The Art of Rap

Hello everyone writing you this one as a reminder of the fact that at my core I am still a big fan of hip hop:-) and guess what it seems that I am not the only one. As you all know from my The roots post, when I talk about hip hop on don't mean the gibberish you get on mainstream media these days and yes, I'm taking about the Kanye West & Co. Have nothing personal against Kanye, on the contrary I would say that he is one of those people or producers out there who gets it and can still (from time to time) produce some great music. What I want to say by this intro is that, high music has evolved to levels I would never have imagined seeing when I was in my teens, it has also surprisingly become as 
crazy as hell.

So, I guess it's needless to say that when I saw the movie From nothing to something, announced as the movie made by rappers for rappers, I was at the seventh heaven at that moment I saw it.  But yet again knowing the business and money making orientation the music industry is heading to these days. Don't have anything against commercialisation and showbiz. After all artist got to make money too (provided you agree with the "work for money" paradigm). Just saying that the in the earlier days it might have been about the money, but it was mostly about the culture, I think.

Anyway, all that being said, let's go back to the documentary in question. The art of raping, as I said before is an authentic movie. The kind of movies you go for when you are in search of something genuine. And God knows it delivers. You can see a lot of all time favourites of hip hop in it delivering one of the best possible quotes and ideas about rap in general. Took some time to write some of them out for you :-) hope you enjoy.

Grandmaster Caz (Cold Crush Brothers) - "Hip - hop reinvented everything".

Afrika Bambaataa - "The b boys & the b girls,  the djs, the mcs, the aerosol writers and a fifth element that holds it all together - knowledge".

Rakim -"I listened to Jazz and it really inspired me. And I always wondered if they can take you right "there" with the instrumental, is it possible to take people "there" with words?".

Immortal Technique - "In Hip - hop you have to fight with your mind".

Marley Marl - "Hip - hop doesn't have the status of Jazz and Blues yet, because there is not that much love in Hip - hop, no reunions, no love. It's just now that everyone is starting to realise this".

Dj Premier - "You've got to know how to listen to it. Not knowing, makes no sense"

Raekwon - "Wackiness , that's how I will summarise hip hop today. All we want is a Nigga who will rhyme with some dignity, rhyme with some kind of feel. If you're not coming with something like that, there is no other option than calling it wack".

Chuck D - "My lyrics have to be structured. I gotta be sure that whenever someone hears a statement I make, he should be sure that I stand behind this statement".

Ras Kaas - "The only Niggaz who had time to learn are Niggaz who went to college and those who were in Jail. And those are my greatest fans" .

Krs - One - My first battle was in a park in Mel Rose. And it all started because a dude said something about my clothes

And the list goes on and on. With a lot of interesting things like getting to know how rappers write. As in finding the way they write their rhymes. From total isolation to having a hardcore workout before throwing out some rhymes. Also came to the understanding of how many djs came to sampling records, with one of the rappers in the movie saying, "They took our instruments from us so we used records and made music from them instead:-)". Pretty cool, right?

So, that's it for my ode to hip hop. As Erykah Badu says,

I met him when I was a little girl he gave
He gave me poetry and he was my first
But in my heart I knew, I wasn't the only one
Cause when the tables turned he had to break up
Whenever I got lonely, needed some advice
He gave me his shoulder, his words were very nice
That is all behind me,
Cause now there is no other
My love is his and his is mine,
My friend became my....
Love of my life, you are my friend
Love of my life, I can depend
Love of my life, without you baby
Feels like I sampled true love, yeah