Skip to main content

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.

Comments

  1. Got a question for you, what happened to all my old cassett tapes? I left over a hundred tapes down in mama's basement have any survived? Can they be converted to CD? I know I had some classics.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Got comments? Let it out. I always do.

Popular posts from this blog

Maury must be stopped. No one has profited more from Black people being ignorant than he.   I know the old saying: “Mama’s baby, Papa’s maybe.” But, contrary to popular belief, Black men love their children.   Everyone loves children.   Even if Black men realize that they aren’t bringing much to a household, they know that there is magic there.   That magic might be scary, like all magic, but it’s there.   There isn’t much difference between the love that develops between a man and a child with his D.N.A.   and a man that a child that he has raised. I am my father’s son.   No, I’m not light skinned or a hustler, but I laugh when I hear something funny.   I’ll sit on a porch and dink liquor all Saturday morning.   My toes are extraordinarily long (just like his).   I will see a beautiful woman and take notice just because I am a man and that’s what a man does.   My dad raised me well. When you see a Black man on Maury, y...

For my friends that considered suicide when having a nigga in your corner isn't enough

I remember wanting to die.  I didn't want to kill myself per se, I just wished that I could just go the fuck away.  I was a young, skinny teenager that wasn't looking forward to anything outside of video games.  What kind of life is that? But teenage life is always stupid.  When the lead actor is phoning it in, the play sucks.  That is teenage life in America.  I wish I could say that only teenagers go dark enough to want to die but we all know that is not true.  Life gets so much harder for people that dare to be an adult. As an adult, I get reminded of my younger years because shit still gets dark.  When I feel that kind of hopelessness, I still remember the fire that gets lit inside of me.  My ability to say "Fuck all of these people." is my super power.  It is a necessary tool for me.  When all the love I try to spread around begins to fail that flaming hatred for those that I let push me there always comes back.  Someh...

its a bird, it's a plane its a nigga wearing a cape!

I wish I was a super hero.  Even at this age I have delusions of saving people that far too often don't want to be saved. Seriously, how many stupid people can one city have?  That's not even counting all the people with Confederate flags on their cars or worse, Mitt Romney bumper stickers.  Those people just need to be slapped.  There are people in this city that still think drive by shootings are viable options to settling disputes that started on facebook... Fucking FACEBOOK.  Shooting these people would be counter productive and hypocritical but I do think someone should at least make an attempt to turn these people into useful members of society.  When that doesn't work, beat those assholes into submission.  Brutality worked during slavery and that had zero moral grounding.  I support routine beatings of people that obviously deserve it. First example: Sexual predators.  Something ridiculous, like 1 in 4 women are sexually ass...