Once upon a time in a universe far, far away, HipHopDX used to host blogs. Through Meka, Brillyance, Aliya Ewing and others, readers got unfiltered opinions on the most current topics in and beyond Hip Hop. After a few years, a couple redesigns and the collective vision of three different Editors-In-Chief, blogs are back. Sort of. Since our blog section went the way of two-way pagers and physical mixtapes, Twitter, Instagram and Ustream have further accelerated the pace of current events in Hip Hop. Rappers beef with each other 140 characters at a time, entire mixtapes (and their associated artwork) can be released via Instagram, and sometimes these events require a rapid reaction.
As such, we’re reserving this space for a weekly reaction to Hip Hop’s current events. Or whatever else we deem worthy. And the “we” in question is myself, Omar Burgess and Andre Grant. Collectively we serve as HipHopDX’s Features Staff. Aside from tackling stray topics, we may invite artists and other personalities in Hip Hop to join the conversation. Without further delay, here’s this week’s “Stray Shots.”
Has Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) Ever Rapped To His Potential?
Andre: Mighty mighty Mos may be the most underrated emcee from the so-called Golden Age of Hip Hop. You know, the time when quote-unquote Hip Hop heads could look back and recall with great precision how a song made them feel like Tommy jackets and Timberland boots would last forever. But, with Black on Both Sides turning the age of a pimply teenager Monday, we had to posit on the effectiveness of his career. And really, there’s nothing to posit. Let’s check the tale of the tape:
A serious film career: (Two of which, “A Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy” and “The Italian Job” were quirky, weirdo philo-comedies). At least two classic albums: (Yeah, I’m sayin’ The Ecstatic was a classic, if only for its trite ability to make you feel irrelevant and unsophisticated). Did I mention “The Boogie Man Song” is one of the best buddha-head love tomes of all-time? Like, is this even still a serious question? Plus, he’s got a Grammy.
But after the several shining examples of supernatural rhymes he hit us with on Black on Both Sides, Black Star, The Ecstatic and the freestyles (my god, do you remember those?), he never quite put it together the way I’d like. I mean, there’s just this lingering feeling in my heart that he never presented me with the masterpiece my fandom demands. The way Ye´made MBDTF as an experiment in saying “See! This is what you guys want.” And everyone was all like, “Yeah, you’re right. This is perfect perfection. This is a perfectly perfect thing!” But here’s the heart of the matter, for me. He’s the rapper I wanted to choose to represent blackness and rapping. “Yeah,” I’d say, if someone tried to tell me Rap was misogynistic or nihilistic or materialistic, “Yeah, there’s some of that, but what about Mos?” And the conversation would hush itself to sleep right then as the minds of my adversaries spun themselves into a cocoon. Since i’m denied that, I will always kind-of of think his career is sort-of incomplete. Though, of course, that man owes me nothing.
Omar: Wrong question. I know what Mos Def’s potential is about as much as I can accurately tell you what I’ll have for breakfast seven years and 353 days from now. Who fucking knows? The real question is, “Has Mos Def met people’s absurd, rigid expectations for his career trajectory?” And I would say the answer is a resounding, “Hell no,” because said expectations are rigid and absurd.
Think about the song “Hip Hop” when Mos spit the following bars:
“My restlessness is my nemesis / It’s hard to really chill and sit still, committed to page / I write a rhyme, sometimes won’t finish for days…”
I can’t imagine something I loved doing, and were praised and compensated for being that difficult. Maybe I’m over analyzing the rhyme, but it sounds like each one of Mos Def’s sixteens was about as enjoyable as crafting a custom Ron Swanson chair.
Mos Def was painted into the conscious box by a large segment of the very same fanbase that praised him. Some of it was by virtue of him holding a mirror up to Hip Hop (and by extension society at large). Whether it’s fair or not, if you’re labeled as conscious, portions of your audience are going to turn that mirror right back in your direction. And when they do, it’s not just a regular mirror. It’s one of those 5X magnifying vanity mirrors that show every pore, blackhead and disfigurement. Remove the social commentary, and say you pit Mos against an emcee with equal technical precision, cadence and timing. The other emcee can attempt a crossover hit without people wondering about his ex-wife’s allegations, one of his biggest songs possibly being about Beyonce or all the other bullshit expectations a “conscious rapper” gets saddled with.
Add in the nature of the record business and what sounded like Mos Def’s visible frustration with the recording industry, and it sounds (I’m purely speculating here) like a really shitty job. Who would want to put up with all of that for maybe $100K each year? I assume Mos is somewhere doing him sans any expectations from fans or detractors about his potential. There were select moments when he performed a thankless job incredibly well. People’s projected expectations based on those select moments aren’t really his problem.
Are We Secretly Glad “Wu-Tang Forever’s” Remix Got Axed?
Omar: A Drake/Wu-Tang collaboration in 2013 would have been like mixing peanut butter and Hennessy. You can understand why people individually like each element, but you keep them in their respective lanes because the combination would be terrible. I don’t think the botched “Wu-Tang Forever” remix had anything to do with women. People are quick to forget Wu-Tang Clan made some great music co-opting R&B songs—whether it was the Rae and Ghost’s remix to Jodeci’s “Feenin’,” ODB on Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” remix or Meth, U-God, and Ol’ Dirty on S.W.V.’s remix to “Anything.” And that’s before you factor in Method Man and Mary J. Blige’s “All I Need.” Drake and 40 are clearly taking cues from the style of ‘90s R&B/Rap hybrid that Sean Combs helped popularize. And despite those pillow-biting looking album covers and occasionally simpish behavior that we (read: I) sometimes clown him for, Drake can shift into rugged mode when he wants to.
In a perfect world, everyone involved could’ve found a lyrical happy place for a Drake/Wu-Tang collaboration. But, his paying tribute aside, Drake’s “Wu-Tang Forever” was a botched concept from the jump. Much like 2011’s “Practice,” “Wu-Tang Forever” took a pretty rugged track and tried to remake it as a ballad. And Drizzy just doesn’t have the vocal range to do that. Plus the dirty secret of Wu-Tang’s (and to a greater extent Diddy’s) success merging Pop/R&B with Hip Hop was the combination of raw breakbeats over stacked melodies and familiar samples. There’s nothing inherently wrong with mixing bubblegum R&B with Hip Hop. It’s all in the execution. And Wu-Tang Clan and the combination of Drake and 40 take decidedly different routes to get to that destination. With the exception of Ghostface’s 2009 effort, Ghostdini Wizard Of Poetry In Emerald City can the Clan even enter that Pop/R&B chamber anymore? The road to an incredibly terrible collaboration is paved with good intentions. I think Drake and Wu fans are better off with the remix to “Wu-Tang Forever” stuck on a hard drive somewhere.
Andre: I mean, the answer is yes, a resounding yes. And he is not wrong for it. It’s like this, see. Drizzy makes love-songs. The Wu does not make love-songs. Well RZA does, but he’s special. That whole “I got a ‘Love Jones’ for your body and your skin tone” stuff was about relationships. The crew referring to women as different flavors of ice cream, while classic, was not about love. And Ghost pretty much only made songs about sex — some of the best, to be sure — but he did not talk about how vulnerable “love” can make you, how fragile. This is the kind of music that Drake makes, and he makes it very, very well.
In the Clan’s statement, U-God had this to say, “We was hard body at the time. We was listening to the track, and like later on, I was like, ‘What the hell was I rhyming about? I was like I was rhyming some hardcore shit, and he wanted to talk about some bitches.’ Pardon me. Women and stuff…” And Ghost didn’t even know what was going on! “I didn’t record. When I talked to him, I think he wanted me and Rae to go in, but for whatever reason, it never happened.”
So, the remix to “Wu-Tang Forever” maybe didn’t happen because Drizzy wanted something more “woman-y” and Wu-Tang wanted something a little more Wu-Tang-y and there’s nothing wrong with that. That unholy union wouldn’t have been good for anyone, but it would have sure been fun.
Omar Burgess is a Long Beach, California native who has contributed to various magazines, newspapers and has been an editor at HipHopDX since 2008. Follow him on Twitter@omarburgess.
Andre Grant is an NYC native turned L.A. transplant who’s contributed to a few different properties on the web and is now the Senior Features Writer for HipHopDX. He’s also trying to live it to the limit and love it a lot. Follow him on Twitter@drejones.
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if wu rode that drake wave they project would be super hyped. dumbest thing ever. im sure drake didnt release it cuz of the backlash..he did that with the aliyah project too
with the Wu-tang/Drake collab’ not happening, all I gotta say is THANK GOODNESS FOR THAT!!! aaaaaaahahahahahhahahahahhahahhaaaaa!!!
So Drake looks like “pillow biter” on his album covers, and the golden age of hip hop extended to the year 2000. That is some crack jack editorializing.
Word. I hate when people want to give their own dates for the Golden Era. It was mid 80’s to about 1990 or ’91. Not anything past that.
Really hate to get into responding to these dumb articles but this one got me so fucking angry because it just reflects what is so ass-backwards about the current hiphop idiots pretending to be purists. Jesus fucking Christ. such a misinformed BS re: Drake and Wu-Tang. To caricature Wu-Tang as simply rugged and about sex and Drake as bubblegum R&B is just such a load of post-Kanye hipster hip-hop crap that only existing in the removed universe of idolizing-suburban-Westchester-kids-raised-fronting-as-if-there-are-really-from-Manhattan-vortex..(Its really tbh not that far from straight racism to be totally real. Its kind of like the good-black/bad-black pigeon-holing all over again but I wont even go there). To claim, the Wu doesnt write love songsand Ghostface only writes about sex (and nothing vulnerable) is just fucking blasphemy. What music are u listening to? Do these suburban idiots even understand the lyrics? Did he skip over every Wu-Tang release? And RZAs clear love for R&B (not as slyly referred to as breakbeats here) is sprinkled all over his production from the early days all the way to now. Those breakbeats were almost ALWAYS chosen when they were heavily-routed in R&B. It is all the more evidence that these hip-hop nerds writing these articles are born out of the post-Kanye era and they were never really fucking there when this music dropped. They were listening Nelly or Dipset, for real thats my guess. The clearest evidence of this is the same clown who calls Mos Def an underrated MC from the Golden Era. Golden Era? Dude 1988-ish is not golden. Rarely, 1993 gets lumped in there and it is wrong but I let it pass but Mos Def golden? Thats a hella stretch. Its WAAAAY LATER (And BTW, its your botched opinion, but hes not an underrated MC at all. Id argue he is over-rated. He made a couple early amazing native-tongue-ish singles ala Ultramagentic but then, proceeded to disappoint many schooled hip hop heads with the Black Star album that barely had a standout that didnt borrow heavily from BDP or SlickRick. Thats why he never reached his potential. He never had an undebatable amazing album like the Chronic, Midnight Mauraders etc.. And no- Black on Both Sides is nowhere even near it. Hip hop nerds like to reach with that one). Anyways, the point is you kids were late with the Wu-Tang love and its OBVIOUS. All this Wu-Tang bandwagoning is coming from clowns who werent really part of the era when Ill Al Scratch LPs were residing next to Wu-Tang records in their DJ bag. Lets be clear: RZAs core talent and signature sound was precisely based on innovating hip-hop production by meshing it heavily with classic R&B, darkening it to create a sound reflective of New Yorks murky gloomy side. This backdrop created the picture. They always put their vulnerability there. ALWAYS. From CREAM to Can it All be So Simple it was all about gloomy R&B in minor tones and vulnerability in their lyrics. Thats precisely what made their music so compelling. It was never simply hollow ruggedness. Great artists are never one-dimensional. Wu had multiple layers and all kinds of emotions over those records from anger, sadness, fear to whatever. Thats really not unlike what Drake does at all. Hipsters reading might be banging their head against their laptops right now with their latte in hand at their local Starbucks but that is the bottom-line truth. Drakes sound is actually very similar to the Wu and probably owes kudos to them for elaborating on their signature sound, just updated for the 21st Century. Drakes lane is introspective R&B with a gloomy side and boatloads of raw authentic vulnerability THE SAME. Obviously, the vocal range for Wu-Tang Forever was never ever meant to be there because Drakes clearly trying to blur the bucketing of the distinctive genres so his rapping and singing is hard to determine. Whats more Wu-Tang than raw emotion over gloomy R&B production? Whats more Wu-Tang than destroying the mold? Drakes most classic track has a chorus claiming fuck that nigga that you think you found. WTF is bubblegum about that ? Remember people (im-talking-to-you-suburban-hipsters) this is BLACK music. R&B gets love from black people. You idiots can hate Drake all you want but the guy has hardly ever made straight bubble-gum R&B crap when you really listen to his music frankly without the filters in your head. As the years pass, waithe will actually be credited for making R&B quite the opposite in fact. He made it murkier. As always IMO, all the boxing in of Drake rarely comes from an honest look at his music. It comes from evaluating his clean-cut image and good English which somehow frustrates pseudo-hip-hop purists (ahem-racists). For them, its Drakes image they really cant shake because he is too polished to be forgiven for his brand of fusing R&B and hip-hop. So yeah, your sigh of relief is not for anyone who really listens or understand this hip hop shit or understands innovation in music because anyone with any true musical knowledge would know Drake (love or hate him) has actually re-invented R&B/hip-hop and taken a page from the Wu to do it. The sigh of relief is because hypocrite purists roaming this site (who btw, mirror the crowd who vehemently hated Biggie and Jay-Z in their early days also) wouldnt be able to handle it. They wouldnt be able to handle that Drake – someone who has been held as the anti-Christ of hip-hop (just like Biggie, Dr. Dre, the Beastie Boys and Jay-Z before him) would be getting together with the Wu-Tang the group that the purists hold so dear but have falsely pigeon-holed into hip-hop traditionalists.They would see it as mixing peanut butter with Henessey but to anyone who, actually, understands the complexity of music would realize its really just like Johnnie Walker on the rocks.but dont worry, now just go back to your little vortex, heralding the new Kendrick Lamar I single and keep telling yourself that that Ellen-studio-audience-loving-song aint pop because if that boring predictable crap came out in 1993, I would call that shit exactly what it is now straight Top 40 bubble-gum garbage.