NCB - Sharp Tongue in a Twister

It is time for hip hop. And it is also time to work harder on my voice. I just want to sing... I want to communicate. This is my calling

It is interesting how I am getting rather popular on a whole new level. I am getting a lot of artistic attention as well as personal attention. People are respecting the rhythm in me. It is a wonder ful thing...

So last night I am sitting in the living room watching tv and then up comes Corinne Bailey Rae and she comes out on an interview done for Trevor Nelson's The Lick(TM). I am like damn. Is she for real? You think music like that died with the coming of such stupid cats that want to act like they singing buit they really aren't. If you havent listened to anything from her I suggest you go and get something. The sultry voice is consuming. And she has this look about it. It is alluring I say for starters, it is indie, without being to freaky and she does look like someone I would enjoy working on a few things with. Now I am not trying to suggest nothing but you have to give respect. Like an old Shona saying goes Chakanaka chakanaka, mukaka haurungwe(What is good is good, milk does not seasoning). In essence that is to say if something is good as it is, no need to put something on it, just enjoy it as it is. She is correct and she will get better. Hopefully the all powerful willing, I will get to do what I need to do for that cycle.

On a sad note I want to pay respect to singer, songwriter, arranger, musician and producer Lynden David Hall who passed away this past valentine's day after a two year battle with cancer. Painful for someone so young to be taken from us. He was an assuming kind of artist. I remember how involving the first song I ever heard from him Crescent Moon, which till this day is my favourite from the man, he created a hunger for music, not just sound but real music, the kind that has a meaning and takes you somewhere. And when he performed All You Need Is Love on Love actually who would have thought in a little while we would be mourning the brother

He was 31Rest In Peace Brother

Because I had only ever known him as Jay-Dee from the S-villa when I first heard the news that Detroit producer by the name of J-Dilla had passed on it didnt really hit me. So being a student of the game I googled him up just so I could find out what he was about and see what I could find from his legacy. Little did I know that it was indeed Jay-dee.I remember the first time I heard something Jay-Dee had put his golden touch to. It was Climax(Girl Sh!t). It had an ambience about it that just hit me up side my head and made me take notice. I was in awe. I set about getting as much on Slum Village as i could get and the more I heard the more it blew me away. It was like picking up a gem while walking down the street under some rubble, you just got lucky cause everyone had walked by there and had not seen it, choosing to either take in the rubble or ignore it altogether. I went about getting whoever i could to listen to S-Villa and everyone agreed this was genius indeed, a personification of it. How can we forget the beat on Heat on Common's Like Chocolate for Water. It had a hypnotic effect and we all were caught up on something so ill we had to listen to it again to make sure we hadn't overrated it but the more we listened to it the more addictive it became. Not that we could expect anything less from him.

For me it was more than the sound. It helped me come to terms with something that I had been ignoring for so long. The defintion of sound. Sometimes as an artist you might start questioning yourself because you are not sure how your sound would be recieved. J-Dilla was not conventional but he was genius. Probably the greatest of a generation. The streets may have not convereted what they heard to money ot he might have not been big on the commercial aspect but Jay Dee did something with so little that kept hip hop close to the head. He took the art of sampling to a new level but without disrespecting the game. He explored the sound and made it original. He didnt just take some sound from back in the days and put some bass on it and say he had put something on it. He made music. And that is his legacy.

Now I never came close to knowing much about Jay Dee but his work but that is what it is about isn't it? His soul was born through his music. That is what I appreciated about him and at the end of the day that is what every artist wants to be remembered for.

So tonight before I go to sleep I will have one song on rotation, Common's Love Is of BE. I will let that set in and that will be my dedication to the life of a man who inspired me. And while we would have liked to have more of you around to lead us we carry the torch you passed on to us with respect.
RIP James Yancey aka J-Dilla aka Jay-Dee

Thought I had lost my book of rhymes in which I have been doing a little self-discovery. Sometimes you get so busy in life and the expectations that come with it that you begin to forget who you are. It is a painful thing to have to go through because a lot of the times the things that you are now are such a betrayal of the innocence you had, the purity and esteem that you held life in before. But it kinda helps you realise who you are and embrace parts of your evolution.
Am listening to Eric B and Rakim, Paid in Full album. That album off the wall, and full of so many classic rhymes... And he didnt have to swear or threaten to kill someone. He just used creativity, now that is real hip hop right there. I mean what do you do to a rhyme like this from Follow the Leader...

This is a lifetime mission.
Vision a prison.  All right, listen.
In this journey, you're the journal, I'm the journalist.
Am I eternal or an eternalist?
I'm about to flow long as I can possibly go.
Keep you movin' 'cause the crowd said so.Or this from Paid in Full
Thinkin of a master plan
Cuz ain't nuthin but sweat inside my hand
So I dig into my pocket, all my money is spent
So I dig deeper but still comin up with lint
So I start my mission- leave my residence
Thinkin how could I get some dead presidents

That is what real MC'in is all about. The whole album has so many punchlines
and you're like whoa! I mean what happened to being able to rap about rapping.
The skills have just gone missing. The Pitchfork Review(TM) just summed it up
when he said...

Rakim's innovation was applying a patina of intellectual detachment to rap's most sacred cause: talking shit about how you're a better rapper than everyone else. He was the supreme exponent of rapping-about-rapping, an almost lost art now that every MC carries a thousand pounds of crack-dealing backstory around with him.

Rakim immediately projected his self-belief-- not so much messianic as matter-of-fact-- that he was the best. He got away with it every time he opened his mouth and that voice came out: authoritative, burnished, possessing an unflappable sense of rhythm like a drumming prodigy.

And you cant really argue with that. You can read the rest of the review here.
That is the reason for the game and for having my book of rhymes. Let me go and
write something

RIP J-Dilla... will put something on it in a minute

Sometimes you wonder where music is going. Sure you have a few quality artists but in general it just seems as if music has gone the other way. You can't really think of any quality music anymore. It might generally be unfair to those who actually try but you kinda feel disappointed now that it is no longer about the music but about the hype. You will generally find that certain artists or songs are liked because other people like them, which means people dont trust their own taste in music anymore. What happened to being live, to being about the music, and admiring the art. Where the music was a representation of the soul, and if what is coming out now is that, are our souls so empty?