I don't know about y'all, but when I was growin' up, my white middle class ass was listenin' to some hip-hop. Cube, Dre, Snoop, Ghetto Boys, Public Enemy, yeah... then I found out about so-called "alternative" music and latched onto that and derided most hip-hop as basically shit. And, a lot of it was. I was always such a musical person that it was easy for me to see the sugar coated, lowest common denominator production behind the rhymes as essentially ear candy with no soul, nothing "musical" about it.
Lately I've been getting back into it, and there's some really good production out if you know where to look. I really can't listen to any of that gangster shit - I know some people just wanna laugh at it, but I think it's funking sad people take that shit seriously. But there's a lot of good stuff - not neccessarily underground, either. Blackalicious (The Gift of Gab, the rapper from Blackalicious, just came out with a great new solo album called Fourth Dimensional Rocket Ships Going Up - yeah, the whole album is about spiritual evolution and it just makes me wanna sing) and anything from the Quannum collective (DJ SHADOW!), Jurassic 5, I even dig Dilated Peoples most of the time and Eyedea and Abilities are good too. I love the production but most of these guys are really on their game lyrics-wise, mad skillz plus they've got a positive message to spread. I love that moment when the beats and words come together and give you that rush like a shot of smack in the arm....
Whew, speaking of which, I'll be right back... now where'd I put that spoon?
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