One time, two time, uh huh, yo

Transcripts of Wu-Tang Live in the UK would be cool too!

'phat'-ic, heh

um, one line of it starts w. j.brown and m.jackson, obv, tho poss. not the line you want explored (you mean filler phrases, not grunts that transcend mere quotidian language, no?)

Mark S - yes, filler phrases.

Those phrases don't offend me in the context of a hip hop track, but they can do with a hip hop/song crossover eg Fugees. Not that I particularly liked the Roberta Flack cover but the 'one time, two time' interjections were irritating...kind of bovine because it was originally supposed to be a delicate love song.

that's my main complaint with hip-hop too ... there's not much validity to a genre where an mc merely rhymes about how good an mc he is for 3.5 minutes. 'sucker mc's, when i step up to the mic, etc etc'. any genre that is limited to discussing its own workings comes off as sophomoric. in theatre there is a parallel to this called 'breaking the fourth wall' ... engaging the audience in the actuality of the performance. i would still like to see more hip hop touch on personal issues, social issues ... i would like it to be more lyrical and more free(shouts out to cLOUDEAD and various hip hop abstractionists).

but like it or not, that's just how hip hop is. it's a street music, it's a competitive music and it's rooted in traditions that i'll never understand. i'll never understand b-boy battles or graffiti battles, so i'll never know the need to promote my skills as an mc. if we are to look back fifty-sixty years or so to the standardization of the jazz form (when small group jazz instead of big band became the norm) we see that there is a melody -- a 'head' as commonly known. then the instrumentalists take turns soloing -- showing what they've got, busting loose (if you will) and then there is another melody a 'head out'. this has been repeated hundreds of thousands of times and most jazz is based on this form. this 'soloing' or busting loose in jazz and this self-aggrandization taking place vocally in hip-hop are different ways of expressing the same kind of self- empowerment and spirit of improvisation.

sometimes it really works great though ... i'm just as tired of whiny college kids with acoustic guitars and buddy holly glasses singing about working in a coffee shop. is that any better?

Dave Q is probably thinking of Enya, who attempted to stop them using the break from one of her tracks as a locked groove in the awesome "Ready Or Not" on the assumption that they were "gangsta rap" and she didn't want her music associated with such things. But then someone told her they weren't "gangsta rap", so that was alright, apparently.

Their TOTP performance of "Killing Me Softly" was notable for being more of an extended jam session that ranks among the least "mainstream" things seen on peaktime BBC1 (I'm thinking in TOTP terms here, not hip-hop terms) than an actual performance of the song. I never liked that much either, but "Ready Or Not" ... my god, what a single that was, the sheer minimalism of it, nothing to it apart from the hypnosis of that hook (and who else could have made Enya sound so good?), the rhythm, the chorus and Wyclef, Lauren and Pras doing one verse each: the lack of embellishment makes it sound icy, strange, one groove on permanent lockdown. One of the least *produced* number one singles you could have imagined by that time (nothing else in the charts at the time was leaving so many spaces for so much to come through): so little to it, yet so much is there.

I still want to shoot them for covering "No Woman, No Cry" and then releasing it as the follow-up, though.

yes yes y'all, make the body rock, and i don't stop, and on and on and onanonon...

I love stuff like this. A deliberate dancefloor reaction to the condescending "ooh, rap says SO MUCH about SOCIETY, and provides the VOICE for all those POOR BLACK people" crit-speak/think. A certain mc/luhan-ite conflation of form and substance, like saying "classical -- that's the one where they all BLOW INTO THOSE INSTRUMENTS, eh?"

I dunno, Sterling, I think that's a cover up for the fact that sometimes bad shows happen. Friend of mine saw Cannibal Ox and Aesop Rock recently and is not one for patronizing guff like what you're saying -- in fact, he hates that attitude thoroughly. But he still came away swearing mightily at the eternal use of what he described as every last MCing cliche in the book in place of their own material per se, or so he claims.

Well, if you go to a CanOx show, you can expect them to provide their own hatin on sucka mcs who don't innovate -- so they set themselves up, eh?

Ya got me, I'm just passing on what I heard.

I think that the fact that hip-hop can work so completely within its own world is intriguing. It doesn't need to pull in outside influences when it's got a hip-hop nation of its own to contend with. And there has been really good rap tackling political issues. But sometimes there's just nothing more amazing than seeing two great battle rhymers demolish each other. The lyrical bravado, the "We're better than you and we're gonna prove it" thing is so integral to the whole scene. Every rapper worth his salt has dissed on others while giving props to themselves, from groups to the Sugarhill Gang to Jurassic 5. Hip-hop has evolved its own set of rules, its own criteria, its own quality control methods. Hip-hop--or good hip-hop, at least-- respects its roots, and pays constant homage to its 'elders' while also advancing the technique and style of the genre itself. I often wish there was more battling in indie rock-- maybe it'd make that whole scene more interesting.

KRS-One Will End Your Career is an article worth reading. "KRS pointed out that he was like a martial arts master and that he is always prepared. ... KRS claimed that when he hears a new artists come on the scene that he immediately writes a rhyme that will totally dismantle him and his career. He keeps those rhymes in the back of his head just in case he has to take some kid out.."

"This is the remix" is the worst.

I often wish there was more battling in indie rock--maybe it'd make that whole scene more interesting.

What a horrible thought. Can you imagine Elliott Smith and Conor Oberst trying to go at it onstage? Who cares?

'from sugarhill to jurassic 5', good to see you're being all-inclusive!!

Sugarhill = battle mcs!?

I agree, Elliot Smith vs. Conor Oberst would not be a rhyming battle I would ever want to witness!

But surely there are better indie rock battles out there. The problem is finding the indie-rock equivalent to freestyle rapping. Perhaps there could be face-off matches where each band could do more noodly guitar solos than the other, or more twee lyrics, or something. God, this sounds fucking horrible. Well, if someone else can come up with a good way to run an indie-rock grudge match, let me know.

God, this sounds fucking horrible.

See, there we are. There's the old sixties 'battle of the band' type deal where folks get the chance to win (*GASP*!) a free studio session for a single release! But with the proliferation of home technology, that's that incitement out the window.

I love the standard fill-in phrases, though they can be corny at times of course. When I started listening to hiphop it was like learning the vocabulary and standard licks and signal phrases in jazz. It also allows the mc to act like a rhythm instrument without actually saying anything, really.