Passin' Me By

Wait, no ... I did not really pursue my little princess with persistance
And I was so low-key that she was unaware of my existence
From a distance I desired, secretly admired her
Wired her a letter to get her, and it went ...

The first time I heard that track I was blown away, and every time I hear it I still get goosebumps. The whole concept of it summed up my lackluster interactions with the opposite sex throughout high school and the first two years of college. Ironically, that verse was to later end up describing my first real experience, too, years afterward.

As I often do, when I get into a "missing the old school" funk, I pulled out Vinroc's [of the X-ecutioners DJ crew] Reconstruction Volume 1 mixtape (er, CD), by far the best DJ-mixed compilation of classic hip-hop tracks I've ever heard. On the ride to work this morning, I made it through the first five tracks. As always happens, frickin' full-body shivers just ran through me at the start of every track, bringing back so so so many memories of my life back then.

After a beautiful splicing together of about thirty samples from various songs on the intro, Vin starts with "Passin' Me By" (can any true hip-hop fan deny the feeling you get when hearing that opening scratch-and-organ combo?), deftly moves on to Arrested Development's "Everyday People", heads back to New York with The Artifacts' graf anthem "Wrong Side of the Tracks", smoothly flows into the Roots' classic "Distortion to Static", then melts into Common [Sense, back then]'s smooth-as-butter "Resurrection", the title track of what was arguably his best album.

With each new track, I found that the volume wasn't quite high enough, and would turn the dial a bit more. It was thirteen minutes of hip-hop bliss, and the grin I had plastered on my face as I walked into my office must have made my co-workers wonder whether I'd just won the lottery or had actually gone insane.

The State of Hip-Hop

For those who didn't get the Notorious B.I.G. quote in yesterday's post [well, it was yesterday's post until I screwed it up while mucking with it tonight and had to delete it, then repost it today], it was from, uh, "Things Done Changed" on his classic "Ready To Die" album of 1994. Thinking of that quote made me pull out the CD to listen to on my way to go running last night. And listening to the CD pulled me back to '94 and moved me to comment on The State of Hip-Hop, as I see it.

My exposure to 'rap' began with Public Enemy's "Yo! Bum Rush the Show" and Eazy-E's "Eazy-Duz-It" around 1988; I was 12 and in 6th grade. I used to spend my time after school skating with a few friends, and one of them starting playing these two tapes as we skated. I remember he even got our bus driver to play the PE tape one morning on the way to school over the bus stereo! I had never heard this kind of music; I was familiar with rap, but only along the lines of the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC. This sound was entirely different: these guys were angry! It felt rebellious, and I loved it.

I remember joining BMG Music Service around the same time and suddenly being deluged with tapes of Tribe Called Quest, Brand Nubian, Diamond D, Big Daddy Kane, Eric B. & Rakim. I started reading The Source and watching Yo! MTV Raps, back in the days before they both went to crap. The beats and rhymes resonated with me, in a way that rock had never done. And I was fascinated by the tales of life so different from my own.

By about 1990 I was fully consumed by hip-hop; it was all I listened to. I knew all the local college stations' hip-hop show schedules and would record every one, and I was buying tape after tape after tape of new music. Around this time so-called 'gangsta rap' caught my ear. I'd always been an NWA fan, but now I was checking out groups like Compton's Most Wanted, Ice-T, South Central Cartel, DFC, Spice 1, Kool G Rap, Above The Law. Again it was the gritty [apparent] reality of the music that grabbed me.

The last three years of high school (92-94) brought so much classic major-label hip-hop that I thought it would never end: Black Sheep, Tribe, De La, Nas, GangStarr, Ed OG, OC, Ice Cube, Public Enemy, Brand Nubian, LONS, Naughty By Nature, Kam, BDP, D-Nice, Redman, Wu-Tang, Outkast, Del, Souls of Mischief, Pharcyde ... and a hundred more. You could hear so much good stuff on college stations, and occasionally mainstream stations, and see the videos on MTV, that the impending doom was completely unthinkable.

There had always been garbage out there: particularly from the west coast (E-40, Too Short, DJ Quik) and the south (Eightball & MJG to name one, and anybody else who flaunted shiny rented cars or gold fronts on their album covers). But it wasn't until the coming of Master P that I remember things clearly starting to go downhill. '94 was still a good year - Notorious BIG among others - but it was only going to get worse from here. The next year I instituted what I now jokingly refer to as the iron-fisted "Hip-hop Purity Purge of '95", where I summarily lined up and sold every last CD I owned that didn't quite meet my standards for quality. In retrospect, I was too harsh and I've had to buy back more than a few CDs since then.

Within a few years, lots of the groups I'd grown up listening to, and really respected, had either changed their sound to grab mass appeal or had just gotten lazy and become boring to listen to: Tribe, De La, KRS-ONE, Ice Cube, Ice-T, Wu-Tang, they were all guilty. Eazy-E had died, 2Pac and Biggie had been killed, and Ice Cube and Ice-T were now actors. Things done changed.

It was around this time that I discovered independent labels, thanks to the almighty Soul Controllers Mix Show on WMUC at the University of Maryland (Soul Ceez represent!). Nothing was more important to me than catching the entire show from 6 to 9 on Friday night, and I taped it every week. Van Dan and The J gave way to DJs Stylus, Book, and Mr. Elite, with Bushhead Ed and A-Double (Aaron McGruder, the guy who created The Boondocks) handling the non-DJ duties of the show. The guys used to play all kinds of independent records, and it was through this show that I found my way out of the trainwreck that major-label hip-hop was turning into. As Puffy and Jay-Z led the devolution revolution, I began finding new independent artists on the internet, ordering CDs and records directly from them, and slowly weaning myself off the increasingly commercialized and radio-friendly garbage being pushed by the majors.

Since about 1998, I've pretty much abandoned the major labels. Artists I used to listen to now rarely put out anything I'm interested in. There was a time when I'd buy anything by Nas, Ras Kass, Ice Cube, Wu-Tang, Tribe, Redman, KRS-ONE, etc.; now I don't even bother checking out samples of their albums. Some have sorta lost their way and thankfully come back - Common and The Roots are good examples.

But overall, at this point I'm completely and totally removed from the world of radio/commercial hip-hop. I hear various garbage being played in people's cars occasionally, or a bit on the radio, but that's about it. For me, independent hip-hop is where it's at, and sadly I don't see that ever changing. Luckily, there is a lot of quality material still being released regularly; you just have to look harder for it. These days I listen to Aceyalone, People Under the Stairs, Blackalicious, Lyrics Born, Sage Francis, Aesop Rock, Paris, T-K.A.S.H., stuff that would never get play on commercial radio.

The thing I often wonder is, what brought this on? Is it the record companies' fault? Is it the fault of the buying public? Are the artists themselves to blame? I'd say it's got to be a combination of all three. I think there's been a general lowering of standards on everyone's parts. And what about kids today, starting to listen to hip-hop, do they ever get exposure to quality music? Do they even know there was a history before Jay-Z, Lil' Jon and YinYang Twins?

Things Done Changed

... on this side
Remember they used to thump
But now they blast, riiight?

It's been an eventful past few weeks and I'm starting to change the way I feel about a lot of things, the way I think, the way I act, on a daily basis.

One realization I've had is that I'm tired of living in the 'burbs. When I moved out of San Francisco three months ago and down to Sunnyvale, the commute shrink from an hour-and-a-half door-to-door down to thirteen minutes, as well as the constant 10-15 degree increase in temperature outside, brought a smile to my face every day. I missed the city, but the south bay grew on me; San Jose, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto all had a comfortable, laid-back feel to them that I enjoyed. And the plethora of great south Indian restaurants - how can you beat having a Saravanaa Bhavan ten minutes from your house? - was awesome. I'd gotten fairly comfortable living here.

But having spent most of three weekends ago back in San Francisco (Sriram and Bharath were visiting), then the past two weekends in D.C., I've realized that I desperately need to be back in a city. Staying at Sriram's awesome new place off of U Street was heaven. It's within easy walking distance of, well, U Street, as well as Adams Morgan and DuPont Circle. The Metro is conveniently just a few blocks away, and I used it to go everywhere I needed to go. There are a million restaurants / pubs / cafes to check out. Every night there's some jazz band to go see, some author's book reading to listen to, some organization's event to attend - there's always something. There's just so much life going on there; the city feels alive 24 hours a day. It was intoxicating.

And it made me realize, this is where I need to be. Not necessarily D.C., but in some city. I need to immerse myself in livelihood; I feed off the energy and it inspires me, motivates me. I'm just now remembering a position that opened up a few months ago in D.C., and my manager was looking for people who were interested. I could've been heading back to D.C. as I type this! At the time, it wasn't meant to be. But if I could do it now, though, ...

Mind your own business

I returned today from spending the weekend in D.C. My flight back first had a stop in St. Louis, then Orange County, then finally San Jose. The stop in Orange County was only for a half hour, as the same plane was then continuing on to San Jose. Wanting to stretch my legs a bit, I decided to leave the plane and walk around the terminal for a few minutes. I had been seated in the absolute last row, near the window, right next to the loud, pulsating, vibrating engine. (Note to self: don’t fly American Airlines anymore if the flight uses a Super-80.)

Some passengers who were continuing to San Jose were staying on the plane. I passed two people sitting together, an older white guy and a younger Asian woman. From behind, I could see that the woman, who was sitting on the inside, next to the window, was turned about 30 degrees away from the man. She was also hunched over a bit, like she was hiding something. My curiousity was piqued: what’s the deal with these two? What’s she hiding?

As I passed them, I couldn’t resist turning around and investigating the scene. And well, she was hiding something all right.

She was breastfeeding her infant.

Now, it’s not the concept of this that bothers me, but rather the awkwardness of the position in which my curiosity had now put me. Since I was in the last row, I was the last one off the plane; this, combined with my very noticeable turnaround to check them out, drew the attention of both of them, so now mom AND dad and I are staring at each other, locked in a split-second but nonetheless extremely uncomfortable game of visual chicken. And the obvious question in their minds has to be, what is this guy, some kind of sicko?

Luckily, I only saw the actual suckling in my peripheral vision, as I made a conscious effort to not look away from her eyes as soon as I understood what was going on. But I would guess that even the back of my head was beet red as I resumed walking off the plane and made my escape. Once I was in the terminal, though, it occurred to me that I was going to have to walk back past these people when I re-boarded the plane. Oh, that’s just great. When I returned, I purposely stared at the floor until well past their row.

Lesson learned: if you see a woman sorta hunched over and appearing to be hiding something, then, um, just mind yer own damn business.