Back in the days when I was a teen-ager ...
before I had status and before I had a pager
you could find The Abstract listening to hip-hop
my pops used to say it reminded him of be-bop
I said 'well daddy, don't you know that things go in cycles?'
So begins the opening track "Excursions" from A Tribe Called Quest's classic 1991 sophomore album The Low End Theory. I clearly remember listening to the cassette for the first time after getting it as part of BMG Music Club's 'buy 1, get 10 free' initial offer way back in 1992. At the time, I was heavily into hip-hop already, but with a very narrow focus on Ice-T, NWA, PE, X-Clan, Eazy-E and the like - the more 'confrontational' stuff. Aware that there was a whole 'nother world of hip-hop out of New York that I knew little about, I used the BMG 10-free deal to get up to speed on it - Brand Nubian, BDP, Tribe, Big Daddy Kane, etc.
I remember being blown away by The Low End Theory, in particular. It was unlike anything I'd heard: creative, positive, headnodic (yes that's a word), jazzy. I listened to it constantly for months, and it's been one of my favorite albums ever since that first listen.
Pondering recently the state of hip-hop (again), it occurred to me that my enthusiasm for new music has waned considerably these days. I look forward to new game releases much more so than hip-hop albums, whereas it used to be the opposite by a long shot. A big part of it is that I still haven't found a convenient way to keep up with and find new material (yup, still mourning the loss of college radio at WMUC since leaving College Park seven years ago). I try to catch The Soul Controllers on Decipher on Thursday nights, but since they moved from 11 to 10 PM, I haven't actually caught the show live in months. In the past few months I haven't been checking out local shows in DC either, for various reasons. And so my only source of information is various websites like Sandbox, which, while regularly updated, don't make it easy to actually listen to and discover new stuff.
Not that I haven't been finding anything new; in the past few months I've really enjoyed Atmosphere's When Life Gives You Lemons, J-Live's Then What Happened?, The Package's New Golden Era, and The Roots' Rising Down; and I did recently pick up People Under The Stairs' FUN DMC (nice as usual, although not quite as addictive as some earlier efforts) and The Mighty Underdogs' Droppin' Science Fiction (just today, and the first listen was pretty positive, although with Lateef and Gab how can you go wrong?). I've also ordered Panacea's new one, A Mind on a Ship Through Time, which is in the mail and is presumably just as good as everything else they've done.
But nothing's really amazed me in a long time. I feel like back in those 'golden era' years that was a regular occurrence. And so, feeling a little hip-hop malaise tonight, "Excursions" popped into my head and I just had to hear it ... but then I couldn't stop at Buggin' Out, then Rap Promoter, and before I knew it Scenario was ending; an hour had passed without my having even realised it, hip-hop nirvana having sucked me blissfully in.
*sigh*
Man, I miss those days.
you could find The Abstract listening to hip-hop
my pops used to say it reminded him of be-bop
I said 'well daddy, don't you know that things go in cycles?'
So begins the opening track "Excursions" from A Tribe Called Quest's classic 1991 sophomore album The Low End Theory. I clearly remember listening to the cassette for the first time after getting it as part of BMG Music Club's 'buy 1, get 10 free' initial offer way back in 1992. At the time, I was heavily into hip-hop already, but with a very narrow focus on Ice-T, NWA, PE, X-Clan, Eazy-E and the like - the more 'confrontational' stuff. Aware that there was a whole 'nother world of hip-hop out of New York that I knew little about, I used the BMG 10-free deal to get up to speed on it - Brand Nubian, BDP, Tribe, Big Daddy Kane, etc.
I remember being blown away by The Low End Theory, in particular. It was unlike anything I'd heard: creative, positive, headnodic (yes that's a word), jazzy. I listened to it constantly for months, and it's been one of my favorite albums ever since that first listen.
Pondering recently the state of hip-hop (again), it occurred to me that my enthusiasm for new music has waned considerably these days. I look forward to new game releases much more so than hip-hop albums, whereas it used to be the opposite by a long shot. A big part of it is that I still haven't found a convenient way to keep up with and find new material (yup, still mourning the loss of college radio at WMUC since leaving College Park seven years ago). I try to catch The Soul Controllers on Decipher on Thursday nights, but since they moved from 11 to 10 PM, I haven't actually caught the show live in months. In the past few months I haven't been checking out local shows in DC either, for various reasons. And so my only source of information is various websites like Sandbox, which, while regularly updated, don't make it easy to actually listen to and discover new stuff.
Not that I haven't been finding anything new; in the past few months I've really enjoyed Atmosphere's When Life Gives You Lemons, J-Live's Then What Happened?, The Package's New Golden Era, and The Roots' Rising Down; and I did recently pick up People Under The Stairs' FUN DMC (nice as usual, although not quite as addictive as some earlier efforts) and The Mighty Underdogs' Droppin' Science Fiction (just today, and the first listen was pretty positive, although with Lateef and Gab how can you go wrong?). I've also ordered Panacea's new one, A Mind on a Ship Through Time, which is in the mail and is presumably just as good as everything else they've done.
But nothing's really amazed me in a long time. I feel like back in those 'golden era' years that was a regular occurrence. And so, feeling a little hip-hop malaise tonight, "Excursions" popped into my head and I just had to hear it ... but then I couldn't stop at Buggin' Out, then Rap Promoter, and before I knew it Scenario was ending; an hour had passed without my having even realised it, hip-hop nirvana having sucked me blissfully in.
*sigh*
Man, I miss those days.
posted by GregP at 6:00 PM
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