I rap.
No no-, it surprises me too that this housedj/black-soul-hipster-lookin- chick actually drops some verses and I will publicly announce now that the rapper who has been most influential to me is Jay-Z.
Idk what that does to my street cred or my music snobbery cred, but I'm going to explain. I grew up in the 90s....that use to make me young and my memory of pop culture and pop history insignificant but I don't think that's the case anymore. Furthermore, I grew up in the hood/ a predominantly working class-middle class Black neighborhood of a super segregated New York State city with two very older siblings who were driving by the time was I was walking. Likely, with a single-parent working mother, when I wasn't with my grandma I was with my siblings-- in their cars, with their friends, in the house; being exposed to whatever radio, cassettes (90s!), or music videos they played and watched. It was all hip-hop and R&B, so as I child, before I grew a musical identity of my own, I continued to listen to what they listened to and watched the videos they watched. The artists behind these songs, at least the hip-hop ones, that I remember were Big Pun, Foxy, Missy, and Jay Z.
*(I missed tupac and biggie, and I ain't gonna front like I ever tried to catch up. I didn't. It's just the way it was for me)*
Jay stuck out the most. I'll try and regain some cred by saying that the prime of J's musical careers were the albums he came out with during my childhood (Reasonable Doubt to the Black Album). These are the albums people think of when we call him one of the best rappers of all time. When I was 11 and 13 I ordered the Blueprint, Jay-Z: MTV Unplugged and The Black Album from a CD catalog that was the way to order CDs before Apple was more than a fruit and Amazon existed. Can't tell you how many times I listened to them, how much I heard bits of myself in songs like Dec. 4th, can't tell you how much I appreciated, learned from, and absorbed J's flow on the tracks, how much I escaped to or understood the stories painted in these albums.
Many communities don't get voices...sometimes its problematic to have rappers, rap, hip-hop, and pop-hop as it's become to be the voice of urban, black, or youth communities. But during that time period, Jay was the voice of my community. And he did it with class.
Yes, class, though hip-hop can be seen as a sort of classless art form. What's expected from an artistic tool used to discuss a dirty, grimy, dark lifestyle and existence? It's a heavy burden to do that and do it well and many rappers fail and many rappers get lost and many rappers don't even try and abandon that tradition, one that was started when the first boats arrived from Africa so when a rapper does do it well-- you can feel it.
But enough philosophy. J painted my childhood until I got to the point where I abandoned hip-hop for music that made more sense to me at the time. And although there were a few more rappers that also grabbed my attention before I left (Luda, Nelly, Missy, Busta...), whenever I sat down to tell a story, to release something--it came out in rhyme and in the form of a rap verse and I always had Jay- Z in the back of my mind.
And that's just my story, but I don't know a whole lot of other music lovers who don't have a solid Jay-Z track in their catalog of 50 best songs of their memory. But more than just the far-reaching potency of his music, what must also be respected is Jay-Z's business sense. This dude has done some serious, serious, entreneurship. He's built an empire of record labels, basketball teams, clothing lines, restaurants, clubs, real-estate, beer...everything. He's retired, married a superstar, made albums, went on tour, launched some of the most famous rappers and producers into the game, come back, released an album, went on tour, produced a broadway musical, and returned to claim his throne. But in all fame, glitz, glamour, and general hallabaloo, we sorta lost sight of the J we use to know and couldn't quite remember if he deserves the respect he seems to be demanding.
Enter J's new book (yeah homie's an *author* now) "Decoded", and more importantly his recent conversation with Dr. Cornel West (moderated by some crazy European dude) at the New York Public library. These two media releases brings Jigga back to the level of leader, poet, and important community (Black community, music industry community, hip-hop community) voice. Not gonna give a full synopsis, but you need to watch this ish. They talk about anything and everything that is relevant to these two cultural figures. Without a doubt, whether we like it or not, Jay is going down in pop-culture history, but before we dismiss it I think it's important to understand what he's saying as he continues to make his mark. Take for example this: "The internet was a way of the music industry purging itself". Dude believes the same thing I do, that the internet is the way to escape the banality, shallowness, and "thinness", as Dr. West calls it, of radio-driven commercial music (see the success of J Cole's new mixtape). Jay even admits that he left the system for two years to build with other artists because he's disgusted with the fact that "people don't even believe in artist development anymore."
As I've made my return back to hip-hop, I've come to know a lot of young MCs and musicians who see the hip-hop game and music industry as a way to make it. As a way to escape. They wanna be "BIG" big. They wanna have the money, the lights, the glam. They wanna be the next Jays, Lupes, Drakes, whatevers. Without leaving you my own opinion on all that, or even what I want from music myself ( who wouldn't mind a Jay-Z story of their own?), I'll leave you with a beautiful quote from "Decoded" about what the men and women we grew up with used this music thing for.
The 70s were a strange time, especially in Black America.The music was beautiful in part because it was keeping a type of torch lit in dark times...I feel like we as rappers, djs, producers were able to smuggle some of the magic of that dying civilization out of the music and use it to build a new world. We were kids without fathers so we found our fathers on wax, and on streets, and in history, and in a way that was a gift. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves...rap took the remnants of a dying society and created something new. Our fathers were gone, usually because they just bounced, but we took the records to build something fresh.
Popculture eaters/historians/cultural students--watch or listen to this conversation.
My fellow musicians and aritists--what new world are you building, and what ancestors are you bringing with you?
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