of Brandon’s exceptional two-part piece which engages with the same ideas that I was trying to get down with but in a far more developed and intelligent way (shouts to reader WestIndianArchie for the recommendation). What I found particularly interesting about this piece was that Brandon incorporates a discussion of shifts in production aesthetics and how this has consequences on the style of vocal delivery that is required in order for a song to feel homogeneous. In short, you can’t have Nas’ lyrical flow sit over the top of the more stripped-down, jittery staccato beats that have now found favour with the masses because their very nature necessitates a more off-kilter, abstract style of rhyme. Weezy would sound similarly goofy rhyming over the instrumental of ‘It Ain’t Hard To Tell’. I accept this, and it goes a long way to explaining why Wayne remains a mystery to me because at a base level I don’t ever really feel the beats that he’s rapping over: I’m lost and pretty much lacking engagement before I even attempt to get my head around what’s coming out of his mouth.

But this leads me down another avenue in the discussion. Almost unquestionably, the pinnacle of any MC’s achievement is their flow. Hip hop is so intrinsically a case of style over substance that in reality it doesn’t matter what you’re talking about, but rather the way in which it is delivered (although naturally the true greats transcend this generalisation). But then what do we really mean when we talk about flow? Water flows. Air flows. The word by definition means a movement that is smooth and continuous. In which case, can we really talk about the proficiency and accomplishment of an MC’s flow - if this is the key parameter on which we judge their ability - when their style of delivery is at times the deliberate antithesis of the term itself?

Now I don’t want to go too over the top here. I realise that what I’m now beginning to engage in is a slightly silly semantic argument that perhaps doesn’t hold a lot of weight and would be relatively easy to debunk. I’m also keen to point out that I’m not saying that Weezy hasn’t got flow in the more traditional sense of the word. Of course he does. It also doesn’t mean that some MCs who I love haven’t been deliberately playing with more staccato, off-beat rhythms since way back when (see Pharoah Monch). But when it comes down to it I guess the root of my problem here is that when I listen to the music coming out of the South its deliberate stop and start aesthetic is at odds with what I love about hip hop music in the first place: its sense of unshakable momentum. It flows.

Rather obviously, this is all entirely subjective. One man’s caviar is another man’s stinking pile of fish eggs. Does Lil’ Wayne’s ‘flow’ flow? Does it really matter? Am I misunderstanding something crucial about Wayne’s skills as a lyricist? Are you? Will his heralded genius endure when inevitable shifts in the genre come around again?

Who knows. I still don’t like the guy though.

I just don’t get it.  Doesn’t anyone else think this is kinda annoying?

One thing that has been painfully obvious to me ever since starting in blogging is that living on the other side of the pond means I’m pretty disconnected with a lot of what’s going on in the contemporary American scene. It actually plays on my conscience a little bit, because as much as I realise it’s important for me to keep abreast of developments in the genre, there’s a barrier there that I find relatively hard to break down. In part this is my own doing - there aren’t really any excuses with the proliferation of information on the web - but ultimately I still feel a distance (and vague sense of bemusement) when trying to figure out how it is I’m meant to respond to the commercial side of contemporary rap music in the States.

Let me try and put this in perspective a little. Would it surprise you to know that until about six months ago I didn’t even know who Rick Ross was? Would you be stunned if I told you that I’d never seen a Flo Rida video on TV? Would you be picking your jaw up off the floor if I mentioned that not one single kid out of the thousands I’ve now taught has ever had a hip hop ringtone accidentally go off in class? Would you be left feeling similarly aghast in the knowledge that had it not been for my own intrepid travels through the web I would never have heard ‘A Milli’? (I’m not sure how much better I feel having done so though.) I’m aware of the fact that when it comes down to it what I’m really talking about is southern rap here, but am I the only person who just doesn’t get it? Is it just my Britishness and a lack of necessary cultural reference points that makes the hype around/success of these artists seem incomprehensible? Can I communicate my bewilderment even more eloquently by squeezing yet another question into this paragraph?

I’m desperately trying to avoid a completely tired and two-dimensional view here. This brief aside from regular programming is far more confession than decent, well-informed commentary on the subject. I really don’t want to just come off as some sort of dinosaur who is so blinkered to shifts in the genre that I’d rather just cuddle up with my copy of Enta Da Stage and forget about it all, because I really don’t. I’m also aware of the fact that even in writing this, I feel a niggling sense of guilt/shame that maybe it’s just because I’m not trying hard enough to appreciate what it is that has clearly captivated such a wide audience and garnered such critical praise. I mean if Jeff and Renato can get down with a little Weezy, then why can’t I? I’m open to the idea that it just may not be my cup of tea, but even attempts to listen to Tha Carter III just leave me feeling a little lost. What am I missing here? Is there some level of irony that’s escaping me? I accept that Weezy’s thang is all about being completely over the top, but does no-one else feel like this is just preening, overblown bullshit?

Perhaps all I’m really doing here is exposing my own shortcomings as a hip hop ‘journalist’. I’m also engaging in what must be a completely worn-out argument for some of you reading this: it’s not like there hasn’t been a lot of far more intelligent and pertinent commentary written about the South circulate the blogosphere over the last couple of years, but it’s still a phenomenon I just can’t quite wrap my head around.

I’m open and ready to be slaughtered: don’t hold back. Oh, and if you’re wondering what brought all this on, look here. I mean, what the fuck?

Beatnuts - ‘Straight Jacket’
taken from Street Level (Relativity/Violator, 1994)

The Sons - ‘Boomp Boomp Chop’
taken from Sons (Capitol, 1969

Harry Nilsson - ‘Rainmaker’
taken from Harry (RCA, 1969)

Wu-Tang Clan - ‘Da Mystery Of Chessboxin”
taken from Enter The Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers (Loud/RCA, 1993)

Having been heavily back into the first Beatnut’s full-length over the last fortnight or so, I realised that I’ve actually rarely touched upon their work here at FDB. This strikes me as somewhat bizarre because despite only coming around to their material after devouring the more obvious production big-hitters, they still hold a special place in my heart as one of my favourite crews to ever do it behind the boards. OK, so they’ve ended up falling off post-2000 (who hasn’t?), but I still generally find their more recent music to be more enjoyable and imaginative than other outfits who have managed to maintain that same balance between underground respectability and mainstream success (see Dilated Peoples), and that’s saying something given that the inaugural Intoxicated Demons EP dropped in 1993. It’s probably no surprise to you that Street Level has endured as my favorite album from their back catalogue, and so it is that ‘Straight Jacket’ finds itself under the figurative digital microscope today.

What I’ve learned to appreciate about the Nuts since getting into the sample side of things is that those boys dug deep in the quest for funky musical fodder (perhaps that should be ‘dig’: there’s supposedly an album coming next year). Although looking over some of their sample credits reveals a lot of familiar names and breaks, there are also a few bits and pieces nestled in there that demonstrate an individual, artistic approach to the art of digging that is made even more impressive by a handful of songs that will be immortalised as their own unique find (here’s a decent example). Of course this is a quality shared by pretty much all of the production greats, but there’s something enjoyably kooky about some of the Beatnuts’ samples choices that I find endearing as it seems to communicate a passion for unearthing something truly original before transforming it into a very different beast (see corresponding example).

Although in terms of aesthetic The Sons’ ‘Boomp Boomp Chop’ may not seem that obscure a choice - it does after all conform to the standard smooth jazz formula that so many producers turned to during the era - the record itself has proven incredibly difficult to research. It’s not helped by the fact that the album is self-titled and that the name of the group is particularly generic, but I can’t help but feel that this is also an indication of this record’s scarcity and therefore highlights the Beatnut’s originality in its discovery. And the reason for the difficulty turns out to be down to a swift name change by psychedelic west-coast rock outfit Sons of Champlin for their second LP (shouts to reader eons for the info).  The sample is easy to spot as it serves as the opening four bars of the main groove in the source material, a beautifully atmospheric mix of electric piano and guitar licks, and despite being pitched-down a little this is just a straight loop. I feel like I’ve said it hundred times before by now, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Any information on The Sons or the record from which this is lifted would be much appreciated.

For drums the selection is similarly astute. Although Harry Nilsson isn’t exactly a small player in the history of music, he doesn’t come to mind immediately when you think of hard-hitting snares, and yet it is from his song ‘Rainmaker’ that the Beatnuts source the percussion that propels ‘Straight Jacket’ forwards with such ferocity. As with The Sons’ groove this also appears to be looped, although extra snares add the necessary detailing and the step up in pace makes this a break to be reckoned with: in some ways I’m surprised that it hasn’t been used a little more widely. The album from which it is taken entitled Harry comes from the earlier stages of his career, released on RCA in 1969, and although I’d like to make some comment about how this work fits into the Nilsson catalogue in all honesty I haven’t got a clue. Yet another musical avenue to explore at some stage…

The ODB vocal sample as hook works wonderfully well, but there are so many other small nuances to comment on here that certify this is a masterfully executed chunk of mid-’90s hip hop music. The running water that disappears after the first eight bars makes the drop into drums all the more glorious, and the use of an unidentifiable high-pitched chirp that intermittently appears throughout the song adds another layer of interest which despite being relatively subtle adds real character to the beat. Then you got the switch in the main groove into the bass heavy riff and some tastefully placed sax to take into account and what you’re left with a beat that is at once perfectly simple whilst masking an underlying complexity.

I’m on a serious Beatnuts tip at the moment so I wouldn’t be surprised if they crop up again in the near future. They have got the funk, after all.