I don't think I could have imagined as a young(er) girl that I would see it really happen. I daydreamed about it for my children, sure. I hoped and prayed that someone would answer the call, of course. I bumped my records, my musical prayer, late into the dorm room nights while sippin' my juice, no doubt. But did I really believe in my heart of hearts that I would live to see the Christopher Wallace biopic-of-epic-proportions written and unleashed for the masses? No.
Here it is upon us, Friends. This past weekend saw the release of a film that will hopefully help to answer the many questions in our young minds that continue to revolve around the 1990s' East Coast/West Coast Feud and the resulting martyrdom (err...) of two promising young men.
N.O.T.O.R.I.O.U.S. is now in theaters: Yes. It. Is. And I have yet to see it, which, in the spirit of Great Opinations, is all the more reason to start spinning commentary.
In my most vivid dreams (the ones I have been having nightly, as of late), this film exposes and explains in intricate detail Biggie's ambiguous beef with Tupac. There is full disclosure of a lack of evidence against Suge Knight, and the "are they" or "are they not" in Cuba discussion is confidently indulged (and Cuba confirmed).
My burning questions are answered: Yes, you thought they were rivals, but really, they are BFFs. When Tupac said "Now you’re ‘bout to feel the wrath of a menace," what he meant was, "Can't wait for you to meet my girl, bro. She gotta pass the Biggie test, know wha'm sayin'. I'll call you tomorrow, after church." I find out that they're really not dead, that they are living in a terrestrial limbo of sorts, anxiously awaiting their 2010 collaborative album drop, after which they will emerge from the dead in a second-coming that will renew our faith in the future of hip hop.
The pundits... the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into East Coast and West Coast; East Coast allegiances to Jay-Z and Wu-tang, West Coast to Dre, Pac, and Snoop. And they've been doing it for almost two decades now. But I've got news for them. We worship an awesome chronic here on the East Coast, and we too tip our hats to bad boys on the West Coast. We appreciate and honor the G-funk on the East Coast, and yes, Raekwon is in our disc rotation on the West. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to good hip hop when we hear it, all of us defending the reputation of the streets.
In the end, that's what this film should be about. Do we let our heroes of hip hop spiral downward, stereotypically, into shameless debauchery, or do we mandate a new level of collaboration that only Cuban dreams are made of? In the spirit of audacious hope, I present the truth that I am almost sure will be revealed in this new film, which is that theirs is the notion of a true team of rivals, and the Biggie-Tupac duo is poised for a real, live catapult back onto the scene.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
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What about the Dirty Souf?
ReplyDeleteMemphis represent! http://www.mtv.com/bands/m/my_block/memphis/news_feature_070505/
Houston represent! http://houstonsoreal.blogspot.com/
Miami bass up in this bliz!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_bass
http://www.nutsie.com/digitaldreamdoor/100%20Greatest%20Miami%20Bass%20Songs/3931825
You got some drank?
Elvis rocked it.
ReplyDeleteNice post K HO.
ReplyDeleteSome rambling thoughts that probably won't make much sense...
All entertainment is theatre and theatre in its earliest forms was all egyptian passion pits & greek tragedies; there are certain 'characters' that are ingrained in the people of any culture anywhere in the world, and we the people of those cultures, advertently or inadvertently seek to resemble those characters - in Spanish/Latin/South American culture it's 'machismo' that needs to be lived up to - consequently, while it's often noted that we live in a 'melting pot', such is not the case, we live in a country that more or less has mosaic qualities, because what we're struggling with is essentially this: Sicilian mafia principals and Old World notions of 'machismo', language barriers, senses of family & of course revenge, coupled with the whole "Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton field, sold in a market down in New Orleans" slavery issue, and by issue I mean the foundation of 'American music' (West African skin instruments), from New Orleans the slave trade and, thereon, Emancipation Proclamation relocated freed slaves to... Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Philly, DC and New York... and then, even longer after WWII, to LA, but this process wasn't an overnight thang, there are notable differences in the sound of jazz from St. Louis and the music being made in Chicago at the same time, bebop never would've come out of Detroit (the birthplace of 'techno', why?? umm, would you want to do a drum circle outside in a Detroit winter or rave in an abandoned factory building?), it was NYC or no place (the same way the sounds created by a band like TV on the Radio came from Williamsburg in 2001, barely 2 years after Napster, but not Milwaukee), but now THINGS DONE CHANGED, and in the 5 years since I was first turned on to TVotR (they were opening act for Interpol at the Roseland, like November '03) when it took that experience rather than idly surfing a music blog aggregator instead of doing actual work.
Hope I'm not losing my train of thought, but this is an important part of the story, or an important part of any solution, if you could define racism in one single word, what would it be? I'll leave the answer below at the end of this comment. But, without giving away the answer, MTV would literally blow acts up, provide the stage on which artists could pimp their shit to no end (god, remember all those bling bling bling bling ad infinitum videos on MTV), but even before that there was Yo MTV Raps (hosted by 2 Brooklynites, mind you) and that was only like 8 songs and, this is going back to like 6th grade, but the majority of it was coming out of NYC. Why do I mention this? Because that breeds jealousy and jealousy breeds hatred, and what else breeds hatred? Unfamiliarity. What hinders hatred? Familiarity. What can hope will prevent another instance like the mid-90s East Coast vs. West Coast blood feud? We can hope the old WWspiderWeb and the familiarity we gain from exposure by choice will tear down the walls of unfamiliarity that cause feuds (those things that come up in Romeo & Juliet instances and always seem to involve parties not remembering how the feud even began) and, in their stead, facilitate avenues of cooperation and collaboration (take for example, Bangladesh 'Passport Music', The Very Best (Esau Mwamwaya & Radioclit), Brett Dennen & Femi Kuti, or even mash-ups like the Grey Album or Jaydiohead).
ps: my old boss (Rob Stone) had a 6'x6' Ready to Die album cover signed by Mr. Christopher Wallace with "To Rob Stone, the coolest white dude in the world" written on it hanging on the wall of his office - so jealous...
(answer: ignorance)
all right, one other point which gives us hope that K Ho won't wake up a 13 year old girl crying about the loss of Biggie Smalls all over again: I think the immersion of music & branded entertainment allows for artists to make legitimate money away from music, I remember hearing that Jigga was like the biggest blow distributor in NYC when i was in college, which only proves the point that at that time it was very plausible (if you looked at how many units his work had scanned in pre-'Hard Knock Life' multiplied by the percentage he received from each album, he definitely was not independently wealthy at the time), while that would be laughable now, why risk going to prison when you're worth so much money? 50 Cent has made hundreds of millions of dollars from his equity stake in Vitamin Water: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=7&entry_id=17046
ReplyDeleteMOREOVER, the structure of record contracts has changed, artists used to never leave the hood (see Curtis Jackson living in Tyson's house in CT) because they'd receive a huge advance and want to show off to their people, then have nothing and sit around waiting on royalty checks, well their aren't huge advances for non-established artists anymore, that only works for someone like Madonna who gets a $100 million deal from Live Nation, and with that all-of-a-sudden fame and fortune "i'm the mothafucking shit" comes envy, and that leads to hate as well, and definitely violence...
the last real hip hop beef i heard about was The Dips (Jim Jones, Juelz Santana & Cam'Ron) vs. 50 Cent, which was absolutely HILARIOUS: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x156jc_camron-vs-50-cent_people
and it totally escalated from there, 50 put a video on YouTube of his crew firing AK-47s at targets in his personal shooting range... I'm going to All Hip Hop now to track the footage down
by the way, in this video, 50 actually drops some music biz knowledge...