How Sweet It Was. Bitch.

I have touched upon how much I think new rap sucks before. I have also asked myself the question “Am I just old now?” Perhaps I’m just following a cycle, the way my Grandmother must have looked down her nose at my mother’s Elvis ’45 collection. The odd modern rap song (I like Clipse a lot) will turn my head, but en masse – compared to how much I loved it circa 86 to 94 – it’s just awful. Look at my car, check out this tacky spinning crap rim I tacked on to my wheel, Look at my diamond plated necklace which also looks like the wheel of my car, look at the ass on this girl, listen to the blippedy beep I made on a synthesizer in 2 minutes.” Ya feel me?

I am not saying that these themes haven’t been prevalent since the days of the Treacherous Three. I’m implying it’s all anybody bloody talks about now. Sure there are the Talib Kwelis and the like who opt for message – but they are few, far between and rarely on the charts anywhere. And by old school, I am not referring to pre-1988 but all the way up to the mid-nineties. The golden-age of rap occured, for me, about the summer of 92 and then dropped off sharply when Biggie died. You can almost trace it back to the month.

My thoughts are on this today because I watched the VH1 Hip Hop Legends Awards on Sunday night and thoroughly enjoyed the shiznit out of it. The way it works, is 6 seminal rappers are picked to join the legend ranks. Then, after a “Story of…” video is played on the big screen, a medley of that artists’ songs is performed by current rappers, often with the honored artist themself joining in at the end. It was really well done – Beastie Boys songs were performed by Q-Tip, Fabolous and Diddy before they joined in at the end. Rakim was honored and performed as did MC Lyte, Ice Cube and Wu Tang. Segments were punctuated by great old songs by EPMD, Das Efx and the like. It made me wonder what the phunk happened.