Heavy Rotation Part V

Back once again......
So the track for this week comes from the Prometheus of Hip Hop, Aesop Rock.
If you don't know Aesop Rock, he's pretty much the bastard spawn of Bob Dylan, John Milton & Biggie Smalls (Now there's a vivid image...)
But yeah, he is good. Crazy stream of consciousness multi-syllable rhymes good.
Night Life is taken from the Daylight EP, the follow up release to Labor Days (if you don't own it, go out and buy it. Don't download it though, you slack bitches. Spend some moolah, the governments about to drop us nearly a whole stack, so spend the 20 spot on a dope CD). The track itself is a lyrical reworking of a single from Labor Days called Daylight.
Unlike a standard remix, Night Life takes the lyrical structure of Daylight, and by reworking the words pretty much completely changes the meaning and feeling of the track. Where Daylight is positive, Night Life is negative. Where Daylight is uplifting, Nightlight is.... well, you get the point.
There is good reason for this though. During the making of this EP, Aesop went insane. Not the kooky, wild, "my mom is just so craaazy" kind of insane, the real kind of insane. And it shows through on these lyrics. Observe the change from Daylight (Still relatively sane)
And I'm sleeping now, yeah the settlers laugh;
You won't be laughing when your covered wagons crash.
You won't be laughing when the buzzards drag your brothers flags to rags,
You won't be laughing when your front lawn is spangled with epitaphs,
You won't be laughing.
to Night Life (total Nut Bar)
And I can't sleep now, Yeah, the police'll laugh,
You won't be laughing when your covered wagons crash.
You won't be laughing when you're hosted by the ghost of Christmas past,
You won't be laughing when your blow up doll's got a headache
and won't give up the ass,
You won't be laughing.
So as we can see, losing your mind is no joke. Even the chorus of the track goes from mad positive:
All I ever wanted was to pick apart the day,
put the pieces back together my way.
All I ever wanted was to pick apart the day,
put the pieces back together my way.
To scary. Just plain scary.
All I ever wanted was to pick apart the day,
Swallow up the pieces,
Spit 'em at your species.
Reachin' the city of lost barnacles and leeches,
Night-light got me when the daylight went to evening.
Yeah.
But Aesop got better, and returned from the abyss to the edge of sanity where he built a cottage, which allows him to write crazy epic poems without wanting to die. And the world, and Hip Hop is better off for it.
So here's both tracks, for your consideration and comparison.
Daylight
and
Night Light
Peace, Kiddies

Heavy Rotation Part IV

So for part IV of heavy rotation, I thought i'd give you guys a treat. Not that the other tracks have been weak, but this is an extra special HR.
DJ Jaguar Skills put together what may be the craziest thing i've heard in quite some time. 800 tracks, played over 48 minutes, in essentially chronological order charting the rise of Hip Hop from one-time fad to the worlds most dominating form of music, language, dress sense etc.
Beginning with the Fatback Band, and their track King Tim III (unbeknownst to most laymen of Hip Hop, this is widely believed to be the first Hip Hop track ever pressed to wax, 2 years before Melle Mel came through with The Message, but that's really another story for another post) you only get 6 seconds of King Tim before we're onto the next one. And then the next one. And then the next one. And so on, through 797 banging tracks. Don't worry if you're not feeling the current selection, as you only have to wait 6 seconds for a new beat.
But seriously, this is an awesome accomplishment, and well worth listening to, as it gives you a great feel for how the sound of hip hop has changed since those days way back when.

For those interested, track list can be found here
Grab that Bad Boy right here
Props to Jaguar Skills, obviously.
Peace.

Heavy Rotation Part III

Lil' Wayne - Best Thing Yet

It was always going to happen. In fact, i'm surprised it didn't happen earlier. In fact, i'm surprised all these Heavy Rotations' haven't been Lil Wayne tracks.
There's not really an awful lot that needs to be said about this track. Off The Empire's "The Drought 6: The Rebirth",this track shows Wayne back at his lyrical best. Still not talking about anything more susbtatial than cars, chicks, and why he's the best ever, but who cares?
Stick it out until the last verse, it's pretty much stream of consciousness rapping. Some wild shit.

Grab that bad boy right here.

Heavy Rotation Part I

So this will usually happen on a Sunday night, but my mate Bunners knocked me out with a fat bowl last night, so it's happening today.
This weekly (hopefully) post will be to highlight whatever track has been heavy in the rotation of songs i've been listening too. It won't necesssarily be a track released the previous week; in fact knowing the state of hip hop at the moment it probably won't be from the previous week unless it's a good week for Hip Hop.
It'll just be a track that is good enough to get me to stop listening to Get This for a while, could be from years ago, could be something crazy, could be a rarity.
Or it could be none of these things.

So, part I.

Promoe - Headache
Download




Promoe (Mårten Edh) is a Swedish rapper, and a founding member of Swedish hip hop group the Looptroop. This track has been getting the first play of the morning for quite some time now, and will continue to do so.
Taken from White Man's Burden, it's been a while since i've heard a track that uses interplay between the rapper and the sample so well. Headache uses a decent selection of samples from Julie Driscoll's A Word About Colour, taking the chorus as it's own (as do so many tracks these days), but unlike most chipmunk soul beats released these days, the original inspiration for the beat is brought in throughout the verses themselves, in a variety of different ways.
As highlighted below, the Julie Driscoll track individual lines of A Word about Colour are sometimes brought in to link one bar to the next. Sample is in parentheses:
"My semen's sedated from stress and toxic waste,
my whole being's mutated;(my soul)
don't even mention my soul,
it's been gone for so long...."
A clever and mellifluous way to link the original feel of the sampled piece into the new track, and it is put to better use a little further on when samples are used to rhyme 2 lines, and close out the verse:
"Stumblin around in a state of mass (confusion),
and i see no solution, (confusion)
but to turn up the music to soothe this (pain that i'm feeling).

This continues throughout the track to great effect, increasing the effect of both the beat itself and the potent lyrics. And the lyrics are potent enough without needing to be propped by the beat. Again, keeping with the theme of the original sample, the track is heavily politically motivated, although the lyrics lean more towards highlighting the feelings of inadequacy and helplessness that accompany people who feel left out of the political system about the issues For example,
"We spiral downwards,
inbreeding a bunch of spineless cowards
livin' in an illusion we define as ours.
Nationalism's that kind of prison
we assign all power,
desperately clinging on to it until the final hour..."
As Rex Hunt might say, this is dizzy stuff folks.
Ghostface raps over "Superman Lover", and uses the concept to structure the feeling of his rhyme, but doesn't really play with the original song during his verse at all, and most MC's rhyming over a track with a sample based chorus will use the first line of the chorus to dismount from the verse e.g. Lil' Wayne's "Best Thing Yet":
"And that's because I know the sun will raise again,
And when it do, Im'a praise the Man.
They say "You crazy Wayne!" but I just bake a man,
And thats Ms. Baker saying that i'm the...(Best Thing Yet)"
Nice, but not nearly as impressive as appropriating a whole track into your lyrics.


Well, that's it. Enjoy the track, and as an added bonus, here's the original inspiration for you to compare the two.
Julie Driscoll - A Word About Colour
Now, i'm going to drink Vodka and Cranberry and watch The Wire until I crash out.
Peace,
~Broke