One problem I have with recommending Akira Toriyama’s Dr Slump (Vizmanga with free preview, Amazon) to other people is that I always end up wanting to explain the jokes. I think it’s one of the most brutally funny comics ever made, so of course I want to focus on what I like: the jokes. But explaining jokes is for the birds. It never comes out right. I could talk about how funny it is that Arale, a little robot girl built by Dr Senbei Norimaki, wishes she had tummy missiles. It’s funny because girl robots tend to have breast missiles. Aphrodite A from Go Nagai’s Mazinger Z is the mother of mammary-based missiles systems (even though Diana A has a better design), and it’s a joke about how girl robots have to have boob missiles because the genre demands it. But by the time I get to this point, you’re bored, I’m in over my head, and we’re both suddenly very conscious of the fact that the joke is receding into the distance and nobody’s laughing.
Here’s the first two pages of Dr Slump:
One of the things I like about Dr Slump is its density. It’s a gag manga, and it packs a ton of jokes into its short chapters. It’s not a buckshot style, either, where Toriyama just throws everything at the wall to see what sticks. No, Toriyama has a very specific tone for Dr Slump, one that’s heavy on absurdity and irony. The thing is that Toriyama isn’t afraid to meander around inside of that tone. He’ll dedicate page space to rolling off joke after joke within that absurd/ironic framework, and when he’s emptied out that vein, he moves on to the next scene.
As a result of Toriyama’s willingness to blow real estate setting up and knocking down jokes, Dr Slump is leisurely paced. Things just sorta happen, characters move from room to room, and the book never really becomes tense, despite the density of the jokes per square inch. The plot of each chapter has room to breathe, but the jokes never stop. Toriyama uses establishing shots to display jokes, too, like dinosaurs who live in trees or idiot aliens. You’re guaranteed at least one solid joke per page, and sometimes six or more.
Dr Slump hits much more often than it misses. It’s a smart dumb comic, in fact, because you don’t get to make funny dumb jokes without being smart enough to think of them. The tummy missiles joke I talked about earlier is funny on the face of it. It’s an absurd request to begin with, since there’s no good reason for a little girl need missiles. It’s funny that she just assumes she needs to fight the forces of evil, too, and her nervous thought of using her “feminine charm” to fight evil is a good’un. But if you know a little manga history, the joke get even better. It works on a couple of different levels.
Part of the reason that Dr Slump is a smart dumb comic is the body language. Characters wipe their brow, rub their eyes, cock their heads, scream, and fliptake, and it all looks exactly like it’s supposed to. It’s just real enough to draw you in, despite the giant eyes and tiny noses. Look at that first page. Look at Arale’s bored yawn and bleary-eyed sniffles. That’s beautiful, and then Toriyama gives Senbei the full Looney Tunes on the very next page. He knows when to amp it up and when to tamp it down.
Most people know Toriyama’s work via Dragon Ball Z, if anything, but Dr Slump predates that. His style here is much more cartoony. Normal people have Krillin-style builds, at best, and everyone else is squat and deformed. Dr Slump is much cuter than Dragon Ball Z, and it’s for the best. Jokes this dumb and absurd just wouldn’t work if his art was more realistic. Suppaman, Toriyama’s Superman parody (also known as Sourman), would look ridiculous if he had Goku’s proportions. Instead, in Dr Slump, he’s another squat, ugly, dumpy-looking guy, the perfect contrast to Superman and full of comedic potential on first sight.
Toriyama is clearly a guy who put a lot of thought into his jokes. He employs a lot of really dumb premises in order to facilitate jokes. In the first chapter alone, Arale goes to a restaurant and orders engine oil, Dr. Norimaki has to wear a schoolgirl outfit in order to avoid being seen as a pervert when buying panties for Arale, and Arale takes an eye exam and spells out N-U-T-S. The first chapter is 14 pages long, and while other strips would thoroughly explore a specific joke like “Arale has bad eyesight” for a chapter’s worth of related gags, Toriyama hits you with one good one (two good ones in this specific instance, actually) and moves on.
But all of this is beside the point. I can’t hit on the sublime thrills found in Dr Slump because they’re so specific to the setting. Toriyama built a world that was the perfect delivery system for his jokes and sense of humor, and then he populated it with circus freaks and idiots. Everyone’s a little bit dumb, even the theoretically smart people. You have to read the comic to get the full effect. The first chapter is free on Vizmanga.com.
I’m a big Dr Slump fan, and I’m glad that Viz is finally putting it up on VizManga, since half the series is OOP and too expensive to buy used. I hope you like it as much as I did. At five bucks a volume, you’re getting more laughs per dollar than basically anything ever.
BACKUP STORY! CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CORSAIR, FEATURING EIJI NONAKA’S CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL! BUY IT USED!
One more time, since we’re about to suddenly become a post-Before Watchmen society. Buying Before Watchmen is a vote for:
-A comics industry that prizes properties over creators
-A comics industry that will effortlessly use its legal muscle to screw over creators
-A comics industry that strip-mines the past at the expense of the future
I don’t know how to put it any plainer than that. Before Watchmen is an attempt to recapture past glories with a crop of A-list talent, instead of creating new glories with that exact same talent. Azzarello? Cooke? Conner? These folks create classics, and instead of hiring them to do that, DC’s hired them to fulfill some top down publishing edict to wring all the money they can out of Moore & Gibbons Watchmen, no matter what. It’s stupid and short-sighted.
“The strength of what comics are is building on other people’s legacies and enhancing them and making them even stronger properties in their own right,” says Dan DiDio, DC co-publisher.
The first half of this sentence is so wrong as to be laughable. The second half is so corporate it’s depressing. Properties: code word, meaning “something we can exploit in other media or in the future.” They aren’t characters. They definitely aren’t art. They’re properties. I wish there was a whiny baby font so I could really get across my disgust with Didio’s position.
The stuff about building on other people’s legacies… no. That’s not the strength of comics at all. The strength of comics is the creators, the men and women armed with pens and pencils who go in and make the stories go, who craft classics that are so good that it’s like they’re daring us not to like them. I don’t like Frank Miller’s Daredevil because of what Stan Lee and Bill Everett brought to the character. I like Frank Miller’s Daredevil because Frank Miller showed me things I’d never seen before. That’s the same reason I like Gene Colan’s version, or John Romita Jr’s version, or Alex Maleev’s version.
Dan Didio is objectively wrong about the strength of comics. He’s towing the company line, which is that the dissent against Before Watchmen is about Alan Moore being pissy over people using “his” characters. That, in turn, enables all the asinine remarks about how Lost Girls or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is the same thing.
The thing is, it’s not about characters. It’s about ethics. It’s always been about ethics, no matter how often scumbags like Joseph Michael Stracynzski suggest otherwise. It’s about not taking advantage of the letter of the law to push forward with unethical projects. It’s about respecting the talent and the things they bring to the table.
But to DC, it’s about toys. “Why doesn’t Alan let us play with his toys, huh? Why’s he so stingy?” And I know that the comics press is going to enable these guys to get their way. Betting on whether or not a bunch of reviews open with some variant of “Despite the controversy, Before Watchmen is pretty good” or “While a vocal minority expressed a rabid dislike for these books, sight unseen, blah blah blah” is a sucker bet. Of course it’ll happen. Gotta protect those relationships to maintain access!
I dunno, man. Before Watchmen is loathsome. It’s going to come out and people are going to buy it, but my advice to you, my request, is that you think about the series and what it represents, and then decide if that’s the comics industry you want to build for yourself. If you just want to read Batman comics month in, month out, no matter who’s doing them, fine. That’s your thing. But if you want one where creators are respected, maybe give some thought to not buying the series, and telling DC what you think on Twitter, via email, during San Diego Comic-Con… get up in their face. Force them to talk about it in public.
A lot of creators, from indie megastars like Bryan Lee O’Malley to Big Two mainstays like Chris Roberson have expressed dissent, to put it nicely, about Before Watchmen. People care about this, and it’s not just because Watchmen was a really good comic however many years ago. It’s because creators’ rights matter, respect matters, and ethics matter. Alan Moore is one of the most respected and important people in comics. If they’ll put him to the wall, what do you think they’ll do to you? Pay attention to what these companies are saying behind the con announcements and press releases. Before Watchmen has a very clear message, and don’t be surprised when Before Watchmen II is announced next year.
I don’t want the industry that DC is trying to shore up. Not even remotely. There’s too many good comics out there to let Before Watchmen be what defines our industry and our habits as consumers.
One thing Frank Miller and I still have in common is that we looooove abused protagonists. Heroes who get shot, stabbed, blown up, families massacred, high school reunion bombed, dog killed, cat kidnapped, and beds short-sheeted are just better than most other heroes. It’s not out of any creepy gorehound fetish or anything. It’s just that a hero who has had all this stuff done to him earns the end of his story. The getback, which is one of my most favorite things in the entire world, will be glorious. “Rot in hell” spat from a mouth full of blood. Willingly getting stabbed in the stomach just so that you can grab the blade (or walk forward!), immobilize your enemy, and then smile when you take his head. That “Like hell!” moment in Superman: Birthright. Look at Elektra Assassin or your higher quality shonen manga. The hero gets knocked down. The hero gets up again. You’re never gonna keep the hero down. “If you intend to die, you can do anything.”
I like Lara Croft, bka Tomb Raider. Yes, the series came out when I was at the perfect age to be vulnerable to her ridiculous carnival breasts and the (fake, until it wasn’t) idea of a “nude code,” but I’ve always liked platformers, and the Tomb Raider has produced a couple good ones over the years. I first became interested in the new Tomb Raider, after years of apathy, when I saw that they’d turned Lara into something like an actual woman, complete with a build and personality and equipment that seemed great for a lot of gritty climbing.
I didn’t associate Lara with abused protagonists before this latest iteration was announced. Platformers haven’t had a lot of those until fairly recently, I think. Mario is pristine, Ryu Hayabusa is a super ninja, and the Prince of Persia games kept things relatively clean. Which is fine, because the fun of platformers is solving puzzles, jumping, and then fighting. But the new art had her a little bloodied and raw. It looked a little more cool than I expected, a little more realistic, and a little more up my alley. This makes me sound like a blood fetishist, doesn’t it? I don’t mean it that way. Here’s the trailer from last year:
It looks pretty okay, right? Even despite the corny scream/lightning thing. (I hate that so much.) A nice reboot, and the idea that “the extraordinary is in what we do, not who we are” falls right in line with the abused protagonist, and hints that, by the end of the game, you’re gonna get to shoot somebody in the face and not feel bad about it.
Here’s this year’s trailer:
Good news: it looks like it has a dope variety of gameplay and some interesting gimmicks (hunting, bullet time maybe, being set on fire while you try to escape a trap, and what I suspect are semi-interactive cutscenes).
Bad news: Lara is abused way, way, way too much.
I like abused heroes, and I don’t really exclude women from that. They’re a little tougher to list, just as a result of society thinking dudes are the only ones that count, and the awkwardness of depicting severe violence against women; but I don’t think, and don’t want, women excluded from this category. But this trailer, as an advertisement intended to make you want to play a game, does way too much in far too little runtime. Lara gets tied up and hung upside down, watches her friend die, watches another friend get kidnapped, gets stabbed with a steel rod, steps on a bear trap, tied up again, beaten up, threatened with rape, and weeps and whimpers her away across the entire trailer until they finally flash to pure gameplay and you actually see the game you wanted to play.
The thing is, all of the gameplay-related stuff looks dope. It looks like they learned a lot from Uncharted and are gonna give us all types of dynamic chase scenes, both people and wreckage inspired. I’m very happy about that, and then traditional platforming sections look pretty ill, too. The one where Lara is climbing frantically toward light puts me in mind of The Descent, and yes I would very much like to experience that through her eyes.
But that’s a lot of misery to pack into a trailer. It makes the entire game seem like a slog, like a clipshow of Lara getting punched in the stomach every time she stands up. That’s not what makes abused heroes fun. The slings and arrows aren’t the focus. They’re just the staircase leading to the focus. The focus is the hero with a smoking gun, a bloody nose, and a limp off into the sunset. Maybe a one-liner. The point is that a little goes a long way, and when you put a lot into a little (like shoving a few different examples of grievous emotional and physical trauma into three minutes) the tone changes. It changes from “Oh man, I can’t believe she survived that! Such will! Amazing!” to “Oh man. This is really, really depressing.”
Spread out over eight to twelve hours, each bit of abuse wouldn’t be a big deal. A brief burst at the beginning to set up the game, then one or two instances every other chapter until the end seems reasonable. That’s just rising action. But it’s too much for a trailer. It’s off-putting. It’s distilled misery, possibly literally.
Equally off-putting is the rape threat. At this point, sleazy rape threats in fiction are about as played out as the black guy dying first or a lady kicking a sexist pig in the junk as a Statement Of Feminism. It’s almost the icing on the cake for the trailer, really. “Even after all that… she still might get raped, gamer!” Sure, rape threats can be used well, but here? It’s just another brick in the wall. Even worse, it’s boring. Banal. It was more exciting when she was hanging upside down looking at some weird devil worshipping stuff.
My interest in Tomb Raider isn’t shattered or anything dramatic like that. I’ll probably still check it out, but I really hope that the trailer isn’t representative of the entire game. There’s gotta be a balance.
Hey, kids. Hitting Week 141, my Council of Panels this time around is made up of Was Taters, Gaijin Dan, Space Jawa and Jody.
Little on my side this time around. I did read Batman Annual #1, which I’ve seen a lot of gnashing of the teeth about. Personally, I didn’t mind it. While that episode of the Batman cartoon was great and we got a lot of fun Freeze stories out of it (and Batman and Robin, sadly), I think they’ve gone as far as they could with it and it’s time to at least try something different.
Animal Man Annual #1
Jeff Lemire and Timothy Green II
Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise Part 2
Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru
Batman Annual #1 (Taters’ pick)
Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV and Jason Fabok
That is the exact opposite of my experience with hip-hop. For me, rap has been an explosion of infinite possibility. Every year brings me some new obsession or style, and even when I revisit older albums, I find the foundations for modern albums or idiosyncratic outcroppings that were never followed up on. I can’t imagine becoming bored of rap, or thinking that rap devolved, because rap, for me, is in a state of constant and rapid-fire evolution.
I thought about doing a serious rebuttal to Rabin’s piece, personal though it is, because I disagree with so much of it. Half a second after having that thought, I got super bored with the idea. Instead, here’s a few of my rap memories. My memory’s not great, but music is one of those things that sticks with me. I want to try to illustrate rap’s infinite potential, my indelible love for the genre, and how I can chart my growth by way of rap history. For the record, and to provide a bit of context, I was born in 1983 and grew up (for all intents and purposes, if not literally) in Georgia. (Maybe this is a dumb idea, but I did it and you’re about to read it. Love to love to love ya, love ya, love ya!)
2002: There was one album that caused a seismic shift in my listening this year. It was The Clipse’s Lord Willin. Specifically this song:
All you gotta do is pound out this beat on a table to get my head nodding, and it’ll keep nodding for a week. I was working at Burger King on base when it dropped, and we’d bang it on the radio, on CD, and on the metal tables we used to make those stupid sandwiches on. We couldn’t even do that high pitched “grind-ing!” but we still gave it the old college try. It was the perfect antidote to all those Harlem shaking New York rappers who were still talking jiggy, and is still basically the gutterest rap song ever. Magic happens when you put the coke dealers with the skateboarders, I guess.
2003: 2003 is definitely defined by OutKast. Stankonia was great, but Speakerboxxx/The Love Below was something else. They dropped a combo funk and R&B album, and it somehow worked. And there was this, of course:
I think in a lot of ways, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is an actual endpoint for rap music. Rap has always been about reinventing and reinvigorating the past. The entire history of black music is enclosed within rap music, from the blues to James Brown, and this double album is what happens when those influences are not just foregrounded, but made the point of the album. Speakerboxxx goes from funk to electro to soul to crunk and back around again, while Andre gets his Prince and his Michael Jackson on in The Love Below There’s a really good essay lurking around somewhere on that subject, but from “Ghettomusick” to “Hey Ya!,” it’s hard to think of an album from 2003 that was harder than this. It’s such an amazing album, man. It felt new.
2004: Goodie MOb officially fell off in 2004, and that was unbelievably depressing, but a lot of people really stepped up to fill that gap for me. dead prez’s Revolutionary But Gangsta worked that black nationalist niche I love so much, but Jadakiss’s “Why” not only re-introduced me to Anthony Hamilton (also present on Heltah Skeltah’s Magnum Force!) but was the hands-down best political rap song that year.
Two of my favorite artists really arrived in 2004. TI and Kanye West both had killer years, which ended up being just foundations for even better albums a couple years down the line. TI’s Urban Legend had “Bring Em Out,” “ASAP,” and “U Don’t Know Me,” which I stayed putting on mixtapes. It was a comeback album, kinda, since he’d already started his habit of getting locked up between albums, and it was crazy ill. TI’s not lyrical, but he’s a skinny dude with heart, and it shows. His voice is way bigger than you’d expect, and there’s something seriously charming about dude. Put him on a DJ Toomp beat and he shows up with a fire that just can’t be matched. His trademark shout/growl “Yyyyyyyyeah!” is one of the hypest things in rap, second only to Jeezy’s “ha-haaaaaaa!” and Nore’s “WHAT!” in terms of being an iconic ad-lib. And it turns out if you put dude on a Swizz Beatz track, like on “Bring ‘Em Out,” things get even more hype.
Kanye blessed us with The College Dropout, which had a bunch of bangers, but was just a warm-up for his incredible and nigh-perfect Late Registration in 2005.
2005: I rediscovered Saul Williams in 2005, after a brief dalliance in 2000 or 2001. I loved “Coded Language” back then, so I was really pleased to find that his Saul Williams album hit just as hard. It’s an album that feels like conscious pop music, a revolution that you can dance to. I threw “Telegram,” “List of Demands,” and “Black Stacey” onto every mixtape I made that year, and “African Student Movement” still really goes.
2006: I discovered Khaled in 2006. Rather, I was introduced to Khaled by a friend when I stayed over and was forced to watch the video for “Holla At Me”. I wasn’t really checking for mainstream rap at this point, content to sorta mope in the corner on my own, so Khaled’s “Holla At Me” was stunning. For one thing, Paul Wall was back after “Sittin Sideways,” and he still had the internet goin’ nuts. The biggest surprise, though, was that Lil Wayne had transformed from the kid who hung around with Cash Money into a real spitter. He had an ill flow, and I totally didn’t expect that transition. Fat Joe came through with a solid verse, too.
“Holla At Me” was my intro to Rick Ross and Pitbull. I definitely hadn’t heard “Hustlin'” by this point, and I remember thinking that big goon was just aight. I liked that low, menacing flow he had, but he wasn’t really spitting anything interesting, and son had way too many punch-ins. Pitbull was excited, but… incoherent? He showed up and I tuned out.
2007: Andre 3000 ran my 2007. There’s not even a question here. He had at least five guest appearances that were worth five mics on their own. He completely outshined every single rapper on Rich Boy’s “Throw Some D’s” remix, including a Jim Jones at the top of his game. I liked Andre as a rapper, but I didn’t realize that he was the type of rapper that could chew up other emcees and spit them out with little to no effort.
And then there was “Walk It Out,” Unk’s hit joint. Andre went first on this track, too, and Unk is lucky that Big Boi and Jim Jones were on this song. Otherwise, he would’ve been renegaded to death. Unk is wack, basically, and Andre leads off a verse that’s just tangentially related to the song and is ill as anything ever was. Capo gets it in, and Big Boi does too, but they just can’t compete with Andre.
Or “International Players Anthem,” the UGK song. Or Devin the Dude’s “What A Job.” Or “You,” Lloyd’s single. That verse on “You” is insane, real talk wrapped in an awesome verse about love. 2007 was the year Andre left rap at the top of the game, and he did it like it was nothing.
2008: I was positively obsessed with “Birthday Girl” by The Roots, and “75 Bars,” throughout 2008. But if I really had to pin down one memory from 2008… it would be Killer Mike saying “But allow me to weigh in on a couple of issues right now. Allow Killa Kill to say my part right now, homey. First and foremost, I wanna say: niggas, stop making fucking Obama songs if you can’t get in an interview and sound halfway motherfuckin’ intelligent.” on “The Devil Is A Lie.”
But past that, it’s Royce da 5’9″‘s “Shake This.” It was an unexpected and painful song from one of my favorite rappers, and the only dude who can reliably keep up with Eminem.
It’s one of those songs you just vibe to. It’s relatable, it’s honest… it’s inspirational music, as opposed to aspirational. It’s about not screwing up ay more and getting the job done, which is something I need to be reminded of on a regular basis. For one of the dudes who really started making me pay attention lyrics to drop this song, as opposed to someone like Slug from Atmosphere who I expected to be this open, was tremendous. It reignited my love for Royce in a major way.
And “Shake This” led me to “Onslaught” (“We up in this bitch like Tranzor Z” whoa), where Royce and Joe Budden buried their light beef and ignited SLAUGHTERHOUSE, which is basically a dream come true for me in terms of talent and make-up. Like, this track “The One”? That’s my rap. Mad lyrical, mad grimey, mad sleazy. And Buddens and Ortiz going back and forth on that Lox tip is mega-ill.
2009: I got into Blu way late, but 2009 is about when I really started clicking with him. I think I grabbed a mixtape off 2dopeboyz or something, and then it was off at the races. Blu was a guy that I could personally relate to in a lot of ways, from how he keeps releasing noodly, not-quite-finished albums to his steady work ethic. He comes off as a regular guy with more creativity than he knows what to do with, so he experiments constantly. That’s why one of his albums is about 50% chiptunes and 50% raw raps.
That regular guy-ness is something I really dig. Our experiences don’t overlap too much, I don’t think — I’m from Georgia and I write, he’s from Los Angeles and he’s a musician — but I can still look at him and see a kindred spirit. There’s this lo-fi DIY aspect I really appreciate.
2010: It’s gotta be that boy Yelawolf, because of songs like this:
As an introduction to a rapper, “I Wish” is killer. Yela’s a country rapper, so his accent is real familiar, but his subject matter and flow is something else entirely. Add the driving and sparse beat to the cool chorus (I love when they mix up the chorus a little) to Yela’s verse (which is heat rocks from word one) to CyHi and Pill’s ill features. What’s the result? Something crazy, a song where all three artists go in and leave you thirsty for more.
It helps that it’s southern, of course. I’ve got a fondness for country rap, and these guys are part of the new vanguard. This is speakerbox music, and makes me wish I still owned a car. That’s one of the things I miss about back home, and I definitely make it a point to go for a drive or two solo every time I go back. “I Wish” is so aggressive in tone that I bet it knocks.
2011: I didn’t see Danny Brown coming. His flow is a combo of some of Vordul Mega’s more out-there verses and Ol Dirty’s flow, real off-kilter and shrill. Some words get squeaked, others get grunted, and no verse is the same. He’s weird, even to my ears, but he grew on me really quickly. He’s clever, which is one of my must-haves for a rapper, and he knows how to write a song.
It’s that off-kilterness that’s so attractive, I figure. I never know where his songs are going to go in terms of flow and lyrics. He opens XXX with “Colder than them grits they fed slaves” and I’m instantly interested. Over the course of the rest of the album, he does party joints, emotional joints, cold-hearted joints… he’s got a real range that I enjoy, and his metaphors are juuuust weird enough to force me to pay attention more than I do with artists I’m more familiar with.
2012: And Danny’s verse on “The Last Huzzah” is partially responsible for me running into Mr Muthafuckin’ eXquire, king of sleaze rap and the dude who dropped the single best verse of 2011 on “Two 22’s b/w Twenty-two 2’s”, which came out on Christmas Day.
I was in Los Angeles for Christmas, and made a conscious decision to stay off the internet. I only got on to see if a Jean Grae tape I’d been looking forward to had dropped and went for eXqo’s tape because it was there. I was blown away, because it’s seriously heat rocks and I didn’t know he was that ill. It made me go back and reconsider Lost in Translation, his prior mixtape, and start grabbing any little freestyles or bootlegs I could find. He’s in a lane of his own, with broad subject matter, a fantastic sense of humor, and great storytelling.
I don’t know how anyone can look at rap and say that it isn’t constantly innovating and evolving for the better. All of these are off the top of my head, pure stream of consciousness, and this wasn’t even hard. I cut other anecdotes because they had me way off-topic. Every year I find something new to fall in love with, and I find a new artist who leads me to other new artists or rediscover an old artist (like Fiend from No Limit) who’s back and hungry.
This Saturday night, CHIKARA brings us their second iPPV event in Chikarasaurus Rex: How to Hatch a Dinosaur. Their first iPPV came last November in the form of High Noon, which ended up being a great show with no major technical problems.
The show officially starts at 7pm on GFL.TV, though there will be a live pre-show on Ustream.TV at 6:30. While nothing’s announced as of yet, there’s likely to be some kind of exhibition match in there for the sake of hype. The show itself is $15.
That is the exact opposite of my experience with hip-hop. For me, rap has been an explosion of infinite possibility. Every year brings me some new obsession or style, and even when I revisit older albums, I find the foundations for modern albums or idiosyncratic outcroppings that were never followed up on. I can’t imagine becoming bored of rap, or thinking that rap devolved, because rap, for me, is in a state of constant and rapid-fire evolution.
I thought about doing a serious rebuttal to Rabin’s piece, personal though it is, because I disagree with so much of it. Half a second after having that thought, I got super bored with the idea. Instead, here’s a few of my rap memories. My memory’s not great, but music is one of those things that sticks with me. I want to try to illustrate rap’s infinite potential, my indelible love for the genre, and how I can chart my growth by way of rap history. For the record, and to provide a bit of context, I was born in 1983 and grew up (for all intents and purposes, if not literally) in Georgia. (Maybe this is a dumb idea, but I did it and you’re about to read it. Love to love to love ya, love ya, love ya!)
Circa late ’80s: At some point, I got DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince’s He’s the DJ, I’m The Rapper on cassette. It was a white cassette, and I played and handled it so often that the words smudged off. I still know about half the album by heart. The only other music I remember personally owning was a Sesame Street tape that included Kermit the Frog’s “Kokomo,” I think, and Big Bird’s “ABCDEFG.” I don’t think the Sesame Street tape counts as rap, though.
1995: I probably became conscious of music as something to pay attention to a little before 1995, but my earliest specific music memories are from ’95. I’d been watching music videos, and I loved Michael Jackson, but it was just something that was there. I would sing songs with my mom — I remember really, really loving the Jackson 5’s “ABC,” and do to this day even though my voice is way too deep for that mug — I wasn’t really paying attention. Either my memory is worse than I thought, or 1995 was a serious milestone year for me. It was when I discovered the Wu-Tang Clan, too.
I came to the Wu a little late, and the T-H-O-D Man was my introduction. “All I Need” was blowing up on BET and Rap City. I knew and loved “All I Need,” and I obviously wanted to hear more. While going through my uncle’s collection, I found his copy of Tical and threw it into his stereo with the volume turned down real low. His room was right next to the living room, and I didn’t want the music to blare through the walls. Come to find out I put the CD on and not only does “All I Need” sound COMPLETELY different, but Method Man is cursing up a blue streak. This was a HUGE surprise to my ears, being a mostly innocent 12 years old.
By the end of the year, though, I was banging GZA’s Liquid Swords like it was going out of style. I’ve known the long speech from Shogun Assassin by heart since 1995, with proper inflection and pauses inserted as needed. Me and my cousin would often say it to each other while on trips in the family van. In hindsight, we were both bastards (is there a special word for girl-bastards, as opposed to boy-bastards?) so it was probably a little creepy and insensitive, but listen: that speech is incredible.
1996: ’96 is defined entirely by two acts for me: Tupac and OutKast. I’d heard both before, obviously, but Tupac ran rap that year. He was inescapable. “California Love” and “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted” alone loom large in my memory, but once I got ahold of the full album of All Eyez On Me, it was over. I was a Tupac fan, soon to become a Tupac stan.
I still remember being in middle school and talking about Tupac’s death. We didn’t have the internet, so all we had were rumors. It was heartbreaking, like a hero had died. The next year, I remember hearing about how Faith Evans collapsed onstage at an awards show when she heard Tupac died, but how she didn’t do anything when Biggie died. It’s a lie, obviously, but it sounded true, no matter how bad it made Faith look. Makaveli is still an amazing album, but back then, it was legendary. A blast of hate and skill, the last gasp of a hero on his way out the door.
OutKast, of course, is OutKast. Do I even have to explain the appeal? They were from Georgia, they were weird, and every single song on ATLiens goes. “Elevators” is the biggest joint on that album, and I swear everyone I knew knew it by heart.
The Fugees were definitely a close second, almost entirely because of Lauryn Hill. The Score was the one rap album that me and my mom could listen to together. She liked the singing, I liked the rhymes and beats, and I don’t remember how we reacted to that awful skit in the Chinese restaurant. It’s sort of funny in hindsight how this was my introduction to Rah Digga, Young Zee, and Pacewon of the Outsidaz, who I got into in a major way years later.
1997: The weirdest thing about 1997 is how Master P arrived out of nowhere, at least back home in Georgia, and made his name off the back of Tupac’s death. Or so I thought at the time. His song “I Miss My Homies” felt like a Tupac tribute to me, but it turns out it was about Master P’s brother. I was salty at the time, but by the time “Make Em Say Uhh!” (na na na na) hit, I was all-in as far as No Limit went. They were undeniable, and while I’d rather not listen to Silkk the Shocker these days… I listened to a lot of Silkk the Shocker back then.
I got Wu-Tang Forever in ’97 and hated most of it. It was weird, it wasn’t the Wu I was used to, and it took about ten years before I really appreciated it for what it was. I liked a few songs — “Dog Shit,” for some reason, and “Hell’z Wind Staff” in particular — but on the whole, I didn’t really bang this album that much. It didn’t help that I couldn’t listen to half the album around my mom.
Busta Rhymes hit for me in ’97, too. It was entirely “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See.” The video was nuts, the beat was incredible, and Busta’s style was this weirdly comedic slash satanic style, with a hard dose of the Shogun of Harlem. It’s sometimes hard to reconcile the Busta I grew up on with the modern Busta, but it is what it is.
1998: I bought my first CD this year. It was Heltah Skeltah’s Magnum Force. I knew of the Boot Camp Clik because my uncle was into that grimey New York rap, and they had an ill logo, so I went for it. It’s still a great album, totally worth banging if you haven’t heard it. It even has good skits, which is rare for a rap album. Method Man’s feature on “Gunz’n’Onez” is one of the top 5 Meth verses ever, and the video for “I Ain’t Havin That” is great. I talked my mom into buying OutKast’s Aquemini, too, which is probably still my favorite Kast record.
I was in Virginia for the last half of the decade, and that meant that I had to know every Timbaland or Timbaland-adjacent song out there. He was from Norfolk, I lived in Hampton, and that was it. Timbaland & Magoo, Missy Elliot, his guest spots on Aaliyah songs… all of it banged. Up jumps da boogie. He was as inescapable as Jay-Z, and I feel like that was just a regional thing, because it seems like he didn’t really blow up until “Big Pimpin” dropped. Remember “Here We Come”? The Buddha Brothers and whoever else it was who ran the mix at the rap station used to play this joint out on the radio in Hampton.
1999: I met this guy at my afterschool job. I can’t remember his name now — Carl, Kevin, something — but he was a white dude who put me up on game. He was really into UndergroundHipHop.com, which had all types of RealMedia files for the downloading of artists I’d never heard of before. I got into Eminem right before the Slim Shady LP dropped via falling in love with him and Royce da 5’9″ as Bad Meets Evil. My friend thought that Eminem sold out with the Slim Shady LP, which is totally a backpacker thing, even if I didn’t know that term back then.
Through UGHH I discovered Company Flow, which was honestly life-changing, which led to Rawkus, which led to Soundbombing volumes one and two, Lyricist Lounge, Last Emperor, Mos Def, and Talib Kweli. That put me onto Black Star’s album from ’98, and by this point, I was well on my way toward hating on music I’d liked previously (peace out Jay and Juvie, what’s happenin’ Canibus and The Porn Theater Ushers and The High & Mighty) and turning into a real deal backpacker.
2000: I moved to Spain in 2000, which derailed music for me. I was still backpackin’ it — especially that Jurassic 5 Quality Control — but I was also probably pretty homesick, which had me banging UGK, 8ball & MJG, and OutKast like it was going out of style. Space Age 4 Eva >>>>>> everything.
Ludacris hit like an atom bomb before I left the US. “What’s Your Fantasy” was crazy, the sort of song that boys and girls would sing at each other, instead of with. Luda had this funny, charming, and still hard style that appealed to basically everybody. It was like if De La Soul and DMX had managed to merge their styles. And don’t even get me started on “Southern Hospitality”. Rap was invented for those kinds of songs. (Watching the video now, I realize that Scarface and Too $hort were in there, which is tight.)
I think I could handwave away digging Luda and being a backpacker because Luda could spit. He was super lyrical in a way a lot of rappers like DMX and Jay-Z weren’t. But he didn’t Canibus it up and only rap about rapping. He took that lyrical-ness and bent it toward some real country rap. The freestyles on those early Luda albums with 4-Ize are super ill.
I actually made one of my best friends in high school because of the Jurassic 5. I had the album, his parents wouldn’t let him have it, and he wouldn’t stop bugging me about it. I eventually relented, found out he was backpacking it up, too, and we bonded. We even had a little rap group for a while.
2001: Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein. I could mention other albums, but I was definitely a def jukie, and this is the only album that actually matters from 2001. Sorry if you liked anything else. You could maybe make a case for The Blueprint, but no. Cold Vein. It was the album I listened to on repeat for days at a time. It was the album with flows I struggled to memorize and then decode. It was the album that had me wishing OHHLA had actual experts transcribing lyrics, instead of fans.
! BUY IT USED!
