Food&Liquor/Blue Collar the new "One for All" ?
tonyphrone
1,500 Posts
Lupe and Rhymefest are really on to something. They both come from a city whose biggest rap export throughout the 90s was an insufferable granola-munching pseudo-boho. They've both fully absorbed the aesthetics of the late-90s Rawkus backpack boom, and they both get a little sanctimonious from time to time, but it's only a piece of the puzzle for both of them. There's not a lot of "real hip-hop" talk from these two; both of them claim that they don't even really listen to rap, even if both of the cram in enough internal rhymes and quick allusions to let you know it isn't true. Compared to overbearingly conscious types like Talib Kweli or Little Brother, they both sound like they're having a blast all the time, like they're both perfectly aware of everything that's wrong in the world but they aren't going to let that detract from the joy of piling words on top of each other. Both Food & Liquor and Blue Collar remind me of one of my favorite records of all time, Brand Nubian's One for All; they're charged with rage and frustration and injustice and bad faith, but the "eating up suckas as if I was Pac-Man" stuff remains fully intact. I get a lot of heat in the comments section for preferring T.I. and Jeezy to Common and Kweli, but I'd like to offer Rhymefest and Lupe as examples of ways to escape the us-vs.-them grandstanding that infects so much Okayplayer fare. These two guys don't need to wear their brains and their hearts on their sleeves to let you know that they're there. Could this be true? This writer Tom Breihan for the VOICE seems to have iffy taste at best- but it always feels very honest. This last paragraph kinda got me intrigued. I've only heard "Kick Push" and "Brand New"- and I really like those tracks? I definitely believe that the sound of hip-hop has moved on from Brand Nubians (see: TI, Lil Wayne, Jezzy) and i'm not into any "golden era" revivalism - but are these records gonna make me dig out my batman medallion? 
Comments
The dude should just stop--Common was neither Chicago's "biggest rap export" during the 90s (see: Da Brat; Crucial Conflict; Twista), nor did he become an insufferable granola muncher until the nineties were over.
why did all these guys get together and decide that Brand Nubian is the only early 90s hip hop act worth name dropping a positive light?
At some point in the past 18 months... when they started listening to rap.
i don't think (most) rap fans would characterize Common as "insufferable", except maybe for Electric Circus, but even still, "insufferable" as compared to ______ in rap music?
as for him being "a pseudo boho", again, that wold only apply to Electric Circus, and we can drop the "pseudo", he was as bohemian as it gets.
Well, I thought LWFC was the album where he veered sharply bohoward.
"Pseudo" maybe comes in when discussing EC, which a lot of people viewed as very forced and unconvincing, but it was more "PseudoAndre3000" than boho.
Yes, but honesty in the service of ignorance (or should that be the other way around) is NAGL? For real, Breihan has - time and time and time and time - again, shown himself to have a severely compromised sense of hip-hop history. I mean, dude is so disconnected he makes me look, you know, connected. It makes it really hard to taken any of his opinions very seriously. Plus, from folks I know in NYC who know him, he's rather cocky which only makes his opinions even more suspect.
I think you'd have to go back to One Day... to see the early moves toward the boho world. Everything from production to that track with Cee-lo screamed directional change.
This wasn't a bad thing as much as its something "rap fans" didn't want to accept. It's hard to see a rapper not stick to the ol' song and dance about being poor, hustling, drugs, hoes, etc.
Hardliners pipe up when they feel their way of life may be threatened.
I've chose to erase all "EC" and "Love Below" material or carrer publicity stunts from my memory.
File under: we thought thats where the money was.
ok - but there is something about those singles that i do like. Maybe it is regional thing (chicago) ? Maybe it's a just break from the coke rap/trap/snap that appeals to my white middle class sensibility? I dunno? But "One for all" was a BIG record for me personally. I'm not sure how far it reached the rest of the country- but in NYC in 91 it was all over the place. Every car/club/house party etc.
Just stop. It couldn't possibly be that Com's spiritual exegesis with Cee-lo or his collab with the Roots and Erykah were simply terds could it? And plaese to point us to the "being poor, hustling, drugs, hoes, etc." period in Com's catalog, the departure from which we all found so upsetting.
Yeah, but dude, that's the point. It probably was a huge album in NYC but it was an NYC group to begin with. Of course it was more likely to be big there.
MY POINT, is that there was a certain vibe that was very unique to that record. It just had a sound/feeling that I didn't realy hear again (party rap/5%/street/etc). I'm not saying Food&Liquor/Blue Collar has it- but I think I understand what Breihan is saying.
But in all honesty, it's probably just another nostalgia trap. Oh well?
ok your turn, please show us your justification for saying Crucial Conflict was a bigger Chi-town export than Common?
In most senses that would qualify them all as "bigger exports"
Just not in TB's private mind garden.
This said, when I think "Chicago hip-hop of the '90s" I think Common too.
Crucial Conflict had one album that made some noise, Common has had a 6 album career (so far).
"Hay" IMHO does not equal anything close to that.
Plaese to familiarize yourself with the local Midwest experience
real talk- and i would say has a bigger influence on the new school chi-town - Lupe/Kanye/Blueprint etc.
Uh, no, that was simply a young man's record--not the record of somebody whose expression was limited to "being poor, hustling, drugs, hoes, etc." Did you even listen to rap back then? Com's subject matter on that record was hardly atypical of the era. And for what it's worth, to whatever extent his fans were disappointed in the shift in direction hinted at by One Day, this is not the record that moulded their expectations of him.
I can't even tell if this is a serious question. Where is Common's "Hay"? Oh that's right, he never had a hit like that. Where is Common's Final Tic? Oh that's right, he didn't go gold until he released LWFC, which didn't occur until after the nineties were over.
You may personally prefer Common to Crucial Conflict and that's fine, but during the nineties CC were bigger artists than Com, as were Twista and da Brat. This is not really open to argument so please just stop with that.
No arguments there, but it'd be crazy if Com didn't influence them. He and Kanye have been associating since long before KW got put on, and Lupe and Blueprint are West's hommies.
And most of the rap-listening public has never heard the majority of those albums.
We're talking about "bigger" here, not "better," and that's just the way it is.
I liked "Showdown" a whole lot more than "Hay."
I think "reminds me of" should be replaced with "influenced by."
I think NOID, producer of said insufferable granola-munching pseudo-boho, helped put Kanye West on the map in the late 90s, who helped put Rhymefest on the map in 2005--the reason why Tom is writing about Rhymefest in the first place.
On a different note, I think Tom is a much better writer when he sticks to the history of hardcore punk and Tupac Shakur halloween costumes:
http://wrt-intertext.syr.edu/X/breihan.html
In Breihan's favor, I will say that his own rap writing is much more palatable than that of David Foster Wallace, his "favorite creative nonfiction writer."
Real headz wish they did not know the deal:
But how do you feel about his experiential post cards?
They're some of my favorite experiential postcards.