"You know those jams in the park? They produced the spark. Made me feel words how I read books in the dark. I always took it to heart, loved the art..."
Late-spring/early-summer has been hectic for your favorite man of letters. 14,400 miles in the air in May between Mumbai, London, and Virginia? Excellent. Perusing the arcades of Paris in fine Benjaminian style? Magnifique. Linking up with some old friends? Great.
Keeping pen to paper? The best. The nature of my writing has been changing quite a bit over the last few months. After spending almost two years turning out relatively short reviews, I'm moving into longer format pieces -- more extensive reviews and, now, a set of long articles for PopMatters. At the same time, I'm cooking up my second master's dissertation, a 15,000-word piece on neoliberalism, hip-hop, and policing in NYC. In other words, if there seems to be an early summer drought at CanineMind, don't worry: there's a flood of stuff on the way for your extended reading pleasure.
Enough with the persona-building backstories, let's get to the monthly business: I've got the first installment of my multi-part piece on hip-hop and policing, "America's Most Policed Art Form" -- "The Rise of the Informal Mixtape Economy," courtesy of PopMatters. A video essay on inside jokes centering around MC Hammer's astoundingly terrible-great "Pop Ya Collar" (shout out to the "Committee to Elect Hammer and Wee-Wee). And, of course, some recent reviews from okayplayer.
In the spirit of inside jokes, and in keeping with the miserable weather in dear old Londres...
POPMATTERS -- Hip-hop, as any number of industry executives, gaudy videos, and endlessly self-referential rhymes will tell testify, is big business. And yet, even with its fabled rise “from ashy to classy” – leapfrogging from ghettos to rural hamlets and back again, from New York to Los Angeles, Atlanta to Houston, and all points in between – hip-hop has retained its status as Public Enemy #1: the subject of endless crusades, tirades, crackdowns, and lockdowns. Just ask DJ Drama and DJ Cannon, two prominent Atlanta-based DJs and radio personalities who spent the evening of January 16 this year cooling in sheriff’s custody on racketeering charges. The early-morning SWAT raid on their Gangsta Grillz mixtape operation – the culmination of an investigation supported by the Recording Industry Association of America – did more than confirm the high stakes involved in hip-hop’s newest, most dynamic addition, the informal mixtape economy: it solidified hip-hop’s long-running status as America’s most policed art form. (More...)
Ah, the perils of inside jokes. They start out funny, but after a while, as more and more knowing glances, elliptical comments, and general jackassery pile-up, they generally collapse under their own weight into powerful, sociability-destroying black holes. I've been involved in my share:
1. "50 CentGate" (Spring 2003): It's rare that you'll hear me say I "hate" anyone. Hate is a very strong word, and I don't throw it around lightly. So let's just say that I LOATHE 50 Cent. But even I'll admit that Get Rich or Die Tryin', his major label debut, was a titanic album. I must have listened to it once or twice a day for a good three months -- whether on my headphones, my room stereo, or the dusty boombox we kept in the weightlifting cage. Within a month, we had most of the album memorized. Within 6 weeks, we started communicating only in soundbites from the album. Scenarios: a. Lunch: One friend grabs another's sandwich, takes a bite, stares. "I'll eatcha food in broad day like it's lunchtiiime." b. Practice: Training partner fails to complete jump, gets lashed on back by bar. "Damn, homie. In high school you was the man, homie. What happened to you?!" c. Evening news: TV Reporter: "Gunfire erupted..." Friend: "I love the sound of gun-firer."
Yeah, that was annoying... and pretty sad.
2. "ChapelleGate" (Spring 2004): similar scenario to #1, just involving the infamous Rick James and Prince sketches from Chapelle. Also pretty sad when you think about it.
3. "PappadeauxGate" (Spring 2005): at Mike Jones' behest, we visited the popular Houston eatery. Waitress (looking at me, the only white guy in the restaurant): "Where are you from?" Me: "New Jersey." Waitress: "Why'd you come here?" Me: "Well, we heard that real baller's eat at Pappadeaux. We're real ballers, soooo..." Waitress (stifles laughter behind menus, leaves to compose herself)
I think PappadeauxGate is actually a sub-joke of the much longer running MikeJones/SwishahouseGate of Spring 2004 to the present.
4. "Hammer&Wee-WeeGate" (Spring 2004 to Fall 2004) aka "The Great Collar Popping":
For a brief period time, I was engaged in an ironic detachment contest of epic proportions. My opponent: a certain Johns Hopkins student known as the Ph/f[?]atmaster. The objective: search for rap videos that were so bad they were good. And were there ever some great bad ones -- Black Russians' "Back Up Out My Way" (Description: "The Black Russians have a beach party! Magoo plays football!") comes to mind. The best/worst by far, however, was "Pop Ya Collar" by MC Hammer, featuring Wee Wee. When Ph/f[?]atmaster inboxed me this one, I knew I had lost.
The video speaks for itself, but I always have to have the last word, so...
I'm not lying when I tell you we learned every pop -- by name -- and that we (and by "we," I mean the specially formed "Committee to Elect Hammer and Wee-Wee") executed them with an undeniable level of grace, fluidity, and swag. I'm also not lying when I say that I "Delivered the Pop" in a Notting Hill club last weekend... to applause, nonetheless. Popping is now just part of my DNA. I don't even have to think about it, I just do it. Wu-wei-wu.
Looking back at the video, though, I now realize that I never fully appreciated the pain, the heartbreak, and the cosmic wisdom that're packed into this song. Hammer pours his heart out and you can't help but feel bad for him. Doubly so when you see that hideous dress shirt he's wearing.
"Sounded like them good old times Reminded me of when the world was mine... Bring back them good old days We danced the night away"
"I had to get away Put it down and learn to pray Now that's the only way Now that's the only way"*
*Although I would like to note that, in following this immediately with "POP YA COLLAR MAYNE!", Hammer seems to locate his salvation not in God, but in the pop. Or perhaps God is the pop... Ever since "Pray," Hammer's theology has been kind of questionable.
Other inside jokes-cum-universal-implosions I've witnessed and/or been involved in: "ForeignDirectInvestmentGate" (Fall 2006 - Present), "Costa/AbbeyBank-CafeGate" (Spring 2006), "BalmIrahqGate" (Fall 2003), "SockPuppetGate" (Fall 1999 to Spring 2001), and the grandaddy of them all, "DoucheGate" (Fall 1997 to Spring 1999) [please, don't ask, it's a long story involving an all-boys Catholic high school that deserves a much more extensive telling than I could give here].
"I need to stop doing this blog stuff, oooooooh weeeee!"
In keeping with the obsessive-compulsive “cultural should” that jackhammers repeatedly in the back of my brain, I’ve accumulated a tidy stack of cultural objects I “really should” consume. Among the items in the aforementioned stack include:
1. Bartleby the Scrivener 2. The collected works of Stendahl 3. Madame Bovary 4. About 800 pages of Rem Koolhaas manifestoes 5. The Very Best of the Stylistics 6. A turkey sandwich 7. My ego
Count Supercool California Soul 2 as the most recent item transferred from the “should” to the “did” pile. Should I have? Yeah, most definitely. Would I have, given an alternative? Depends on what I… or, better, you (trusty reader *identified with an e-finger extending from the ether directly toward your face*) want to get out of your listening experience. (More...)
To say that I had a love/hate relationship with college would be a gross understatement: I LURVED and *haaaaa-teeeeed* virtually every moment of it, sometimes simultaneously. But rarely during my two-year period of post-baccalaureate self-questioning, self-recrimination, self-satisfaction, and various other “self-”modified activities did I ever think I had ever learned anything straight-up wrong while in school. Unpleasant perhaps; astounding frequently; pretentious almost always, but never wrong. Except for basically all of evolutionary psychology. Or maybe all of evolutionary psych isn’t wrong; maybe I’ve just finally realized, after listening to Angelique Kidjo’s Djin Djin, that – try as music executives and image consultants might to convince listeners otherwise – music isn’t like faces.
Yes. Parents, what an astounding advertisement for a liberal arts education in the 21st century. Four years, X dollars, and all I can come up with is “Listening to Angelique Kidjo’s Djin Djin made me realize music isn’t like faces.” No, the concrete on sidewalks doesn’t bother my knuckles. Why do you ask? (More...)
Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention up until now, but I believe that Prague and Vienna are home to Western Europe's most violent statuary. Most statues I've seen usually involve a god playing a lyre or growing a beard, or an admiral fondling his piece-nez and leering sullenly. Prague and Vienna are filled almost entirely with statues of hulking brutes stabbing, maiming, clubbing, and otherwise assaulting other hulking brutes. For example:
But how can you front on a region that also features the world's only lion-drawn chariot?
That's gangsta.
Anyway, after a jaunt through the land of Freud, Kafka, and Kundera -- and an educational stopover in Bratislava, the land of... um... (guys?) -- I'm back with the April update. I've got an extended reflection on Detroit's hip-hop avant-garde, two new soul reviews from okayplayer, and some Nigerian pop. That's a lot of verbiage to spread between your twin vanilla wafers...
Enjoy.
(all photos copyright of T.M. Wolf, except the Vienna Fingers package, which I wouldn't claim to have taken even if I did -- unlike Spanish eateries, I like to keep food and art separate)
Detroit is still haunted by the ghost of the assembly-line worker, whose endless welding, pounding, and riveting fed a nation’s insatiable appetite for mass-produced tangles of steel and glass. Odd, then, that the former home of Ford’s legions has also produced a smallish clique of rapper-producers who have been steadily but quietly manufacturing boutique beats for the underground public. The passing of D-godfather J. Dilla might have monkeywrenched the operation briefly, but a year later, Detroit’s post-Fordist hip-hop formalism shows no signs of slowing down, at least as far as Black Milk and Ta’raach are concerned. Even with the recent release of Dilla’s resurrected, retooled Ruff Draft pointing back to pas[t/sed] greatness, the two are forging ahead as the new avant-garde of Detroit’s art-hop tradition. (More...)
The first time I heard this song -- sitting in a two-door hatchback screeching on two wheels through Northern London -- I thought I heard a harmonica. I quickly dismissed that thought as some sort of hallucination brought on by far too much Nigerian cinema. Imagine my surprise when I found the video. Dude - is - playing - a - harmonica. Is that what's really hot in the streets? Maybe it should be.
I've been a massive Buju Banton fan since my sophomore year of high school. It's a shame that his youthful homophobia continues to cast such a pall over his later career, because the man of 'Til Shiloh and Inna Heights is one of the most insightful, soulful, and, in my opinion, truly good (as in authentic and virtuous, not skilled... although he is that, too) artists in contemporary music. "Magic City" never made it onto a Buju album, but it easily ranks among my favorites. I wan yuh fi check it out...
Sliding right in under the March deadline, I've got an update to tie my sporadic early spring posting together. In addition to my debut pieces for Stylus (RZA and Sean Price), I've got reviews of the Bar-Kays latest, as well as an older review of Planet Asia's The Sickness out the okayplayer vaults. Be on the look-out for a nice big Stylus piece on Detroit's art-hop, coming soon.
"I don't usually do this but, ah, break 'em off with a few shoutouts":
Shoutout to fellow hip-hop literati Blake Brandes for putting the wraps on his latest album, Soulfire.
Shoutout to Michelle McDevitt of Audible Treats for a number of nice leads as of late.
Shoutout to Todd Burns and Mike Powell of Stylus for a new platform and some writerly advice.
And last but not least, shoutout to my international network (from Beijing to NYC to Cambridge to London) for putting up with me and holding me down over the past few months: Christian, Chuk, Cliff, Dave, Jacob, Mike, and Ross. Whether we've known each other since Mr. Wiz's gym class or since opening days at the DPU, I appreciate the words and the time you've given me, especially as of late. "That's what friends are for"? Forget it... I'll make it up to you all, please believe. In the meantime, just remember:
"It don't take a whole day to recognize sunshine."
The history you know never happened: long before “Tell Me When to Go,” the Cali underground was primed to snatch the crown away from New York. It’s funny, in a sad way, because the future you expected never happened either: by now, Planet Asia should have hit us with at least one classic solo album. Instead we got The Last Stand EP and The Grand Opening. Now, we’ve got the equally uneven mixtape The Sickness. (More...)
Back with another STYLUS piece... Sean Price—formerly known as “Ruck,” one half of the on-again, off-again duo Heltah Skeltah—reintroduced himself to hip-hop audiences on 2005’s Monkey Barz as “The Brokest Rapper You Know.” Price used his first solo project to comment endlessly on his lack of success as a rapper…and a husband…and a father…and, well, as a human being in general. On Jesus Price Supastar, Price sounds like he’s been taking his own self-deprecation a little too seriously.
Shout out to my okayplayer connects for putting me on to this vintage footage of Al Green performing "Tired of Being Alone." Simply magnetic, chill-inducing. This isn't musical theater... it's musical confession. It's been a while since a piece of music has caused me to smile spontaneously (0:50 - 0:53... wait for it, wait for it), let alone smile and shiver spontaneously. This did just that. I feel ya, Al.
One piece of news I didn't want to share until it was confirmed (hence "building" in Feb's update -- or, one part of "building"... potentially more to come) was that I've recently begun contributing pieces to Stylus Magazine. Same T.M., new location (haven't abandoned okayplayer, just broadening my base).
I hate to plug myself shamelessly, but, in certain respects, that what this blog is about (at least I'm honest). Sooo... why don't you check out my first review: RZA presents The Afro Samurai Soundtrack?
Originally published in okayplayer's Best of 2006 feature
The gloriously textured swan-beat-tape from Detroit's Crown Prince, J Dilla. What it lacks in Dilla's swaggering, flow-heavy raps, Donutsmakes up with its soaring vocal snatches and gracefully chopped samples. Dilla's (near-)last has emerged as the gateway to his less widely heralded but equally intriguing backlog – from Tribe to Slum, Best Kept Secret to Welcome 2 Detroit.So how appropriate that it begins with its ending ("Donuts (Outro)") and ends with its beginning ("Donuts (Intro)")?
After noted lapsed Marxist Claire Fox dropped a bombshell of a post-dinner speech (reviling multiculturalism, the West, the Near East, the youth, academia... and, well, everyone in the room), I had the privilege of closing the evening. Never a good idea to let me get the last word:
"Well, I'm now put in the odd position of speaking on behalf of the angst-ridden, multiculturalist youth of the world. Welcome to our cavernous, fabulous hall. If I may add my own brief thought on multiculturalism: As an Irish Catholic raised in suburban New Jersey whose cultural diet consists almost entirely of Jewish philosophy and hip-hop, and now living an expatriate existence in London of all places... I must say that there is a certain value in standing outside your own comfortable assumptions. Through the greatest self-questioning comes the greatest self-understanding.
Now, as any good social theorist will admit, there is a complicated relationship between theory and practice. Claire has given us today, and has given us throughout her public career, a strong argument for the value of unfettered speech. She not only speaks of it, but exemplifies it in her actions. And, maybe, in theory, free speech -- the unchecked flow of ideas -- is the bedrock of a democratic culture. But... in practice... I would guess, after three hours of food and drink, and based on the looks that you all are giving me right now... in practice, the last thing we need is another excuse for ME to keep talking. So, I ask the Governors, our distinguished guests, and my fellow Goodenough members to join me in thanking Claire for keying our evening." Exeunt.
I haven't really felt G-Unit since Lloyd Banks' first album, and had even less time for Young "Gun-fi-rur" Buck, but his new single and video... tight. It looks like a hardcore version of OutKast's Rosa Parks, with particularly ill visuals on the third verse.
Debut work from a good friend and former teacher of mine, Eric Paras (PhD, Harvard '05) -- easily the most lucid, interesting, and vividly written study of Foucault I've encountered. I mean, in my wholly disinterested, unbiased, ethical journalistic opinion. (Buy it)
"I'm thinkin' / Deep in thoughts / Ya boy ain't even winkin'" And that about sums up January. Heavy coats for heavy times, and heavy conversations for heavy minds...
Thankfully, I've got a few more items to lighten things up. First, a short video essay on genre conventions in hip-hop, chased down with two "different" reviews from my vaults, the second of which caused a *bit* of a stir when it was first published. Like I've said before, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Time to step out of the boxes we've neatly crafted for ourselves.
What have I been thinking about? Everything and nothing at once. And that looks kind of like this...
Hip-hop is roundly criticized as a "violent" art form. As of late, rap lyrics have even been drawn into court proceedings as "proof" of the writer-in-question's murderous obsessions. Outsiders fail to realize, however, that -- inasmuch as some rappers talk about their violent "realities," using lyrics to explore their circumstances and/or brag about their exploits -- gun-talk and "murda-muzik" are, for 99% of rappers, part of an elaborate genre convention. To the general literalist public: Rappers and other assorted Others DO have the ability to be metaphorical, ironic, or darkly humorous... and they exercise it regularly.
But let's be clear, a big component of rapping is "battling" -- a form of verbal violence. There's a certain fit between wordplay and gunplay, which probably goes a long way towards explaining why gun-talk and ki-shifting is hip-hop's reigning convention.
As far as I see it, there are at least three ways to step outside contemporary hip-hop's genre conventions:
1. A rapper can simply not acknowledge them, and rhyme about anything but guns/drugs without referring to the fact he's not rhyming about guns/drugs.
2. He can draw attention to the fact that he doesn't rap about guns/drugs while pointing out his opponent's tendencies -- usually self-fictionalizing -- to rap about guns/drugs. To see a good example of strategy #2 in action, check out Round 1 of the Serius Jones vs. Murda Mook SMACK battle, one of my favorites. Pay particularly close attention to Serius' verse (he's the first to rap):
Do I also need to point out that battling represents an organic rhetorical tradition?
3. He can call his opponent's bluff. Which is just what E-N-J did recently to Nyckz on this YouTube fav:
I'm not sure if that was the most positive or negative move in hip-hop history (there's a "true story" video floating around out there, but it doesn't do anything to clarify the situation). Positive or negative, that's a huge punch right in the face genre convention.
T.M. biographers (well, if there were such a thing) will note that I once referred to aesthetic theory as “the graveyard where all good philosophers go to die.” Okay, fine, my stance on aesthetics has softened a bit. Chalk it up to the experience of an affected provincial living in a world city – I felt like I had to choose between synthesizing Kant and contemporary soul (theory), or wearing a scarf/sportcoat-with-elbow-patches/monocle. The monocle was uncomfortable, the coat ill-fitting, and the scarf itchy. Which left me with… Kantizing Jeremiah’s Chasing Forever. (More...)
"Read T.M. Wolf's review of More Fish then try and say something funny style about Okayplayer's reviews section." - Dan p period
Much love to the okayplayer staff for the front page love (Dec. 18), and much holiday love to everyone out there reading the December update. While haters were getting tied up in knots in The Lesson (I know how this blog game works, you don't think I'm actually going to drop a link, do you? I know you see it), I was eating strombolis and canolis in fly gondolas and building with the Doctor of Plague on all subjects Venetian -- including lion-head mailboxes and mini-pistols in hollowed-out prayer books.
Up for this month are reviews of the latest Ghostface -- with some cribbing from the last update -- and Free Speech's audio screed, Laffy Taffy Rots Your Teeth. Follow that up with a short feature on Raekwon's classic video for "Incarcerated Scarfaces." And for a stocking stuffer? "White People," my recent non-hip hop picks.
2006 is drawing to a close and 2007 is fast on us. If you've stumbled across my little corner of the net, drop me a short line and let me know what you think. Otherwise... Happy Holidays, in the most multi-/non-sectarian and all-inclusive way possible.
The only thing more classically “Ghost” (read: perpetually intriguing, frequently counterintuitive, and occasionally non-sensical) than Def Jam releasing the second Ghostface album of the year was the brilliant (read: ridiculous) decision to title the follow-up to early-2006’s coke-cooking, soul-sampling rhymefest Fishscale… I pull your terry-cloth robe not... More Fish. Who other than Ghost would literalize a metaphor beyond all comprehension (Ghost as coke-slinger to Ghost as cod-monger)? While not exactly a proper solo successor to Fishscale, More Fish combines with its predecessor to suggest that the man once caught in Cancun eatin’ grouper is now serving up a significantly less exotic plate to a blissfully unaware listening public. (Read More...)
