Showing posts with label T.I.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label T.I.. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Broken Glass Everywhere


Don't push him, he's close to the edgeAs a young white kid growing up in the suburbs, I listen to nothing but hip-hop throughout the Middle School years. My love of the genre has died down as I have grown mostly due to the blandness rap has gotten with it endless talk of bling over the same bland beats. I was ecstatic last year when VH1 started up their Hip-Hop Honors awards giving props to the innovators and reminding me of a time when rap was truly king. Last year honored some of my favorites such as , , and . This years festivities did a better job of focusing on the inductees with only one performance of a song not made famous by an inductee whereas last year there was about three or four. Other highlights included:

- was the first inductee. I have always been on the fence about him as he was the guy who brought love songs into the culture. Buy on the other hand, Mama Said Knock You Out is a top 5 rap song of all time. LL is paid tribute by and , the black Britney (can’t sing, moderately attractive but shows a lot of skin). But how much of a tribute can it be when both need guided vocals to sing the songs.

No one has been rapping this hard since Ice-T- Next up is one of the mainstays of my Middle School years, Ice-T. To this day I can recite both the clean and dirty versions of New Jack Hustler. Ice-T is joined on stage by the only other gangsta rapper who has somehow crept into the mainstream . Had anyone guess back in '92 that one would be on the most successful TV show franchise and the other would be doing commercials with Lee Iacocca, you would have been accuse of dipping into one of their stashes.

- Many point to Rapper’s Delight as the start of rap, but The Message by is where hip-hop started. I did find it odd that during there performance of the song the threw in a line from Matthew Wilder’s Break My Stride just like Diddy did back when he was Puff Daddy when he sampled The Message for Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down. What was stranger was Morbidly Obese Joe inclusion in the whole thing.

- are next with a hyped performance with as the first time they performed together. Am I mistaken or didn’t they perform the Whatta Man during one of the Video Music Awards. Can someone give me confirmation for this? Then during the perfomce the for some reason threw up pictures of Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, Ray Charles and I swear I saw Dave Chappelle too. Um, okay.

- I’ll go ahead and admit it, I’ve never seen .

- Who invited the dude from Entourage? Was he there just to fill the token white person quota? Wasn’t Ice-T’s wife enough?

- Kanye West comes out and give the most entertaing performance of the night. I don’t say that because of anything he did but that there was some old fat white dude in the second row that had an Art Garfunkel receding afro that had me cracking up thought the whole thing.

- The midget Jermaine Dupree comes out with charms on his watch. No wonder why anyone with credibility makes fun of the dude.

- The induction of Big Daddy Kane is next and the dude can still move. He gets a tribute from on the turntable, (or Antoine Merriwether as I like to call him), Black Thought of The Roots, and sporting a “I Love Black People” t-shirt which seems to be in response to his boss’ “George Bus hates black people” remark.

- Diddy is up last to induct his friend/meal ticket and mentioned Biggie duets album. I have a feeling I’ll pass on that. The finale with Kanye, , and wasn’t as cool as the VMA tribute, but the choir was a nice touch.

If I were on the selection committee for Hip-Hop Honors, here is who I would nominate for the 2006 class (feel free to add anyone you would nominate in the comment section):





Tuesday, February 22, 2005

If You Know What I Mean


I have this friend who is a master at the single entendre. And of course he always finishes with the obligatory "If you know what I mean." And, sadly, I always do. Now this phrase has seeped into one of the worst pop song in recent memory, Destiny's Child's Soldier. Now I was totally on the Destiny's Child bandwagon circa the Survivor era. During my Best Songs of 2001icon countdown DC charted 3 times (Bootylicious - #6; Survivor - #8; Emotions - #43) and Beyoncé has made my countdown in recent years by herself. But Soldier is just bad on so many levels. First of which is the previously mentioned, "... if you know what I mean." And in the song it preceded by, "Known to carry big things..." As much as I don't want to, sadly I know what they mean. But there are things they talk about that I don't know what they mean. Like, "He knows how to split the money three ways." What do they mean by that? Does that mean the three girls get the money while the guy gets none? It makes no logical sense.

Then there are the rappers. First up you have T.I. whom for some reason thinks he is hard. I have no respect for a rapper who claims he's hard but when it comes down to it I could beat him in a fight. The guy even wears his hats like Antoine Merriwether of "Men on Film" fame. Then there is Lil' Wayne, who already violates one of my rules for rapper stating that all rappers with Lil' in their names suck massively (i.e. Lil' Bow Wow, Lil' Kim, Lil' Romeo and so on). Then to make thing worse, the Lil' one raps "Cash Money is an army. I'm walking with purple hearts on me." Um, does he not realize that there is real war going on right now where real soldier are earning purple hearts, not just rapping about it in a corny pop song? I doubt Lil' Wayne or the Antoine Merriwether wannabe could last one day as a real soldier.

There is another song that as might as well have a "if you know what I mean" in it, 50 Cent's Candy Shop. The line in question is, "I'll let you lick the lollipop." Or, "I'll melt in your mouth not in your hand." How sophomoric. Is this the same guy how wrote the eternally clever How to Rob? Of course that was back in the "Bashing Ja Rule" days. Unfortunately 50 has slowly become Ja Rule. Have a female R&B artist sing your hooks - check. Tell the female singer to "keep it between me and you" - check. Run with a talent less crew - check. Appeal to fourteen year old white girls - check. It's about time to have an intervention for 50 before he does a video based on a musical ala Mesmerized or worse a duet with Jennifer Lopez.