And then I said, "huh, haven't made any stained glass windows in awhile." I quickly came up with three projects. This is the story of none of them. During the concept phase for one of them, I came up with this idea and decided to make a weekend project out of it. Sadly I can't tell you the story without revealing part of the story of one of the three projects, which is strictly against company policy. So here's a story that has nothing to do with this stained glass window, with pictures inserted at random.
I find that there are things in my life I'm not capable of objectively grading. The movie I saw with someone, that song I heard at the exact right time. Hip Hop Hollas by Jerry Quickley is without a doubt one of my favorite poems of all time, but I don't know that it's necessarily that great or if it just speaks to me on a level past rational thought.
A scholar recently asked me about
the relevance of hip hop
I didn't know what to say to him
Let's do a by the numbers thing real quick here. My favorite album of all time (I'll sleep when you're dead by El-P) is a hip hop album. Twenty-two of the thirty-four songs that I've listened to in itunes more than a hundred times are hip hop songs (more on this in a bit). Every single album highlighted in, this thing i bought, has been hip hop (mark ronson, not entirely, but quite a few of the songs are). I'm listening to some right now. This is, I suppose, just a very drawn out way of saying that, I really like hip hop. Definitely was not always like that.
and there be moments like this
custom coach with 12 *people* on their first tour
gliding at 70 across the desert floor
and there be 12 faces pasted to the windows
instead a arguing about watching how the money goes
they be checking out the blooms of desert rose
and Arizona lightning smells of ozone
and sudden rain washes rocks that dwelled in the sea
and there's only the sounds of the engines rotary,
the bright cords of lightning
as heaven manifests subwoofers
ain't all that make the shit mad exciting
it's the snap crackle pop of Tupac
pushed out of Bose cubes
pressing the heart into this moment
and the scene is music
and this moment is an organ
and somewhere there is a
custom coach with 12 *people* on their first tour
For reasons I couldn't possibly explain, I like to trace things back to their start. The point at which everything changed. Seminal moments. The moment that me and hip hop intersect goes like this:
Growing up I can remember always telling people I liked all music except country and rap. I had no very compelling reason for this, but that statement covered all the music I was ever introduced too and since this was coming from people I took seriously, I had no reason to argue with it. The only rap I ever heard was what gets played on the radio. It's never a good idea to pass judgement on things based on what you hear on the radio.
Then one day I was driving somewhere with my brother and he tells me I should check out this group, Jurassic 5. I got home and listened to their song Quality Control and everything changed. That song gripped me the way almost no other music had (I'm gonna say this was when I was fourteen). I remember listening to that whole album and falling in love.
That's where it began, but the change really didn't happen for awhile. At first I reacted in the way most people do when being presented with something that goes their held beliefs, such as, that rap is bad. I remember thinking about it years later when I was leaving my apartment and I heard music coming from my roommates room, which, would normally not stand out, except it was the exact album I had been listening to, two floors down, not five minutes before this. The album was Dungeon Master of Ceremonies by MC Chris and when I went and asked The Godfather about this, someone who has always held that he does not like hip hop, he said "well this isn't really hip hop." Hey, whatever gets you through the night my friend, but make no mistake, it is hip hop.
and there be moments like this
four girlfriends driving out of the hood
going to a party in the oranges
this is the first time the youngest has been alone
in a car with her friends
they zoom across the GW
canopy of steel beams
paints the hoop de in fast blurs of shade and sun
and tires roar from the grates
and up front there's the sound of
bracelets and nails on the dashboard
and there is laughter and
there are no box cutters or police
and L'il Kim jumps through the speakers
and the youngest girl pushes herself
deep into the rear seat
as straining speakers conjure halos
she watches the world sway past
the tiny rear window
and this fat bass line will forever mark this turning point
and she has never felt so free
and she has never felt so strong and so loved
these are her *people*
and somewhere a young woman is going
on her first ride with her crew
It's all well and good to try and deny these things, "it's not really hip hop," but I couldn't really think it was the only album of its kind, there had to be others out there that sounded like it. I searched. I went through all of J5s offerings. I heard all of the collaborations they did. Looking around, I found some artists that sorta sounded like them, but there was a big problem. In addition to me fighting the hip hop, I still had this outcast mentality that popular things were bad. Ignoring even just the popular music I might have liked had I given it a chance, having that close-minded mentality runs over into other things. If you badly enough want to, you can find a reason to dislike anything. Having any kind of criteria like that meant that all too often I wouldn't give something a chance and maybe not because it was popular, maybe it just had one song featuring an artist I felt was too mainstream. Maybe for no compelling reason at all, but irrational things like popular is bad lead to other irrational criteria. Enter BobbyT.
In the internet age I am a person who can, uh, find things. Bobby had asked me to find him a copy of Kanye West's Late Registration. I can remember bringing him the cd and on the way I popped it into my cd player and wow. I mean I knew who he was, sure, but I didn't listen to the radio all that much and I had never been that big a fan of Jesus Walks. This was like J5 all over again. The album grabbed me. This was pretty close to the time when I had switched to using itunes almost exclusively. Heard em say, touch the sky, gold digger, roses, hey mama, celebration and gone are all part of the above mentioned songs that have had more than a hundred plays. Once again I dug through everything of his and then kept looking for other things. The difference was that this time I stopped having any preconceptions to guide, if I had any even the slightest reason to listen to something, I'd give it a shot. I'd check things out just because of the name. That lead me to getting I'll Sleep When You're Dead, because let's be honest, that's a name that stands out.
and there be moments like this
Nebraska farm boy sitting
on the edge of a quarry pit
all his crystal powder gone
he wonders about gravity
he wonders about his family
his sister writes to him from
a small town in the north
tells him of jesus and fewer black eyes
how he should visit in the summer time
because her boyfriend should be out of rehab
and how the yellin' ain't so bad
his pops tells him next year things will be different
and he wonders if he will ever escape next year country
and he feels weak inside his strong body
and gravity is making moves
and Jay-Z's Hard Knocks crow from the cab of his pick up
and for a few minutes he's lost in it
tales of a life closer than you think
close to the bone it unfurls like his own
runs to a neighboring corn field
he splits stars with his scream
he stands breathless in headlight beams
he smiles and he's high as a kite
and he knows that moonlight and beats have saved his life
and somewhere a farm boy
sits on the edge of a quarry
Atmosphere was one of the artists that cracked the original run of hip hop (interestingly enough, also by way of BobbyT). There's a hidden track on his collection of EPS, The Lucy Ford Eps that feature El-P. I always really liked the song and was sad I could never find any more songs of his. The thing was he was mainly a producer and didn't rap that much. Between that and the great name I was pretty much sold on I'll Sleep When You're Dead form the jump. Wasn't exactly love at first listen though. Up All Night was an immediate winner (we might have been born yesterday, sir, but we stayed up all night). It took awhile for the whole thing to really sink in, but that had more to do with me just not giving a very thorough listen. Even when I did it wasn't like those other albums. It took awhile for it to really click with me. Eventually it occurred to me that when I couldn't figure out what to listen to at work I was picking it. At home, it was the only cd that I really never skipped tracks on. Probably more than any other album, I was trying to learn the songs and having trouble with it (you'd probably have to have lived with me at some point to understand that that's really saying something).
In case you're curious, the title is a lyric in what may be the best song about suicide I've heard.
So how dare you assume that I'll sleep when you're dead
This is well outside the boundries of acceptable behaviour
I will not give you the go ahead and you will not be remembered fondly
I'm throwing down the gauntlet, fuck you this isn't your decision
and for all the holy fuck I give, your little spectacle is ended
But dont think for just one second you've honored your obligations to me
I'm serious look in my eyes, I don't find this funny
or whatever you imagine poetry and justice feels like when you combine them
I am not going to allow this on my watch buddy, nobodies impressed
with your imagined sacrifice device or insurmountable regret
You are not uniquely pained and if you go we won't be sorry
and who the hell are you to put me through the banality of watching this
Cause many better men have gone for clearly better reasons and I
starkly must remind you that you have not even been trying
And that's the only thing remarkable about you, stop me if I'm lying
and there be moments like this
with family and friends in the front room
a woman washes dishes at the sink
a mother with missing heart
buried earlier that same day
in the same casket with her young son
and across from their house
a yard party has broken out
and in this moment
her first moments alone
her chest is imploding
failure and loss have arrived
and they will stay for a very long time
and she didn't know hearts could break this hard
or what black magic makes her still draw breath
and in this moment
her first moments alone
De La Soul trickles in the window
and she begins to cry
as the brothers from the east
preach about how the Stakes is High
and somewhere there is an empty mother
washing dishes in a sink by a window
Hip Hop Hollas tells all these touching stories of people in these moments touched by hip hop, but the truth is it could be any kind of music. If country music is your thing I'm sure you could tell some story of when you heard a certain song at the exact right time. Or if for you it's rock. Or punk. Or jazz. Or what-the fuck-ever. For me I went from once upon a time thinking Weird Al was the only artist worth listening to and growing to where I love it all. Hip hop blew those doors open.
It's funny now. Of all those Kanye songs off Late Registration, roses, hey mama and gone are the only ones that still get any play. After listening to that album so many times, it sees almost no play these days. I honestly couldn't tell you how good I really think it is. Maybe it was good, maybe it was bad, maybe just average, but to me, whatever it was, it was important.
he don't know the price of the ransom
and doesn't recognize slippery slopes
or the sound of hope dipping out through the transom
swollen knuckles drift toward hip hop radio soon
as your hear it ump up the volume
pump that beat
pump that beat
pump that beat
and that's the fucking relevance
of hip hop
