This is not a great record, but it's an important one-- I'm fairly certain it was the very first rap record from the West Coast. Both tracks are traditional toasts dressed up with a little blues/funk backing. It's really derivative of the style of Rudy Ray Moore, who recorded a lot of traditional toasts, sometimes also with a beat. I'd be curious to know if Too $hort heard this, since it anticipates both his nasty subject matter and his spelling, although not his musical or lyrical style.
Given the way pop culture seems to constantly get more vulgar, I'm always a little surprised when I hear nasty lyrics that predate $hort, 2 Live Crew, etc. I guess songs like that were always being written and performed, if not necessarily circulated in the mainstream.
This recording, from 1964, has some of the filthiest, most vicious lyrics I've ever heard:
The recording comes from an album called Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me!: Narrative Poetry from Black Oral Tradition, which was compiled by Bruce Jackson as a companion to his 1974 book of the same name. Most of the recordings were made in Texas state prisons; this one is credited only to a man named Henry on the Ramsey, Texas prison farm. The last minute or so gives me chills; it's colder than even anything Suga Free ever recorded.
and thinking to yourself, "Wow, what a thoroughly awesome music blog! How can I possibly show my appreciation?", let me point out that Michael Jackson's effects are being auctioned off next week and these are excellent gift ideas (and roughly in descending order of how bad I want them):
Next to Edwin Starr, Stubbs was about as raw as Motown singers got. I tend to think James Jamerson is a little overrated but his bass part on this song is phenomenal.
I'm not one of those bitter, old rap guys who believes rap music peaked in (insert year here-- 1988, 1991 and 1994 are particularly popular choices, but it seems to hinge in large part on the age of the person making the call) and believes most everything since then has been bullshit. No, I'm a bitter, old rap guy who loves tons of new shit and doesn't have a whole lot of prepossessions about what good rap music should sound like, be about, etc.
Rap music began as party music. In David Toop's classic rap history, Rap Attack, Grandmaster Flash said that the reason MCs were introduced was to keep the crowd moving instead of just standing around watching the DJ. If you listen to early recordings of live shows, you hear it-- rappers were there to entertain.
So I'm not persuaded when people gripe about current commercial rap music saying nothing. (This is usually when the bitter, old rap guy brings up Soulja Boy.) Still, I think there are a lot of subjects rappers don't touch on anymore and that's a shame.
I was ripping Ice-T's O.G.: Original Gangster last week and this track really fucked my head up.
Ice-T: "Ya Shoulda Killed Me Last Year" (Sire, 1991)
The directness and immediacy of it are just so foreign to rap music right now-- I just can't picture any current rapper of any commercial stature or prospects being this direct about a social issue, aside from maybe David Banner. I mean, in the months-long run-up to the current war, a war which just about every rap listener I know opposed from the beginning, what rapper had the nuts to say something like this? Jay-Z snuck a "leave Iraq alone" into his Punjabi MC remix, but that's it as far as I know.
These two tracks are drawn from a 7" issued by Chicago's Citizens Alliance for VD Awareness in 1974. The level of talent they were able to draw was pretty amazing: Stax hitman Johnnie Taylor and original Last Poet Gylan Kain each perform a side, while Chess/Cadet arranger Richard Evans and Chicago soul jack-of-all-trades Chuck Colbert lend support. Granted, Taylor was stranded a few years between the commercial peaks of "Who's Makin' Love" and "Disco Lady", and no one had bought Kain's remarkable 1970 album, but still....
According to my boy google, Tuff City reissued this on 45 last year, albeit with a different track on the A-side. No word on why Wolfman Jack replaced Johnnie Taylor.
Bishops of the Holy Rollers Fallout Shelter (Gylan & Denise Kain): "It's Free" (CAVDA, 1974)
Johnnie Taylor: "Something to Remember Her By" (CAVDA, 1974)
