Blues and Rap

People paint rap as vulgar and macho crap, but blues is a part of history now, we can admire it. People forget the message and obsess over the medium . Although saying that, maybe I'm guilty of being too political and forgetting about the aesthetic pleasure to be had from repeatedly copying with few variations the template. No wonder, people don't really want to think about those who haven't benefited from a society that has given said people such a comfortable existence.

Is there one over-arching message in rap? Aren't people who complain about the words paying attention to the message rather than what might be called the medium (or anyway, the more formal, aesthetic side of it)? What kind of message was I supposed to get out of NWA's* (quoting from memory) "Think I give a fuck about a bitch I ain't a [whatever it was]?" That the ghetto is dehumanizing? I don't really enjoy listening to music which I hear, in large part, as a symptom of a social problems. If I start to hear it primarily as symptom, that kind of kills it for me. There are other ways of staying informed about the world, about a part of the world that is outside of my experience, than listening to rap. To contradict myself a little, I wonder how much of it really is symptom. After a while, a genre takes on its own momentum. Gangsta rap has is defined by a set of conventions, like other sub-genres.

*--I know this is an old example, but in what little I've sampled of hip-hop in the last ten years, I still hear similar things. I'm sure if I owned a DMX CD, it would not be difficult to come up with a more current example.

A big problem lies in the way people hear hip hop on such a literal lyrical platform. Whether it's "Fuck the police," or "Money, Cash, Hoes," or whatever, everybody moans about the rotten language and morally corrupt content blah blah blah with the unspoken implications that their 'good' community of 'good' folk doesn't need this poverty music (unfortunately more often associated as black music). DMX is not going to spit some eloquent academic message, no. You don't listen to NWA to educate yourself about the ghetto either. What's key is the phenomenon itself, how people, as different as you they may be, have gathered their resources and ambitions and put out their expressions on record. Rappers are so explicit in their vocal delivery, a lot of people don't hear anything else at all. They take everthing so seriously and personally and uphold their conservative notions of value and "relating" with tunes. Really, it's all an ancient issue it seems, but I still come across people who tell me that they hate rap and wish it just went away.

Whether such a project is ultimately of value or not is another question, but its complexity & aesthetic validity seem clear to me.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it per se.

Why should this kill it for you?

I don't know why, but it seems to have done so. I find it very depressing to read the news. That's bad enough. I don't necessarily want to be reminded of these things when I am listening to music, which I do essentially for pleasure (something which I have been told is "almost decadent" by a leftist at work). With someone like Public Enemy, at least there was some sort of positive vision of how to makes things better. I didn't agree with a lot of the solutions, and there were things even in P.E. which started to get to me, but at least they didn't seem to be embracing sheer mayhem. Sistah Soulja may have been talking (okay, in interviews, not in music) about blacks killing white people (instead of each other), but at least she wasn't talking about indiscriminately killing everyone.

DMX may involve social issues, but focusing on this aspect alone is a pretty narrow way to approach the music. Not saying that that's what you're doing but elaboration would help to clarify...

I can't really say much about DMX, since my only experience of his music is from listening stations, hearing him coming out of a neighbor's apartment, and possibly hearing him in a club. But what I remember listening to at an HMV listening station was so depressing to me. I kind of thought, "So this is what it's come to." I almost wanted to cry. (Maybe it wasn't DMX and I am mixing him up with someone else, but I'm pretty sure it was him.)

A big problem lies in the way people hear hip hop on such a literal lyrical platform. Whether it's "Fuck the police," or "Money, Cash, Hoes," or whatever, everybody moans about the rotten language and morally corrupt content blah blah blah with the unspoken implications that their 'good' community of 'good' folk doesn't need this poverty music (unfortunately more often associated as black music).

Yeah, I know that rappers use personae, and so forth, and that Ice-T wasn't necessarily going to go out killing cops. But I resent somehow ending up feeling obligated>/i> to make allowances for content that offends me enough to detract from my enjoying the music. It's okay not to listen to or like hip-hop.

Also, given the amount of, generally pretty stupid, violence that high-profile rappers have been involved with, that line between the personae and the rappers starts to get a bit blurrier.

You don't listen to NWA to educate yourself about the ghetto either. What's key is the phenomenon itself, how people, as different as you they may be, have gathered their resources and ambitions and put out their expressions on record.

But after recognizing the phenomenon in the abstract, I may prefer not to listen to it.

Rappers are so explicit in their vocal delivery, a lot of people don't hear anything else at all. They take everthing so seriously and personally and uphold their conservative notions of value and "relating" with tunes. Really, it's all an ancient issue it seems, but I still come across people who tell me that they hate rap and wish it just went away.

I don't necessarily mind obscenity, but I've heard a lot in rap music that has bothered me. It's not just this word or that word, or even this line or that line, but the whole effect of the words, the attitude with which their said, etc. The words are often so much in the foreground that I don't see how you can insist that listeners should just kind of not pay so much attention to them. When I was checking out an MP3 of Tupac's "How Long Will They Mourn Me," I found myself alternating between laughing along with some of it (assuming Tupac was laughing at all in that song, which maybe he wasn't) and being very bummed out by it and realizing that it wasn't something I would want to listen to. I agree that a lot of people seem to miss the artistry that's there. I think I hear some of it, but I can't get past the things that bother me. Maybe my taste has changed in other respects, in ways that make what rap has to offer less appealing than it was. I should probably stop saying this, since I've already said more or less the same thing already.

Hmmmm. I wonder why no one ever seems to talk about how much better rap videos are than rock videos--or at least were when I used to pay attention to either (1989-1992).

Also...40 year old critics already tend to do the patronization thing for 'message'-oriented emcees (This guy Common has something to say, you guys!). Could it be only a matter of time before......

Mickey, your point on crudeness is interesting, but I wasn't aware anyone had started praising gangsta rap for being crude (maybe I didn't read closely enough). This line of thinking (they genuinely find hip hop exciting in a way and can express that excitement in an intelligent manner = they intellectualise crude things) seems to be based on a value judgement that labels rapping as an artform crude point blank, despite your disclaimers to the contrary. It disallows the possibility that there might be some level of artistry involved in constructing personas, in twisting language (*not* "devolving" it), in finding fresh metaphors to express familiar concepts and ideas etc. To simply dismiss an appreciation for these as being little more than patronising anthropology is to also dismiss them as being mildly amusing cultural defects. Never mind that the same argument could be used against the sonic and emotional retardation of rock, jazz, whatever, and sound equally reasonable (ie. not very reasonable at all).

P.S. surely John's post was meant to prove that Ice Cube didn't necessarily mean it, maaaaaaaaaan.

I wouldn't go *that* far, inasmuch as if said imperviousness exists -- I'm pondering the potential answer to that at this point -- it doesn't apply to me as listener anyway. If I'm bored, I turn the album off (much less messier than pies thrown at your stereo). Though there is something to be said for the way the incorporation of imperviousness inhabits hip-hop's lyrical sense to a massive degree -- which, to tie back to the start of the thread, sure has an echo (reverse projected?) in blues braggadacio.

It's an emotional reaction, to be sure, but the primitiveness has less to do with craft than the message. I mean, punk is simple, but it's not misogynistic and violent in the same ways so consistently. Like it or not, a large part of rap is overtly so, whereas other genres of music, while dealing with, perhaps, the same issues, don't go to the same degree of shock.

That's not to say that I don't think it's fun or even valuable, but I certainly wouldn't put that frame of anthropological interest that I've heard plenty of critics AND just normal people say.

Plus, rappers resort to the excuse of "urban agitprop" waaaay too much. And it's completely self-contradictory--either they mean it when they say, "we're keepin' it real." or they mean it when they say, "it's all an act." or they're just opportunistic commercial artists who will say whatever to get money and fame--that doesn't demean their art, but the social awareness aspect is completely destroyed.

Tim, I wasn't addressing all critics or all appreciators, but given the volatile nature of race in rap, this appreciation of the twisting of personas sometimes draws close to a different sort of appreciation altogether. I agree, it is a judgment call, and I'm not sure that there will be a clean-cut line. I don't disagree that it IS fascinating to watch a persona, just like personas in any other setting, Bowie, or what have you in white music, but often the justification overlooks or whitewashes the actual art. I mean, sometimes it just ISN'T all that clever to be another tough-talking gangsta after there have already been 10,000 of them.

Although I listened to that album fairly often at one time, I never really listened to it with such a literary approach. Maybe although in principle I know that we're dealing with personas, I have sometimes forgotten to actually apply that to what I'm listening to. I never really liked being an English major all that much, though, so I don't think I'm really interested enough to want to do that work. You know, another angle is that this is dance music, party music even. And I don't feel comfortable dancing and whooping it up while lines like this are being delivered.

I think my favorite thing about "Straight out of Compton" was the way different MCs come in and out, and the energy, the way it comes rolling at you.

*

I like most of what dave q said.

He's *not* a leftist, he's a standard-issue moralist asshole (sounds to me).

People who are praising rap for its crudeness are people who aren't exactly doing it the courtesy of listening to it intelligently.

He's *not* a leftist, he's a standard-issue moralist asshole (sounds to me).

I got lazy about describing him, actually. Just calling him a leftist makes it sound as though I am in the opposite camp, when I'm actually a wishy-washy left-leaning liberal. Maybe he's a Marxist of some sort, though I'm not sure he'd accept that label. I think he can't help himself. He's a bit on the gloomy side.

Because the blues is 100 years old and all the great blues musicians are dead. Its safe.

Robert Johnson=gangsta rapper

black jazz/blues groups were DANCEBANDS (eg patterned iconically after sousa-strauss type groupings) and thus a conscious step away from gangstadom even in the bebop- pachoco-zoot era (when a middleclass geek like dizzy gillespie cd get chucked out of a band for knifing somene: admittedly another band-member, traditionally a behaviour frowned on by band-leaders)

20s/30s bluesmen were mostly rural loners, so by def not "gangstas" (gangsters = urban and in gangs, and — in post-godfather style — communally minded); tho i think mickey b is overstating it to extrapolate from robert johnson to ALL pre-rock musicians (leadbelly was a ex-crim)

derayme: yeah, my point wasn't actually anti-leftist either (tho dave q's might have been, heh)

I mean, I'm being slightly facetious, but really, saying that there are certain thematic connections between the blues and hip hop seems like a pretty ordinary idea to me.

Don't understand this.

The other thing, that I forgot to mention and think is a deeper connection, is both blues and hip hop as oral narrative. That's the real continuity.

"it's completely self-contradictory--either they mean it when they say, "we're keepin' it real." or they mean it when they say, "it's all an act."

I would say that keepin' it real is an act, or a performance :)

Why is Robert Johnson still famous? Sure, great music. But lots of other bluesman made great music tho, and they're not icons today.

Answer: The Johnson persona as existential bluesman with a hellhound on his trail. Supposedly rooted in reality--telling tales of personal experience--but inescapably tangled in myth, which he himself constructs in his lyrics. Where one leaves off and the other begins, who knows...

Secondly, what I meant by commercial is that the conscious and contrived creation of a persona, of manipulating media to expound and expand upon that image, to make it a lifestyle accessory that others will want to emulate, to EMULATE a role outside of music, i.e. gangsta or mogul, that's totally not what the blues were. Even if they portrayed a role in a song, it was evident that it's a song, and no one got that confused with Mr. Johnson. Some might argue that the bluesmen would have done so if they had a chance, to which the reply is, we are discussing what IS, not what might have been. And further more, there are plenty of bluesmen today who aren't doing that.

I mean, the line of oral tradition isn't relegated only to blues, what happened to field hollering, folk, country, gospel, these are all oral traditions. And no one seems to draw a line there. I acknowledge a tenuous link via African-american vehicles of expression, but I don't agree that it's so crystal-clear as it is fashionable to claim.

Mostly agree with the rest of what you say (aside from the moralist overtones around the words "contrived" and "manipulating," and of course, the tenuousness) But hey, that's where the different social contexts come in.

I would say that keepin' it real is an act, or a performance :)

That's clever, but it misses the point that this "it's all an act" is used to deflect criticism about content.

Also, I don't mean manipulation in a moralistic manner at all--I think that's a value placed by the perceiver. I mean that in the most objective sense of the word. Contrived as well. It's not real, it's contrived. Contrivance is the nature of creative art--if the contrivance is clear to the perceiver, then one has to question whether or not that is the point.

I'm not so sure that the real Robert Johnson persona can so easily be separated from his songs (it's not unlikely that the guy who shot him was confused on this matter), or that rappers can be so easily identified with theirs. Is the mix of reality and fiction really so different? Are rappers really so straightforwardly telling people to emulate them? Many rap lyrics contain specific warnings about the perils of doing so. And casting doubt on a rapper's true street credentials is also a standard feature of both lyrics and fan conversation.

Just to clarify what I meant about oral tradition; I was thinking specifically of toasting and the dozens--rhyming stories, often violent, misogynist and scatalogical, used for purposes of entertainment and self-aggrandizement. As distinct from the kind of tales they tell in folk, country, et al.

Last year an internet friendship I'd developed over a couple of years broke down, largely as a result of my trying to defend Eminem/gangsta rap. My correspondent, a gay male, objected that this was tantamount to condoning, or at least tolerating, homophobia, misogyny, the glamorisation of criminal violence etc. As a sometime victim of homophobic violence he understandably felt he did not need more hostility worked up by celebrity entertainers. As a liberal he was not advocating censorship but he did think there was a moral irresponsibility in buying the product.

As a rap fan I produced the kinds of defence that have already been offered - the cartoon nature of the attititudes depicted, the implied distance between persona and artist, the inevitability of alienation (and it's expression in extreme forms) in a racist society, the safety-valve/catharsis theory that it's safer to express dangerous emotions in art, the close relationships between gangsters and celebrities even back in the day when lyrics were June, moon and spoon. But I wasn't convincing him and I'm not sure I was convincing myself. The obvious problem with the "it's a fantasy" defense is the real violence, killings and wife-beating, extortion, corruption and racketeering of some of the key players.

In "Hip-hop America" Nelson George brandishes his liberal credentials by tearing into the misogyny of the no-cred 2 Live Crew, but avoids disussing similar elements in the work of more "credible" rappers like NWA, Dre etc. As far as I can see (I haven't read the whole thing) The Vibe History tut-tuts over specific examples of extreme lyrics or behaviour but sees no need to mount a defence of the genre.

I'm still buying rap records but I feel slightly uncomfortable about it.

That's because mounting a defence of the genre is about as useful as mounting a defence of "the movies." Show me a gangsta rapper, I'll show you a "conscious" rapper (who people will probably criticize for being boring and PC). Show me a nasty piece of out-and-out homophobia, I'll show you a hilariously offensive riff on "Yo Mama". Hiphop is a big genre.

"The obvious problem with the 'it's a fantasy' defense is the real violence, killings and wife-beating, extortion, corruption and racketeering of some of the key players."

If we started disqualifying art on the basis of the personal lives of its makers, we wouldn't have much to listen to. TS Eliot was an anti-semite; Heidegger was a Nazi; that's not going to stop me from reading either of them (tho Heidegger's clotted, lugubrious prose style really presents problems), and doing so doesn't mean I approve of all of their opinions.

;o)

But there are different degrees to which the unsavoriness of the artist ends up being reflected in the work, and there are different degrees of separation betweeen the image surrounding the artists and the art. In pop music, the image tends to loom larger. I wouldn't deny though that every artists has to have an image of some sort. Perhaps Eliot is a good example for your argument, or Pound even more so, since anti-semitism plays a more overt role in The Cantos than it does in Eliot's poetry (though I think when I was reading Eliot as a kid, some of his anti-semitic digs just went right past me); but there are some cases where the author/artist might have been abominable, but it doesn't necessarily carry over in any obvious way in the work itself. I've heard some disturbing stories about Miles Davis, but I don't hear that in his music. Anyway, I don't know what Ice Cube is like in person, but that line I quoted above is still just too rough for me to enjoy in music. I'm not trying to show how good or PC I am, it's just the way I react to it. It's not that I feel guilty about listening to ganster rap, or that I would condemn anyone for doing so, but my enjoyment is compromised by the content, in many cases. I don't see movies much, but I have never been attracted to slasher films. I understand that most people who enjoy them aren't going to go out and become serial killers.

I once had someone tell me not bother to read Kant because somewhere he expresses the opinion that the state should have an official religion and enforce that, or something of the sort. That didn't seem to me to have much to do with the plausibility or implausibility of his metaphysics, or for that matter, his moral theory in the abstract. (I never did get through "Critique of Pure Reason," but some day I hope to.) Heidegger's Nazism is more than a little creepy, and if I ever read him I will do so very much on guard, but it wouldn't prevent me from reading him. It's not that I feel guilty about listening to ganster rap, or that I would condemn anyone for doing so, but my enjoyment is compromised by the content, in many cases. I don't see movies much, but I have never been attracted to slasher films. I understand that most people who enjoy them aren't going to go out and become serial killers.

I also agree with you that the personality of the artist is usually irrelevant. Although as it happens I don't much care for T S Eliot despite his brilliance partly because his creepy life-hating personality is everywhere in his work. But I'm a huge fan of Miles who was a 24 carat asshole. But there are legitimate questions, as DeRayMi suggests: Do rap players become criminals partly because criminal behaviour is validated by the conventions of the genre? Are there murder or rape victims who would not have been murdered or raped but for the popularity of gansta rap?

and ditto the bible (eg the big old book of god-blab, not the rubbish rockband, who are i suspect in the clear on this count...)

:)

I think this issue of an artist's politics is different than the critique of the artists' work unless one specifically champions the artist(s) because of their politics. I mean, no one goes, man, that fucking Wagner, what a great social critic. Oops, he's an anti- semite. Most people go, fucking Wagner, fucking brilliant composer, too bad he's a fucking anti-semite. What a fucker. As opposed to, Wagner, fucking great social angst, yeah there's antisemitism, but that's 'cuz it's what he FEEEELS, man. Don't judge him for that, it's really a reflection of his social upbringing. Love that it's so reeeeaaaall.

And regarding scatalogical--I always thought that just using cuss words that are scatalogical in origin doesn't mean that you are being scatalogical in your discussion. Don't you actually have to be talking about shit? I mean, actually discussing, say, dung beetles or poop or something?

(and btw, nobody I know makes the social angst argument about hiphop; haven't seen anyone on this thread make it; maybe Mickey should read some different critics, or just tell us who exactly he's talking about when he's beating that dead horse)

But at the end of the day, "Four Quartets" is still pretty amazing, Heidegger had some interesting things to say about technology, etc etc. I don't play "Cave Bitch" too often; but damn, "Dead Homiez" is a lyrical, moving piece of storytelling.

As far as questions like "is it Ok to enjoy misogynist lyrics?" and "can we blame rap for rape?" go... what you're really saying is "is this music corrupting the minds of our poor young children?" and I really tend to remain ambivalent about that stuff for a number of reasons.

a) We can never really know. Even if you say, yes, hiphop in some way affected someone's mindset so much that they did this awful thing, you can then start to wonder about whether it simply triggered something that was already latent.

b) Focusing on hiphop (or video games, or slasher movies) excludes plenty of other factors that are probably more important: the availablity of guns, lack of parental control, the quality of the school system, poverty, jealousy, whatever.

c) I think that the ratio of really straightup dodgy shit in hiphop (vs, say, dodgy shit that's mediated, distance, or refracted in some way that makes it difficult to read as a straightahead inticement to do something bad) is much lower than people make out in conversations like this one. NWA, Ice Cube, Eminem--the same old names get thrown out again and again, because there ain't that many names you can throw out.

d) There is no such thing as complete safety. Living in a free society entails risk. If the freedom to talk about what we want, explore taboos, etc, means that one in a million morons is going to take a rapper's lyrics as a personal message of instruction, then I accept that risk.

In my dictionary, it says scatology means, among other things, some of them shit-related "obscenity or obsession with the obscene"

I might have got this all bitched up, tho: i know i plundered something abt it for a piece i did long ago on public enemy, heh...

heidegger was a nazi mainly to stay on-side with the powers-that-be: i fink his philosophy is deeply wrong, but intrinsically anti-nazi (so he wasn't even being true to his own beliefs) (ps i am not pro nazi)

is eminem just describing the inner dynamics of hate, by manifesting them as mic-drama, or is he himself hate-filled? can you do the first w/o being the second?

"stan" is (after all) a song that actually explores the responsibility the artist has for his fans... i think a great, very smart song

And whether or not it influences kids of my generation, being the ones who grew up under the burgeoning gangsta rap of the early 90's, I think that's an irrelevant point. That's certainly not what "we're really saying." Or at what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is, how far can one go with self-congratulatory, anti- anti-racism, I'm down with the homey reverse validation before you've become exactly what you set out to destroy? Interesting, somewhat relevant, article in the latest NYTimes magazine about a conservative Black critic, Loury, who has since jumped ship.

And re: scatology, I stand very much corrected.

But then, I don't read Rolling Stone or Spin, and maybe this is just another reason why.

Is it OK to enjoy rap with lyrics that promote homophobia and misogyny? Why? To enjoy the music AND the lyrics, or enjoy it despite the lyrics? Or do we reject those specific tracks as beyond the pale? And what are the implications of these not being isolated instances but a strain within the genre with its own conventions encouraging that kind of posture?

When Ice Cube says "Life ain't nothin but bitches and money," I don't take it as "O'Shea Jackson believes that blowjobs and dollars are the only things worth pursuing in life." It's a crystaliztion of Cube-the-character, obviously. To what degree does Cube-the-character represent O'Shea? I don't know and will never know for sure unless I ask him.

What I have to do in order to enjoy "Gangsta Gangsta" without my Marxist ass twitching is accept the misogyny as an unlikable part of a complex persona. Your friend Steve is incredibly intelligent, funny, and can kick your ass at the dozens any day, but he's kind of a dick to his girlfriend. You might not quit inviting him over for a bowl, but you try to open his eyes to the hurt he's causing his Sig Other and maybe try to counsel the g/f on occassion.

I don't know if I'm saying anything interesting here. Hopefully somebody smarter than me can come around and help out with this shit. I may be completely wrong or incoherent, but this is a great fucking thread and I wanted to bring it back with something more substantive than REVIVE, BITCHES!

I'm the new Ice Cube/Motherfuckers hate to like you

I totally short-shrifted this very, very interesting question, but I'm leaving work now. Back to discuss tomorrow, unless someone beats me to it. Get the feeling I might be talking to myself for a minute.

Of course this doesn't mean that there should be some sort of knee-jerk feminist reaction towards misogyny in rap without taking into account its place in culture; as people like Bell Hooks and Nelson George have pointed out, rap's misogyny can be seen as a part of larger set of gender issues in the African-American or American society in general. But this doesn't mean that rap shouldn't questioned for its misogyny either (in fear of being racist or whatever reason). In places like ILM the typical knee-jerk reaction against accusations of misogyny seems to be, "Oh yeah, but rock is misogynic too!" or "Our whole society is misogynic!". Well yeah, of course they are, but that doesn't mean that the specific forms of misogyny in rap lyrics can't be analyzed critically, just like specific forms misogyny in other cultural products have been criticized.

I think it's a pity there are only few such writers as Tricia Rose, who both love rap and know it well, and also take a feminist stance in writing about it. I'd say it's exactly people like her who can write informed critiques about misogyny in rap, instead of the sweeping accusations made by some less informed commentators, which are often (and rightfully so) interpreted as attacks towards the whole genre, or black people in general.

A lot of folks on this thread seemed to be talking about "rap" as this monolithic entity. The crudity of rap. The violence, homophobia and misogyny of rap. Seems so vague and depersonalized. A lot of rap is objectionable by such standards, but then again, a lot of it isn't.

I mean:

"I was rejected at the high school dance
Gonna get that fuckin' girl, gang rape out her ass"
- Rejected At the High School Dance is by the Tar Babies

"1, 2, I'm looking at you
And there ain't nothing I miss
3, 4, your just a fuckin' whore
'Cause you no longer exist"
- You Stupid Asshole is by the Angry Samoans

"I don't care that you're only 13, 'cuz 13 is my lucky number
Jailbait, jailbait, statutory rape
Give you just a kiss I know the rest can't wait"
- 13 Is My Lucky Number is by the Child Molesters

"Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed
Old enough to pee then she's old enough for me"
- Let's Fuck is by the Dwarves

Big Black, Rapeman, the Meatmen, the Mentors and the Misfits. And so on and so on and so on. But you seldom hear concerned, white liberals saying they "feel uncomfortable about supporting punk rock." Grindcore and death/black metal are a million times worse, but you rarely hear anybody express moral misgivings about metal as a genre.

Rap is popular. I get that. Rap lyrics are (generally) clear and comprehensible. I get that. And rap is more popular than, say, black metal. Fine. But in discussing rap, critics often take a hand-wringing stance that's almost entirely absent in the discourse about other genres.

Something about it doesn't quite sit right...

ah sorry mark I am cursed w/literal-mindedness and tend to overstate my case (and your posts are the exception to all rules even when I fail to grok the nuances) maybe I'll taste-test Ice Pickin by Albert Collins against some Ice Cube and my mental clouds will clear...