May 6, 2007

Top 10 Southern Emcees

My man Q and his man Rizoh have a blog called Street Census (blogroll), that does a whole bunch of lists.  I love the site, largely because I don’t think I’ve read a list that I agree with.  Where would the fun be if I agreed all the time?

The other day, Rizoh did a list on the top 10 Southern emcees.  I’d wanted to do a 25 on that, but I really didn’t have the time to do it and properly address all the more obscure people.  I normally do lists by going through my itunes, but I know there are limitations, and that topic’s too crucial for me to get wrong.

So I’m going to go through ten of them.

10.  Killer Mike.  This is pretty high, considering I haven’t heard his second record, and the first was inconsistent.  Might even be too high.  The inconsistency on Monster was because of beats, though, not him.  Mike’s got something in common with Bun-B–a decidedly Southern tone that’s unquestionably influenced by old school East Coast rap.  Bun’s rhyming idol is KRS-ONE, and I’m inclined to believe that Mike’s is, too.  In fact, Mike’s more of a Kris disciple, to my ear, because he’s more intense than Bun.  The power, the ability to clearly spit every line, and the fearlessness that make Kris the best make Mike so good.  There are very few things I’d want from an emcee that I don’t get from Killer Mike.

9.  Big Gipp/Cee-Lo.  I’m adding Cee-Lo to this because I’m not sure what to do with him.  He can rhyme, best believe.  Can jump on a beat and become a part of it.  The problem?  If you wanna offer smart-guy rap, you gotta be…smart.  What has Cee-Lo really offered than simple-minded stuff that no one could disagree with?  If he wants to make thought-provoking statements, he should be thought-provoking.  And he’s not.  Gipp’s far more interesting to me.  He’s jumped from style to style and made each work, offered intelligent rhymes without making a point of how intelligent he was being, and proven that the most underrated cat on the cool pantheon is the country baller.  I think Cee-Lo’s a more talented rapper than Gipp, but he ain’t quite as interesting.  If I could combine them, that amalgam would be at #9.
8.  Devin the Dude.  I’m torn on this one.  I enjoy him.  A lot.  But you wanna talk about someone without a lot to talk about?  That’s Dev.  But I’ll be damned if he hasn’t consistently found ways to make songs about little more than sex, weed and liquor entertaining.  Seriously, how does he do this?  I should have been bored with him three years ago.  Instead, I love Waitin’ To Inhale.  How in the world has he pulled this off?
7.  Lil’ Wayne.  As born to do this as anyone’s ever been.  Has any other rapper been as good as he was as a child–as far as we think–and become this good as an adult?  He knows how to flip words, has an incredible gift for metaphor, and a confidence on the mic you just can’t teach.  So why only at 7?  I don’t think he’s ever given me anything to think about.  Not a single thing.  Great stuff for enjoying, but little beyond that.
6.  T.I.  Yeah, he’s young.  But he’s given us four straight very good-to-classic records, and he’s done so with a style that pays homage to histor while forging new ground.  He’s as smart as they come and might have the best ear for beats out there.  He knows how to construct an album.  More than anything, he’s created a complex persona that compels me to keep listening to find out where he’s going to end up.

5.  Juvenile.  This was the omission from Rizoh’s list that made me do my own.  He did one of the records that changed the course of hip hop–400 Degreez, which I think is the record that truly began the Southern infusion into the mainstream.  He’s got one of the greatest voices ever, a way with words that’s like no one else, and a thought process that isn’t often heard.  I don’t agree with him, but the idea that people who don’t do whatever they have to do to get out of poverty are too concerned with appearances is something I had to give some consideration to.  It’s one of the most compelling responses to poverty that I recall hearing, even though it’s not rocket science.  And that’s what Juve brings–insight.
4.  Bun-B.  The tricky thing with Bun is that he’s only got one solo record that, in terms of his performance, pales in comparison to everything he did with UGK.  It’s good, but he never let loose in the way that made him legendary.  So creative with rhyme schemes, so confident, such a broad frame of reference, and an incredible ability to jump on any beat and wreck it.  Also–and this is irrelevant to this evaluation–the best interview I ever did.  God bless you if you get the chance to talk about music with Bun, and you’re the king if you can interview him as well as Jon Caramanica did.  Probably my favorite interview ever with a rapper.
3.  Andre 3000.  Name a rapper that’s ever commanded your attention from start to finish more consistently than Dre?  I can’t.  But I can’t put him over the next man on this list…
2.  Big Boi.  Yeah, over Andre.  It’s no longer a debate for me.  Who’s better at his best?  Andre, without question.  He just overpowers tracks in a way that I don’t think anyone has ever been able to be.  But what sets Big Boi over Andre is the fact that he’s the smarter of the pair.  Andre’s got great ways with words and can drop the perfect metaphor at the right time, but Big Boi’s offering more food for thought underneath the prettiness on top.  There’s nothing he can’t talk about.  He’s also the best since Big Pun at rapping about sex, which is a noteworthy point.  It’s not like it’s a breakaway victory for Antwan, but he gets it over Dre.  And I’m not just saying that to be contrarian.

Oh, and he never left us to make an average R&B album.

1.  Scarface.  There wasn’t even a question on this one.  He’s the godfather of the modern storyteller, the man that provided the blueprint for the grittier, unromantic East Coast gangster records of the mid-’90s, and the man with the greatest artistic longevity in the game (LL doesn’t count since he sold out so blatantly).  Three classics as a solo rapper–Mr. Scarface is Back, The Diary, The Fix–one spectacularly underappreciated album–Last of a Dying Breed–and a pioneering track record with the Geto Boys.  And to top it off, there’s probably no rapper more respected by more of his peers than Brad Jordan.  He’s the best from the South and, unquestionably, one of the greatest of all-time.

Missed the cut:  Ludacris, Phonte Coleman, Eightball, MJG (tough one for me), TDD, Bubba Sparxxx, Mystikal (real tough), Chamillionaire (check back in five years), and a few others

May 6, 2007

Today’s Lamentation on Gender

As many of you know, my parents are college professors.  My mother’s an economist, which gives an inclination to look at things without getting lost in too much distraction.  The best and worst thing about economics is that it’s a just-so science, after all.  Thank goodness she’s legitimately the fairest person I’ve ever met–and I ain’t saying that just because she’s my mama, and more than a few readers of this blog could second that–for otherwise, I’d probably be a bit of an android.  Instead, I’m the nicest guy you never knew was nice.  Really.

My father, on the other hand, is a political scientist.  More specifically, he’s a political epistemologist.  Or, in layman’s terms, he thinks about stuff and ponders how and why people think about stuff.  It’s a great skill.  I kinda wish I was formally trained in it rather than just having a tacit knowledge of the skill.  Then, I’d know better when and when not to check out how and why people do the things they do.

And I wouldn’t annoy my girlfriend nearly as much.  When applied to everyday life, epistemology is a lot like fielding in baseball–a success rate of 95% just ain’t good enough at times.

Anyway, here’s the coolest thing about having a father with an active understanding of how to e-mail and a knack for epistemology–he sends me some of the stuff he thinks about.  It’s like having a father that works as a chef and brings food home for work.

So he sent me a paper he presented on the role of black males in the continuation–and on the converse, eradication–of the oppression of black women.  He and I are in agreement that black women are the most oppressed people in this country.  While the attention black men get from police is incredibly annoying, black women are burdened with the same responsibilities as black men while receiving far less for doing what they’re supposed to do.  That’s pretty foul.

The old man framed discussion around the responsibilities fathers have in how they raise their daughters.  Not just that simple-minded “keep her off the pole” madness.  It’s about how fathers need to empower their daughters’ ambitions, teaching them to “fly” rather than “perch.”

The old man’s dead on with this one.  I don’t think I need to explain it much deeper than that.  I apologize for offering a substandard synopsis of the paper, but I dont’ have the freedom to post it for you to see.

What I do have is the perspective of someone who’s life has begun to include considering my role in things like that.  I’ve always joked that, if I had daughters, I’d send them straight to the orphanage, simply because I know I’d be putty in their hands.  I see dudes at the store, I’ve got buddies with daughters, and they’re all suckers for their daughters.  They can get sons in line without thinking twice, but they’re powerless to hearing Daaaaaady!  I don’t wanna be that guy.

And just because I don’t want to be that guy, I’m probably gonna wind up with three daughters like their mama.  Which means I’ll be totally powerless, and I’ll have to walk through the grocery story with a shotgun to let them cats know I mean business.

But reading the old man’s paper made me realize the hardest thing for men raising daughters–that which lurks within them that they don’t realize is present.  The same way it’s impossible to navigate through this culture without internalizing some measure of white supremacy (or adopting black/Asian/Hispanic/etc. supremacy as a defense and being just as wrong, but in a different way), it’s hard not to get some sexism about you if you live in this country.  It’s just impossible.  So much is there and ingrained, and we’re typically not trained to recognize it.  We see it as how things should be, largely because that’s how they are.  Those two things aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but they ain’t the same.

It’s tough to wrap my mind around that responsibility.  I hear all the time about dudes who start seeing the world totally differently once they have daughters, and I totally believe it.  I never had a little sister, so I never had to consider how things I’d do would affect her and the hypocrisy that points out.  For the most part, I think I’ve done okay.  But I also have a bit of a know-it-all streak–an unfortunate by-product of knowing everything!!!–which surely doesn’t get better when dealing with women.  I’m not positive of that, but I think it’s a safe guess.  After all, I grew up in this world.

How dreadful would it be to pass some foul, potentially paralyzing attitudes on without knowing it?  Dude, that’s really spooky.  If that’s me, I hope the kids will be smart enough to listen to my lady…and learn from her when not to listen to me.  Necessary skill that is.

I doubt this makes a great deal of sense, at least not in the name of cohesion.  But as I’ve reached the point where my life ain’t just mine anymore, I’ve realized the great level of responsibility that comes with that.  It’s a responsibility few of us are prepared for when that time comes.  And now that time is here and ain’t going nowhere, I better get ready.

Especially before there are even more people to worry about.