And I'm back... sorry, this whole "working for a living" thing really constrains my "life work" of blogging. Without any further ado: the continuation of my serial work on references.
As a history student, I was trained to surround myself with references. One of my less inspired professors actually told his class that their final papers would be graded partly on their gross number of references. He also had a tendency to literally (and when I say literally, I don't mean figuratively) froth at the mouth while yelling about the "namby-pamby" liberals who voted for Nader and lost the 2000 election for Gore! He was a nice man, but very intense.
"Fine," I thought to myself. A footnote is just a simple way of showing the reader where you learned whatever you are writing and is "required" unless you are stating something that is "common knowledge." When writing a history paper, you can footnote almost every sentence. After all, most of the time, I had very little knowledge of the subject before I began to learn about it, so all I had to do was pay attention to where I learned each piece of information, and I could cite it. I averaged around ten footnotes per page... by far the most in the class... and, surprise, surprise, that was quite enough for me to earn a top grade from my reference obsessed professor.
That Freshman year effort of mine was not quite as good as my old chess tutor who claimed that he wrote a senior thesis which consisted of one sentence of body text and footnotes for the remainder of the paper. Irreverent, yes, but I think there is some inkling of a point behind the smart-assness. My guess is that my tutor was trying to make the point that any thesis paper is really just a single statement with TONS of time spent trying to show your reader how you came to believe in the truth of that statement. I'm pretty sure that my point was just that number of footnotes was a silly game to play, but that I could play it to extremes if need be.
Later, when I was writing my senior thesis, I found myself constantly troubled by footnotes. My problem was that I was writing about an obscure (although it was once as well-known as the OJ affair) murder case from the 1920s. Before I discovered it on Google, I had never heard of the Hall-Mills case and I had lived and studied history in the town where it took place for 4 years! So, clearly, I couldn't assume that ANY of the details of the case were "commonly known." And the twenties? Well, all I really knew was that the market crashed in '29, that Hoover was president then, and that Wilson had started the decade; that prohibition was on and that Marilyn Monroe walked like "Jello on springs!" (although come to think of it, surely that's an anachronistic line... wasn't Jello a product of the '50s?) I want everyone to enjoy reading my writing, so I certainly wasn't going to assume more general knowledge than that.
Once again, I felt like I should really footnote almost everything. But, when writing a hundred and something page paper, there's no way I could possibly do that. Nor would I have wanted to, because even at their most interesting footnotes break up the narrative flow of the paper; the story in the history. But as a result I spent most of my time while writing, feeling like I was making shit up. I don't think I really was, but without a footnote to point to, who's to say I wasn't?
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Friday, December 08, 2006
Top Ten Hip-Hop Albums
Low End Theory, A Tribe Called Quest, 1991.
This was the album that got me into hip-hop. The two rappers, Phife and Q-Tip, interact more seamlessly then any other duo I've ever heard.
"If your hair and eyes were real, I wouldn't have dissed you, but since it was bought, I had to dismiss you. So if you can't achieve it, they why not try and leave it, if you can't extend it then you might as well suspend it, if you can't braid it, next thing to do is fade it, I asked who did your hair and you told me Diane made it."
Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, Pharcyde, 1992.
The first album that I turned off when my parents got home, this California classic is a mixture of pot-head humor, perverted posturing, and posse hip-hop.
"If I were President, I would not carry no spare change, I would just re-arrange the whole government structure, cause there seems to be something that's messing with the flucture of the money, it's not coming to me."
The Score, Fugees, 1996.
Best enjoyed during the summer months, this album features Lauren Hill (yes, she of Sister Act II) bringing by far the hardest and best female rapping ever. Add in a little bit of Jamaican feel and a reference to Rutgers, and you've got a classic.
"Even after all my logic and my theories, I adds a motherfucker so you ignorant niggas hear me." and "While you imitating Al Capone, I be Nina Simone, defecating on your microphone."
Black Star, Black Star, 1998.
I got a copy of this collaboration between Brooklyn MCs Mos Def and Talib Kweli on an audio tape in High School, and it was going strong until a year and a half ago when I got a car sans-tape player. A measure of how much I like this album; I bought the cd.
"Thoughts that people put in the air, places where you can get murdered over a glare, but everything's fair, it's a paradox we call reality, so keeping it real will make you a casualty of abnormal normality, killers born naturally like Mikey and Mallory, not knowing the way will get you capped like a NBA salary.
The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem, 2000.
After racistly resisting Eminem for years, I found myself in South Africa, where I perceived that racism is not always a good thing. I made a copy of my housemates Marshall Mathers LP, and it became almost my constant companion for five months. Dr. Dre's simple but addictive beats keep your head nodding in time while you proverbially shake it at Eminem's surprisingly nuanced twisted humor.
"I murder a rhyme, one word at a time, you never, heard of a mind as perverted as mine, you better, get rid of that nine, it ain't gonna help, what good's it gonna do against a man that strangles himself?"
Stillmatic, Nas, 2001.
Nas' true talent is in street-story telling. That said, Stillmatic contains a diss song, Ether. In it, he destroys Jay-Z with the second most devastating line in beefing history,* "I rock hos, Y'all rock fellas." (Jay-Z's record label was called Roc-a-fella records at that point.)
*The most devastating single line is of course when Eminem completely ruined Will Smith forever with, "Will Smith don't gotta cuss to sell records, well I do. So fuck him and fuck you too."
Chicken and Beer, Ludacris, 2003.
Beyond the sheer genius of the title, beyond the intermingling of simplicity and wit, beyond everything else that could be said about this album, remains the sweet fact that Snoop Dogg, as a guest rapper on the track, "Who Let These Hos in my Room?" describes Bill O'Reilly as a "white-bread, chicken shit, nigger." I don't know what that means, but it can't be good.
I'm not going to put a quote here, because I have plans to annotate my favorite song from Chicken and Beer, "Hip-Hop Quotables."
Late Registration, Kanye West, 2005.
From track three to track eleven, this album is seamlessly great. Not a bad song, not a song out of place, it all works perfectly together. Admittedly, it is the music that makes this album so great -- but, whatever else can be said about Kanye as a rapper, he is extremely accessible; I find myself knowing every word to entire songs.
"The pressure's on but guess who ain't gonna crack, pardon me I had to laugh at that, how could you falter, when you the rock of Gibraltar, I had to get off the boat so I can walk on water, this ain't no tall order this is nothing to me, difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week, I do this in my sleep, I sold kilos of coke, I'm guessing I can sell cds, I'm not a business man, I'm a business, man... let me handle my business, damn."*
* of course, this, the best bit on the album is not Kanye, but guest rapper Jay-Z.
Lord Willin', The Clipse, 2002.
These guys' whole schtick is that they're primarily drug dealers who only rap as a hobby... and for some reason (probably that the Neptunes did the beats for their whole album,) it works.
"What I look like spending my nights in jail, I could never be a thug - they don't dress this well. Ride in VA, reside in VA, mostly likely when I die, I'm gonna die in VA. Virginia's for lovers, but trust there's hate here, for out-of-towners who think they gonna move weight here. Ironic the place that I'm making figures at, that was the same land they used to hang niggers at."
Ready to Die, The Notorious B.I.G., 1994.
Clearly, I'm a little bit behind the times on this one, having bought the album six years after Biggie's death. That said, it really stands the test of time pretty well. Which just plays into a blog which I won't write (now at least,) that the reason New York and California hip-hop has lost out to all the other regions, is that they can't move on from the styles of their martyred leaders.
"So low, Caviar, shark bar, uh uhn, strictly sex that's sweaty and left-over spaghetti, I know you're used to slow cd's and Dom P's, but tonight it's eight-tracks and six-packs while I hit that."
The albums are listed in the order that I discovered them.
The rules:
1. These albums all had to be albums that I owned (legally or illegally) and listened to obsessively at one point. (Excluding: The Chronic, Doggystyle, all of Tupac, and lots of other all time greats.)
2. They had to be albums whose lyrical content was primarily rap. (Excluding: The Miseducation of Lauren Hill, Baduism, Get Lifted, etc.)
3. The memorable quotes had to be ones that I could quote from memory... but I did check on a few of them, just so I didn't make any unbelievably embarrassing mistakes.
This was the album that got me into hip-hop. The two rappers, Phife and Q-Tip, interact more seamlessly then any other duo I've ever heard.
"If your hair and eyes were real, I wouldn't have dissed you, but since it was bought, I had to dismiss you. So if you can't achieve it, they why not try and leave it, if you can't extend it then you might as well suspend it, if you can't braid it, next thing to do is fade it, I asked who did your hair and you told me Diane made it."
Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, Pharcyde, 1992.
The first album that I turned off when my parents got home, this California classic is a mixture of pot-head humor, perverted posturing, and posse hip-hop.
"If I were President, I would not carry no spare change, I would just re-arrange the whole government structure, cause there seems to be something that's messing with the flucture of the money, it's not coming to me."
The Score, Fugees, 1996.
Best enjoyed during the summer months, this album features Lauren Hill (yes, she of Sister Act II) bringing by far the hardest and best female rapping ever. Add in a little bit of Jamaican feel and a reference to Rutgers, and you've got a classic.
"Even after all my logic and my theories, I adds a motherfucker so you ignorant niggas hear me." and "While you imitating Al Capone, I be Nina Simone, defecating on your microphone."
Black Star, Black Star, 1998.
I got a copy of this collaboration between Brooklyn MCs Mos Def and Talib Kweli on an audio tape in High School, and it was going strong until a year and a half ago when I got a car sans-tape player. A measure of how much I like this album; I bought the cd.
"Thoughts that people put in the air, places where you can get murdered over a glare, but everything's fair, it's a paradox we call reality, so keeping it real will make you a casualty of abnormal normality, killers born naturally like Mikey and Mallory, not knowing the way will get you capped like a NBA salary.
The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem, 2000.
After racistly resisting Eminem for years, I found myself in South Africa, where I perceived that racism is not always a good thing. I made a copy of my housemates Marshall Mathers LP, and it became almost my constant companion for five months. Dr. Dre's simple but addictive beats keep your head nodding in time while you proverbially shake it at Eminem's surprisingly nuanced twisted humor.
"I murder a rhyme, one word at a time, you never, heard of a mind as perverted as mine, you better, get rid of that nine, it ain't gonna help, what good's it gonna do against a man that strangles himself?"
Stillmatic, Nas, 2001.
Nas' true talent is in street-story telling. That said, Stillmatic contains a diss song, Ether. In it, he destroys Jay-Z with the second most devastating line in beefing history,* "I rock hos, Y'all rock fellas." (Jay-Z's record label was called Roc-a-fella records at that point.)
*The most devastating single line is of course when Eminem completely ruined Will Smith forever with, "Will Smith don't gotta cuss to sell records, well I do. So fuck him and fuck you too."
Chicken and Beer, Ludacris, 2003.
Beyond the sheer genius of the title, beyond the intermingling of simplicity and wit, beyond everything else that could be said about this album, remains the sweet fact that Snoop Dogg, as a guest rapper on the track, "Who Let These Hos in my Room?" describes Bill O'Reilly as a "white-bread, chicken shit, nigger." I don't know what that means, but it can't be good.
I'm not going to put a quote here, because I have plans to annotate my favorite song from Chicken and Beer, "Hip-Hop Quotables."
Late Registration, Kanye West, 2005.
From track three to track eleven, this album is seamlessly great. Not a bad song, not a song out of place, it all works perfectly together. Admittedly, it is the music that makes this album so great -- but, whatever else can be said about Kanye as a rapper, he is extremely accessible; I find myself knowing every word to entire songs.
"The pressure's on but guess who ain't gonna crack, pardon me I had to laugh at that, how could you falter, when you the rock of Gibraltar, I had to get off the boat so I can walk on water, this ain't no tall order this is nothing to me, difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week, I do this in my sleep, I sold kilos of coke, I'm guessing I can sell cds, I'm not a business man, I'm a business, man... let me handle my business, damn."*
* of course, this, the best bit on the album is not Kanye, but guest rapper Jay-Z.
Lord Willin', The Clipse, 2002.
These guys' whole schtick is that they're primarily drug dealers who only rap as a hobby... and for some reason (probably that the Neptunes did the beats for their whole album,) it works.
"What I look like spending my nights in jail, I could never be a thug - they don't dress this well. Ride in VA, reside in VA, mostly likely when I die, I'm gonna die in VA. Virginia's for lovers, but trust there's hate here, for out-of-towners who think they gonna move weight here. Ironic the place that I'm making figures at, that was the same land they used to hang niggers at."
Ready to Die, The Notorious B.I.G., 1994.
Clearly, I'm a little bit behind the times on this one, having bought the album six years after Biggie's death. That said, it really stands the test of time pretty well. Which just plays into a blog which I won't write (now at least,) that the reason New York and California hip-hop has lost out to all the other regions, is that they can't move on from the styles of their martyred leaders.
"So low, Caviar, shark bar, uh uhn, strictly sex that's sweaty and left-over spaghetti, I know you're used to slow cd's and Dom P's, but tonight it's eight-tracks and six-packs while I hit that."
The albums are listed in the order that I discovered them.
The rules:
1. These albums all had to be albums that I owned (legally or illegally) and listened to obsessively at one point. (Excluding: The Chronic, Doggystyle, all of Tupac, and lots of other all time greats.)
2. They had to be albums whose lyrical content was primarily rap. (Excluding: The Miseducation of Lauren Hill, Baduism, Get Lifted, etc.)
3. The memorable quotes had to be ones that I could quote from memory... but I did check on a few of them, just so I didn't make any unbelievably embarrassing mistakes.
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