August 2009

When I was twenty, I drove roughly an hour to see Eyedea & Abilities perform in Columbus alongside the Living Legends crew. At this late date, there are only two significant occurrences from said evening that I readily recall. Firstly, Living Legends were as bland live as their albums are/were coming out of one’s stereo. Second, Eyedea battled some poor schlub from the crowd and wrecked him. It was something that should have been expected – and no, there’s no reason for that guy to have gotten on stage, but that’s how you learn. It was a decent show despite the two hour transportation to and from the venue. Read more

Mining the depths of funk usually ends up landing the voyager at some unknown destination where all musics come together in a sort of commercial orgy and a pinnacle of cheese. Not always, but if you dig deep, there might be a reason as to why some of the stuff is down there. As diggers reach further – and prices get to be startlingly big – it seems that the majority of discs possess only momentary glimpses into funk greatness. Not that the Meters or whoever else didn’t have a few throwaway tracks tossed in there, but the consistency of that group – early on at least – is a paradigm unmatched by most that come after. Read more

While everyone’s awaiting the release of The Seventh Seal, I harkened back to hearing Rakim for the first time. I guess I came late to all of this, but a year after The 18^th Letter was released, I remember seeing it sitting around my friend’s house and eventually tossed it on. At the time Lyricist Lounge and work of that vintage comprised most of my listening, but hearing one of the most well respected emcees in recorded history go in on his ‘come back album’ was truly something untoward. It was the basis of everything that I’d been interested in – within hip hop, at least. Read more

Despite having derived his name from some oblique incident on a ski trip – seriously? – Big Daddy Kane has been one of the most consistently revered figures in the rap world for about twenty years now. And considering the impact that this one figure has had on the game, I think that it’s more than appropriate to take a minute to look back at the man’s first album - Long Live the Kane – in order to understand where the game’s gotten to today. It kinda seems like it’s all the same, but despite that or even because of it, the first Big Daddy Kane record seems to encompass a great deal of what rap is today. Read more