Sunday Tunes: Hip hop edition

Even though I'm a Gen-Xer, I have a pretty curmudgeonly view of music videos, which is the reason the bulk of the Sunday Tunes are so far and will continue to be live music clips. But I also love the hip hop and I'm afraid I have to make an exception for hip hop because the live performances one can find on the Web are perhaps interesting for those already familiar with the particular piece but have sound quality that sucks so bad it's difficult for the unfamiliar to get a real sense of the music being performed.

The following clip by Mr. Lif, of Live From the Plantation, demonstrates some of what annoys me about the genre. Here Lif has constructed a great story rap in the tradition of Slick Rick, for which the sounds and the lyrics create all the imagery necessary and, I find, that the video imagery detracts from the mental picture painted by the song.



Not that I'm posting that as an exemplar, I'm just saying. The following serves as nice counterpoint, however. If you do have to make a video, this is how I think you should do it. Mr Lif again, with Because They Made it That Way. Here the imagery is a bit more subtle and, yet, more concrete. It's a case where pictorial imagery, if it has to be there, adds rather than detracts. (As a side note, I should mention that Lif has forced me to readjust my NY-oriented snobbery towards Boston hip hop, if not Boston itself)



I think you probably get my gist. I won't comment on the particular visual characteristics of the rest.

Blackalicious, Deception, another great story rap.



While looking for that, I found this great example of the freestyle skills of Blackalicious's Gift of Gab. Having seen him live a few times, I'll tell you that, as amazing as it is, this is par for the course for him.



The album Illmatic by Nas is one of my favorites (Don't tell anyone that I presented Boston and Cali tunes before I got to the NYers!). This is The World is Yours off that album.



Let's finish this edition of Sunday tunes with a few of the tunes that got me so excited about hip hop in the first place:

I remember being about 12 years old or so and sitting in the very middle class living room of my tenured professor parents (lest anyone think I'm try to construct a false NY urban gritty past for myself in any of the above commentary) watching 60 Minutes, as seemed to be the weekly ritual of "concerned liberals" in my world. I can't recall a single detail of what the report was attending to but I can still see clearly in my mind's eye two girls from one of the over-bridge boroughs (i.e. Queens, Brooklyn, or the Bronx), a year or two younger than me, sitting on a park picnic table rapping, "Don't push me/cause I'm close to the edge/I'm trying not to lose my head/a-huh-huh a-huh-huh/it's a jungle sometimes/it makes me wonder how I keep from going under." It stuck in my head, but it would be at least a year or so before I would first hear the original: Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's The Message (1982).



The following are two of my favorites from the era that I began to get an inkling of the full glories and promise of hip hop.

Eric B. and Rakim: Follow the Leader (1988)



Finally, here's the very first Public Enemy tune, appropriately titled, Public Enemy #1, from Yo, Bum Rush the Show (1987). (no video, just listen to the music, dammit!)

An opportunist's eulogy

Needless to say, I take no pleasure in Benazir Bhutto's assassination, as corrupt a politician as she might have been and as much as she was enthusiastically playing the role of Washington's stooge-in-waiting in Pakistan. But even if I were to make some comments suggesting that Bhutto's death might have been beneficial for Pakistani or world politics (which I don't actually think, given that she will now inherit a martyr's mantle which she doesn't deserve and that, whatever Musharraf's fate, US support for the Pakistani military establishment is unlikely to wane) the tastelessness would pale in comparison to this statement from Joe Biden:

We need to have a person in that Oval Office come January 20th next year that when the unexpected like this happens, it will be a person who's dealt with issues. I've spent 26 years on the Foreign Relations Committee. I served in the Peace Corps in Latin America. I know the middle east well. A year ago at this time I was in the region here, in Pakistan, for obvious reasons but over the years, you know Musharraf. I met with him. Benazir Bhutto's a friend. I've known her for a long time, so I'm not encountering these issues for the first time and I think as people get closer to Caucus date, these events and events like this are going to highlight the importance and understanding that good, soaring speeches are not the experience we need at this moment and frankly, even being the First Lady of the United States, it doesn't necessarily qualify for you for dealing with these issues as I have over the last quarter of a century on a daily basis.

With friends like these...

Bonus Belated Sunday Tunes

R.I.P. Oscar Peterson (15 August 1925 – 23 December 2007)

Oscar Peterson and Ben Webster - Perdido (1973)

Belated Sunday Tunes

Them, with a young Van Morrison: Mystic Eyes and Gloria.


The Band, doing The Weight, enhanced by the soul-gospel stylings of the Staple Singers, Mavis Staples stepping in first, followed immediately by her father Roebucks "Pops" Staples. (From Scorsese's The Last Waltz, which is the best concert movie I've ever seen.)

Charlie Wilson's War

Writing about Charlie Wilson's War, the Washington Post finds it to be "pretty accurate, as movies go." Of course, being the Post, the premier newspaper of the nation's capital, ahem, they appear to be primarily concerned with Wilson's womanizing and drug use, which as we all know are the truly important issues to be concerned about in a movie about covertly funding and arming proxy mujaheeds in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Yes, they mention it, but the coverage is limited mostly to uncritical quotes from the CIA's station chief in charge of the effort:

"Charlie got Washington behind it," remembers Milt Bearden, who was the CIA station chief who helped run the Afghan war. "The irrepressible Charlie Wilson was pushing to get the money."

Using all his skills at backroom politics, Wilson maneuvered to get funding for the Afghan rebels -- overt funding for humanitarian aid and covert funding for weapons. "It's the only place in the world where we are killing Russians," he said in the early 1980s. "I don't know anybody who wants to be against backing religious freedom fighters against the atheistic horde from the north."

Wilson made more than a dozen trips to Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, where he was deeply moved by the courage and tenacity of the Afghans. Being Charlie, he also managed to have some fun. On one trip, he brought along his girlfriend, Annelise Ilschenko, a former Miss World USA. On another trip, he strapped on a gun, saddled up a horse and rode into Afghanistan with a group of rebels.

"He loved that whole Kipling scene," says Bearden, laughing.

For all his antics, Wilson was deadly serious about the Afghan war, and he lobbied behind the scenes to win authorization to arm the rebels with shoulder-fired Stinger missiles that could shoot down Soviet aircraft. In 1986, the Stingers reached the rebels and proved very effective.

"After that, it was just a nightmare for the Soviets," says Bearden.

In 1989, after a decade of war, the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan. On "60 Minutes," when Pakistani dictator Zia ul-Haq was asked how the Afghan war was won, he simply said, "Charlie did it."

"Every once in a while, you have somebody who changes history, says Bearden, "and Charlie did that."

Note, when fact-checking a movie about covert imperialist adventures, it's always important, if you're the Post, to go directly to one of the principals of such efforts for a critical perspective. On the other hand, there's also the historical record:

In the latter half of the movie, there is one big lie and one item of anti-Afghan propaganda. The lie is that U.S. support to the mujahiddin went only to the faction led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Afghan leader who was assassinated on Sept. 9, 2001. I spoke with Rep. Charlie Wilson, D-Texas, in 2002, at which time he called Massoud "a Russian collaborator." I find it disingenuous that Wilson and his Hollywood biographers now want to throw their arms around him. (Note: George Crile's book does not make this false claim.) Moreover, if this movie succeeds in convincing Americans that the U.S. support went to Ahmad Shah Massoud alone, it will have effectively let the CIA and Wilson off the hook for their contribution to the circumstances leading up to 9/11. During the 1980s, Wilson engineered the appropriation of approximately $3.5 billion to help the Afghans fight the Soviets. According to Milt Bearden, CIA chief of station to Pakistan, Massoud received less than 1 percent of it.

Huh, apparently CIA operative Bearden might actually be of some informational use after all, if asked about something substantive by a knowledgeable interlocutor.

Random thoughts from my regular job: Community

I love/hate the term "US intelligence community," which is faithfully used even by ostensible critics. Do we ever use the term "intelligence community" to refer to the spy agencies of official enemies of the US? No, in that case it becomes the "spy apparatus" or equivalent.

Similar for the term "international community," which in the US press is a euphemism for American imperialism and whatever other countries it could bribe, bully, or cajole into supporting the particular policy in question. Thus the US-French-Canadian overthrow of Haiti's Aristide becomes the "will of the international community," as does the US-British-and-assorted-hangers-on (but not France or Canada) overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

This post brought to you by the Curmudgeon Community (as I've found one other, albeit anonymously sourced, curmudgeon who agrees with me).

Islamo-perialism

Via Angry Arab, I come across this commentary by Samir Amin arguing that political Islam (or "Islamofascism" from such addled brains as Christopher Hitchens or David Horowitz) is in fact a bulwark of imperialism.

I commend to you, dear reader.

Excuses...

I won't bother with 'em. I'm doing this more for me than anyone else, but for those who may actually be reading this thing: a perfunctory apology.

'Til I get a bit more time, forecasted to be this weekend, have some fine Marvin Gaye as a belated Sunday tunes.

This is Marvin doing Got to Give it Up in 1980. It's funky as hell and he gives it a nice workout. He's also clearly having more fun on stage than he seemed to have during much of the 1970's (although Live at the Palladium remains a great slab of vinyl), based on what I've seen.

Sunday tunes

Here's the bomb I promised (other promises are delayed-bills, bills, bills): Charles Mingus live in Norway, 1964, in seven parts. This is from the same tour that resulted in one of my favorite Mingus albums of all time, The Great Concert (Paris, 1964). With the exception of half of one song, apparently edited together on the record from more than one performance, Johnny Coles's trumpet was missing on that album, apparently due to a perforated ulcer (in Coles, not the trumpet). Below, Coles is present for the whole proceedings. The other performers are: Charles Mingus on bass, Jackie Byard on piano, Eric Dolphy on alto sax, Clifford Jordan on tenor sax, and the great Dannie Richmond on drums.

(pre)Sunday tunes

Tomorrow I'll bring you the promised second part of the post discussing estimated excess deaths in Iraq as well a BOMB of a Sunday tunes entry.

Until then, have some Nina Simone.

"Ain't Got No... I Got Life."