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"Hemphill sees the Hip Hop Word Count as a resource for settling arguments. “There’s a lot of disputes in rap—who influenced whom—who came first,” he said. “Everybody is always asking, ‘Who is the goat rapper, the greatest of all time?’ Mostly, it’s settled by who has the loudest voice in the room, but now people will be able to put some metrics to it. Is it the guy with the most complicated lyrics, or the most innovative? The one with the densest words? You could even answer something like ‘Which sneaker is more hip-hop, Nike or Adidas?’ ”
Hemphill entered both terms in the database. “Two hundred and fifty-two entries for Adidas, and Nike has five hundred and fifty-eight,” he said. With the reserve of the social scientist, however, he added, “But you have to take into account that Nike is way easier to rhyme than Adidas."— Alec Wilkinson talks to Tahir Hemphill about Hip Hop Word Count, a database of fifty thousand rap songs, beginning in 1979, that traces how words travel through rap music, and how slang evolves: http://nyr.kr/ZGIOib(Source: newyorker.com)
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Podcast: Making Sense of Kid Rock→
This week in the magazine, Kelefa Sanneh profiles the genre-jumping musician Kid Rock, who got his start in hip-hop, went platinum with rap-rock, and then transitioned into country music. Here Sanneh listens to Kid Rock’s music with Curtis Fox and talks about how his early years in Detroit’s hip-hop scene shaped his identity as a country-rocker. Also, Donald Hall on what reading poetry has in common with oral sex (spoiler: vowels). Listen.
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Rick Ross and the Life Style of a Boss
What matters is not the rap sheet but the rhyme, and the spin the m.c. can give to the trade. Nas generally paints a grim picture of it; Clipse offer a cynical endorsement of dealing; Jeezy sounds both thrilled and scared by the amount of power that drug dealers have. Ross has become a respected rapper by depicting the life style of a boss, or a don, two words that he loves. He never cares to unpack the morals of the drug trade—what he revels in is the security and relief of being fabulously wealthy. This is what his voice sells, the way Sinatra once sold an implacable but supple kind of confidence.
-In this week’s issue, Sasha Frere on Rick Ross’s confidence game: http://nyr.kr/xZRrSi
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My favorite two hip-hop albums yawed towards what might have once been thought non-commercial, though it’s hard to say if that distinction will survive. A collaboration between MC Ride, the drummer Zach Hill, and the keyboardist Andy Morin, the Death Grips trio self-released “Exmilitary,” which has little use for anything that slows down time or blurs the edges. Start with the video for “Guillotine” and move on—the album is one long, wide-awake, multi-colored holler. Ishamel Butler, veteran of nineties group Digable Planets, brought his mysterious Shabazz Palaces to Sub Pop records and created “Black Up” with various unnamed collaborators. It’s a marvel of details that you can’t initially hear, but which eventually surround you as Butler raps, sounding no more wound up than he did twenty years ago. In the year of disorientation, Shabazz Palaces created the clearest, loveliest fog.
- Sasha Frere-Jones breaks down the best hip-hop of 2011: http://nyr.kr/u6OfbU
Read more of Frere-Jones on the best music of 2011: -
The Fame Monster: Drake’s unenviable success
“Look What You’ve Done” is typical of the combination of soft sounds and hard truths on “Take Care.” Over a gentle piano figure, and backing vocals by the little-known but widely respected R.&B. singer Static Major, Drake raps quickly and nimbly about the support that he received from his aunt, sneaking into her pool after school dances, borrowing her Lexus, and discussing with her his ambivalence about an acting career. He eventually pays back the money he and his mother borrowed - their “checks bounced, but we bounced back.” Imagine Will Smith losing his sunny disposition and rapping about suburbia with a straight face, and being convincing enough not to sound soft.
- In this week’s issue, Sasha Frere-Jones writes about Drake’s new album, “Take Care” [subscription required]: http://nyr.kr/tYF9mt
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In this week’s issue, Kelefa Sanneh writes about the hip-hop collective Odd Future and its mysteriously missing member Earl Sweatshirt (sub req). In the course of reporting the story, Sanneh tracked Earl down and asked him about the Free Earl movement that sprung up among Odd Future fans after his disappearance. Earl had this to say:
“Initially I was really pleased that all these people claimed that they wanted me released because I thought that translated into ‘they care,’” Earl wrote. “So time progresses and the fan base gets bigger and the ‘Free Earl’ chants get louder but now with the ‘Free Earl’ chants come a barely indirect ‘Fuck Earl’s Mom’ and in the blink of an eye my worry changes from ‘will there still be this hype when I get back’ to ‘Oh shit I just inspired a widespread movement of people who are dedicated to the downfall of my mom.’”
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This week in the magazine, Calvin Tomkins writes about the life and work of artist George Condo. In this audio slide show, Tomkins talks about Condo’s work with Kanye West for the rapper’s latest album cover. Takeaway: Kanye wanted the cover to get banned.
Above: One of Condo’s proposed covers for the Kanye album.
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Literary Rap Battle
Duelling m.c.s, nose-to-nose freestyle battles, coast-versus-coast wars of words or worse—the history of rap is a history of confrontation. So it makes sense that the first big university-press anthology of the genre has generated an intriguing and rather tense literary smackdown.
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In keeping with the hip-hop theme of some of our recent posts, check out Alec Wilkinson’s profile of Gil Scott-Heron, the musician frequently called the “godfather of rap,” in this week’s magazine. (Subscribers can read the full text; others can buy access to the issue via the digital edition.) Here Monique de Latour narrates a slide show of her never-before-seen photographs of Scott-Heron, whom she met in 1995. She talks about their relationship, his musical performances, and his struggles with drug abuse.
