Hip Hop for Adults

     It's Thanksgiving tomorrow in the U.S.  I thought I would be helpful, as well as update this blog.  So here goes...You, like video games and hip hop, are closing in on 40 years.  It's prostate exams, mammograms, and colonoscopies from here on out.  You stopped playing video games and listening to hip hop after middle school.  Now with mid life approaching, you want to relive your childhood...as well as the cliche of buying a sports car.  None of your friends and family play video games or listen to hip hop.  What do you listen to and play to give you that nostalgic feeling without having to play or listen to the old stuff?

Phonte - First and foremost, he makes great music.  It just so happens that this over 30 year old's skillful lyrics are also relatable to those over 30.  Escapism and living vicariously through an artist's songs are fine, but a deeper connection is established with the listener if the artist is talking about something the listener is going through...also helps that both are in the same tax bracket.

9th Wonder & Jamla Records - Heavily influenced by the 90's Golden Era, they are forging ahead with strong, deep boom bap roots.  They bring you that warm feeling, like the first time you heard "Electric Relaxation." 

Part 2 - Video Games...coming soon.

The Wonder Year

     The good and the bad about my writing style is brevity, always has been.  I can't spend pages and pages describing a leaf like Tolkien or defending an argument like some lawyer.  All the way through 12th grade, I'd get notes back from teachers telling me to "describe this more" or "this needs more description," so I tried my best to elongate my essays.  When I sat down in ENG 111 at NCSU, my professor said to write concisely...motherfucker.

     As a "work in progress," the cut of The Wonder Year, the documentary about 9th Wonder, shown at this year's RiverRun International Film Festival, looked about 98% finished.  Director Kenneth Price will still make minor tweaks here and there, but according to him during the Q&A session after the screening, there will be no drastic changes to film's length.  Judging from the audience's reaction, Price has definitely earned his MFA.  You see, this documentary is also his master thesis at UNCG.  

      I can say so many good things about this documentary, but I'm lazy on top of being concise.  Everyone I knew, that was there to see the film, was extremely excited to see it on the big screen, for the first time.  There was a positive vibe in the 300 plus seat theater.  Even old white people, who were clearly not solely at the film festival to see The Wonder Year, were nodding their heads to 9th Wonder's beats.  Just like 9th chops a song and samples its best parts, Kenneth Price shows us fun, real, touching samples of a year of following 9th around with a camera.  In between mostly an interview with just 9th(although welcomed guest appearances do pop up from time to time throughout the film), Price laces that space with footage of 9th as a beat maker, teacher, father, and the man behind the moniker: Patrick Douthit.

     This is just the beginning folks.  With more screenings to come and possibly a college tour in the fall, You will see and hear about The Wonder Year.

The Wonder Year website presented by LRG 

The Wonder Year page on RiverRun's site

Jeanne Jolly

     www.jeannejolly.com

     Jeanne Jolly is one of North Carolina's best kept secrets, because I should've heard about her before last month.  When not harmonizing with Phonte at Foreign Exchange shows, she leads an impressive career as a solo artist.  Her gentle, yet powerful, southern sweet tea voice is reminiscent of folksy Jewel at times with a hint cowpunk Mary Prankster.  Whether performing her original songs or covering country, blues,  Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, or Whitesnake, Jeanne sounds beautiful.  I bet she could even make Rebecca Black's "Friday" sound good. 

     The way Jeanne Jolly holds and plays her guitar fascinates me.  Guitar players I've seen, hold and strum the instrument with ease, showing their command and total dominance of a lifeless, inanimate object.  Jeanne, on the other hand, handles her guitar with care, as if it is a delicate baby that weighs a ton.  Each strum and pick takes effort like gravity is reversed and working against her.  There is such weight and significance behind each note.  I could be wrong about all this, and her weak ass just needs to hit the gym.

     You know, James Taylor wasn't born in North Carolina.  He doesn't even fucking live in North Carolina.  So why is his song "Carolina in My Mind" the unofficial anthem of North Carolina?!  It's time for an update!  From a true daughter of North Carolina who lives in North Carolina, Jeanne's "Falling in Carolina" should be North Carolina's NEW unofficial anthem.  

      

I Love the 80s F.O.B. Edition Part 5

     I lived within walking distance of my elementary school(shout out to J.Y. Joyner).  My dad would give me a ride if it was raining heavily.  During second grade, there was a particularly heavy rain morning.  My dad tied plastic bags over my sneakers to keep them dry and drove me to school.  When I got there I noticed it being awfully quiet...and deserted, outside and inside(had the zombie apocalypse started?).  When I got to my room, it was empty except for my teacher.  She told me school had been cancelled because of flooding roads.  The school buses couldn't get to all the stops.  The day had been turned into an optional teacher workday.  Well, my dad had already left wouldn't be able to come back and pick me up.  She was nice enough to let me stay.  She brought me a morning snack from the cafeteria and explained to me what our class would have studied that day.    I got a head start on what would be the next day's school work and completed some of it.  I saw her light up a cigarette.  She told me not to tell the class she smoked.  Keeping me from being bored, she let me help her grade some papers and staple together handouts.  Then she took me to the library.  One of my classmates was there.  She was the daughter of one the teachers.  It was around lunch time that she decided to drive me home, but not before taking me to McDonald's for a Happy Meal.  I never saw her in the same light after that day.  She would be my favorite teacher until middle school.  Thinking about her now, she was cute.  She probably only had been teaching a few years(in her mid 20s).  The next year while waiting in the lunch line with my third grade class, I saw her walking in with her second grade class.  We waved and smiled at each other.  She was quite pregnant. 


     When I told my parents what had happened at school, they were very surprised.  School cancelled because of rain?!  It was such a foreign concept to them.  My teacher advised me to listen to the radio on mornings of bad weather for school delays and cancellations.  Luck would have it, that winter, I got to experience my first snow day :)


     What made me think of the story above was last night.  The Foreign Exchange held a free private concert for about 30 of their fans.  I'm calling it "Unplugged" show.  The way you got to go was RSVPing to an email address and getting picked at random.  I didn't get picked, so I jokingly bitched about it on Facebook and Twitter.  Next thing I know, Phonte is messaging me.  I worked out a deal with the woman of a thousand hustles, Aimee Flint.  I could come to the show if I helped set up, greet the guests, and sale merch.  So here I was, 24 years later, feeling like a kid on that rainy day again.  I got see the men and women behind the artists, like I got to see the woman behind the teacher that day.  

to be continued...

Never say never...

"Never meet your heroes.  They will disappoint you."

"Be your fan's number 1 fan."

     I stopped worshipping celebrities around the time of the OJ trial.  That was also the same time I started hating the media...cable news in particular.  Hmm, what a coincidence.  Nowadays with social media, there's even more of a false sense of connection that fans have with their "heroes."  Kids are spoiled these days.  They can read Lady GaGa's twitter feed 24/7 and get images of her off the web instead of waiting for their latest issue of Teenbeat or Seventeen to arrive in the mail.

     Sometimes though a real connection forms, and the social contract of fan/customer and merchant/entertainer changes ever slightly to acquaintance with mutual interests.  And if you're really lucky, friendship/brotherhood or sisterhood.  People like Questlove, Jon Favreau, Felicia Day, Kevin Smith, 9th Wonder, Phonte, who interact with their fans through forums, twitter, etc., build something real beyond the virtual and impersonal space of the www(Even if some celebrities fake it, they and their publicists have fooled me).  I really appreciate and respect those that invest in their fans like that, because people's time and energy are important and to spend it talking with your fans goes a long way.  Hopefully, the dividend is fans buying tickets and merchandise.

     To disgress even further and cynically break it down for the streets, hos that come up to your car and ask, "are you looking for a good time baby," and strippers who just ask, "Do you want a dance," aren't gonna go as for as hos that give you that girlfriend experience or strippers that sit down and chat with you first.  They're in the service industry, so customer service with a friendly smile is key.  You catch more flies with honey as the saying goes.

     Ok, enough rambling.  My point is my "heroes" haven't disappointed me.  One factor is that I can't really watch, read, or listen to something that someone has created without respecting them.  I know you have seperate the art from the artist, but I can't do that all the time.  A perfect example is Kid Rock.  I bought Devil Without a Pause on a whim, months before it became popular and catapulted Kid into stardom.  Then one night, I saw him on Jay Leno.  He wasn't a guest(not famous enough yet) but was interviewed during a Jaywalking segment.  Leno asked him some North American geography and American history questions, and he didn't know the answers to any of them.  I stopped listening to Kid Rock after that.  I don't have time to deal with fucking idiots.

  

     On the other hand, I still listen to Kanye West even with all his flaws.  My feelings on the Taylor Swift incident is analogous to those that support the troops and not the war.  I obviously feel bad for young Ms. Swift, but I wasn't mad at Mr. West for running up on stage.  Without contemplating too much about the situation, it was a funny award show moment.

     

I Love the 80s F.O.B. Edition Part 4

     Before I had access to cable, which would not be until 1987, I had very few opportunities to experience hip hop.  After "Planet Rock" and Herbie Hancock's "Rock It," it would be about 2-3 years before I heard Run-D.M.C.  Should I count The Fat Boys?  I would fill that gap with radio, and the radio played a lot of synth.

     The other music radio played was anything by Michael Jackson.  

     Michael would be the most entertaining human being to me for a few years(close to all of elementary school). Sure, I can get into his whole "Jacko" persona but I don't think I can write a better piece about MJ than Phonte of The Foreign Exchange: My Hero Ain’t Molest Them Bitch Ass Kids.

to be continued...

     

I Love the 80s F.O.B. Edition Part 3

     Kids' brains are like sponges.  Put some stimuli(or bombard them) in front of them and they'll soak it up.  Learning a second or even third language is easy when you're young.  My best English teacher was television :P

I watched everything on TV.  Back then, there were only about 6 channels in Raleigh.  My parents didn't restrict what I could watch(too busy trying to obtain The American Dream, priorities man), so I got to see violent R-rated movies and the cheesy sex scenes of prime time soaps before a lot of other kids.  I'm so glad my parents weren't restricting in that regard.  I got all that testosterone filled, frat boy popcorn trash out of the way early, so I could have more of my life to enjoy dialogue, cinematography, score, and editing in films.  You know, real artsy fartsy shit.

to be continued...