In the alternative world created in black ghetto culture, the biggest hero is the pimp. Exploiting the fact that many black women cannot find a better job than prostitution, and the fact that many white men regard the black female as the utmost fantasy, the ghetto pimps form financial empires, and live like kings. For many ghetto kids, the pimp is the best lifestyle you can aspire to. According to the myth, the pimp in the man, so virile that he can make any woman do his will and work for him, thus yanking loads of dough from the Man and living the American dream without bowing to the system. The pimps are also known for their sense of style, for their colorful homes, clothes and cars, and are considered icons of cool. Iceberg Slim, a pimp who talked about his conquests in books and albums from the seventies onwards, became such a street-hero that several rappers named themselves after him. The fact that all of this entailed the exploitation of their black sisters didn't really bothers these guys – the entire African-American culture was plagued with extreme male chauvinism.
We've mentioned the positive changes that happened over the years, and the big change caused by the sexual revolution of the turn of the millennium. This change could be seen in the image of the pimp as well. While nineties gangsta-rap drew mainly from violent gang life, in the naughties it became more sexy, and the pimp played a more central role. And again, the hip-hop artists affected a more elaborate view on this particular lifestyle. In this record there is no double-meaning, and Jay-Z is just pimping it, repeating all the clichés, but the clip shows something else. There are many hot chicks here, to show that Jay-Z is a big pimp, but there is no hint of exploitation: they are just dancing and having fun. The pimp is beginning to be transformed here into someone who uses his legendary virility not to enslave women, but to make them feel good. This was the first time I felt a change in the image of the pimp, and in the following years, some more elements connected to it got sublimated and became more positive. Thus, the TV show Pimp My Ride reshaped cars in the pimp style, and the term "pimping" started to mean: tinker in a colorful way. This process strips the pimp image of its unique traits, and deflates the myth.
It had a negative side as well. As always, most people were unable to discern the moral from the immoral, and the pimp's bigger acceptability caused the immoral sides of his profession to find their way to the screen as well. In the pimped vids of 50 Cent and the likes, there is abuse and exploitation of women. But pop's history shows that there's something good about that as well: when you bring something up from the underground to the light of the Sun, the public's bigger awareness of it makes it discuss it more, and the process eventually cleans it up. The larger public awareness to the pimp will compel street culture to deal with its attitude to women, and I expect to see that in the coming decade.
Anyway, the man who pimped this record is Timbaland, in a brilliant production that samples Arab belly-dance music. And Jay-Z, as always, is right on the money.
Showing posts with label jay-z. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jay-z. Show all posts
Friday, January 29, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
44. Pharrell feat. Jay-Z - Frontin' (2003)
One of the reasons for the hip-hop takeover of the beginning of the third millennium is that the period was blessed with several hip-hop producers that cooked up wondrous things in the studio, and drew musicians from other styles, who wanted the same kind of treatment done on their records. Dr. Dre and Timbaland were two who stood out, but above all were undoubtedly the pair of Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams, better known as the Neptunes.
The unique style that turned the Neptunes into a hitmaking machine is based on exotic sounds, either digitized or instrumental, ordered to create a bouncy and sensual rhythm section, minimalist funk that invokes Prince in his prime. Their bass always has something crackling about it, a dirty sound that makes you feel horny and dissatisfied, but the treble pampers the body and the spirit. The Neptunes play many of the instruments themselves, which enables them to create a live and hungry feel, and their mastery of technology is absolute, allowing them to intensify every effect. And the icing on the cake is Pharrell's funky falsetto, which always adds a sexy dimension to the records, and his baby face which does the same for the videos.
The Neptunes worked together as producers some years before this sound gelled in 1998, but once they found it, it didn't take them long to become the hottest producers around. Their springy style, and Pharrell's soft backing vocals, made the music of hardcore rappers like Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg and Busta Rhymes a lot more accessible, and elevated them to a higher level of popularity; lit a fire under the white nerdy asses of Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Gwen Stefani, and made them cooler and funkier; launched the career of several artists, like Kelis; and yielded interesting results even in the field of rock. In 2003, about every third record you heard on the radio was their production. In my chart this is the sixth, and certainly not the last, record they have produced.
With such domination, it is no wonder they started to produce records of their own. This is their biggest hit, and also the most representative. "Fronting", in black jive, means pretending to be more than what you really are, putting a front. But in the context of this record, it is of course also a symbol of the moment Pharrell steps up to take front-stage. In the song itself, Pharrell is indeed fronting, boasting and coming over as a lover-man to impress some chick, in a typical combination of romantic sweetness and funky dirty talk. But in 2003, Pharrell really was the man.
The unique style that turned the Neptunes into a hitmaking machine is based on exotic sounds, either digitized or instrumental, ordered to create a bouncy and sensual rhythm section, minimalist funk that invokes Prince in his prime. Their bass always has something crackling about it, a dirty sound that makes you feel horny and dissatisfied, but the treble pampers the body and the spirit. The Neptunes play many of the instruments themselves, which enables them to create a live and hungry feel, and their mastery of technology is absolute, allowing them to intensify every effect. And the icing on the cake is Pharrell's funky falsetto, which always adds a sexy dimension to the records, and his baby face which does the same for the videos.
The Neptunes worked together as producers some years before this sound gelled in 1998, but once they found it, it didn't take them long to become the hottest producers around. Their springy style, and Pharrell's soft backing vocals, made the music of hardcore rappers like Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg and Busta Rhymes a lot more accessible, and elevated them to a higher level of popularity; lit a fire under the white nerdy asses of Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Gwen Stefani, and made them cooler and funkier; launched the career of several artists, like Kelis; and yielded interesting results even in the field of rock. In 2003, about every third record you heard on the radio was their production. In my chart this is the sixth, and certainly not the last, record they have produced.
With such domination, it is no wonder they started to produce records of their own. This is their biggest hit, and also the most representative. "Fronting", in black jive, means pretending to be more than what you really are, putting a front. But in the context of this record, it is of course also a symbol of the moment Pharrell steps up to take front-stage. In the song itself, Pharrell is indeed fronting, boasting and coming over as a lover-man to impress some chick, in a typical combination of romantic sweetness and funky dirty talk. But in 2003, Pharrell really was the man.
42. Punjabi MC feat. Jay-Z - Beware of the Boys (2002)
This decade, as mentioned, was characterized by a heightened dialogue between musical cultures that were almost deaf to each other in the past. For a productive dialogue to emerge, two preconditions are required: first, there has to be a common ground, on which the connection can be formed; second, every side has to have something to bring into it, something that can be understood by the other side and enrich its world. When we talk of Indian music vs. Western pop, it is still hard to form that connection.
The first contact was established in the sixties. Western youngsters traveled to India and sampled (most of them superficially) Eastern spiritual doctrines, and were also taken by the mystical sound of classic sitar music. This sound became one of the cornerstones of psychedelia, but actually, this connection was not with Indian culture itself, but with some idea that these youngsters formed in their mind of India. The things that rock bands did with sitars did not create common grounds for conversing with Indian music and culture, and did not give anything back to the Indians. The psychedelic era came and went, and the cultures remained alien to each other.
Indian culture, in the meantime, began to be increasingly influenced by Western pop, with the main perpetrators being the Indian immigrants to Britain. The common ground that Indian youngsters eventually found with their Western peers was of course rhythm and dancing, things that are understood by any human (except those who were corrupted by classic European or classic Indian music). In the eighties, Indian musicians started to merge Western pop with bhangra, a traditional Punjabi dance, and found success among the Indian crowds. And in the nineties, with the coming of the dance era, bhangra found a wider audience, and became part of the decade's tapestry of sounds and rhythms. This helped to spark a renewed interest in the West in contemporary Indian culture, and contributed to the attempts to marry Western cinema to the Indian cinema, known as Bollywood. It seemed we were heading towards a new age of dialogue between the cultures.
But it isn't that simple, and in the current decade, things just plodded along. The connections between Hollywood and Bollywood happened mainly in the field of comedy, and made fun of the misunderstanding that result from the clash of cultures, and in music, now dominated by hip-hop, there were additional attempts at making connections, but without much success. In 2002, Jay-Z took 'Mundian To Bach Ke', the classic 1998 hip-hop-bhangra record by Punjabi MC, and remixed it along with his own vocal track. Jay-Z does his best, and his best is a lot, to match his flow to the different rhythm, and the result is a very fun record. But still, there is no sense of true dialogue.
Hope for the opening of a new era came in 2008, with the Massive success of Slumdog Millionaire, which presented a deeper cinematic connection with a more universal message. I still await the musical equivalent, and I'm sure it will come. In the meantime, let's have fun one more time with Punjabi MC and Jay-Z.
The first contact was established in the sixties. Western youngsters traveled to India and sampled (most of them superficially) Eastern spiritual doctrines, and were also taken by the mystical sound of classic sitar music. This sound became one of the cornerstones of psychedelia, but actually, this connection was not with Indian culture itself, but with some idea that these youngsters formed in their mind of India. The things that rock bands did with sitars did not create common grounds for conversing with Indian music and culture, and did not give anything back to the Indians. The psychedelic era came and went, and the cultures remained alien to each other.
Indian culture, in the meantime, began to be increasingly influenced by Western pop, with the main perpetrators being the Indian immigrants to Britain. The common ground that Indian youngsters eventually found with their Western peers was of course rhythm and dancing, things that are understood by any human (except those who were corrupted by classic European or classic Indian music). In the eighties, Indian musicians started to merge Western pop with bhangra, a traditional Punjabi dance, and found success among the Indian crowds. And in the nineties, with the coming of the dance era, bhangra found a wider audience, and became part of the decade's tapestry of sounds and rhythms. This helped to spark a renewed interest in the West in contemporary Indian culture, and contributed to the attempts to marry Western cinema to the Indian cinema, known as Bollywood. It seemed we were heading towards a new age of dialogue between the cultures.
But it isn't that simple, and in the current decade, things just plodded along. The connections between Hollywood and Bollywood happened mainly in the field of comedy, and made fun of the misunderstanding that result from the clash of cultures, and in music, now dominated by hip-hop, there were additional attempts at making connections, but without much success. In 2002, Jay-Z took 'Mundian To Bach Ke', the classic 1998 hip-hop-bhangra record by Punjabi MC, and remixed it along with his own vocal track. Jay-Z does his best, and his best is a lot, to match his flow to the different rhythm, and the result is a very fun record. But still, there is no sense of true dialogue.
Hope for the opening of a new era came in 2008, with the Massive success of Slumdog Millionaire, which presented a deeper cinematic connection with a more universal message. I still await the musical equivalent, and I'm sure it will come. In the meantime, let's have fun one more time with Punjabi MC and Jay-Z.
35. Jay-Z - Change Clothes (2003)
This decade, as I already discussed, marks the beginning of a new era in pop. From the beginning of the twenties to the end of the fifties, the pop world was ruled by jazz. From the end of the fifties to the end of the nineties, by rock. And from the end of the nineties, by hip-hop. What do these three styles have in common? That's right, they were all originally black styles, which became ascendant when they were adopted by white musicians. But while in previous times the blacks were cast aside once whites took control, now we live at a time when superstardom is open to African-Americans, and even a decade after Eminem's breakout, hip-hop is still dominated by blacks. Out of the black superstars who steered hip-hop in this decade, Jay-Z was the most prominent.
One of hip-hop's main characteristics is of course the vocal style, namely rapping, and one of the revolutions caused by rap is in the attitude towards language. In rock'n'roll, the vocals are a primal scream, an expression of urges and feelings that are predominant to language, and this scream welds and distorts the words to the point of losing shape - a good rock'n'roll singer is almost unintelligible. The words are an instrument to dig deep into yourself and draw out these primary emotions, and therefore must be very expressive. Rap, on the other hand, started out as a form of singing that turns the rapper into a vocal percussive instrument. The words were initially selected for their onomatopoeic quality, and even later, when rap started to pay more attention to lyrics, this quality remained. The result was that all words in language became of the same importance: in rap, there is no such thing as "a deep expression" and "a trivial expression" - all expression are of the same rank, and measured by their ability to resonate percussively in that place in the record. This leveling enabled rap to attack everyday speech, dismantle it, instill new conceptual combinations in it, turn its biases on their head, and then deconstruct and reconstruct it all over again. And since the consciousness behind everyday language was determined by white culture, it gave blacks the power to undermine its preconditions and create new ones.
Jay-Z is in a position that rappers of previous decades never reached. He is all at once a pop star, and also a representative of hardcore rap; an entertainer, and also a gangsta-rapper; speaks highbrow language, and also the language of the streets; rubbing shoulders with world leaders, and also with convicts. That compels him to change positions all the time, but his liquid rap flows smoothly through the different perspectives, deconstructing and reconstructing in techniques that were developed in decades of hip-hop. His conceptual world is also richer as a result, and he weaves the concepts together masterfully to create a new kind of poetry, and further extend the boundaries. His music also displays the eclectic variety of latter-day hip-hop, and samples from everywhere, manifesting its universal outlook. Jay-Z is a pop superpower, a delegate of a musical style in full bloom.
Out of all the many good records he put out this decade, this is my favorite. Manifesting Jay-Z's abilities as a poet, musician and rapper, meandering through his different worlds, and providing the motto: we must remain fresh all the time, so let's change clothes, and go.
One of hip-hop's main characteristics is of course the vocal style, namely rapping, and one of the revolutions caused by rap is in the attitude towards language. In rock'n'roll, the vocals are a primal scream, an expression of urges and feelings that are predominant to language, and this scream welds and distorts the words to the point of losing shape - a good rock'n'roll singer is almost unintelligible. The words are an instrument to dig deep into yourself and draw out these primary emotions, and therefore must be very expressive. Rap, on the other hand, started out as a form of singing that turns the rapper into a vocal percussive instrument. The words were initially selected for their onomatopoeic quality, and even later, when rap started to pay more attention to lyrics, this quality remained. The result was that all words in language became of the same importance: in rap, there is no such thing as "a deep expression" and "a trivial expression" - all expression are of the same rank, and measured by their ability to resonate percussively in that place in the record. This leveling enabled rap to attack everyday speech, dismantle it, instill new conceptual combinations in it, turn its biases on their head, and then deconstruct and reconstruct it all over again. And since the consciousness behind everyday language was determined by white culture, it gave blacks the power to undermine its preconditions and create new ones.
Jay-Z is in a position that rappers of previous decades never reached. He is all at once a pop star, and also a representative of hardcore rap; an entertainer, and also a gangsta-rapper; speaks highbrow language, and also the language of the streets; rubbing shoulders with world leaders, and also with convicts. That compels him to change positions all the time, but his liquid rap flows smoothly through the different perspectives, deconstructing and reconstructing in techniques that were developed in decades of hip-hop. His conceptual world is also richer as a result, and he weaves the concepts together masterfully to create a new kind of poetry, and further extend the boundaries. His music also displays the eclectic variety of latter-day hip-hop, and samples from everywhere, manifesting its universal outlook. Jay-Z is a pop superpower, a delegate of a musical style in full bloom.
Out of all the many good records he put out this decade, this is my favorite. Manifesting Jay-Z's abilities as a poet, musician and rapper, meandering through his different worlds, and providing the motto: we must remain fresh all the time, so let's change clothes, and go.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
8. Beyonce feat. Jay-Z - Crazy in Love (2003)
The most recurring word in the decade's record titles is "featuring", or "feat." for short. The custom of featuring another artist in your records was already quite routine in nineties hip-hop, but mostly it was just one rapper hosting another. In this decade, with the bonding of hip-hop and R'n'B and the moving of white artists into black music, the path was opened for more various collaborations, and a more productive dialogue. In the nineties, the attitude that dominated rap was set by the gangstas, who treated women as bitches to fuck and nothing more. At best it was tongue-in-cheek dirty talk, at worst it was raving misogyny. But once female singers began to take pride in their own sexuality, they found a better role for the horny rappers, and featured them in their records to tell the whole world who's number one in bed. This process sublimated hip-hop, and made it less chauvinistic and more cheeky.
And so, in the record that launched her solo career, Beyonce invited Jay-Z to add some spice. Not that it was needed. Not for the record, and certainly not for the girl. With the sweet face, the killer smile, the limber bombshell body, the ass that moves like jello on springs, the relentless talent and the enchanting voice, the world didn't stand a chance. Many stars shone brightly in 2003, but none of them was as hot as Beyonce.
And so, in the record that launched her solo career, Beyonce invited Jay-Z to add some spice. Not that it was needed. Not for the record, and certainly not for the girl. With the sweet face, the killer smile, the limber bombshell body, the ass that moves like jello on springs, the relentless talent and the enchanting voice, the world didn't stand a chance. Many stars shone brightly in 2003, but none of them was as hot as Beyonce.
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