It’s okay to like something, right?
It’s very easy to forget that it’s okay to feel good about hip-hop. Especially if you’ve read this column before. I spew hatred weekly. Its easy for me because there’s a lot that I hate in the world. Especially if that world is restricted to hip-hop. Since I am bombarded everyday by visual and auditory evidence of what I hate, its very easy to sit down and write about the reasons that I am upset.
After a few weeks that shit can pretty old.
The challenge is to share with you the things that I feel good about. I can only hope that it would make as entertaining of a read.
Is it wrong of me to assume that I’m usually entertaining?
_____________________________________________________
Honestly, I’m some sort of musical crackhead. I’m always trying to chase the feeling of hearing one of my favorite songs for the first time. I go through favorite songs at the same rate that a child runs through favorite toys. I invite any of the psychologically trained out there to diagnose me. I’m certain that its reflective of some sort of illness.
I used to think that it was due to maturation. That as I grew I naturally became less enamored of certain sounds and that somehow my tastes were becoming more sophisticated. In most cases of forgotten favorites, this wasn’t the case.
I wouldn’t dispose of a song in the same way that a small boy disregards action figures once he discovers video games, never to orchestrate a GI Joe war again. On the contrary, I often find myself going through bags of old radio-recorded mixtapes, trying to happen upon a favorite that I’d forgotten about.
Its kind of like that part in Jo Jo Dancer when Richard Pryor sifted through his carpet for crack rocks that he may have dropped. Right before he burnt himself up.
In the same way that a basehead constantly attempts to recreate that initial release of dopamine into the brain’s pleasure center, I search endlessly for songs that make me feel that feeling.
My fellow music junkies already know what I’m talking about. The first time you hear the song on a new album that makes you hit the skip-back button before it even ends. The song that plays itself over and over again in your head as soon as you’re away from the stereo. In my cassette walkman days, it got so bad for me that I would record a song at the beginning of a tape, flip it over and record it over the end of the tape so that I could play it over and over again without having to rewind. I actually thought I invents that shit before one of other junkie homies told me that I was late.
That was 1995.
In 1995, with more variety available in new releases and a constant back log of shit that I hadn’t heard yet, I had a new favorite song at least twice a month. Sometimes the “favoriteness” would last long enough that there would be some overlap. I had a particularly hard time choosing between “Still Shinin” from Busta Rhymes and “Zealots” from the Fugees.
In 2005 I only found my high five times.
Since I don’t have the luxury of graduating to a more potent drug (at some point I tried cinema, but I lack the attention span), I found myself moving horizontally across more genres to find my fix. Last year’s addi(c)tion was the blues. It joined Jazz, Disco, Classic Rock, Funk, and West African tribal music as the genres that I’ve only begun to appreciate since the year 2000.
One would figure that opening up to an entire new style of music would lead to a slew of new favorites. I’ve learned, however, that there is a very particular thing that gives me the feeling that I crave.
I really don’t know which words to use to accurately convey the kind of sound that gives me the feeling. It’s the feeling of being genuinely touched by something foreign. Sometimes it’s the whole song, sometimes its just one chord progression. Inside it feels like some tense part of my mind explodes in joy. Tiffany says that my eyes close, and my face scrunches up like I’m trying to frown and smile at the same time.
I imagine that to be a good external representation of the chaos wave passing through my body when I zone out to something new. I probably could have described it better in 1995.
Last year I had to stretch the equivalent of a nickel bag over the calendar year, so I did an awful lot of carpet scavenging to survive. Sometimes this meant pouring over my cd collection for titles that I’ve ignored long enough to miss. Other times it meant frantic internet searches to hear songs that I remember but no longer have access to. I lost a lot of my goodies in an incident known as “The Great Tape Breakage” of 1994. As an eighth grader, I lacked the common sense to realize that carrying all of my favorite tapes, uncased, in the same bag that held my school books and my house keys would lead to disaster. I went through the trouble of mummifying a few of them. I still keep some broken but salvageable cassettes in a bag. I’ll get to them someday.
Here’s some of the joints that I re-discovered last year
The Association – Cherish
A late sixties oldies gem that I remember from the radio in my grandfather’s Cadillac. It took until this year to find it because I always thought that the Beach Boys did it. I’m dumb for thinking that they could have made something this wonderful.
Bill Cosby – Martin’s Funeral
I don’t know if he wrote or arranged it or what but his name is listed as the artist. This is the song that Ali Shaheed Muhammad sampled to create “We Can Get Down” from the Midnight Marauders Album. Download it, its digital cocaine from an unlikely pusher man.
Ween – Freedom of ’76
A soulful ballad about prostitutes and doo wop groups from Beavis’ favorite weirdo rock band. I first recorded this song onto a cassette when I was twelve. They were on somebody’s alternative rock talk show performing it live in the studio. I used to play it nightly before I went to sleep.
Organized Konfusion – Invetro
A warm-hearted ode to life and death by Pharoah Monche and rhyme partner Prince Poetry. Each rapped from the perspective of an unborn child. Pharoah, because of the ills of this life, did not want to be born. Prince Po chose life in his verse, underscoring his power to choose his own circumstance.
Group Home – Up Against The Wall (Getaway Car Mix)
My favorite beat from the beat album of the 90’s. I still think that this album was an evil science experiment by DJ Premier. He wanted to see how an album would perform with the worst two rappers he could find over his very best production. Because of this song, I’ve hard Malachi the Nutcracker’s garbage lyrics in my mind for the last ten years.
Funny thing about finding songs you haven’t heard in a while…They’re only about 75-80% as good as you remember them to be. This is further evidence that I’m experiencing some sort of addiction. It’s an addiction to experiencing moments in space/time more than once. When I remember a favorite song, I’m also remembering whatever joy I was experiencing and whatever anguish I was escaping at that particular time. Thus, It’s nearly impossible for me to experience the same neuro-chemical reaction in another space/time.
The trick is to find the enjoyment in the now. The false assumption that I often operate under is that yesterday is, by definition, better than today. Every yoga master, quantum physicist, or wise old dude will tell you that the secret of heaven on earth is to find the joy in experiencing all moments, especially the wack ones.
So in the spirit of illumination, go find something you hate and experience it until you can appreciate it.
Then come back and tell me how you did it.
OpenMikeEagle
Out
Links to writers more enlightened than myself
” class=music>Cameron comes one step closer to leaving us. And for some god awful reason he thinks that bribing one guy with an I-pod is going to make it okay.
