Who knew Ice Cube was still dope?

I thought he had disappeared to Hollywood, coming back only to make joints like We Be Clubbin. That’s not fair, actually. He’s done some shockingly good work with Lil Jon, notably Roll Call, which blends early ’90s Cube and Lil Jon’s high impact production into something that’s like a throwback from the future. (The bit in the video where Cube goes into his house and masks up is one of those things only rap and superhero books can get away with. Of course Cube kept his black gear, baseball bat, and black Impala in his garage, despite his family life. He’s the realest, Disney movies aside. Never mind the fact that this video is Beat It 200X.)

Raw Footage is that album that reminds you where Ice Cube got his start and the days when he was untouchable. If you go just by years, Cube is almost on elder statesmen status, despite not looking any older than he did years ago. He isn’t the best rapper, and doesn’t really bother with the wordplay acrobatics that a lot of other rappers employ. What he is, however, is a rap juggernaut.

His flow is steady and undeniable. Its pacing and subject matter are going to keep hitting you while you listen. He’s relentless. This isn’t an album that I could sit back and just idly listen to until recently. I had to be an active listener and figure out what he’s talking about, digest it, and come back.

Cube’s the archetypal angry negro, but that was 15 years ago. Now he’s something else. I don’t want to say that he’s mellowed with age. I think it’s more that he’s just matured. He deals with religion on Raw Footage, and his personal beliefs, which is something that doesn’t happen often enough. He shows a certain amount of contempt for the people who grew up on his music, but didn’t learn anything from it, on Hood Mentality. He sprinkles bits of wisdom throughout the album, and even stereotypical braggadoccio rap like Do Ya Thang is about building self-esteem and being true to yourself.

Ice Cube’s about to hit 40, man. That blows my mind. Straight outta Compton was twenty years ago.

The standout on the album, and off the album, is easily Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It. It’s that Ice Cube I love to hear- the one who is smart, has been in the business for years, and knows what he’s talking about. He puts everyone who ever used rap as a scapegoat on blast, and does it with a deftness that I feel like only he can bring to the table. He went through his share of rap-related drama in the ’90s, and was the poster boy for gangsta rap for years. If you look at any of the recent outbursts in the past year, the finger always came back around to rap. “If gangster rappers didn’t say nigger, would Michael Richards have done it? What about Don Imus, what if rap wasn’t so offensive?” The remix to the song features Nas and Scarface and is even better than the original.

When you put three of the most respected emcees from each coast on a record, you’re going to hit gold. I kind of hope they actually make that album together. The only problem is that if you get Scarface on a guest appearance, he’s going to wreck you and end up with the best verse on the song. It’s true here, it was true with both Jay-Z and Beanie Sigel songs, and it’s true on his Nas guest spots, too. Uncle Face is a monster.

I Got My Locs On with Young Jeezy is pretty tight, too, and Get Used To It is Westside Connection 2008. Cube’s Why Me with Musiq Soulchild is pretty dang chilling, too. I have to give special mention to when Ice Cube starts kicking fast food chicken metaphors toward the end of Thank God, too. It’s a weird detour, but hilarious, and instantly understandable if you’ve ever hit a Popeye’s chicken. Get Money, Spend Money, No Money is the anti-swag anthem, too, which is sorely needed in rap these days. That’s your money, man, I don’t care how you spend it when I don’t have money of my own.

Raw Footage is the most westside album to come out in a while, and one of the smartest rap albums to hit in 2008 in general. It’s a far cry from the Cube of ten or fifteen years ago, but there’s a definite through-line from then to now. I love how angry he is on this album, as if he looked back at what he’s done and the message his fans took from his work and started kicking over tables and throwing a fit.

Official videos:
Do Ya Thang
Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It
Why Me?

Heltah Skeltah’s Magnum Force was probably the first CD I ever bought. I’d owned tapes, yeah, but buying a CD for the first time? That was a big deal. No more taping songs off the radio for me! It must’ve been probably ten years ago at this point. I knew of the Boot Camp because my uncle was a Black Moon fan, but all I was probably thinking was that I Ain’t Havin’ That was one of the dopest music videos I had ever seen in my entire life. The fact that I got an album with features from Method Man, OutLawz, Kurupt & Daz, Anthony Hamilton (before I was even a fan of dude), and the entire Boot Camp Clik was just icing on the cake.

In a way, the video for I Ain’t Havin’ That is the Cliff’s Notes for Heltah Skeltah’s style. It’s classic Brooklyn smack you in your face rap, ala MOP, but with this air of self-consciousness you don’t see in 99% of rappers. When DMX is talking about beating you up and shooting you and digging you up and eating your corpse arf arf arf what niggaaaaaaa, he’s probably saying it because he thinks it makes him sound hard. Heltah Skeltah knows it’s all rhymes, so they aren’t afraid to let loose with something like

Just in case, I’m renaming both of my hands Laxative and Colonic
They ah, smack shit out any nigga who want it

I don’t even know how to describe it. Self-conscious thug rap? Tongue-in-cheek braggadoccio? Sean Price made a living as the self-described Brokest Rapper You Know after Heltah Skeltah broke up. Rock a.k.a. Al Catraz a.k.a. Da Rockness Monstah a.k.a. look just watch this video.

Da Incredible Rap Team, as an album, a concept, and an album title, is classic Heltah Skeltah. It’s tongue-in-cheek funny, but thugging it at the same time. Magnum Force started off with Sean Price talking about how that record had to be “just like the last album, only better.” It’s true for DIRT, too– it’s just like the last album, only better.

The ten year break between Magnum Force and DIRT didn’t do anything to decrease Sean P and Rock’s charisma and teamwork. Their flows still perfectly complement each other. Rock’s voice is still ridiculously deep. Sean P is still coming with ridic punchlines. The beats are still dirty, dusky, and grimey. There’s even a BCC posse cut and a track that hearkens back to Therapy, off Nocturnal.

DIRT is kind of like innovating while doing the same thing over and over again. It doesn’t reinvent the Heltah Skeltah wheel, but it does add just enough to the formula to keep it interesting. They’ve grown as artists without giving up where they came from or paying slavish tribute to the past. They’re smarter, funnier, and seemingly hungrier than they were ten years ago. The whole album is two guys who are eager for people to listen and have fun to their music. Instead of dropping an overly serious and overwrought LP (hello kanye), they produced the music they, and their fans, enjoy.

How do they feel about other rappers?

Y’all say they nice? We say they polite… y’all like ’em though.
Rappers embarassed to say they rappers… proud to say they sell crack, though!

DIRT, like Magnum Force, is an album I keep coming back to. There’s just something about it that’s attractive, from the beats to the rhymes, and it’s a shame it’s going to end up so underrated. It’s a nice break from generic thug raps.

Also, there’s a ton of references to The Wire on the album.

Official videos:
So Damn Tuff feat. Buckshot & Rustee Juxx
Ruck n Roll
Everything Is Heltah Skeltah

T.I. has had an insane year. At the top of the year, he was facing serious jail time, his 2007 album was on “Successful, but Average” status, and he had Shawty Lo running around Atlanta making youtubes of how he isn’t actually from Bankhead and is a lying snitch.

By the end of the year, he’s looking at a year inside, launching his new clothing line, signed Killer Mike to Grand Hustle, obliterated Shawty LO, put B.o.B. on, has something like a million hit singles, and a platinum album. Quite a turn around, isn’t it?

One thing I’ve always liked about T.I., other than the fact that he’s also a skinny smart black dude from Georgia, is that he always looks like he’s having fun. The What’s Up, What’s Happenin’ video is the most exuberant diss video in years. He looks like a dude with jokes, or at least one with a healthy bit of self-consciousness. He seems like a regular guy, despite the movie star clothes and rap braggadoccio. There’s something kind of forthright and honest about him, and I can’t quite put my finger on why.

This carries over into his album. Some of the songs are typical rap joints, but he isn’t afraid to get personal, either. He opens up about the death of his best friend Philant on Dead and Gone, and interspersed throughout the album are mentions of his trials and tribulations.

What’s nice is that it never rings as hollow as DMX’s prayers on his old albums did. T.I. went through a very public arrest. Everyone knows what the deal is. But, even though he doesn’t have to, Tip breaks down his reasons for doing what he did and how he feels about the decision. We end up with an album with mainstream appeal, but personal lyrics. T.I. has been doing that for ages, though– go back and listen to Be Better Than Me.

Of course, it isn’t all personal. His jawn with Ludacris, “On Top of the World,” kicks off with “rich by popular demand,” which is quickly followed up by two of Atlanta’s most successful rappers going in on how they went from nothing to something to everything. They pay respect to where they’ve been even as they look to where they’re going, and point out that it isn’t all just clothes, bankrolls, and hoes. T.I. drops this gem on his last verse:

I sold dope and dropped out of school, seems it’s all they can see
They don’t notice none of my family did that since me (nah)
I broke that cycle, now my family live a life of
Mandatory minimums, but not when the judge sentence us
Cousins in college, where you think they get tuition from?
(Answer that) Just for standin ’round wishin, huh?
Hey while you stand around lookin dumb, I make it happen
Takin action over time, got damn good at it

And it’s true– both of these guys have poured their cash into making life better for people where they came from, diversified their income, and went from mice to men.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out Swagga Like Us. Even though I basically hate the word swagger now, T.I. comes on stage with extraordinary swagger. He’s on a track with three of the hottest rappers out, though only one of them is really all that talented, and sons all three. Kanye and Wayne drop typical verses for those two. It’s aight, not great work from those two. Jay-Z makes a solid showing. T.I. wraps up the song, though, and recaps his life, career, and year while showing that everyone who thinks the south isn’t lyrical is an idiot.

Paper Trail bumps. It’s a thorough record, with club songs (Swing Ya Rag has a remarkably listenable Swizz Beatz) and classic T.I.P. tracks (56 Bars). It’s definitely something to keep in the ride. What’s funny is that he predicts this reaction in 56 Bars:

World hopped off my jock, I got ’em right back on it

Official music videos:
Whatever You Like
No Matter What
What’s Up, What’s Haapnin’
Live Your LIfe (when did this video come out? i totally missed it)

Honorable mention:
Ain’t I, by Young Dro (it’s a hot song, I just wanted to link it)

I used to be a Young Jeezy hater. I think I first heard dude in Fabolous’s Do The Damn Thing, where he gave a funny, if uninspired and really kind of dumb, verse. The problem with that verse is that it was quotable, just off the strength of how dumb and how ad-lib laden it was. If you can come out with more quotables than the punchline heavy Fab, well, there’s something there.

I couldn’t escape Jeezy from 2007 to 2008. I got put on to Juelz Santana after years of hating and went through a few months of playing his CD. Make It Work For You was catchy and has a pretty ridic beat. Grew Up A Screw-up was probably the first song where I genuinely respected Jeezy. It’s not even a special verse– it’s just vaguely autobiographical. There was something about it, though.

Young Jeezy’s The Recession somehow, someway became one of my favorite albums of the year. I couldn’t even figure out why I liked it until a couple weeks after it came out. I just knew that I kept playing it on my iPod and feeling guilty, and then turning up the volume to drown out the guilt.

The overall theme of the record is that there’s a Recession on and it’s time to make money because time’s almost gone. He kind of sticks to the point, but like any good trap star, he’s kicking that drug dealing thing more often than not. So, what’s left is an album that occasionally shows flashes of what would be called conscious rap if anyone but Jeezy was rapping, and throws post-T.I. drug rap at you at the other times. Tracks like Vacation eschew the album’s concept entirely, Put On is hood motivation (and probably has one of the last good Kanye verses ever), and Crazy World is all about a recession.

The Recession, as an album, isn’t quite as smart as it should be. Jeezy has a niche, and that niche requires banging, bass-heavy beats and cocaine talk. He comes off better than he ever has before, though, which makes the entire album surprisingly listenable. His rasp-heavy flow is pretty charming, and his ever-present ad-libs (Yeeeeeeeeeeah!) add even more charisma into the mix. His punchlines are off-kilter, and he’s willing to commit cardinal sins like rhyming Columbia three lines in a row just because it’d sound hot on a song. It makes it a fun album to listen to, despite the subject matter, just because it’s so weird. Why should we call him Jeezy Hamilton? Man, why not?

Listening to Jeezy gives me a weird mix of hometown pride (he used to live in the next town over from my hometown, Macon/Warner Robins representing), a weakness for ignant rap, and genuine enthusiam. The only way to explain it is that it’s a fun record. Jeezy himself sums it up with his first few bars on Crazy World:

What they want?
They want that young shit
That dumb shit, that “where you from?” shit
That ride around your hood all day with your gun shit

I said earlier that I couldn’t figure out why I liked The Recession. It took me listening to My President Is Black, Jeezy’s collabo with Nas, to figure it out. Nas is one of my favorite emcees, so I obviously have a a vested interest in the song. The thing about that song is that Nas, who dropped one of the top five greatest rap albums of all time, was completely bodied by Jeezy. While Nas was talking about how some stripper isn’t a politician, she’s a pole-itician, Jeezy Hamilton spit two verses about real life and a love for passed rap artists that completely outclassed Lil Homey. In my hater days, I’d have said that it’s the equivalent of Justin Timberlake outsinging Al Green on the same song. Nowadays, I just appreciate.

Official videos:
Put On feat. Kanye West
Vacation
Crazy World
Who Dat (“why he keep saying yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah? I’on’t even know”)

Hot guest appearance:
I Got My Locs On, by Ice Cube

eMC is Masta Ace, Wordsworth, Punchline, and Stricklin, and their The Show is one of those long lost fossils of rap– a concept album. It isn’t as thoroughly concept-heavy as, say, Prince Paul’s A Prince Among Thieves (if you hate that album you are less than trash), but it’s about a day on the road of eMC, a touring rap group.

It works. It uses skits to fill in the blanks, and most of them are a minute or less, thankfully. There’s nothing worse than falling into a five minute skit about nothing at the beginning of a song. The songs are tight, the production is spot-on, if not particularly spectacular, and the rhymes are tight.

That’s the thing about this album. eMC is heavy with true spitters. I first heard Punch & Words on the classic Lyricist Lounge tape from years ago. Wordsworth alone had ridiculous punchline, a , and insane jokes. Masta Ace has dropped like eighty thousand albums, it feels like, and is a New York rap mainstay. Sean Price (of Heltah Skeltah) shows up for a classic guest appearance.

Hey, do you guys remember when Busta Rhymes made fun music like this? That was a good time, wasn’t it? Too bad he’s too busy making Arab Money and dealing drugs now.

Official videos:
Leak It Out
(EMC) What It Stand For

The problem with dead prez is that they’re kind of stupid. If you actually listen to Hell Yeah and watch its terrible video (in concept and execution), you’re going to realize a couple things. One, their scams won’t work. Two, the video is one of the worst-conceived pieces of trash in years. That’s your revolution? Really guys?

Immortal Technique is probably just as extreme, if not more, but he’s actually got some smarts behind his eyes. The 3rd World is a mix of old tracks and new, and is a delightfully coherent taste of rebel rap. It’s still hipster and college student high on new philosphy-friendly, but there’s actual meat to it, too.

One thing Technique has over other rebel rap-types is that you can see his growth as an artist and a thinker as you follow his career. He’s adjusted his views. There’s less misogyny and homophobia than there was seven years ago. His criticisms are more focused and direct. And yes, his skill has gotten better, too.

Immortal Technique is raw rap. It isn’t a record you put on to chill with your friends and play video games. It definitely isn’t one to play when your girlfriend comes over for the weekend. It’s abrasive. It’s not as harsh as Technique’s Dance with the Devil (don’t click that), which I listened to once and then promised to never, ever listen to again, despite its quality. It was too harsh, too real, and too dark.

3rd World is more palatable, though he isn’t afraid to put the boot in. Lick Shots, with Crooked I and Chino XL, is one of those tracks that’s just three dudes going in, Reverse Pimpology is the second coming of Industry Rule 4080 (record company people are shady), and Payback features Diabolic and a much-missed Ras Kass getting back on his political grind.

I’m not even getting into Technique’s in your face rhymes. He’s very quotable, but you really can’t quote him without either getting arrested or funny looks. He just sounds angry, but in a good way. He’s urging revolution and striking back at the system. It’s something like Tupac said. “Only in Cali will we riot, not rally, so live and die.” Talking is easy. He wants to see action. He even takes aim at rappers who jump onto “conscious” songs once every couple of years on Lick Shots:

Niggas love to say “Fuck revolution!”
Until the jury come in and move for the prosecution
And them brothers act like a born-again Huey Newton
Forgot about the bullshit music they was producin

You want to have a computer nearby while listening to Technique’s 3rd World. Sometimes you have to google something he talks about just so you can know more. Tech is well-read, intelligent, and worth listening to. It’s music to get angry, or perhaps be angry, to while you drive or commute.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out Immortal Technique’s Beef & Broccoli, wherein he dismantles those people who think that veganism or vegetarianism is some kind of revolutionary act. Here’s a spoiler: it isn’t.

I was going to do a Top 10 or whatever for comics that came out in 2008, but realized that I had no interest in explaining to people why Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s run on All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder is better than Grant Morrison’s run on Batman in almost every way or why certain comics just aren’t enjoyable and are in fact Silver Age navel-gazing at best. Instead, I’m stealing a page from Tucker Stone‘s playbook and doing a music countdown instead. I’m doing only eight for 2008, but if you’re curious, numbers nine and ten were NERD’s Seeing Sounds [Explicit] and Ill Bill’s The Hour Of Reprisal [Explicit], respectively. NERD because I’ve loved their sound for years and Everybody Nose/Everybody Nose Remix, Anti-Matter, Sooner or Later, and Spaz are all genuinely excellent songs. Ill Bill has a few great songs, too, most notably White Nigger and the track about his uncle.

The next five weekdays are going to have two posts from me a piece at noon and midnight. On the next to last day, instead of posting my #1, I’ll post a quick top 5 round-up of some free music and then hit y’all with the #1 pick the next day.
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Let me tell you a story about words and accountability.

Once upon a time, there was a guy named Yung Berg. He got a little bit of status, and you know what that means. Suddenly, people are paying attention to his words! Things he says matter.

So, Yung Berg gets to talking. He talks a lot. He says a lot of different things. At one point, he talks a bunch of trash about Detroit’s rap scene and one rapper in particular. He mentions how he doesn’t like “dark butts.” He says a lot of things.

And then, one day, he visits Detroit for a show. The rapper he dissed has a posse, and this posse stomps out Yung Berg, takes his Decepticon chain, and sends him packing before he can even perform.

A couple weeks ago, something similar happened. Yung Berg was talking, and said the wrong thing to the wrong man again. This time it was Maino, and Maino left a hi hater handprint across Yung Berg’s face for his trouble.

One thing rap has excelled at is accountability. If you talk out the side of your face, you are going to either get called on it or catch five across the eyes. No one gets to talk reckless and get away with it.

Is it wrong of me to wish that comics blogging was the same? Could you even imagine how incredible that would be? It’d force bloggers to up their game. You wouldn’t be able to get away with making outlandish accusations about people’s personal lives because that person, or someone else, would call you on it.

All of the tasteless jokes and insinuations and knee-jerk reactions and hysterical shouting and death threats and all of the other terrible garbage that low class bloggers get up to would end. You’d have to be grown up and responsible and actually intelligent. It would be like an entry fee, only it comes after you’ve already entered the blogging arena. That makes it into a tax.

I’m 100% for this, if only because everyone who has ever suggested that a comics creator or company should die horribly because they dared to make something that someone else didn’t like would end up laid flat, and hopefully in public. Own your words like an adult.

If you’re wishing death on somebody because of a book, you’re a clown. End of story.

Comics blogging should be more like rap. It would be a better world by far.

Hola, bonjour… hi, hater.

Y’all got to do better.

SkottieYoung.com: Business Isn’t the Same

I hate to admit that in some ways, I’ve become the guy who talks about the music of his youth is so much better than what the “kids” today listen to. But dammit, I’m right!!!!

I can remember running home after school to try and catch the 1 hour of hip hop they would play on tv. I loved it. It was so new and different that everything else and I craved it before I knew what a craving was. I’m not going to pretend that I know why it spoke to me so much or say I was ahead of the curve on anything. I just loved it. KRS-One, Public Enemy, Nice & Smooth, Special Ed, Eric B & Rakim, 3rd Bass, Big Daddy Kane… I could keep listing names all day. It just felt fun, and energizing. One of my favorites of those days was Eric and Parish…EPMD. Get the BoZack. You got to Chill, Crossover, Headbanger, on and on and on and on. I remember being heart broken when they broke up but got my smile back in ’97 when they brought it back. They really frame the sound that I remember as a kid growing up.

Skottie Young is one of my favorite artists. That New Warriors miniseries he did with Zeb Wells was definitive, and Marvel really needs to give him an Amazing Spidey arc. Click through to check out his blog.

Nasir “Nas” Jones is one of the best rappers alive.

It’s as plain as the chipped tooth in his mouth. Illmatic is one of the top five best albums ever. It’s that good. New York State of Mind, to pick one song, is infinitely quotable (“I never sleep, ’cause sleep is the cousin of death” “Rappers I monkey flip ’em with the funky rhythm I be kickin'” “I got so many rhymes I don’t think I’m too sane/ Life is parallel to Hell but I must maintain” “Never put me in your box if the shit eats tapes”). If I tried, I could probably kick half the rhymes on the album with an instrumental.

The problem with coming out swinging on your first try is that your second looks lame by comparison. So it was with Nas– basically every album has been seen as lesser than Illmatic, to the point where Nas released Stillmatic. I’d say that Hip-Hop is Dead is his closest to Illmatic and a thoroughly awesome album.

The thing about Nas is that he’s scary clever and intelligent. It’s like if Tupac had kept up with the tone of his first album (Brenda Had a Baby, for example) with a bit more black power in. He is a sick storyteller. He isn’t the free-association kind of storyteller like Ghostface is. He’s in the Rakim school of telling stories– really straightforward and just in the mix. Ether is still basically the anatomy of how to make a diss song.

(If you’ve ever seen me make reference to spitting ether or ethering someone, just know that I’m not talking about the chemical.)

What I’m saying boils down to Nas is smart. The corollary to that is that he should know better.

Case in point, from King Magazine (vaguely nsfw, bikinis):

Do you remember the first time you were discriminated against because you were black?
The first time I opened up a Superman comic book. The first time I saw Flashdance, with the light-skinned, beautiful bitch who’s chasing after some white cat, which…I don’t have nothing against interracial relationships—love ’em, actually.

This is Nas’s career in a nutshell. He’ll hit you with something profound and then follow it up with something off-kilter. “The first time I opened a Superman comic book.” “The first time I saw Flashdance, with the light-skinned, beautiful bitch.”

He’ll drop The World Is Yours and then hit you with Hate Me Now. He’ll go from Nasty Nas to Nas Escobar. Illmatic to It Was Written. He put One Mic, one of my most favorite songs ever, on an album with Braveheart Party, a song so bad that Mary J Blige asked for it to be removed from the second pressing of the album. Braveheart Party makes me want to fight Nas. One Mic makes me want to hang out with him and chop it up.

Nas’s next album is called Nigger. I trust him and his skill, particularly lately, to be able to pull it off. The first single is harsh, but I’m digging it. It took me a minute to open up to it.

What will it say about the record industry if Def Jam drops you, 10 albums deep, over a single word?
That starts a revolution. It sparks something within the hip-hop community, within the streets, within the people outside the streets. It raises an eyebrow to the situation, you know? Nobody wants to deal with the word “nigger,” because what comes with the word “nigger” is a whole history where you show so much injustice, and you show so much that has not been fixed yet. So it’s a scary thing. But it’s also uncomfortable when I’m dealing with it. Like, no one can tell me what to do. None of the black leaders, none of these motherfuckers, record companies, none of them can tell me what to do. Because you can’t stop what I want to do, you understand?

Nas is smart. Nas is stupid.

I say that this is Nas’s career in a nutshell, but it’s also bigger than that. It’s emblematic of a bunch of black men all over the country. Actually, let me dial that back– I am right there with Nas.

I’m not perfect. Sometimes I slip. Sometimes I roll my eyes at certain things like “*smh*, white people.” Sometimes I look at something and the only comment I’ve got is “That’s mad niggerish, man.” Sometimes I want to just box the entire internet’s ears and and scream on someone.

I’m smart. I should know better.

It’s a constant struggle. This is why I don’t like snarky things– it’s too easy. Anyone can toss off six sentences of ill will without really looking at something. I try to keep from doing it if only because I hate it. I force myself to think things over. I force myself to adjust to new information. I force myself to produce real content, for good or for ill.

I love Nas. I don’t want to be Nas.

From Nas’s verse on Kanye West’s “We Major”:

I heard the beat and I ain’t know what to write
First line, should it be about the hoes or the ice?
Fo-fo’s or Black Christ? Both flows’d be nice
Rap about big paper or the black man plight?

Nas knows what I’m talking about. (Kanyayo does, too, but that’s another conversation.) You can go low brow or you can go high brow. I can talk about ice or black man’s plight, which one do I pick?

I like Luke Cage and Storm. At the same time, I hate Luke Cage and Storm and everything they represent. They’re two sides of the same coin– the dangerous thug and the whitewashed safe one. The problem is that that coin represents a false dichotomy.

It isn’t that simple. Very, very few things are black and white. Racism and sexism definitely aren’t as simple as racist/not racist or sexist/not sexist, no matter how hard people on both sides of the argument try to make it seem that way. 99% of people are Nas– stuck in the middle. Smart and stupid. Gifted and wasted talent.

Pedro of FBB and I talk pretty much daily, and one thing we often talk about is how the level of discourse online and off embraces dichotomies way too easily. People want to be able to point and say “That’s wrong” and be absolutely right. It’s the “Manichean murder machine” that The Invisibles talks about. Nine times out of ten, it isn’t as simple as with me/against me. Real life is not in black and white. Real life is in shades of gray. I feel like it’s important to take that into account when writing.

On the one hand, Lil Wayne is the dude who coined “Bling bling.” On the other, he’s dropped incredible verses on “Georgia… Bush” and Rich Boy’s “Ghetto Rich” remix. (“Fuck being like Mike, I wanna be like pop/ Then I picked up a mic, I wanna be like ‘Pac/ Please put down the pipe, you don’t need that rock/ Please put up a fight for the kids that watch/ Us in the spotlight, and then they mock/ But caskets get closed and then they drop.”) David Banner can drop “Like A Pimp” or “Play” (NSFW) and then be that dude who basically did a better job raising money for the Hurricane Katrina support effort than the US government?

Is T.I. the idiot who got caught trying to buy illegal guns, or is he the guy who stays working with single parents and Boys & Girls Clubs, trying to make life easier for them?

This is what I think about. I write for a living, so I take this writing thing pretty seriously. I want to be sure that I’m on point, because my words reflect who I am. I’m not afraid to pull back and tell myself “It’s just comics,” but I’m not going to be that guy who is talking out of the side of his neck and end up looking like an idiot.

I hadn’t realized it until I sat down and thought about it, but Nas was probably the first “conscious” rapper I heard. I’m saying, I knew PE and KRS and them, but I know Nas way better than I know them. Maybe that’s why he’s so prominent in my mind. I heard KRS and PE. I paid attention to Nas.

I could talk about the man and his career all day. I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing about Nas on my comics blog and I don’t entirely know where I’m going with this. He wanted to draw comics as a kid, though, which ties into my usual point that black people reading comics isn’t a new or remarkable thing. Don’t call it a comeback new trend, ’cause we’ve always been here. Pay attention.