Song 10: To All Those Gone

I'm going to try something a little different. Whenever I have my Zune or Windows Media Player on random, I'll do a write-up on the tenth song that plays. Its kind of like The Smoking Section's iPod Shuffle except, you know...Zune

Song Title: "One Mo' Time"

Artist: Freddie Gibbs

Album: midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik

TSS described Freddie Gibbs' style for their Freshmen 10 of '10 as a mix of Tupac Shakur and Bone Thugs n' Harmony because he can blend gansta with intelligence while rhyming like he was from Cleveland circa 1995. I'd describe "One Mo' Time" as his "Crossroads" (at least for now) since its dealing with the death of loved ones. The first verse has him lamenting the death of a close friend who he personally saw go from dealer to one of Freddie's customers. (Basically what happened to Pookie, but the he fell farther.) The second verse is about his inability to really cope with lose, even though he knows those he lost are in a better place. It's a heartfelt ode to those that are gone, but not forgotten by Gibbs.

I'm not that emotional of a person, but I feel where he's coming from when it comes to loss, as I'm sure everyone else has experience loss themselves.

To me, death never really seems...real, if that makes any sense. I know I won't be seeing friends and family that have gone on anymore in this world, but I can never seem to really let go. I'll see a car like the one a friend used to drive and expect to see them in the driver's seat; I'll sometimes see someone that looks a little like them, and I'll be reminded that they're gone and, even though I don't think it's right, my day will be a little ruined because they died. I can't help wanting those who went on to still be here, even the ones who were sick. I hoped that they would get better when they were here, and I still hold out for Hollywood endings when I hear someone's in a bad way.

I made a pact with myself that I wouldn't go to anymore funerals after a friend of mine past in 2008. Its the open caskets, the body of someone who only days before I was talking to about band or relationships or whatever, lying there made up while their mothers, fathers, sibilings and friends cry out for them, that I can't stand. Not everyone's strong enough to remember that their loved ones have gone to someplace better. They just want them back here, now.

I don't know what it says about me as a person or my mental health, but I've never cried at the funeral or the grave. When I cry its days or weeks later, in the middle of the night. Tears running down my face as all the emotions I don't show rush out, and I try to push them back in without waking anyone up.

When I die, I want a New Orleans style funeral.

Don't "Like" The Song, "Like" The Album

Right now I'm listening to Pl3dge, by Killer Mike. I'm on Track 5 ("Burn"), and I can say that the album's certified Tony Montana dope.

And I haven't "liked" one song.

I did this as an experiment to see if I was able to just enjoy an album as a complete work without any obligation to rate each track. I read an article in Esquire that said that this is the Era of the Good Song because we are forced to make instant criticisms on songs as we hear them. Albums don't really sell like back in the day because we've become conditioned to only really respond to instant gradification. We don't have time to take in an artist's or group's whole body of work so we buy the dollar single over the ten-dollar album.

Maybe we need to change this. Maybe if we had the option to rate the album like we do the single LPs would be of better quality. Sure you can "like" an album on Facebook like you "like" a single, but on your iTunes and Zune only ask if you like the song, not the whole work. To Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, the sum of the parts outweigh the whole. Maybe someone needs to fix that.

"Like" Pl3dge.

The New Business of Music

I don't like to pay for music.

Scratch that.

I don't like to pay for something I could get for free.

Now we can sit here a argue about whether or not downloading without paying is really a crime for hours, but that's not my aim today. I'm here to talk about how the business of Hip-Hop has changed since I was a kid.

Think about this for a second: Shaq is a platinum artist. Multi-platinum, I believe. It used to be that any Joe Spitkicker could at least get a gold album. Skills mattered, of course, but back in the 90's you could get away with being wack and still do numbers because of marketing.

O.K., that hasn't changed, but the ones who got the most shine usually had the most skill.

At least that how I remember it.

Now, former multi-platinum artist struggle to go platinum once in a month's span. Lil' Wayne doing a million in a week off of The Carter 3 (Carter 2 was better, IMHO), it was considered a grand achievement. Meanwhile, arguably better albums sometimes can't even go gold.

But there's hope.

Mixtapes are starting to sound like albums now. (Kush & Orange Juice) They sound so much like studio LPs now that some artists are re-releasing them on iTunes about a month after their online release, either in their "untagged" form (a plus if DJ Scream's on the tape), or as stripped-down EPs (Str8 Killa > Thank Me Later EP IMHO). You can actually build a decent catalog around a artist consisting of free material they put out.

Dang...it's kind of cool being a Hip-Hop fan today.

Politics As Usual

Right now in Georgia (and across the U.S.), politicians are paying for television time to get your votes. They do the usual things: talk a little about themselves, say what their going to do for your state...

...and sling mud at their opponents.

I know this kind of thing has been going on for decades, but lately, it's been getting on my nerves. Particularly the way Republicans have been using Obama as an easy target to get the conservative vote. This may have to do with the fact that the only other President I've voted for lost to a man who doesn't care about Black people.

I wish I could just let this roll down my back like everyone else, but I have to get out my fustration somehow, or else I'll go crazy.

If you want me to vote for you, do something different: simply tell me in plain language what your plans are for Georgia, and let your work speak for itself, instead of attacking the guy on the other end of political spectrum as you. I'd vote for someone like that.

I'm an anarchist, by the way.

Girls on the Mic

I miss Lauren Hill. I'm not the first person to lament about L Boogie, and I won't be the last. But like it or not, she one of the three female emcees mentioned most often when bloggers and writers talk about the lack of Y chromosomes in Hip Hop.

Scratch that; the lack of Y chromosomes in MAINSTREAM Hip Hop.

There are female emcees out there who are making great music. Unfortunately, Lil Wayne is backing Nicki Minaj.

Yeah, Invincible and Jean Grae aren't gonna get airplay outside college radio as long as every chick in the club wants to be a Barbie.

I guess I could say something possitive about Rocky Rivera or something, but it's been said. I'm just tired of hearing the same deep voices on the radio, I guess.

Come back, Ms. Hill.

Recluse

I don't think it's crazy to talk to yourself. I'm pretty sure I'm doing it right now. Which means I can speak with complete freedom in a crowded room as big as the planet. With that said, let me make the following statements.

I think social networking is one of the most retarded, ass-backwards concepts of our time.

True, I have a MySpace and Facebook account, as well as Twitter, but they often collect dust. I just can't get into the whole idea of having conversations over an internet connection. I don't even like talking on the phone. Worst yet, it spreads the idea that writing is passe, at least with pens and pencil. And I can't stand L33T speak, and technicially I'd be classified as a geek. (A comic geek, but still...)

I don't really have a point to this story, I'm just talking to myself again.

Semi-Legal

The thing about being broke and an addict is that you have to be creative with the ways you get your vice. For my particular substance of choice, music, that means walking a very thin and controversial line between rabid fan-dom and outright crime.

If you think in dial-up, I'm referring to file sharing.

Now to me, file sharing falls into a legal gray area I like to refer to as "semi-legal" activities. (Weed's the only other real member of this group in my opinion.) This means that while under the letter of the law these actions are illegal, the reasons behind their legal status have as much to do with business as they do with public safety.
Family Guy aired an episode recently dealing with the issue of marijuana legalization. Sure, it dealt with the subject like Family Guy, but still...
Basically what Seth McFarlane was saying was that while weed ain't exactly the best substance to be on when, say, reporting the news, the reasons for it being illegal might have as much to do with the business as much as the social issues of the drug.

The same thing can be said for file sharing. In the late 90's, recording artists attacked Napster for allowing people to share songs freely without any consideration towards the artists. They claimed that this would cause the downfall of CD sales and bankrupt the music industry. Well of course, we now know that the industry didn't die; the times just changed. Some had a hard time reconciling with the way things were and how things are. So the industry is still attacking the can when the worms are already loose.

Just as recently as last week the RIAA was still in court trying to crack down on file sharing. Meanwhile SoundScan first week numbers for albums are in the six figures, and Weezy was the last dude to do a mil in the first week. ITunes is the new king of music distribution, and artist can get rich off one song rather than a whole record. So was the advent of file sharing really that bad?

Money aside, file sharing opened up the doors for Zune and iPod to be invented. Soulja Boy owes the dude who came up with Napster some residuals. Still, one could see how a dude with a record contract would be pissed off at the fact that they could be making money off of 1,000 downloads that no ones paying for.

Free Music.