Word to tha Mutha F*%kin’ Streets!

Word-up Homie’s.

I thought I’d bang on about how Hip-Hop. I’m a big fan , and whilst I don’t claim to know everything, I know what I like.

What sparked this, B?

Glad you asked. Well….I’ve just been handed a copy of, and have briefly glimpsed the trailer for, ‘Notorious’ and I was pretty stunned at how Jamal Woolard manages to capture Biggie Smalls. He looks the spit of him. Its Scary. I’m pretty sure the whole cast will be good…even P-Diddy likes the guy who plays P-Diddy.

I reckon my first dalliance with Hip-Hop graced my young ears in the playground at secondary school. Just as with so many of my first flirtations with different musical genres, the same guy passed me his Gaffa’d together walkman headphones and said “B, listen to this.”

The same smile that spread my face wide open when he’d passed me those same headphones many times before for such wonders as Pop Will Eat Itself , The Wonder Stuff and Mudhoney, appeared once more, and I was drawn in. I think to begin with I was hooked mostly because my 13 or 14 year old ears had never heard so much swearing and outright verbal violence on any track before, and I was astounded at the anger and attitude it exuded. It was NWA (I know…the clue is in the title). About the same time I was given a copy of Doug E. Fresh’s ‘The Show’, a few years older than the NWA record, and it portrayed a more positive message. The B-side ‘La Di Da Di’ was probably one of this first tracks I ever learned the lyrics to. It was like a novelty that didn’t wear off. The opposite in fact…it grew, but not after festering for a while.

About this time, Skateboards were talking over my daily travel routine and extracurricular activity; raw, pulsating guitars were ravaging my passion hungry ears, and quenching my sound hungry soul, while my monkey like arms were finding a way to bang out punk tunes on an old bass guitar my Uncle gave me.  It wasn’t until I learned to drive 2 or 3 years later and joined a band who, operated outside a mile radius of my house that Hip-Hop entered my life again, and it couldn’t have been more welcome.

Arriving at a first rehearsal, never having met most of the band, what turned out to be our vocalist pulled up behind me in the driveway, in a beat up VW Golf, with soul stirring bass lines rippling out of the window and vibrating my insides.

“Hey…what’s that you got on, man”.
“That, my friend, is Snoop Dogg’s album.”
“Gimme’ it.”
“…OK.”

And so it arrived back, and this time squarely planted itself at the forefront of my CD collection and took pride of place in the tape deck (err…yep) of my car for, what many would consider, an unhealthy amount of time.

The genre had moved on since I last heard it, it now shared the same funk driven feel that I was beginning to crave with my bass playing. They were mostly talking about the same things, ’smokin’ bud’ and ‘bangin’ hoes’ with the odd story of gang related crime and cop killing, but the attitude had changed from anger to a laid back groove. This is what I was after. Snoop Doggy Dogg’s first record ‘Doggystyle‘, and Dr. Dre’s first record ‘The Chronic‘, I quickly grew to understand that Dr. Dre’s production is what I loved, and still do.

Entering my early 20’s, my self-imposed ‘musical snobbery’ left me for good and the gates opened to let anything in. Along with the flood, in the hip-hop raft came Tupac, Notorius B.I.G., Jay-Z, Jurassic 5 , The Roots, Cypress Hill, House of Pain, to name a few, and then floating past came the British hip-hop, so I soaked up Rodney P, Roots Manuva, Skinnyman, Task Force, Jhest and Verb T amongst many, many others.

These days anything goes with hip-hop, so much great production behind so many good rappers.

Currently, I’m enjoying Ill Bill’s second album ‘Hour of Reprisal’ and desperately waiting for the first album from La Coka Nostra.

I feel must point out that I don’t just love Hip-Hop or Rap or whatever you want to classify it as. It would feel like nothing without Punk, Rock, Alternative, Electronic, Drum & Bass, Grunge, Jazz, Funk, Blues, Soul…well…you see what I’m getting at – expect to read me gushing about punk/rock in the near future, or about how I think Aphex Twin is either a genius or a complete nut job, or even about how funk should control your pelvic region.

OK…So..yeah…essentially that was a brief story of how Hip-Hop came in to my life.

I don’t necessarily know what’s gonna come out when I start writing, or indeed how informative, on the pulse, or consumer friendly it will be. So, well done if you got this far.

Gold Star.