There's gold in them thar crates

Right now I’m listening to Camp Lo’s Uptown Saturday Night.  I don’t know how much play this album got around the nation when it dropped in 1997, but it didn’t get any love in Kansas City, but If you haven’t heard, it is the shit!

I don’t know when it became the general consensus that rap music that didn’t come out in the last 6 months isn’t good but we have to remember hip-hop’s history of being the product of people that were willing to dig in those crates.

Bargain bins at the used CD store, garage sales and amazon.com all have great CDs that you never heard.  Not to mention all of those CDs with 2 or 3 great songs on them.

My point is that great music doesn’t have a shelf life.  Just because Kanye and Jay-Z keep coming out with hits doesn’t mean Reasonable Doubt and The College Dropout aren’t great CDs.  It’s just the opposite.  There has been a long time since somebody referred to a rap album that is universally referred to as a classic.  Think about it.  There have been really good albums but a year later, nobody is talking about them.

Part of that is that rappers have entered a post-modern stage.  Meaning, they are making music that they want to sell and not so much that they believe in, or have taken the time to perfect.  The industry is constantly looking for something to sell and real artistry isn’t always marketable.  A lot of great artist died broke and people don’t rap to be broke.

But, we don’t listen because we want to make someone rich.  We want to be entertained and in tune with other people in the hip-hop nation.  We want to fall in love with the culture and the rhythms all over again and hidden inside those classics is the map to the love.

It’s funny; I learned this lesson, not by looking for old school rap albums but by discovering one of my non-rap favorites at the half priced book store.

I don’t know why I did it.  I wanted to pick up “The communist manifesto” and maybe a book from the black section and after that was accomplished, I decided to peruse the CD section.  There is was, amongst several copies of CDs that people considered junk was Mariah Carey’s Rainbow.  I don’t know why I even picked it up.  I didn’t even like Mariah Carey.  My favorite Mariah song was that Christmas song she did and I only really like that joint because she was looking so damned good in that outfit in the video.  It could have been her smile on the cover photo.  It could have been Jay-Z’s Cameo on “Heart Breaker” or maybe I just had money burning a hole in my pocket that made me want to risk 99 cents on an album by a lady that was quickly making the transition from fame to infamy.

I went from shamefully playing Rainbow in my car to bumping that shit all around the city over the course of a week.  What’s worse, I wanted more.  I went back to the half priced books store to see what kind of cheap Mariah fixes I could get.  Damn, was I surprised.  For less that 2 dollars apiece I bought: Mariah’s first CD, her second (Daydream, my favorite to this day), Charmbracelet, and Music Box.  I still play them all to this day.  I doubt if it gets any better than hearing Mariah sing songs written by Journey.

My point is, had I not taken a chance on an old CD that nobody wanted; I would have never discovered music that I love so much.  The same could be said for my love of Talib Kweli, Aerosmith and De La Soul.  It makes it that much sweeter that the radio doesn’t even play good music anymore.  They play what they are told to play so that the big companies can get the sales up when they used to be the voice of the culture.  It’s sad but that is all the more reason to go to where we know good music lives; specifically our own forgotten CDs.

My challenge to you today is to look through your old CDs; not your ipod or your mp3 player.  Go find that CD that you fell in love with before you had a person to apply those same feelings to.  Go to your nearest CD player (probably your computer) and bump that shit.  Bump it for what music used to be.  Bump it for the love you used to have for it and remember, just because an album has a little dust on it, doesn’t mean it isn’t good.   There’s classics in them thar crates and they’re waiting for you.