Banner vs. The World
David Banner f/ Dead Prez & Talib Kweli – “Ridin“
David Banner f/ Kamikaze – “X-ed“
from Certified Clean LP (Atlantic, 2005)
Rap’s David Banner Threatens to Kill Music Industry:
David Banner treated the crowd’s indifference as a personal insult. During the first song of his half-hour set, he ran out into the crowd, jumped up on a table, tore his shirt off, and threw Courvosier on the crowd. Then he stopped the show to preach to the crowd, telling it that the entire music industry was based within fifteen square blocks in Manhattan but that 85% of Universal’s sales last year had come from Southern and Midwestern artists, that “y’all got more responsibility to promote this music.” He said that his home state was flooded and that his father had “brain cancer and lung cancer” and that we needed to make him feel more at home. On the next song, he tore down the Universal banner behind the stage, threw it on as a cape, and then charged into the crowd again. He threw up devil horns and yelled, “All you white people, put ya rock signs up! And all you black people, I know you working for somebody white because that’s who runs the industry, so put ya rock signs up too or else you might get fired!” Then the DJ cued up “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and Banner chanted, “Rock! Rock! Rock!” He stared into the audience and said, “If my father die and you fuck this album up, I’ma kill y’all,” and gave a low chuckle. He denounced the crowd for perpetuating rap beef: “We grown men acting on some high school shit! We in front of these white folks looking like savages!” (I’m paraphrasing all these quotes, but he was really saying this stuff.) He rode some bouncer’s shoulders. He put some girl up on his shoulders. He jumped up on the bar. I’m pretty sure he told the crowd that he’d pissed in Diddy’s pool. And when the crowd still gave him a weak cheer at the end of his set, he screamed, As hard as a motherfucker work, I’d rather have y’all boo me!”“
On some real skull busting bottle smashing punk rock shit. I love this guy. Here are two burners from his forthcoming LP. One’s a skull buster, ones a less than skull buster but still certified,
“Ridin’” is the token “hey i’m conscious too”. I guess Common wouldn’t return his calls, so they had to get the #2 go to guy for this sort of shit – Talib Kweli (Could they at least get at Boots once in a while?) Sprinkle on some Dead Prez and some wetmouth web journalist (no, not me) will be calling it the second coming of public enemy. Really, hearing the DPs (or whichever one raps) next to Kweli makes me realize that I might not hate Dead Prez as much as I thought. I might not always agree with their sometimes eschewed ideology, but at least they can ride a beat. Kweli is falling all over the place and he ain’t saying nothing word to james and divine styler. I guess that is to be expected at this point. Lavell outshines both of em, which is also to be expected. Cut off the last verse and this is the niceness.
“X-Ed” reunites him with his Crooked Lettaz partner Kamikaze. End of discussion.
These are clean versions. Sorry. The rest of the album is a balancing act between this sort of post crooked ls shit, some generic target marketing pandering (see the whisper knock off “play” or the lame love song with Case) to the usual chest pumping angry riot inducing shit you’ve come to expect from the man. I’d probably feel it more if a quarter of it wasn’t already leaked as semi singles. But it still is very good, at least as good as Mississippi, and much better than the sloppily patched together MTA 2. Drops Sept. 20th. Stop worrying about Kanye and mark it on your damn calendar.
September 2nd, 2005 at 3:11 am
Dude paid my three-hundred dollar bar tab a few weks ago in Hollywood during a record pool meeting. Totally a stand up, down to earth goon.
September 2nd, 2005 at 5:04 am
Kweli hasn’t impressed me much at all since the Black Star days. And you’re right about Boots…The Coup remains eternally underrated.
September 2nd, 2005 at 8:46 pm
New Blackalicious here:
http://marathonpacks.blogspot.com
September 8th, 2005 at 7:31 pm
Of course you don’t agree with dead prez’s “eschewed idealogy” because you’re white and you feel threatened by it.
September 8th, 2005 at 8:46 pm
i know you’re just baiting me (why no email address?), but i’m pretty sure i’ve addressed my problems with dead prez in the past here, search the archives.
they’re inarticulate, name droppers who like to sell counter revolutionary light weight gangsta bullshit under the guise that they’ve been influenced by the mao, the panthers and other dudes who would straight up smack them around for glorifying dumb shit like robbing pizza boys. similarly the gangstas they selectively emulate would do the same for that cruton on the futon headwrap inscence crap.
the revolutionary but gangsta gimmick cannot exist. the concepts are diametrically opposed.
and if you honestly think i’d write off a rap group solely for “anti white” sentiments you probably haven’t been reading this site for very long.
September 9th, 2005 at 10:00 am
i don’t include my email because i dont want muthafuckas who i dont even kno emailing me. i kno u’ve had artists with anti-white sentiments on blunts before like x-clan, but lets face it, they were pretty much a novelty. i kno dp isnt tha 1st anti-white political rap crew, but they r certainly tha 1st 2 express such a strong anti-white doctrine, and u kno and i kno that it gives u mental discomfort at least subconsciously. i kno i would b disturbd if i heard a rap crew proclaiming “fuck spiks.” ur jus followin in tha long tradition of white dudes who initially oppose political rap crews as “racist” and then 10 years later regard them as legends like all tha white dudes who blastd public enemy but now all of a sudden love them. do i think stic.man and m1 r tha new huey newton and bobby seale? of course not. i dont understand how u could diss dp 4 tryin 2 introduce a new generation of kids 2 revolutionary philosophy and enlighten them on issues such as the prison industrial complex and the modern day slavery that it truly is. who else is gonna do it? lil’ jon? and i honestly dont see the difference btween dp’s idealogy and that of your heroes, the coup.
September 9th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
Nice posts… Banner is always fucking great. And btw, I’m white and a DP fan… not that there’s anything wrong with that. But, comparing them to Public Enemy is fucking insane! They arent even on the same boat… Public Enemy was/is way more influential and inspirational then anything Prez could even dream about rapping.
And besides, Public Enemy would never put three versions of the same song on an album (heh)
September 11th, 2005 at 10:50 pm
thanks for responding. i didn’t mean to insult with that comment, it’s just blog comment windows round here are usually a source for a lot of misdirected race baiting. i’m glad you actually wanted to initiate a discussion.
when dead prez say kill whitey i can rationally understand the subtext that whitey represents the white power structure. presumably if i were to meet stic man he’d be cordial to this whitey. does it subconsciously bother me? i don’t think so, but then how would i know?
i’m also not saying that everything they say is wrong, they do bring some important issues to the forefront (but then again so do “gangsta rappers” like banner or scarface or even 40, they just don’t get critcs slobbering like dp). i just feel that they negate their message when it’s so ill informed, basic or downright contradictory. it should also be noted that their mostly preaching to the converted (headwraps) and unaffected (white people), so your “we need them to inform the kids” is kinda moot.
dead “gonna rob the pizza boy finna get paid” prez vs. the “ain’t no hustler on the street can do a whole community” coup?
but most importantly, the main difference between dps and every artist you listed (including x-clan, i think it’s not entirely accurate to dismiss them as gimmicky, although they did rely on some gimmicks) is that they just aren’t
very good rappers. anti white or not they’re gonna have to step up their rap game considerably if i’m ever going to consider them to be “legends”.
September 13th, 2005 at 1:36 am
wow. you had me right up until the last sentence. dpz are often contradictory and i think they might be confused as to exactly what it is they are after, but to say they’re not very good rappers? gtfohwtb. while rbg was kind of a step back, let’s get free is a Classic. also, they more than held their own with boots when he invited them onto his album.
September 13th, 2005 at 1:40 am
yeah allow me to rephrase that – they aren’t *great* rappers. they are, very competant, fairly talented rappers, but they aren’t some legends, that’s for damn sure.
September 14th, 2005 at 4:36 pm
wow i’m fienin’ here. haha. thanks for the tracks.
September 15th, 2005 at 1:16 pm
Mane, I just became Boots’ 99th Myspace friend. I left him a Myspace comment that the Coup make me feel proud to be human.
September 21st, 2005 at 7:02 pm
Is that Nottz in the pic with Banner? If not, who the hell is it?
Lovely site and posts, as always. You’re one of my favorites.
September 23rd, 2005 at 3:25 am
Yeah, about DP…I’m pretty sure that no one who is really in the Black Power/neo-Panther whatever movement would refer to themselves as ‘niggas’…
Or maybe they steal and hustle simply to worsen poverty, thereby creating more people to uplift.
October 10th, 2005 at 11:16 am
Haha,Dead Prez is not anti-white,they said it themselves, “we make music for all kinds of people” and “90% of our fans i america is white” the`re just speaking the truth..