Tom Breihan is Fucking Retarded (Or Better Living Through Ad Hominems)

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Wisdom Body 101: The Tao of Dennis Coles

Men marryin’ men/Ill…- "Mighty Healthy"
Fuck what they say/Cuz we against the abortions –“Beat The Clock”
Do business with the Jews?/Never that!- "After The Smoke Is Clear"

The idea that you should hold a woman equal to a man is really fucking basic (no homo). No bleeding heart eyeroll-inducing feminist lectures, its just human courtesy. Sure there is a lot of typical macho bro shit that comes out the mouth of Wu members but these are 70’s babies, 90’s rap survivors and still a bunch of dudes from the projects of Staten Island and Brooklyn. What’s surprising is how backwards what the fuck came out his mouth was. You’d have to be terribly PC and sheltered to think that there aren’t women like that described in “Wildflower” and that being a male somehow neuters you from expressing derision or disappointment or out and out shitting on a woman with reason. If you accept the premise that people should be treated equally until shown otherwise then that goes without saying and makes invoking the "m" word a lot trickier and more up for discussion. The weird thing is that, you don’t have to be at all "feminist", “liberal” or “sex-positive” to draw ire with the Angela Yee interview comments.

I was half expecting him to go in on some practical reasoning or maybe even bring up how when he got diabetes he thought it was AIDS because he recklessly went raw with a lot of girls during Wu's heydey and wants to avoid another scare. But not some ole' style male supremacy shit. On general principle, that’s some 1950’s bullshit he’s saying, that, though perfectly in line with the Wu and, really, a classically royal/Victorian/pre liberation male notion of the Madonna/Whore complex and the worth of a virtuous woman versus one who is loose(d) (And creepily suggest that a lot of the WU kind of just want to find a girl just like their mom, who is consistently the highest revered figure in their depictions of women in song). Most reasonable people, like myself, are willing to allow a shitload of wiggle room in Ghost’s logic because A)We love him and B)It seems typical of what we’d expect to hear from a lot of people, rappers or not. The thing that’s jarring in his whole “I’m not going to wife up a chick I perceive to be a slore” steez is how low his number was. His base car loan pitch of “1 guy a month being too much” is pretty fucking ridiculous, if not insane. (And Nahright takes another L for cosigning that shit) It's reminiscent of Clerks and Chasing Amy, when Kevin Smith (“36 dicks!?”) effectively distilled male insecurity and hypocrisy about women.

There's cognitive distance between enjoying an acceptable level of shooting and drug selling and womanizing on record up until a certain point, illustrated by the interview. Wu always had a lot more going on in the songs, and usually the difference between typically negative content that bored intellectual essay-writing rap writers aim to defend to moralists (and really people who tend to not care about art in the first place) and what we tend to eschew comes down to that extra amount of detail or soul or insight or recontextualizing. The same was really dumb attempts at art from kids at my college would be torn-apart for being one-dimensional and obvious is why “C.R.E.A.M.” is transcendent and some LCD rapper breaking the fourth wall and hollering “I ROB NIGGAS/I ROB NIGGAS (HAAAAAAAAAAH!)” like a bad Wild n’ Out is equally shat on. No matter how fucked up some of the things Ghostface has said on wax, and there’s been a few, there was always this belief, at least in my head, that my view of him as an artist was thankfully unmarred by who he might actually be as a person.

Most of his interviews with mainstream (i.e. traditionally white) press outlets have had him seem wizened, a little ornery and pretty guarded while his interviews with hip-hop outlets always find him a bit more energetic and willing to delve into questions that he seems to always skirt and falsify when it’s the Onion or something. As someone both conscious and admittedly extremely liberal, I’ve found myself trying to doublethink the ongoing and bothersome clichés of rappers being heterosexist and (though there’s a lot more to hip-hop’s various takes on women than 1-hour VH1 rap docs would relay) misogynist. The truth is that most seemingly negative lyrics about women rarely bother me, not being a woman and rarely hearing a rapper suggest women are inferior and shouldn’t have rights, when they offer at least one reason for the song’s ire or criticism or dressing down. But I have frequently tried to justify all the “faggot” talk from rappers I admire, like Q-Tip, the assorted Native Tongues satellites (Talib, Mos, Common, etc). and others because when you enjoy an artist’s music, there’s still this lingering childlike notion that you want to like them as people also. I’ve maintained for years that I could give fuck all who a musician molested or peed on or raped or filmed peeing or shat on in a crowd or accidentally killed in a drunken car crash or forcefully annexed into German territory in the late 30’s.

Busta Rhymes is a piece of shit as a human being but he’s still got some classic material, which is and should be all that matters. It’s not even the banal “fuck faggots” steez a lot of guys still parrot. It’s the really vitriolic learned hatred of gays that I still see pop up on rap message boards and, as opposed to classical pre-90’s racism, doesn’t seem to be dying down with newer generations. Trick Tricks’s “ra-ra” Hutu-esque "cut the tall trees" call to arms last year was made more disturbing by the fact that so many people were agreeing with him. Luckily most instances of the utterance of "faggot" are in the normative "feminized male"/"bitchass nigga" sense and not actually addressing anyone who actually identifies as gay. But the feminine implication is still troublesome, and pretty inaccurate considering I could hop on the L to Canarsie right now and find chicks harder than most of the dudes I've ever met.

In general most of the guys who've said some reckless transgressive shit in interviews have been either smart enough or cajoled enough into keeping it out of their music to avoid hurting sales or drawing unnecessary Marshall Mathers LP-like negative attention to themselves. And as someone who grew up with such a morally complex art form to deal with and discuss you're so used to assorted coonery and general ignorance from mainstream rappers that it makes you almost proud to look at your favorite MC and not have to shake your head or cringe at some shit he said on a song. This Ghostface interview is sad not only because he said some questionable shit when I would've, as a fan, preferred him to've been mum or at least hold a more acceptably backwards view on the topic, but because its genuinely disheartening to know there's a 39-year-old grown man who believes this shit.

Ghost holds onto this outmoded "women v. hoes" taxonomy that, realistically, is probably more reasonable than most other American male's, but its still a denigration of one sort of female and honoring of one based on a rubric that probably doesn't allow any wiggle room to convince him that a woman can fuck 12 or more guys a year and not be any less valuable. Ghost lyrically treasures smart, strong, and faithful women, but falters on her sexual freedom. Although, considering the era in which the WU grew up, where they grew up, and the archaic lyrical inspirations of their music (Egypt/Kemet, Islam, Christianity), it makes sense that he wouldn't extol Sontag-isms. Especially Islam, which despite revisionist attempts is pretty fucking conservative. Just a shame that his "futuristic"-ness ends at his lyrics and fashion.

Remember when I long-dicked you and broke your ovary? Remember when I said you weren't equal because my questionable splinter religion said I was the embodiment of God and you're naturally subservient? Good times.

This Rap Is Like Ziti

First of all, I'd like to thank my (wireless) connect, and being able to still use the task manager to start programs. I might have to throw down some cash for this bullshit this week, so I can't stress enough: ALWAYS DO SYSTEM RESTORE.
Anyway, I'd be remiss if I waited too long to document the Hip Hop Lives show from Friday, and lose what details I still remember.

My man Christian's birthday was Sunday, and for part of my staggered gift process we went to the Ghostface/Rakim/Brother Ali show I have been waiting for ever since I missed Ghostface's Spank Rock and Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival performances. This was notable for being only the second time I felt at one with a crowd at any show, last one being the Roots/Lupe Fiascogate show last spring. I was taken aback by the number of Wu stans (again, mostly white males, who I appreciate for keeping Wu standom alive) on line, as well as this being the most number of late 20's hood cats I've ever seen at any show (since I don't go to those wack BB King's/Knitting Factory rap shows).

Seriously. The blunts were sparked about 4 mins into people being inside of Nokia. Theere was an odd sprinkle of teenage hipster, but it was an even divide between white hip-hop fans that were definitely at Rock the Bells, and 90's cats that, by some stroke of luck, kept up with Ghostface even as he became a critical darling and the fourth post of the hipster bed of rappers (with Clipse, Cam'Ron, and Lil' Wayne). After some wait and an awesome heavily-latin mini-set by the Rhythm Roots All Stars, Brother Ali came on. I hate Rhymesayers and Def Jux, and I don't listen to boring music or current NY rap, so I didn't know any of the guy's catalog. I did know he was on Rhymesayers and that he was an albino, and I predicted he'd have to be, logically, pretty good to overcome that, since fact is, having any sort of physical malady or trait that makes you not "look normal" is a hindrance in the arts.

And he was. If there was any doubt of tonight's theme, it was that it was going to be the real of the classic MC as defined by the Golden Era rubric. No Saigon/Jim Jones/Ringtone Rap bullshit. Pure crowd control and A LOT of onstage reverence for the icons of the canon, including those on the tour themselves during Ali's set. The guy definitely has presence and rhyming ability and even has some really neat (yes, neat) songs about being yourself and his son and sneaks in references to his albinism. He did lose the crowd from time to time with three songs that seemed to have the same happy-go-lucky faux-70's pop beat styles (as interpreted by the band, who were TIGHT), but he got them back whenever he freestyled his written raps (lolz) and invoked his touring partners as legends. And surprisingly, he had fans in the audience that knew every word. But still, fuck Atmosphere.

Ghost was second, which worked out because C needed to rest his back and legs from standing and we could do that during Rakim's set. I went apeshit. I went retarded. I recited every lyric except the shit from Supreme Clientele, which, except for parts of tracks and most of "Nutmeg" (which he didn't play despite me and this guy screaming for it) I couldn't memorize for the life of me ever. Which was also a problem during the set. The show was amazing and the band's renditions of shit like "Apollo Kids" and "The Champ" were incredible, but Ghost seemed to forget that despite everyone being Wu stans and loving his body of work, his lyrics aren't exactly the catchiest. Dude is complex, so I have to defend the crowd when he eventually got noticeably vexed that his first four songs didn't have the same singalong effect as when he did some Wu acapella's to test the crowd and make us prove ourselves (He did "Shimmy Shimmy Ya", "Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nothing Ta Fuck Wit", "CREAM", and Deck's "Triumph" verse, which I can proudly say I destroyed, yelling like an asshole in the crowd from stage left). Which worked great, except, just like I do personally, the crowd hilariously forgot the second half of Deck's verse, since it sort of loses momentum halfway through (or maybe because the beat changes). But Starks did his "Ice Cream" verse, "Criminology", "Fish", "Back Like That", "Holla", two shitty Theodore Unit tracks, one shitty Bulletproof Wallets track, "Cherchez La Ghost", "Be Easy", "Daytona 500", "Run", and maybe some other tracks I forgot.

I was still disappointed, just because Ghost has, bar none, the best catalog of any rapper, and one of the best catalogs ever (only one wack album. COME ON), so he could do two hours and I'd be stoked. I wanted to hear every fucking song, especially interpreted by the impeccable Rhythm Roots All Stars, but nah, he seemed pissed and ended with "Run" and left. I recall him getting vexed and saying that being his hometown, we shouldn't bullshit and play the wall and we should be more hype than Utah, and what we give him is what he gives back. This is what led to the Wu verse sing-along test, and I don't think he left satisfied with the crowd participation or reaction, despite still getting a lot more out of a NY crowd than most performers (what can I say? We suck.), and he gave a stern-ass warning to give more to Rakim, which I don't think happened.

I was more curious than interested in seeing Rakim perform. I like a lot of Rakim/Eric B. tracks, but none of their albums as a whole, although few pre-90's rap albums are that solid, anyway, save for the first three Boogie Down Productions albums. I was also, on principle, pissed to see 25-35 people at least leave after Ghost was done. Where I come from, if you pay more than $12 for a ticket, fucking stay, or you don't deserve to have the income you so flippantly throw away. Anyway, me and C rested our weary legs and backs (we're out of shape) for a while, and wished for free non-fountain water. After watching Rakim do a few tracks on the big screen downstairs, I wanted to catch the rest of the set, which was fucking awesome. Those tracks hit even harder live, and though the mic system robs all of the MC's of their personal vocal nuances and only enhanced the fact that Rakim has lost most of his measured smoothness and adopted this strong grimy accent of late, I delighted in hearing classic track after classic track. Rakim made a fatal error, though. He ended with, I think, "Microphone Fiend", and had prefaced it by saying it was the last track. Then, as everyone was rushing out, he went into more songs. I felt bad for the guy, but that was a dumb move on his part. It was maybe half an hour to one and everyone there was probably planning on going to the club or something afterwards. Still, like when I saw Slayer's boring ass three years ago, it was good to cross Rakim off the "need-to-see" list.

Strangely enough, I regret not seeing Ghost the other two times this year even more now. I would see that dude 50 times if I could. HITS FOR DAYS, B.

Some notes:

-Ghost did a tribute to those who died, discussing that his brother died last year on ODB's birthday and that ODB's birthday had just passed, all while playing "I Ain't Mad At Cha". He said it was Pac's best joint (I actually think "I Get Around", "Hit 'Em Up", "2 of Amerika's Most Wanted" and "Dear Mama" are better, but, meh) and paid tribute to him and Biggie. So, being me, when he big-upped Pac, I yelled as loud as I could, "FUCK THAT NIGGA!!!". C thought it was funny.

-I like Cappadonna, despite the fact that he sucks. More for his interesting stage presence and wacky moves and his affinity with Ghost. But the dude's "darts" are pretty dull. I could've done without three "freestyles".

-LOL @ Shawn Wigz getting sonned all night. First, his mic got taken away so Cappadonna could do some songs, which left him bouncing and looking dumb on stage (he's always offbeat, BTW). Then, when he got it back during "Ice Cream", he seemed to forget to not say the "nigga" part of "...watch these rap niggas get all up in your guts". So, he would intermittently slip-up and say it, make a face of realization, not move his mouth when it was time to say "nigga", then continue to fuck-up and say "nigga". Sad, considering the Wigz in Shawn Wigz probably stands for "Wigger" and he might've been named so by Ghost. Dude is really goofy, but then, so is all of Theodore Unit. Then again, Theodore Unit>Ice Water. Not saying a lot, but still.

-Ghost is intimidating when he's pissed.

-I would've loved to have seen Sun God out there with his dad or at least Ghost and Rakim do a duet, but nah, no avail.

-I agree that Rakim is legendary and changed the course of hip-hop, but maybe people would hold him higher in their rankings of the best rappers or not walk out one song too early during his set if he could get his shit together and make a good album. or any album, at all.

-The theme was really pounded through when Ghost played some Kane beats during his set and rhymed over them. Poor Big Daddy Kane. Had he had better albums, kids would care more.

-LOL @ me wanting to congratulate Shawn Wigz when I saw him in the downstairs area after Rakim's set was closing.

You Thought You Wasn't Gon See Me? I'm The Osirus Of This Shit!

Fact: Wu are the apex of rap, or, as RZA always says "hip-hop in its purest form". All the interviews, videos, albums, the aesthetics, the mythology, the universal appeal, the fact that they're both a group and an assembly of solo stars, Wu-Tang Clan is the embodiment of all things hip-hop. Coincidentally, when they're off their game, so is the majority of the art form.

I thought it fitting, with the subdued level of anticipation for 8 Diagrams coming in December and the always prevalent geek-level discussion about the Wu, to talk about the song that made me a fan, since I was really poppy until around 14 or 15 and liked almost everything that got played on MTV for a while and wasn't really interested in checking for albums until late in junior high.

I focus on this song, of the final years of Wu's visibility as a group over "Gravel Pit", "Protect Ya Neck (The Jump Off)", and the amazing "I Can't Go To Sleep" because, for one, its fucking ill. Two, its the only one of those four singles without a hook, which is still a big accomplishment to have this long ass grimy hardcore rap track with 9 dudes spitting and no hook be a big radio and MTV hit. Plus, Wu-Tang Forever pushed like 8 mil.

Now, besides how unorthodox it is as a single, its an amazing example of subtlety in songwriting and arranging and how to approach a pop song. First off, Deck's verse, which pretty much ruins the song for the rest of the Wu, with only 4 verses coming even anywhere near the quality of INS' opening.

"I bomb atomically, Socrates' philosophies
and hypotheses can't define how I be droppin these
mockeries, lyrically perform armed robbery
Flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me
Battle-scarred shogun, explosion when my pen hits
tremendous, ultra-violet shine blind forensics
I inspect view through the future see millenium
Killa Beez sold fifty gold sixty platinum
Shackling the masses with drastic rap tactics
Graphic displays melt the steel like blacksmiths
Black Wu jackets Queen Beez ease the guns in
Rumblin patrolmen tear gas laced the function
Heads by the score take flight incite a war
Chicks hit the floor, die-hard fans demand more
Behold the bold soldier, control the globe slowly
Proceeds to blow swingin swords like Shinobi
Stomp grounds I pound footprints in solid rock
Wu got it locked, performin' live on your hottest block"

Even recited acapella, the cadence and bounce of his verse is ridiculous. Its probably one of my favorites of all time, along with a bunch of stuff from Ready To Die, "Hit Em Up", and AZ's verse on "Life's a Bitch". Judging by how RZA chooses the cats to lace his tracks based on who makes the hottest rhymes for it (good in-house quality control, which explains why U-God is so scarce on albums...) at the moment, I can definitely imagine the rest of the Wu being both wowed and frustrated by Deck's verse, which alone makes an argument for checking his solo records. Plus, he pretty much wrecks the much more even, quality wise, "Protect Ya Neck (The Jump Off)". Dude's flow is on point, period.

At this point in the song, shit is wrecked. The gauntlet is laid, and interestingly enough, whoever survives without sucking implies the caste structure of the Wu. Example, the first stars of the Clan were ODB, Meth, and Rae, and the perception was Meth was the best. Unfortunately, Meth was just the first one to be fully developed as an MC, not counting GZA who is always on some crazy meditative 43-year-old man shit that never fails. Seriously, the guy is almost creepily detached and wise-sounding. Whereas RZA pretends to know what he's talking about, GZA seems to know just about everything. But poor, poor Meth got burned out, and his only good album (Tical 2000) got shitted on by most rap fans. The issue with Meth has always been, since "Method Man", that along with Ghost, he has the best flow in the Wu, but as opposed to Ghost, never really says anything good lyrically. Its not as if Meth's lyrics are terrible, they aren't most of the time. The issue is his verses have no endurance, they fall apart halfway through and he isn't very interesting most of the time. It reminds me of watching "Method Man" in 2004 and going "wow...uh...most of his verses were awful". So its fitting that he's the first to be fed to the wolves on the track and sort of put him in his place as a good and charismatic rapper, but nothing more.

So, Wu went through three phases of caste in the 15 or so year existence of the group. Between the first album, first phase solo releases and second album, it went:

Top Tier: Gza Rza ODB Meth
Second Tier: Raekwon Ghost InspectahDeck
Weed Carriers/Fill-Ins:MastaKilla U-God

From Wu-Tang Forever to the second round of solo releases (the end of RZA's 5 year plan), it looks like this:

Top Tier: Rza ODB Gza Ghost
Second Tier:Meth Raekwon Inspectah Deck
Weed Carriers/Fill-ins:MastaKilla U-God

And you could argue that at the moment its:

Top Tier: Ghost Gza Rza(more for behind the scenes than rapping)
Weed Carriers/Fill-Ins: Everyone else

So with Meth's underwhelming bars, there's less tension and the next verse will seem really good, in theory. The pressure is off, and Meth took the bullet and caught a Kennedy. Which is lucky for Cappadonna, because he sucks and his breezy, unobtrusive verse passes by like a pallet cleanser. After listening to this song a lot lately, I noticed how the effect of so many disparate styles and rappers affects the feeling and flow of the song. As opposed to a sonic dynamic, the same loop rocks through the song and the dynamic of the song is retained in the difference between all the members of the group, which is an interesting occurrence that I don't think could be intentionally replicated. However, there is a sense of something like parts or a suite as after the first third, ODB (where the fuck was he to make such a weird out-of-touch, rushed sounding adlib?) comes in with his Wu hype, and then the beat's second loop, the repeating vocal riff over strings starts for U-God's verse. Not really that great in the scheme of Wu-Tang as an MC, but he drops a great verse in that fragment sentence flow of his where he seems to break everything into measured spaces.

Next up, RZA comes on and gets on his RZA shit. Besides being the founder, leader, and producer for Wu (and oddly enough, part of one of the two families within Wu, as he's cousins to GZA and ODB and Rae and Ghost are half-brothers), he's also fucking weird as an MC. All these things keep him in the top tier of Wu constantly, and I quickly grew to love how he's purposefully off beat. He can rap, but he tends to just fucking say "Fuck it" and throw in as much consonance, assonance, and garbled rhymes as he can and just go a beat or so over the snare, making his last words occupy an awkward aural space of inherited importance and putting emphasis on everything. And RZA's verses are just always so cool...I don't know what it is about him and ODB, but they're always wildin out on tracks. Plus, he wore wings in the video and comes up with great aesthetics. Seriously, the whole egomaniacal god-like nature of the "Triumph" clip is perfect.

So RZA drops the second good post-INS verse, which we will now refer to as the "post-9/11" verse. Next up, GZA, who never falters, so we move on to Masta Killa. Now, on the whole idea of dynamics and pacing in a rap song, particularly this, what I would hate on any other track worked perfectly as Masta Killa's asshole ruminations about pretentious 5% bullshit (seriously, he reeks of arrogance on here. At least when GZA invokes a deity or elder perspective, he's LIKABLE). Plus, he pretty much doesn't flow at all for his verse, he talks on beat almost like he's giving a speech, which both acts as a good twin for GZA and buffer for RZA's recklessness while putting a second dramatic peak to the song. It almost sounds like the Wu manifesto, which makes it real interesting, especially in light of friction between Ghost and the rest of the Wu of late, when Ghost starts his verse with "Yo, FUCK THAT". I always laugh when I hear that, because it comes in grimy and dismissive , razing all the haughtiness of the Masta Killa verse in just a few words.Predictably, since until Supreme Clientele they were musically inseparable, Ghost and Raekwon end the song and video together, straying from everyone else on the track by strictly keeping to hood themes and avoiding any abstraction or overt 5% prophetic shit-talking. And of everyone in the group, the two were always the best at crime talk, anyway.

It's interesting that the last section of the song is thematically completely different from the rest, seeing as in reference to how some of the Wu gave B.I.G shit around Ready To Die, Method said something along the lines of "That's just Ghost and Rae. They don't like anybody". Though everyone in the Wu seems to be cool with Cappadonna, RZA and ODB, it always felt like Ghost and Rae, for that time period, just liked themselves the most. Regardless, the two are, after GZA, the most lyrically complex in the group and succeeded in each dropping great verses, which was probably helped by going last. I also have to add that its odd that Ghost's vocals sound like they were done at a completely different time and place, based on the sound of the recording, which sort of again hint at how the two half-brothers are the loners of the group.

Its crazy to me to have 9 guys all spit 9 different flows and verses on a track with just one rhythm, which itself is a feat considering how most of the Wu rapped the same way on the first album, and that they avoided biting the flow utilized by Deck at the onset of the track. Its tough knowing he killed it and found the sweet spot, in a way, and that you have to work harder to keep your individuality all the while being inspired.

Now, considering the first four records, it'd be interesting if there ends up being a classic group cut on 8 Diagrams. Fishscale's "9 Milli Bros." was decent, so hopefully they can improve upon that, but I doubt they'll be able to get anywhere near "Triumph" or "Protect Ya Neck (The Jump Off)", the latter of which has one of the most ridiculous Ghostface verses of all time.



"The swift chancellor flex the white-gold tarantula..." -Raekwon