I’m a rapper. Ok, not really. But I should be. It seems everyone is a rapper these days. I was watching a video of CunninLynguists that aired on television in Sweden. They are on tour in Europe right now and the interviewers asked what the difference between fans in Sweden and fans in the United States. Kno responded that the fans in Sweden are just that, fans. In the US everyone is a rapper. This is so true. Everyone is trying to make it big as a rapper these days, and who could blame them? With the music industry the way it is, they’ll accept anything and put it on the radio as long as it has a good beat. Lyrical content doesn’t mean anything. How else do you explain Solja Boy and Lil John. At least with other forms of music, there has to be some additional talent involved, usually involving singing or bands. With rap, you just need to find some beats or some samples and start rapping crappy rhymes. I found a site tonight that had some of the worst music I’ve ever heard. (Link Removed) Just because you have equipment to record your “music” doesn’t mean you should. People need to stop thinking that they have talent and they are going to be the next big thing and start being fans again. Maybe that’s what will save the music industry. Start focusing on talent and stop mass producing crap and raise the bar for future artists. Of course, this will never happen. They are always looking for a quick buck so they will waste money on a one-hit wonder just to get their royalties, meanwhile, great artists, like CunninLynguists, suffer because the industry is settled on a standard of mediocrity.
My favorite channel on XM is The Rhyme: Hip Hop from Day One. It’s an old school hip hop station. After listening to it almost exclusively since I got XM, I’ve come to a conclusion. I’m getting old. Real old. It used to be that old school was applied to the ranks of Kool G Rap, Eric B and Rakim, Kurtis Blow, Sugar Hill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC, The Beastie Boys, and other artists from that forgotten era. Every once in a while you’d see some late 80’s and early 90’s artists in the mix, like Tone Loc, NWA, and others. What made me realize I’m old is I was listening to the station one night and Tupac’s “Me Against the World” came on. Tupac is now old school?!?! I grew up on Tupac! How can he be old school unless… I’m old! More and more I notice that the songs I grew up on are hitting the old school stations and mixes. When did Leaders of the New School become old school? When did Snoop and Dre and Bone become old school? I’m going to be 25 in April. A quarter of a century old. Wow. I might as well retire now and go around yelling at little kids about how their music today sucks (it does) and how everything was so much better in my day (it was).
I have to say one of my favorite features of my new car is XM satellite radio. I always wondered who would pay for radio. The quality is not that great, it’s radio so you hear the same stuff over and over, and there are way too many commercials. With my car I received three free months of XM’s service. Of course they give it to you free hoping they’ll hook you and have you purchase the service after the three months are up. Well, I’m hooked. XM takes all my preconceived notions about radio and throws them out the car window. The quality is fantastic, there is a great mixture of songs and stations, and very few commercials (the commercials I have heard are usually for other XM stations).
I love XM. There. I said it. The programming is perfect for me. I love old school hip hop and guess what, there is a station for that. I love liberal talk radio, and guess what, there’s Air America Radio. Now, St. Louis does have an AAR affiliate, but it’s not a dedicated affiliate, meaning they have other programming on the station as well, and the signal is very weak. It’s nice to be able to turn it on whenever I want and listen. I also love being able to listen to XM online. I listen to it quite a bit at home. It will be really nice when I travel. I’ll never have to search for a local station and hope they play good music. I have my 10 or so favorite stations on XM that I can listen to across the country. I’m definitely keeping the service after the free three months are up.
Interscope Records recently released two separate Tupac CDs entitled 2pac: Best of Thug and 2pac Best of Life. I love Tupac’s music. I have been a fan of his for years and have every album he’s released, as well as numerous books on him. This is getting out of hand. I’m tired of record labels milking his legacy for all it’s worth. I mean, it’s one thing to continually put out new material, but when you release two Best of cds that have almost the exact same track listing as the Greatest Hits cd that was released a few years ago you are destroying his legacy. Quit trying to make money off of him. Quit trying to sucker consumers into thinking they are buying something new. It’s getting old. Also, quit putting out really shitty remix albums of his music. The Nu Mix Classics albums are completely horrible. Stop paring up crappy would-be producers with Pac’s music. That’s just wrong. If you want to get into Pac’s music, buy the Greatest Hits double album and not the Best of two separate discs.
I was at the mall Christmas shopping today and came across a book while waiting in line to check out. It was in the Bargain Books section. The book is Tupac Shakur Legacy. Originally priced at $45, I picked this gem up for $4.99. It’s kind of sad that it went for this cheap. I was even more shocked when I opened the book and saw just how cool it is. The book is about Tupac’s life, but the way it presents it is great. I’ve seen this done with World War II books before, but never a biography. What it does is includes reproductions of things from Tupac’s life with it. There’s programs from when he attended his school for the performing arts, poetry written in his own handwriting, pages from the Gridlock’d script, his recording contract with Death Row Records, and various other documents. It is a really cool book. I’m so glad I went to the mall today and saw this.