This is the thread where we name songs that are evidence to the contrary of popular opinion as regard hip-hop.

Cee-Lo's "Gettin Grown"
Blackalicious' "Make You Feel That Way"
Lauryn Hill's "Zion"

any Grand Puba verse

Aw, it doesn't really matter anyway, this was another patented nickalicious knee-jerk reaction to being amazed at how closed-minded the denisons of a musician-populated message board (not this one) can be about a particular style of music (if you're really curious, it's the Harmony Central forums).

However, it does bother me that hip-hop is so often dismissed as a-style-defined-by-negative-lyrical-content, even when much of it is very POSITIVE. Also that the people who usually do the dismissing don't hold rockers as accountable for lyrics just as misogynistic or materialistic.

But like I said, this was a knee-jerk, so take it with a grain of salt, pretty please with a cherry on top.

Anybody else notice the subtle nod to Maggot Brain in Outkast's "Gasoline Dreams"?

"Maggot Brain" = "Mother Earth is pregnant for the 3rd time, for y'all have done knocked her up..."

"Gasoline Dreams" = "I hear that Mother Nature's now on birth control"

???

Oh, an I could tell you weren't being snarky, I just felt a weird k-guilt for starting this sorta thread (as I hope Anticon did for their Hip-Hop for the Advanced Listener).

The first problem, of course, is Big Boi's flow, which is the least funky thing I can think of.

(And I guess I'm not allowed to say this on any other thread, so I'll just say that Boi bugs the shit out of me on Stankonia when he capitulates to all the gangsta misogynistic paranoia about hoez takin' his money and stickin' his dick all in [subject of song]'s friend's mouth and "throat babies" and all that. Boi could be a lot more interesting than Dre if he'd reconsider pandering like that. But say that anywhere else and I'm a hata, no?)

I bet this new double-solo thing turns out to be like the Kiss solo albums...or, better yet, like Zaireeka, where you have to listen to both of them at the same time. Chewy!

As a suburban white guy who's shielded from the consequences, it's much too easy for me to say that I'd rather hear Nas shooting at cops and pissing in elevators. There's no reason he should have to put on an ultraviolent minstrel show in order to entertain me.

On the other hand: is it so wrong for me to prefer sharp, detailed short stories over community college history lectures? Nas told such great stories, and as a history professor, he's just sub-BDP dull. The best advice Nas ever gave the kids came just after he rose and brushed the blunt's ash from his clothes lo these many years ago, and there were no children's choirs or Fur Elise quotes anywhere in earshot.

COUGH*bullshit*COUGH

I'd like an mp3 of Geir doing "Rapper's Delight" before he says that again.

...and with these wise words, a once-painful song is suddenly revealed to be fine. I still don't want to listen to it, but perhaps my nephew does.

You can't spend your whole life pissing in an elevator, and if Nas wants to add "quality children's entertainer" to his list of titles, who am I to argue? It's definitely an unexpected bend in his career path, but that's the beauty of it.

Organized Konfusion split my brain back in the day, too. Positivity minus cheese? that's some hard shit to pull off, dogs

Yeah, and there are no Norweigans who aren't lame bald men w/a Genesis fixation. See how this stereotyping-from-a-small-sample thing works?

'Cos I just got home ten minutes ago.

--or, Digable Planets - or - G. Love

Mos Def..."What Is Beef", "Mathematics", etc.

Common..."Dooinit", "I Used To Love H.E.R.", "Retrospect For Life", "Resurrection", "Nag Champa", "Ghetto Heaven", etc.