For those who haven’t been paying attention to the internet, Lil B’s New York debut last weekend was an unquestionable success. This was a slightly unexpected turn of events. You never really know how internet buzz is going to translate to the real world, more often than not it simply doesn’t. Bombing seemed especially likely given both the locale and just how divisive B has grown in recent months. When I first walked into the sold out show and saw the crowd my initial concern was that a bunch of hating ass New Yorkers had paid $8 just to boo him. But no, the joint was packed instead with Master Chefs, kids who knew every song by heart and partied their brains out. Wooh!s and Swag!s filled the room and continued to echo out through the Manhattan streets for at least the 20 or 30 minutes that followed his performance. After more than a year of blogging about all things Based to such a mixed response, to walk into that room was a really fulfilling experience. Not in the flag planting, my support made this happen self importance that so many bloggcats wallow in – I’m well aware that B makes the internet, the internet didn’t make him – but rather for the simple realization that I’m not completely crazy. Other people, breathing people, are beginning to see what I saw in the kid so many months ago.[1] There was a sense of pride to the whole experience, like watching your little brother graduate high school. I don’t think I was the only person in that room who felt that way either.
One of the early criticisms when I started posting Based music here so long ago was that I was just posting records from “my friend.” I suppose that was true to an extent, but only in the sense that everyone who listens to B’s music long enough becomes a friend of sorts. Or at least they feel that way. Admittedly this could be seen as a conflict of interests in my case, but if “friendship” is the primary currency and intent of his art – and I think it might be – then to not allow yourself to be one would be a critical misread. B’s gotten a ton of press in the aftermath of Santos – heat can make anything move – but the responses have been tentative, negative, cursory or confused. What you don’t see in the RealTalkNY video is the crowd’s margins, a minority of wall holders who watched curiously but rarely engaged. This was the audience that B’s internet detractors imagined would solely inhabit his show – mostly 25 and up, white, bearded, “hipster” chin strokers. I suspect this is where many of the people writing about the show stood, both physically and metaphorically, and I think that shows in their responses. If you’re observing B from a safe distance then you’re missing the point. The friendship model demands immersion. You ain’t in the game until you’ve heard a thousand songs. Or at least until you’ve tried to cook in the mirror. Read more…
Back again with another Complex Top 25, this time for the Boot Camp catalog. I was a little hesitant to take this assignment because, unlike with the VH1 Southern Producers lists, my knowledge of the BCC catalog leans superficial. Which is to say I owned Enta Da Stage, Dah Shinin in high school and know a handful of the bigger singles from the same era, but not much beyond that. But one of the nice things about my job is that I sometimes still get paid to learn and learn I did. It turns out that BCC didn’t really fall off after 1997, they just turned inconsistent.
But in retrospect I’m not entirely sure if their catalog necessarily demands the 2500 words of intellectualizing/contextualizing that I gave it over there. There wasn’t a grand narrative to Boot Camp Clik, with few exceptions (”Therapy”) they didn’t/don’t make idea driven or conceptual music, Da Beatminerz perfected their sound early on and didn’t do much to expand or evolve it. They lack the built in folklore of Wu-Tang or the eccentricity of the Native Tongues. Their records aren’t unfairly slept on, their members haven’t suffered from dramatic personal crisis or made miraculous comebacks. In putting this list together there points where I felt like the entire song could be concisely summed up by just two words: MADD BLUNTED. Or maybe three: MADD BLUNTED, SON. Their music did exactly what it was supposed to and nothing more. This isn’t a knock at all, quite the opposite. These are classic and very important underground hip hop records and maybe they aren’t as frequently brought into the discussion precisely because they didn’t come with those conversation points attached. Which is shame. But you don’t need to read or write or argue about them. You just roll up a blunt, nod your head and stfu.
After the jump are a few more Boot Camp youtubes, just random joints that were either cut from the list for space or that I just stumbled upon in the process of compiling it: Read more…
from III Trill III Furious (Rap-A-Lot, Coming Soon)
This is not a great song and it doesn’t matter.
Both these artists are absolute legends and deserve our utmost respect but I tend to believe that honest criticism is a more reverent act than empty praise. So it needs to be said that “Let ‘Em Know” is basically a lazy mess. Bun phones in his verse, as he’s been known to do, the beat is generic even as far as standard issue Premier goes and the scratched up spoken Pimp C vocals don’t come anywhere close to forming a musical or rhythmic chorus, let alone a memorable or catchy one.
The record an appropriate combination, though. The Awl [1] was astute enough to notice that both artists are old but there’s an even closer parallel here – Bun and Preem have aged uniquely into legacy artists, which is a rarity in this genre. Aside from Jay-Z, who built an industry off legacy alone, I can’t think of two acts in hip hop who have more effectively sustained themselves off codified mythologies alone.[2] That these guys are important has become conventional hip hop wisdom, so much, in fact, that there are many people who have never heard “Front, Back, Side To Side” who will tell you that Bun B is an undisputed legend and there are those who would mistake “Check The Technique” for a Dockers commercial but will still draw the weathered conclusion that DJ Premier is the best producer to ever do it. I wouldn’t argue against either of those points, but this sort of etched in stone idolization without context has been devastating for a few reasons. Read more…
