Last Tuesday I had one of those rare and wonderful musical experiences that comes from hearing something great for the first time and feeling the excitement just course through your veins. I was basking in an obscenely sunny day off, about to head out for a walk when I ran a across a Reader review of a new mixtape from some Chicago rappers that seemed worth checking out. From the opening beat of the first song I was blown away at the audacious and righteous power of the music and I found myself reveling so deeply in the joy of discovery that I got a little giddy as each new song came on, anxious for each new song like a kid on Christmas Eve.
In terms of introductions, I think that the group themselves does it best on their Bandcamp - "Epic, Illekt, Jasson Perez, and DJ Esquire are the creative force behind BBU (short for Bin Laden Blowin! Up or Black, Brown, and Ugly, depending on the day), and they're committed to making socially conscious rap that doesn't sacrifice an ounce of fun." I didn't know it at the time, but I'd heard their local dance hit "Chi Don't Dance" before which certainly showcased their adeptness at creating unbearably catchy songs. What blew me away was how well they could marry that kind of off-the-wall danceability with lyrics containing more humor, pathos, anger and urgency than anything I'd heard in a while.
Music is one of life's great mood regulators. When you're feeling good, music affirms you and when things are going well it alternately helps you wallow or find strength. This has been a tough week with minor illness personally, major health problems in my family and more things to do than time to do them in. Oh, and it's been cold and rainy all week. It's precisely this type of week upon which the foundation of modern popular music - the blues - was built. However, straight-up bluesmen are scarcer these days than scientists at a Rick Perry rally. Rock has mostly left its 12-bar roots behind for garage-y power chords and genre hopping while modern R&B is heavy on "R" with no time for po-faced done-me-wrong tales of woe. So in the 21st century we're left to take our solace where we can find it and for my money, there are few better modern blues songs than Big Boi's 2003 cut, "Unhappy".
Sean Daley is an endlessly fascinating individual, at least if his rhyming is anything to go by. He spits under the name Slug and, along with his producer Ant, he's been putting out amazingly heartfelt, angry, bitter, tender and insightful records under the name Atmosphere for over a decade. His songs are self-absorbed forays that deal with aging, anger, drinking and failed relationships (family and romantic). He works as a classic unreliable narrator, mixing personal history with three dimensional character studies and second-hand narratives that are never anything less than honest and compelling.
Well, it's Friday again and nothing says "oh God, please let it be the weekend, sweet Jesus yes!" like some some first rate hip-hop, amirite?
About a month ago I was perusing the interwebs when I stumbled on a brief article from The Ministry of Hip that mentioned something about Common and No I.D. back together making music before moving on to something about the Kaiser Chiefs (really?). This floored me because these two guys are collectively responsible for much of the great hip-hop that has come out of Chicago in the past two decades. Both formative influences on everyone's favorite genius/douche/punching bag Kanye West, in their own way each helped create Chicago's distinctive soul-sampling, conscious hip-hop sound since used by MCs such as Lupe Fiasco & Rhymefest.
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