I Have a Confession to Make...

I have never listened to Common's Resurrection in its entirety. Does that make me a poser? Are you disappointed? Filled with anger? Are you gonna run into my house and burn that motherfucker down? Please put down your pitchforks and torches and let me explain myself.

Why haven't I? That's a good question. My reasoning for never listening to this album is that I never felt I needed to. Sure, it has some classics on there ("I Used to Love H.E.R", "Resurrection") and it's an important album in his discography, but it is by no means his best work. Like Water for Chocolate is. It is by far his most cohesive work to date. Being that LWFC was the first Common album I heard, I never felt that I had to dig into his previous records. I feel the same way about One Day It'll All Make Sense and Can I Borrow a Dollar (which aside from a few joints bore me to death). Of course I've heard the singles and skimmed through the album once or twice but I wasn't feeling it.

Honestly, I've never felt that Common was ever one of the most lyrical MCs out there. As a straight spitter he isn't that great (save for "Making a Name for Ourselves", where he holds his own next to a in-his-prime Canibus. He does murder him in his own track, but he did that to everybody. Sorry. I digress.). What does make him great is ability to write cohesive songs about a specific topic. Just look at his history: "I Used to Love H.E.R" (hip-hop), "Retrospect for Life" (abortion), "The Light" (love), and "The 6th Sense" (hip-hop and the hood) among many others. I don't mean to talk shit about his straight spitting tracks (without them we wouldn't have gems like "you rhyme like a nigga with his nipple's pierced"), but Com is at his best when he focuses in on a subject.

So what does this have to do with Resurrection? Well, that album is just Com getting his fliggidy-riggidy flow on. Yeah, it has some bangers, but he was still developing his style as an MC back then. It sounds super outdated compared to his next couple of albums.

Whatever. I'll give it a shot. I borrowed my girlfriend's copy (who is steadily becoming a bigger hip-hop head than me. What?) I'll listen to it and get back at you guys in a couple of days.
Peace.

Guess Who's Bizzack?

Yeah, I know. It's been a long time and I shouldn't have left you without a dope post to step to. It's been about two years and a half since I last updated this blog and a lot of good hip-hop has been dropped. A lot of tears have been shed. A lot of cheeseburgers have been eaten. A lot. Too many actually. But fear not faithful reader I am back.

So why haven't I been blogging you ask? Well, to quote Mr. Kelvin Mercer: "life can get all up in your ass, baby, you betta work it out." You gotta prioritize and I honestly haven't had the time to commit to a blog over the last two and a half years. Hopefully that will change.

Hip-hop and I have have had a very strained relationship throughout the years. As I've grown older and matured I feel that hip-hop has somewhat stayed the same (and at times regressed). Throughout the last three or four years I became tired of listening to how dope an MC is, how many mics he kills, and how many bitches he fucks. I thought it was time to grow up and I wanted substance. Aside from this many of my favorite artists began to dumb down their music or cater to the lowest common denominator in order to become successful instead of pushing their art forward. I wasn't feeling it. After realizing this I started to explore other music. I delved into indie rock, prog rock,and other rock subgenres and found I lot of stuff that I truly dug. But really, my heart has always been in hip-hop.I though that hip-hop had changed but then I reazlized that I had.

These last couple of months have seen me go back to that music that I spent most of my adolescent years loving. What happened? The Roots dropped a new album.

I had forgotten how much I loved The Roots and How I Got Over reminded me of that.

The Roots have always been a big part of my life. They were the first (real) hip-hop group that I listened to and the reason why I fell in love with hip-hop in the first place. It's not their best album but it is definitely their best work since Things Fall Apart. This isn't supposed to be a review of the album so I'll skip on describing it for now, but all in all this is what a hip-hop album should be. Black Thought has definitely grown as an MC (he actually raps about things besides rapping now!) and the band's sound is so intricate and nuanced that they are really starting to transcend genres now. It's a mature hip-hop album for somebody who has grown up with hip-hop. It is exactly what I needed.

No matter what hip-hop is always gonna be about having fun. You can't over think it. For every dude that's trying to be Talib Kweli you have fifty who are trying to become Jay and 50. My problem was that I was forgetting why I loved hip-hop. I forgot that when it comes down to it it's just about dope rhymes and dope beats.

Artist to Check out
The name of today's group is The Doppelgangaz and they hail from Australia (I think). They remind me quite of Artifacts. They have a really dope, throwback to the mid 90s, boom-bap sound. Here are a couple of videos. Hope you enjoy. Peace.

The Doppelgangaz-Digging


The Doppelgangaz-La La La