Thems The Breaks

Kurtis Blow in a more demure mood with brass shoulder pads. My contribution to the world of ghetto bling.

The historical record has objectively concluded that HipHop was at its best between the years of 1980 and 1989. Thereafter, starting from Public Enemy and NWA, it tailspinned into a spiralling decline until the present day.

Well that’s certainly how I saw it when I first got exposed to the old-school stuff at about age 14. And that era is more storied to me than what happened after, which I kindof half-heartedly caught up on in bits and pieces over the next quarter-century of my life. Somehow my brain is wired differently from other hiphop fans and i’ve never really had any common ground with them whatsoever, or really anyone I try to talk about this with.

So there it is.

I don’t really care now so I’m just coming out and saying it.

The gangsta rap years were pretty contemporary for me, and as a lived experience it was mainly about witnessing white guys richer than me trying to act poorer and more derro than me. Right down to attempting petty crime on me. So I wrote the whole thing off as the realm of the stupid. Tryhards, Wiggas, Homie-Gs, and just all-round dickheads.

There were no actual tupacs around in Melbourne, Australia or Ice Cubes or Dr Dres etc. Most of them were just white guys from well-to-do suburbs or Lebs from further out. For a while I had one half-Mauritian mate who was into it and he ended up being more of an army bloke in the end anyway i think. There was no real rationale to indulging in the lifestyle and to do so too enthusiastically would have you marked as a tryhard. People knew you weren’t really from the wrong end of the tracks but just wanted to act like it.

I liked my rap more crisp and preppy. All the other white guys liked it as a soundtrack to cosplay as compton gangstas.

The early hiphop hadn’t really crystalised into a genre with firm rules other than you were meant to sound like you were talking over a drum track. Choice of musical accompanyment would generally be electronic based so synths snuck in, as did sampling of what was at the time their parents/older siblings records from the 70s. Thats how the funk jumped in.

These guys, and a couple of ladies, would more punch out their rhymes in a sharper and higher tone. There seemed to be more optimism in it compare to the gangsta era, The content matter could be pretty funny. Kurtis Blow had a rap song on Basketball with a video thats still brilliant. They breakdanced and poplocked among other things. It all seemed fun and magical and full of amazing talents. And then, like its white hard-rock/metal mirror, that all stopped in the early 90s and the bitching and whining and moping and complaining took over. The ultimate goal somewhat differed: instead of killing yourself, you were supposed to have someone else kill you. That was the way to gangsta rap martyrdom apparently. According to US 1990s pop-culture rules, White people killed themselves, black people killed one another.

Gangsta felt comparitively morose and lazy. Im not saying that it WAS that, but that’s how it kind-of came across. I think its at least half true. I’d come to like the first albums of Wu Tang (36 Chambers) and Dr Dre (The Chronic, which featured Snoop), Some later Wu Tang stuff, GZAs first solo album (Liquid Swords), the Ghost Dog soundtrack (and movie), some early Ice T and Ice Cube, and as of a couple of years ago Queen Latifah (who I never really even knew did actual proper music, I gotta admit). I did see Ghostface Killah live and that was prety good too. I use to try liking Biggie Smalls for a while but now find him unlistenable, especially seeing as Ive heard the original songs that he sampled off. Ive never really bothered much with Tupac and I probably never will. All of the Australian hiphop was downright awful. I was also a Beastie Boys fan but went off ‘em when they wouldnt shut up about Iraq and I cant really get back into them in any nostalgic kind of way. They’re just too annoying. Thats what happens when you let your politics interfere too much with your art. If people disagree with you they’ll start hating you. You might not care, I’m not really sure that I do so much anymore. But you at least oughta know the risk.

The naysayers will always say hiphop is not really music. I half-get that. But in the visual art world we sample too. Its been known as copying, cartooning, collaging, and lately memeing. It can be good or shit in its end-result, and i suppose it depends on how good the creator is on turning the borowed parts into a piece they can call their own, in a way that doesnt seem lazy and imitative.

There’s nothing like researching into a song you like and find that it was basically ripped off whole from another song, with some minor tweak made. Right now im thinking of Armand Van Helden with I want Your Soul, who basically ripped off Siedah Garrett. All he seemed to do was speed it up and add a fussy clearcoat to the production. Taylor Dane’s version by contrast I’d prefer to call a cover. It’s different enough and she put down her own singing track.). How condemned they should be i think depends on how much mileage they expected to have gotten. Some were just bedroom-tweakers who got accidentally big. Some rode the fame-wave for a while and never made much of an attempt to own up. I guess the party was too good and if they said something that would all come to an end, because their talents would be exposed for the limits that it was. Or maybe Im being harsh here too, and DJ’s should just basically be considered live performers, similar to the cover band at your local pub.

I was gonna talk mainly about Kurtis Blow but went way off track. And I could go a lot deeper on this era but probably need to wind it up and leave it for another day. The Breaks is a good song and I always liked it. I find situational and philosophical. It tells you alot about how life rolls, while still being fun. A sense of fun is a good medicine for misfortune. I’ll leave it there.