Make sure you put on your best clothing when you go to Sunday School at XXL Mag Dot Com
Me and my lady’s dad go at it from time to time because he is a classic jazz aficionado and I of course, am not. One thing we both agree on however is that John Coltrane was a gift from God. Coltrane was a consummate artist whose work ethic was nothing short of ridiculous. ‘Trane was enveloped by his art and cared nothing for the fame and trappings that came with popularity. Dude was also just a beast on the saxophone. If you haven’t ever fucked with any John Coltrane music do yourself a favor and open up some of that shit. You won’t be disappointed, unless you are a retahd.
Our argument, rather discussion this weekend centered around the excellent poetry contained in Hip-Hop lyrics. My talking points dealt with rap music’s employment of poetic conceits to describe things like wealth, women, drugs, etc. His argument was that rap does little more than to describe things in order to sell shit. He declared that rap music lacked the ability to describe society the way that poetry does because the use of music negates and meaning to the lyrics. He argued that the purpose of music was to make you dance and not make you listen so therefore any statements that were important were being issued to deaf ears. I corrected him by saying that deaf was actually spelled ‘Def’. He had no idea what the eff I was talking about.
Now while I would generally agree with his overall assessment of rap music in that it is used to sell things to people, from actual products like Courvosier, to more esoteric items like lifestyle choices, when Hip-Hop has attacked social injustice it has done so with aplomb and success. Furthermore, classic poetry itself has been lent to musical accompaniment and that has not diluted its message or intent. I decided I would take a minute to extract some classic poetry that was shaped for musical presentation and compare it with some rap lyrics that I consider a great socially relevant poem. I pulled up some of James Langston Hughes collected works since my lady’s dad made a book with him fifty years ago called ‘The Sweet Flypaper of Life’. The piece I used as an example of the musical nature of poetry is called ‘Po Boys’ Blues’
When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
Since I come up North de
Whole damn world’s turned cold.
I was a good boy,
Never done no wrong.
Yes, I was a good boy,
Never done no wrong,
But this world is weary
An’ de road is hard an’ long.
I fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
Fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
She made me lose ma money
An’ almost lose ma mind.
Weary, weary,
Weary early in de morn.
Weary, weary,
Early, early in de morn.
I’s so weary
I wish I’d never been born.
This is a blues song if I have ever heard one. As a matter of fact I can hear Muddy Waters already on the hook singing this joint. Blues songs love to repeat their refrains to drive home the central idea that the story they are relating is really fucked the fuck up. I chose a blues song for my Hip-Hop entry as well. Blues songs lyrics are clearly where popular American music gets its DNA from. From the chanted call and response to the repeated rhyming patterns which are all Blues innovations.
Especially considering the themes of love, loss, reconciliation and redemption when they are contained in one song owe their roots to the history of storytelling from Africa. The Hip-Hop song I used as my example was the final stanza from Melle Mel’s universal ghetto classic – ‘The Message’.
A child is born with no state of mind,
blind to the ways of mankind.
God is smiling on you but he’s frowning too,
because only God knows what you’ll go through.
You’ll grow in the ghetto, live as second rate,
and your eyes will sing a song of deep hate.
The places you play and where you stay,
looks like one great big alley way.
You’ll admire all the number book takers,
thugs, pimps, and pushers and the big money makers.
Driving big cars, spending twenties and tens,
and you wanna grow up to be just like them.
Smugglers, scramblers, burglars, gamblers,
pickpockets, peddlers, even panhandlers.
You say, “I’m cool, hell I’m no fool!”,
but then you wind up dropping out of high school.
So now you’re unemployed, all null and void,
still you’re walking around like you’re Pretty Boy Floyd.
Turned stickup-kid, and look what you’ve done did?
Got sent up for a eight year bid.
Now your manhood is took and you’re a May-Tag.
You spend the next two years as an undercover fag
Being used and abused, and served like hell.
Until one day you were found hung dead in your cell.
It was plain to see that your life was lost.
You were cold while your body swung back and forth.
So now your eyes just sing the sad, sad song,
of how you lived so fast, and died so young.
You can’t tell me that shit isn’t everlasting fire. Ha! I beat the old man this time. This joint is on some profound ‘Strange Fruit’ type shit. At its height, Hip-Hop tells a truth that gives knowledge and empowerment to those that heed its message.
Jazz = amazing. I wish I had more time to put into searching it out and learning more about it. I knew a lot about it when I was a kid, but I think those brain cells have since been obliterated. Sad, really.
I still know enough to know that Coltrane is the shit though.
“At its height, Hip-Hop tells a truth that gives knowledge and empowerment to those that heed its message.”
And that couldn’t be any more truthful either.
Props.
Between that and the Verse from Beat Street, money still has two top 10 verses.
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Written by Lewis Allen and sung by Billy Holiday, and no one in Hip Hop has or can touch those chilling, icy cold lyrics. Ernie Paniccioli
To Jay Z, 50 Cent, Lil Wang and the rest of you bitch boys and crunk mumblers. You can’t touch these lyrics, go get a late pass beyatches. Yeah I dissed you, Ernie
Mystery (Who Is God) Lyrics
Rakim
Intro/Chorus:
If you can see if you can solve the mystery
The answer revolves around your history
So carefully, I drop this degree
Scientifically, and realistically (Who is God?)
Repeat Chorus
In eternal blackness, in the midst of the darkest night
Proteins and minerals, exist within specks of light
Solids liquids and gases, and sparks of light within
infinite lengths and widths and depths and heights
No beginning or ending, the seven dimensions
Enough space for more than a million words and inventions
To travel through time within enough room to be the womb
of the most high’s great mind which he will soon make shine
With intelligent elements in sight that he will gather
In the realms of relativity electricity struck matter
Energies explode he began to keep releasin
Atoms by the millions, til the numbers increasin
Til it was burnin he kept returnin itself to the source
The hotter his thoughts it gave the center more force
He gave birth to the sun which would follow his laws
All caused by his mental intercourse, who is God?
Chorus
He began to explain his craft, the master in the attic
He dealt with measurements his language, was mathematics
His theoretical wisdom of the numerical system
The complete number nine which means born or existed
He gave birth to all planets, inorganic, and organic
So you wouldn’t take it for granted
They rotated they own distance around the sun
And fully submit to the existence of one
And each one was promised everlasting perfection
If each one keeps spinnin in the same direction
To the East, and each speak the motion of peace
and harmony, and each show devotion to teach
The universe is to come, the whole world must go according
Know your galaxies and myriads of stars start fallin
So stay in your orbit maintain safe and sound
Like the planets each cipher remains perfectly round
Chorus
From unconciousness, to conciousness
By acknowledging his wisdom his response is this
Understanding, which is the best part
He picked the third planet where new forms of life would start
He pursued show and prove every move in order
Back to the source he let off his resources in the water
Climb his climax, where the climate is at, high degrees
See he start to breathe deep in the darkest seas
And the plan is, to lay in the clays to form land
And expand, usin the same clays to born man
In his own image our origin begins in the East
Culture rise to breed, with the powers of peace
Deal in equality nature’s policy is to be God
Build or destroy positively born life like Allah
And each one was given everlasting perfection
If each one keep living in the same direction
And life was life, and love was love
We went according by the laws of the world above
They showed us physically, we could reach infinity
But mentally, through the century we lost our identity
Life start and ending, we got trife and started sinning
Lost touch with the beginning now ciphers stop spinnin
And what was once easy became confused and hard
Which brings us back, to the mystic question, who is God?
Sixty-six trillion years since his face was shown
When the seventh angel appears, the mystery will be known
Check Revelations and Genesis, St. Luke and John
It even tells us we are Gods in the Holy Qu’ran
Wisdom Strength and Beauty, one of the meanings of God
G.O.D. you and me ?Gomars O Dubar?
Knowledge Wisdom Understanding Sun Moon and Star
Man Woman and Child, and so is Allah
Chorus
Bear witness to Allah, gave birth to all
For Allah was all, and therefore, life itself
And the universe gave birth to man
The universe was man, and man was the universe
And the universe has always existed
And existence was life
And life is Allah
And Allah had no beginning because he is, what always was
Rakim Allah, peace
Now who is God?
^ Divine poetry is God
all of the above= truth…..and these 80’s/90’s babies still don’t get it….
These are the lyrics of “Strange Fruit” written by Lewis Allen and sung by Billy Holiday.
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
I decided to post these lyrics both to remind folks that lynching has a ugly reality in American history and to rebuff those sorry asses that are using the issues of nooses to get a little shine, advance their weak political agenda or distract us from the issues of UNITY, LEGAL assistance, MEDICAL care, JOBS and EDUCATION.
Yes, the classic bullshit artists like Cornell West, Russell Simmons, Michael Eric Dyson, Sharpton, Jackson and those self appointed race/gender issue/male/manhood lecturers who take issues of Nooses (either put there by some sick, sorry, racist, uneducated pecker wood or some other ass trying to get his 15 minutes of anonymous fame) or the N word and make a crusade while lining their pockets and advancing nothing more than the cult of their own personality.
Billi Holiday would have none of that, she just told the cold, hard, ugly truth but did it would so much power, beauty and grace that 60 years later it can still bring a tear to your eye. Bro. Ernie
—
Every generation produces artists that break the boundaries and a whole shitload of hacks, wannabees, no talents and losers that clog the airwaves.
Sadly today the losers and no talents are more easily digested by the dumbed down masses and therefore get the shine and produce a shit movie and an even shittier album called “American Gangster” While the true American Gangsters live in the White House.
Real artists are gifts from The Creator like Billy Holiday, Gil Scott Heron (Not Jill Scott, dumbass, do your homework), Marvin Gaye, Richie Havens, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, Charlie Mingus, Bobby Womack, Bob Dylan, Rakim, Van Morrison, The Last Poets, Mos Def, Public Enemy, Bob Marley, KRS1, Miles Davis, Sun Ra, Issac Hayes, Little Jimmy Scott, John Trudell, Curtis Mayfield, Afrika Bambaataa, George Clinton, Sly and The Family Stone. If you have not had the luck, to hear all of these artists, check them out. They may save your soul, help you be reborn, give you a reason to live, think, read, feel, create and feel proud to be human.
“Boogie down productions is made up of teachers
The lecture is conducted from the mic into the speaker
Who gets weaker? the king or the teacher
Its not about a salary its all about reality
Teachers teach and do the world good
Kings just rule and most are never understood
If you were to rule or govern a certain industry
All inside this room right now would be in misery
No one would get along nor sing a song
cause everyoned be singing for the king, am I wrong?”
KRS-one….
All hail the old school lyricists.
good post and comments overall, but i would just like to add that it always bothers me a little when people say hip-hop is poetry. sure it uses some poetic elements (rhyme, meter, etc.), but that doesn’t make it poetry. and i think we, as fans, creators, and consumers, do ourselves somewhat of a disservice by trying to compare it to something that it’s not.
it’s almost as if we have this inferiority complex about hip-hop and need to compare it to something we view as loftier or as having more value. i say fuck that…hip-hop is not poetry. hip-hop is better than poetry – way better.
how many of us actually liked poetry when they tried to teach that shit in school?
fuck poetry…
LOL I feel you Twerk [ll]
I call great rap lyrics poetry because they are. Nothing is greater than the word itself. When man shaped his mouth and lips to create a sound from the air escaping from his esophagus is the greatest tool evar.
Just cause some shit is poetry doesn’t make it good or valuable. There’s wild amounts of bad poetry. Not bad meaning good, but bad meaning BAD (no Run-DMC). It’s all about the use of man’s greatest tool – the word.
twerk…a basketball is still a ball….so hip hop lyrics can still be poetry, poetry being the opposite of prose…., there is nothing inferior about hip hop being called poetry, superior for thst matter, it is what it is….
people tend to generalize it because it gives the unknowing a way of understanding what it is without actually understanding what it is, unowatimeen….
Rick Rubin shoulda got Johnny Cash to redo the Message.
Then he could change his namje to Johnny..Cash … Johnny Cash Flows
That track is the truth pure fire but I don’t care who you are that tight leather banana suit on homeboy is not what’s up, back then or present.
The jock strap under an open gold trench coat with a belt over top and knee high shit kickers isn’t particularly fresh either, but the bud light one piece with knee pads over top makes up for it.
I don’t think I’ve seen a worse ensamble of gear in one picture, the crack was better back then too.