Hiphopnerd

One of the mailing lists I'm signed up for is the House of Blues concert announcements...sure, the vast majority of them are for artists I don't know or don't care about...but every now and then you get some advance warning (and an advance purchase opportunity) for an artist you want to see. Such was the case last Tuesday, when I received an email entitled "Internet presales for A TRIBE CALLED QUEST and RAKIM!" Exclamation point, indeed, HOB...

A Tribe Called Quest...one of the most revered hip-hop groups of all-time, broken up for almost a decade now...creators of classics like "Electric Relaxation", "Buggin' Out", & "Can I Kick It?"...coming to Chicago? Hell yeah I'm buying tickets, even at $50 a piece! Now I know they've played a handful of concerts together since the 1998 breakup...but this is still a rare and special event, and I'm already psyched. I guess I never expected to even have a chance to see Tribe live. They seemed destined to be headliners on the list of artists I wanted to, but never got the chance to experience in concert. Instead, I'm only two months away from seeing TIp, Phife, & Ali on stage...and that's pretty damn exciting.

Now, let's see if we can convince Goodie Mob to reunite and tour again...

Artists sometimes go back to the same creative wells a little too often...

Example #1 - Dilated Peoples
I think they've released the same album 4 times now...great beats, lackluster lyrics, solo song for each MC, uninteresting skits, and a track highlighting Babu and the DJ's role in hip-hop. It still makes for a pretty good listen, but I like to see some growth & advancement in the artists I support. There's little reason for me to keep buying your future releases if they all sound exactly the same as what you've already done.

Example #2 - GZA
GZA's fallen in love with the name dropping track. "Labels" was cool..."Publicity" was enjoyable..."Fame" was ok, and "Animal Planet" just took it too far. Nevermind that the last two were on the same damn album. Look we know you can take the names of record labels/magazines/celebrities/animals and make a sorta-coherent rhyme out of them. It was neat the first two times...but it's getting a bit ridiculous now. Seriously, what's next- calling out chain restaurants in "Hunger"? "Jimmy John & Little Caeser were playin' Dominos OutBack / when Wendy wit' a Potbelly got her face smacked / by Popeye the infamous In-N-Out pimp / who's Subway accident had left him with a limp..." Is that what it's gonna come to, GZA?

Speaking of GZA (well, Killah Priest really)...saw this as I was going to grab a sandwich with friends the other day:


I'm sure Killah Priest didn't invent the acronym, but it's fun to imgaine that the Christian Fellowship Free Church is entirely made up of Wu Tang fans.

One of the few things I purchased on my recent trip to Canada was a K-Os DVD entitled Publicity Stunt? from a used CD shop. The DVD is a collection of his music videos, live concert clips, and a few other things.

I bought it basically cuz I'm a sucker for music videos (provided that the underlying music is good) and a fan of K-Os' music. I knew I'd seen and enjoyed a couple of his videos as well. There are a total of 6 on this DVD- Superstarr Pt 0, B-Boy Stance, Crabbuckit, Man I Used To Be, The Love Song, & Heaven Only Knows and they are all fairly excellent. I think what I enjoy most about them is that he sets aside plenty of camera time for breakdancers and shots of graffiti- those oft-forgotten elements of hip-hop.

The live clips are ultimately disappointing. For one, they are indeed clips and not full songs. Not sure whose idea that was, but it's just bizarre to be dropped into the middle of a track and be returned to the menu after one verse... Secondly, it's not mixed well. The DVD is labeled 5.1, but the engineers put almost nothing in the rear channels making it utterly pointless. The stereo option sounds better. The third problem is also related to sound...the audience is almost completely muted...you hear no applause, and when K-Os holds the mic out for the audience to say the rhyme, you as the DVD watcher hear nothing. And finally, I get the impression that K-Os isn't all that great live. You can tell on his albums he sometimes falls off the beat, and that seems to be amplified on stage in a few of the included clips. Maybe it's just the clips that are on the DVD...it's hard to believe he'd get such sizeable crowds if he was subpar live.

There is one final segment of the DVD entitled "14:59 Minutes of Funk" which is basically 15 minutes worth of extended clips from the breaking sessions that were used in the videos. It's definitely a cool addition; there are some impressive moves caught by the camera.

In short, If you're a K-Os fan, it's worth picking up, at least at a $13.99 price. Dunno about the $31.99 on that Amazon link. Toronto denizens: I grabbed it from Pengiun Music just off Queen St W for $13.99, and it seemed like they had additional copies available.