1. Thun

   “Mr. Incognito” might be my favorite Tribe track ever. That break is incredible. And the fact that Phife could make the lyric “Magenta is the shade of the mystic parade” sound dope as fuck is just mind boggling.

   Mar 15th, 2009

2. jasper

   Jungle Brothers f/ A Tribe Kalled Quest (Q-Tip) – “Promo No. 2 (Mind Review ‘89)

   is “Kalled” instead of “called” an old spelling of the name or a typo?

   ATKQ sounds strange…

   Mar 15th, 2009

3. chima

   mr. incognito > …
   classic ATCQ drums on this one!
   great post!

   im still bumping that j period tape too!

   Mar 15th, 2009

4. Supreme Neck Protector

   Sometimes when you go in and get to dissing wouldbe neo-Natives like Blu or Kweli, it’s helpful to get reminders how much you love the old Natives shit. It’s not that I ever doubt you did, and generally speaking I agree with your critiques of the newer shit, too (although I like Blu’s rapping.) But you usually seem so focused on stuff from outside the canon and so many regional scenes that true-schoolers ignore, while not really giving a fuck about the stuff the true-schoolers admire, that sometimes it seems like there’s a divide between you and them that’s impossible to bridge. I saw that manifesting just a bit in this stupid-ass Dart Adams twitter beef. I’m on your “side”, as it were, because I agree with you about what’s required in discourse, but I’m one of those people who thinks Blu raps very well and Gucci Mane does not. So coming here sometimes can be a little disconcerting.

   I visit every day tho, there is no better rap site, and CB has turned me into a wildly enthusiastic fan of most of what you big-up– I had never heard “One Day” or “Good Stuff” before that In Defense of UGK XXL post and now I have no idea where my fuckin’ life would be without UGK music. I also didn’t know the time when it came to Mystikal, Beans/Free/Peedi/Chris, Playboy Tre, Killer Mike, Turf Talk, Z-Ro, Young Bleed, Lil’ Boosie, Juvenile, Young Dro, the G-Mo-B, and on and on… and now, that’s much of the list of my favourite rappers.

   But I also love some dudes you seem to have no time or patience for, or wouldn’t if you’d heard them, like Phonte, or Black On Both Sides-era Mos Def, or Royce, or Brother Ali, and such and so forth. And sometimes you endorse a cat like Gucci or Plies and I can’t possibly imagine why you don’t consign someone like that to the dustpile where you and I both put Rick Ross and Jim Jones and G-Unit.

   So it’s helpful to remember that the rap love comes from essentially the same root.

   Not sayin’, jes’ sayin’.

   Mar 15th, 2009

5. noz

   My taste is deeply informed (tainted perhaps) by the antiquated idea of style* and uniqueness in rappers. Which is to quite simply say that I don’t like artists that are content to follow in somebody’s footsteps (or retrace their own). No biting allowed. Gucci for all his faults is a rapper who, especially as of late, has been obviously interested in expanding his style and skills and the form entirely. This is a guy who dramatically switches his flows and voice up sometimes in the same song, who hops in and out of characters thematically, who often breaks out of sixteen bar lockdown to do something weird. The end result isn’t always great. I’d be the first to tell you that dude is probably the least consistent rapper on the planet right now. The only thing he does consistently is move forward. That’s what I look for in a rapper first and foremost.

   Artists like Royce or Blu or Brother Ali are all talented on a technical level but are basically running in circles to me, you know? They rarely bring anything new to the table. When I put on Brother Ali I want to hear Organized Konfusion because they did it better**. I mentioned this when I reviewed the Crac Knuckles album a few months ago, but what I loved about that record was not that it recreated the Native Tongues sound, but that it revisited their vibe. It took the playful impulse of those records and channeled it into something unique and modern.*** From what I can tell Blu hasn’t really been able to do that elsewhere.

   I think it’s important to note that this blog is and forever will be a personal one. Which means if I have been listening to nothing but old CVE tapes for three days straight that is what I am going to be writing about here. It concerns me when readers look to this or any blog to validate their own tastes, or worse dictate them. If Brother Ali moves you than jam his shit.

   * Here is a good article about Casual that touches on how ’swagger’ has superseded ’style’. I think this theory is less applicable to mainstream or gangsta rap (as either thing even exists) than it is to the Blus and Charles Hamiltons of the world. Gucci got styles, TI got styles, Wayne got styles. Blu? He has a cool hat.
   ** An oversimplification, I know.
   ** Though it’s probably worth noting that the success of that record had very little to do with the quality or originality of the rapping. The production and format gave Blu’s boring technicality a lot of room to breath.

   Mar 15th, 2009

6. noz

   I posted this on the XXL blog moons ago, but I’m posting it here again. Words to live by/die to:

   “If there’s any excuse at all for making a recording it’s to do it differently… to approach the work from a totally recreative point of view … to perform this particular work as it has never been heard before. And if one can’t do that, I would say, abandon it, forget about it, move on to something else.” – Glenn Gould

   Mar 15th, 2009

7. Thun

   Noz – my piece on Casual was not suggesting that “swagger” has superseded “style” but rather that the word “swagger” seems to have replaced “style” and that they their is an overlap between what the two words signify.

   Mar 15th, 2009

8. Thun

   Or at least sometimes there appears to be an overlap. Or a parallel. Or whatever.

   My contention was simply that when today’s rappers talk about swagger, oftentimes they are referring to what used to be called style (even if they are also referring to other things). And that swagger is connected to the older tradition of bragging about, or defending the ownership of one’s style(s).

   Rap without style is like a neo-soul headwrap chick without a axe to grind against all men.

   Mar 15th, 2009

9. Thun

   And while we’re at it – The neo native tongue rappers fail consistently at what the native tongues excelled at – sounding like yourself (and nobody else) effortlessly and making it look cool, and making it look like you actually enjoy rapping.

   Mar 15th, 2009

10. noz

    “Noz – my piece on Casual was not suggesting that “swagger” has superseded “style” but rather that the word “swagger” seems to have replaced “style” and that they their is an overlap between what the two words signify.”

    Right. I probably should have reread that post before linking it.

    Mar 15th, 2009

11. padraig

    “If there’s any excuse at all for making a recording it’s to do it differently…”

    yeh. Or cos it bangs you know? I mean I know what you & Glenn Gould are getting at (& it especially makes sense for Gould who was mostly playing other composers’ music) but there is plenty of amazing music that is purely functionalist…like tons of jungle (which always has/had a total bboy ethos) or techno & house…but also hip hop. like I think you’ve written before that peak RZA/Primo are, in their own way as avant-garde as Terry Riley or whatever, part of their brilliance, like the junglists, was in how they were/are able to twist old wornout tools & cliches into something innovative & interesting, making things that are more than the sum of their parts…

    “Which means if I have been listening to nothing but old CVE tapes for three days straight that is what I am going to be writing about here.”

    for real – I dunno if this will make you feel better or not – but I come here pretty much just for the writing, I don’t even listen to hip hop these days – if you started a site writing on La Monte Young I’d be all over it. though I guess there’s even less $ in writing about super avant 20th century classical music than there is in writing about hip hop…

    Mar 15th, 2009

12. Tray

    “If there’s any excuse at all for making a recording it’s to do it differently…”

    yeh. Or cos it bangs you know?”

    Indeed. I wouldn’t hate Talib or Brother Ali or whoever so much if it weren’t for the fact that they aren’t nearly as good as the people they’re imitating… I have no problems with revivalist shit that actually sounds like the old shit (like that Raekwon song that came out a month ago), but it’s so rare that, you know, why bother mining all the neo-backpackers albums looking for the one cut that succeeds at kinda recreating an old aesthetic when you could just go and listen to De La Soul Is Dead for the 50th time and hear something you never heard before.

    Mar 15th, 2009

13. noz

    Well I don’t listen to much jungle or techno for that very reason.

    Thanks though, I’m glad someone is still interested in blogs with words.

    Mar 15th, 2009

14. Supreme Neck Protector

    It’s not a question of validation of tastes, really. With bloggers as with rappers, I’d rather they say that which they mean and which means something to them than that which I’d like to hear and will mean something to me. But it is nice when our taste overlaps, just because you’re someone for whom I have a great deal of respect. Same as if I found out a favourite rapper or actor or something admired the same trends in world cinema, or something, y’know? It’s unimportant, it’s just nice. If you see something in a rapper or piece or rap art or something, and I or any other reader doesn’t, then as long as free discourse as to why or why not is possible, it makes little difference. What you’re saying about Gucci Mane makes me inclined to try and find the bizarre songs where he does weird shit, but if I hate everything I find, I won’t bend over backwards trying to force myself to enjoy it because you co-sign it. But I might ask about why, and that’s how this conversation started.

    And as to the dictation of tastes, I realize it’s not your intention, but in this one specific case (me), it tends to happen entirely by accident. Or rather, I won’t necessarily automatically co-sign everything you’re riding for; but your support for a given artist or movement will always lead me to investigate it, determine for myself what to make of it, then fuck with it or not depending. I tend to enthusiastically support most of the shit you like, tho, cf. that long list. And then I proselytize to friends on behalf of both this blog and the rappers featured herein, especially, say, Boosie, for whom most of them have the true-schooler’s kneejerk disdain, not realizing that pretty much everything they loved about “All That I Got Is You” is present in “Life of Crime” as well.

    I think the reason I mentioned Brother Ali in particular is that as far as I can tell, I don’t hear resemblances in his music to other rappers, at least not more than is typical for any rapper whose influences are discernible. I see him charting his own course, more or less, which is why I’d make mention of him in the first place as being relevant to what you’ve been saying. And in my eyes the same is largely true for present-day Royce, who does things in his rap over the “Nas Is Like” beat that I’m not sure I’ve heard anyone do before. Although what you said about retracing their own steps helps me understand why you never pay much mind on this blog to present-day Ghostface or Method Man or Raekwon or Redman or Kool G Rap or AZ, all of whom I think still kill shit, but who do so in much the same way as ever they did.

    On the whole I understand and sympathize with what you mean re: rappers breaking molds vs. going over another cat’s style with tracing paper. In the case of act like Blu Little Brother, I don’t especially care that an old and beloved sound is being refashioned. In fact, the overt aping of a long-established style tends to be grating if little new life is brought to it. But what inspires me about that stuff is lyrical– Phonte’s or Blu’s intelligence and straight talk, which I imagine tends to read to you as preaching, but, fuck it, diff’rent strokes. See also Mos Def before he lost his mind. And I’m not at all critiquing, but I always imagined you’d get more out of what those cats do lyrically than you do.

    I come here for the music and the writing in equal measure, I think. Other bloggers’ tastes dovetail with the true-school end of mine but they haven’t taken the time to think as critically as you have about rap music and the wide-lens context thereof, generally speaking, so there isn’t as much to gain from visiting those sites by comparison.

    For the most part, though, I see what you mean about style, and what you’ve said about this (which you also echoed in your Made review and the point you made about the difference between present-day ‘Face and present-day Too Short or Ice Cube) is something that’s influenced my understanding of rap and also (God willing) improved my own rapping. Although your advice in earlier XXL blogs about dues-paying and caution on the part of aspiring rappers (especially us bleachskins, I’d add) rings true as well, which is the more crucial thing.

    I don’t know that I’ve made a conclusive point, but I’m gonna stop talking for the moment, to avoid talking in circles.

    Mar 16th, 2009

15. padraig

    Just tbc tho I didn’t want to contribute to the popular (in the U.S.) gross misconception that techno is all a bunch of mindless banging, & especially not jungle which is in fact the opposite – based upon intricate permutations of overlapping polyrthyms. I mean it’s like any music, like hip hop, where there’s dancefloor bangers & heavy shit meant to bumped in cars but also hella deep introspective business, the whole spectrum. My point was more that often times the greatest innovation has come from producers who working within certain dancefloor/audience parameters, bpm & the types of samples & general vibe etc, from bending those paramaters – that it’s harder to to bend the rules than it is to just break them outright. I mean if you’re a genius like Stockhausen or Carl Craig or RZA you can do whatever you want but most producers (& rappers) can’t get away with that.

    Actually I’ve never figured out why American bboys didn’t cotton on to jungle – I mean it’s breakbeats & killer bass & heavy vibes, even MCs – the UK’s hip hop really (cos we all know most British hip hop is/has been awful). Not to mention the loads of mid-90s jungle tunes which sampled KRS-One or Wu-Tang or whoever to great affect. actually, while I’m rambling, a couple YouTube links:

    DJ Zinc – Super Sharp Shooter (samples Method Man) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2KZoWLot0g&feature=related
    DJ Zinc – Fugees Or Not (famous remix of…) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVKvO3ab6H8
    Tribe of Issachar – Junglist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGj67GCO2Ls
    Ed Rush – Guncheck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7-CPqhjrQY
    Trinity (Dillinja) – Gangster (Glamour Gold Remix) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaAInCFnQcM

    anyway enough of my proselytizing…

    Mar 16th, 2009

16. Paine

    “Artists like Royce or Blu or Brother Ali are all talented on a technical level but are basically running in circles to me, you know? They rarely bring anything new to the table. When I put on Brother Ali I want to hear Organized Konfusion because they did it better.”

    Cosign. (and I did try to get Brother Ali’s album to buy yesterday on the road till I get back to my mail.)

    I still look at the mystique of the rappers of the ’90s. I never had/got/was blasted to read a blog or watch a VIMBY on Q-Tip; that’s what videos were for. Now, a lot of the new classers do a bunch of shit that detracts from the music, selling “the movement.” Blu, who I’m led to believe, lives totally off the grid (no phone, computer, etc.) is a welcomed exception, though I wish he’d slow down like Stunt D., because three-four albums/free downloads a year is catalogue-killing, for a guy who see-saws between dope and dogfood.

    Rhyme & Reason > The Show, and in my opinion, the same is largely true of the soundtracks as well.

    Mar 16th, 2009

17. noz

    “is “Kalled” instead of “called” an old spelling of the name or a typo?”

    Not sure. That’s the way it’s spelled on the label.

    Mar 17th, 2009

18. noz

    Also Paine raises a good point. Who knows how we’d receive a lot of these classic artists if we were forced to spend every waking minute with them on nahright, if we had to hear every studio fart demo track on a daily basis, if we didn’t have the luxury of compressing only their finest moments into a 40 minutes full length every two years.

    Mar 17th, 2009

19. MAYNHOLUP!

    all i gotz to say righ heah mayn is issss bout rother. besdies dat, fuck de cool ckids, kidz in de hall, kid fuckface, an whoeva else wear skinny jeans.

    Mar 17th, 2009

20. Promo1one

    Q-TIP, my favor singer..i like his songz

    Mar 21st, 2009

21. jayjeevan

    any where to find the j/period mix? – zhare link is dead
    thx

    Mar 24th, 2009

1. JUICE » All Time Classic: Raritäten von Q-Tip - Mar 17th, 2009

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