Silver Jacket

Category: Music

  • The Rapper as Comedian



    Hip hop has long been a venue for laughter. Consider songs like Eminem’s “My Name Is” (“Dr. Dre, don’t just stand there, operate”) and Digital Underground’s “The Humpty Dance” (“I use a word that don’t mean nothing, like looptid”). But even songs that on the surface appear hard sparkle with puns and one-liners. The lyrical intermingling of menace and mirth may derive from a tradition in Black culture known as the Dozens, a game in which contestants trade snaps, aka yo’ mama jokes, hoping to both intimidate opponents and entertain onlookers.

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  • Rapping Is Wrapping

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    Rapping is very meta. A lot of rapping is about how good you are at rapping. Or about how successful and wealthy you are—thanks to being good at rapping.

    Sometimes you think rappers might be rapping about something other than rapping, like The Genius here in "Liquid Swords":

    I'm on a mission that niggas say is impossible,
    But when I swing my swords they all choppable.
    I be the body dropper, the heartbeat stopper,
    Child educator plus head amputator.

    But it's all just a metaphor for rapping. The next lines in the verse:

    Cause niggas' styles are old like Mark 5 sneakers.
    Lyrics are weak, like clock radio speakers.

    GZA amputates your head lyrically. The "s" in "swords" is merely stylistic.

    When rap is completely meta, just a pure feedback loop devoid of any story or lesson, the fun lies in the rapper's creative flourishes, the ornamentation on the perpetual motion machine. There are uncountable ways to say "I'm good (at saying I'm good (at saying I'm good (at saying…)))"

    But even given rap's overwhelming self-referentiality, I was struck recently when I re-listened to the R&B song "Feels Good" by Tony! Toni! Toné!.

    Here are the lyrics to the rap interlude.

    Mosadies the Mellow, quite a nice fellow.
    Met three T, hit a rhyme acapello.
    They had the rhythm and I had the rhyme,
    So then I hit it that one more time.
    It worked out and then they worked it in.
    Tony Toni Tone has done it again!

    As you can see, nearly the entire rap (five of the six lines) is about the arrangement and recording of the rap. Explicitly. No fancy (s)wordplay of note. (Unless you count "it worked out" as brag-worthy braggadocio.) What I'm saying is, I think this might be the most pointless rap interlude ever.

    Any other contenders?

  • Big Bopper

    Susan recorded my back as I danced at Bioluminescence (yes, on a boat). So sneaky!

  • Matt Plays with Fire.

    Last month at the first Vitamin B party I did a fair amount of fire spinning on the roof. A couple of people recorded me and one video made it online: (Shizaru lights me up around 0:30)

    I haven't been spinning with fire very long, but I've been doing poi about a year, and this is the first time I've actually seen what I look like. I'm quite relieved to see that the practice has been worthwhile and I do not look completely goofy.

  • The Other Fresh Prince (and son)

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    A week ago I saw a hip hop show at Knitting Factory in Tribeca. The headliner was a Boston MC named Edan (who can rock a mic with one hand while cutting records with the other), but I was no less excited to see one of my favorite producers, Prince Paul, open for him. And PP did something new. For the first time, he performed with his 17-year-old son, Paul Fresh, aka DJ P. Together they go by Negroes on Ice. Note the appropriate  "Jesus was black" and "ICE COLD" tees in the pic.

    Now, Prince Paul’s been on the block for a hot minute (going back to Stetsasonic and De La Soul in the 1980’s), and I imagine growing up with your dad being such a legend would earn a kid some props at school. DJ P also has his own skills as a DJ, and he’s good looking to boot, so I’m sure he’s got a healthy alpha male ego. But still, being 17 and performing with your dad on stage? That’s enough to give a kid a breakdown. Not to mention that fact that Paul the Elder kept reaching over and tweaking Junior’s sliders and knobs. I kept watching, waiting to see just a flash of an annoyed "Gah! Dad, get your hands off my consoles! I can do it myself!" look on his face. But not a one. He just kept bopping his head, switching up tracks, smiling at the audience. That is one cool cat.

    It’s beautiful to see a parent pass his passion down to his offspring, and for them to meld their engagement so smoothly, but what blew me away was seeing a relationship where a teenager can take lessons from his dad in front of an audience. I could never have done that with my dad. I mean, we both love vinyl, but seriously, have you ever tried mixing Digital Underground with Roy Orbison?

  • Culture Clash

    I think Holly and I might have been the only Annie Hall / DJ Steve Aoki pair in New York this year.
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  • Gotta Have Faith

    Us3_1I don’t much care for country music. With the exception of some bluegrass and that Gourds cover of "Gin and Juice." Yet somehow Saturday night I found myself front row at the Faith Hill/Tim McGraw concert at Madison Square Garden. (In case you didn’t know, Hill and McGraw are the First Couple of country, Bible Belt royalty. Combined, they’ve sold over 60 million records, not including McGraw’s craptacular collaboration with Nelly.)

    StageSo, front row. Well, actually, there’s front row, and then there’s this. I did not know seats like this existed at concerts. The circular stage had two runways extending from the middle with five seats at the end of each runway. We had five of those seats. Sitting level with the stage, we had just a short obstacle in front of us, upon which we set our beers. Yes, we spilled beer on the stage.

    Now, if these had been artists I was a huge fan of, I would have flipped out. As it is, it’s hard not to have a good time at such a perch. The musicians kept coming over and talking to us as they played their guitars, etc. Faith stroked my hand, and I drew a fist pound from Tim. (Boo-ya.)

    Oh, and we had preshow party passes, where we hung out in a small room as Faith and Tim warmed up, all for the amazingly low price of…FREE. All you country-luvin’ haters, keep hatin’, but happenstance happens. My friend Lauren is a yoga teacher, and one of her clients is the production manager for the tour. Hey, it’s not my fault.

    FaithSoap-luvin’ haters may recall my trip to the Days of Our Lives 40th Anniversary Party a few months ago, where I pretended, poorly, to belong. "So what do you do? Oh, you’re the star of the show? Um, that must be nice." Hard to miss the stars in this show, but I still felt a little ‘baggy when they were just feet away and I couldn’t sing along with the rest of the crowd. Gosh, I hope I didn’t hurt their feelings.

    Two quick notes on their outfits. Faith wore Pumas that night (as did I). I highly approved. And Tim wore tight jeans covered in crosses made of jewels. In fact, I’m pretty sure he Bedazzled them himself. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a piece of clothing so Christian and so gay at the same time. With the possible exception of that technicolor dreamcoat Joseph used to flit around in. But hey, I don’t mean to judge. Some of my best friends are Christian.

    [Pic 1: Jae, Lauren, me, a bit of Jess, taken by Leta.]
    [Pic 2: The stage from our seats.]
    [Pic 3: Faith crooning to me, with Tim in the background doing his cover of "I Have No Legs" from "Kids."]

  • Ecstatic Static

    EcstasyYour grandparents were right. Rock and roll will rot your brain. (And if they know what trance music was, they’d be scared shitless.)

    For years scientists have debated whether using ecstasy causes brain damage. (With no small amount of drama, thanks to the likes of George Ricaurte and his bobbled bottle debacle, the Hwang Woo-Suk-tastophe of the ecstasy wars.) But  stimulant studies regularly rely on mice and monkeys distanced from human habits of use. Who sits in a silent cage and pops pills for fun?

    To address the issue, Michelangelo Iannone and a team of scientists in Italy threw a rave for their rats. Well, with a few differences. Instead of music, there was loud static, and instead of scalp massages, there were holes in the scull and electrodes on the brain. The goal was to test if acoustic stimulation would affect the neurotoxicity of MDMA (ecstasy.)

    The results? Yes. Blasting white noise at the maximum volume Italian nightclubs allow (95 dB) decreased neural activity in rats dosed with E. Depending on dosage, the brain blotto lasted from several hours to several days. You can download the report, published last week, here, or read about it here.

    DiscomickeyIn the paper, the authors admit, "it is very difficult to indicate the mechanism underlying these effects." So I wondered whether the form the auditory stimuli took mattered. Listening to static at 95 dB can give anyone a headache, but I know subjectively (from taking E at raves as a teenager) that music can greatly enhance the experience of a trip. And I know objectively (from programming neural networks on computers) that random input like static can destroy the organization of a system. A high noise-to-signal ratio washes out meaningful relationships between neurons.

    I asked Iannone if using input with some structure, such as actual music, instead of white noise would make a difference. He replied: "We made a lot of preliminary (and unpublished) experiments to assess if there is a difference between the two stimuli, using a brief ‘techno music’ brain. And I can say that there is no difference (in our hands) between discomusic and loud noise, in terms of effects." Oh well. Actually, it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s no difference. At the level of the effects that they’re measuring, the brain wouldn’t pay much mind to the informational complexity of the input. It’s all noise to the neurons.

    Fortunately, the brain works at many levels. Under the right circumstances the benefits of E and other drugs can far outweigh the risks. Ecstasy was widely used in psychotherapy until it was outlawed in 1985, and today, researchers such as John Halpern at Harvard are fighting to bring it back. Click here to read about the attempts of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) to make ecstasy an FDA-approved prescription medicine.

    GlowstickIn the Italian study, the authors report: "One of the questions which need addressing by research is how other factors typical of the ‘rave scene’, such as sensorial auditory (techno music) stimuli, can affect higher neural functions…" Now that they’ve tackled music, expect future studies to involve tripping rats subjected to candy necklaces and glow sticks.

    Prepare for a whole new species of e-tard.

  • Double Trouble

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    BREAKING: Los del Río, the Spanish music duo responsible for the tragic Macarena outbreak of 1995, is revealed to be German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

    Link: Reuters Photo

  • Will Someone Change God’s Diaper Already?

    Saul_williamsOn November 20 I saw Saul Williams in concert. He’s an impressive poet and an energetic performer. The only problem is, his work is very political and racially charged, and he was opening for Nine Inch Nails, a band largely followed by white, apolitical gothtards. I saw approximately (no wait, exactly) one black person in the audience.

    So, early in the set, Saul was all, "Where my niggas at?!"

    And we were all, "…"

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