Hip Hop is Dead!

It maybe says something about my musical tastes that the two most uttered phrases in my record collection would be: “Aaaaaaaaaahhhh!” [Heavy Metal] and “Muthafucka!” [Hip Hop]. So after some positive feedback on my last list blog, I thought I would turn my attention to another musical genre.

It’s difficult to image a time when rap music wasn’t simply a way of selling trainers or hoodies to tune deaf posers. It was once the poor black man’s answer to white punk rock. In it's 'Golden Age' * it was music so angry, witty, funny and vital that it left others genres in the dust. But alas these days are long past. Mainstream hip-hop died the moment misogynistic and violent gangsters became the norm. That and simply the music just isn’t as good since the laws on music sampling were passed. This is perhaps why so many disillusioned b-boys became metal-heads.

If all you know of hip-hop is the lazy Sylvester Stallone-style mumblings of 50 Cent then I strongly suggest that you go back to the roots and get ‘oldskool’. So to all my real-hip hop heads out there; forget about what it became and bask in what it what it once was. Let your inner b-boy out and enjoy.

10. “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai” (1999). Forest Whitaker stars as a hit-man who follows the ronin codes of the samurai and communicates with his eccentric gang-bosses with carrier pigeon. The soundtrack comes from the Wu tang chess-master the RZA.

9. “Training Day” (2001). Denzel Washington plays a gansta narcotics cop who leads rookie Ethan Hawke through the troubled gritty streets of LA. Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg do perform their best imitations of actors.

8. “Office Space” (1999). Disgruntled office workers rebel against their mind-numbing lives by slacking off and taking a baseball bat to a printer accompanied by sweary rap from the Geto Boys’. Features Gary Cole as the most petty and evil boss in cinema history.

7. “Wild Style/ Style Wars” (1982). These films capture the birth of hip-hop from the streets of the South Bronx. Wild Style captures the ‘4 pillars of hip hop’ in their early glory; MCing, DJing, break dancing and graffiti. Style Wars is the documentary that had the bigger impact.

6. “Scarface” (1983). Brain De Palma’s cartoon-violent and gloriously OTT gangster opera has been reborn as a rap classic. Egotistical gangstas everywhere see Al Pacino’s money crazed, cocaine shovelling monster Tony Montana as an icon.

5. “Awesome; I F**kin’ Shot That” (2006). Oh, this one takes me back. The Beastie Boys are captured in all their geeky punk-rap glory in this trippy, head-rush of a concert movie. I went to see them on this tour when I was 15; it still ranks as one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen.

4. “Biggie & Tupac” (2002). Nick Broomfield’s terrifying and bizarre documentary investigates the corruption within the LAPD and their connections to feared Death Row boss Suge Knight and looks into the very plausible conspiracy theory that the premier gangster rappers (once friends then bitter rivals) were killed by the police.

3. “King of New York” (1990). Christopher Walken (at his most iconic) is the violent gangland supremo and sporadic body popper who returns from prison to gain control of the local drug dealers in order to set up an inner city hospital. Features Laurence Fisherburne as a manic chicken nugget obsessed gangsta. Mad.

2. “La Haine” (1995). This is the film that dispelled the romantic myth of Paris and showed the rotting heart at the centre of the ‘City of Love’. Focusing on a day in the life of 3 friends from the forgotten estates as they deal with police brutality, racism and revenge, accompanied by a soundtrack from French hip-hop master MC Solaar.

1. “Do the Right Thing” (1989). On the hottest day of the year, tensions between the local black, Italian, Korean and Hispanic communities raise to boiling point. Powered along by Public Enemy’s booming anthem ‘Fight the Power’, Spike Lee’s best film is as angry, funny and vital as hip hop at it’s best. A simply brilliant film.


Essential Soundtrack:
Wu Tang Clan ‘Gravel Pit’ Public Enemy ‘She Watches Channel Zero’ Beastie Boys ‘Intergalactic’ Eric B & Rakim ‘Follow the Leader’ Grandmaster Flash ‘White Lines’ KRS One ‘Sound of Da Police’ LL Cool J ‘Mama Said Knock You Out’ Roots Manuva ‘Witness (1 Hope) Phi Life Cypher ‘ABC’ Anti-Pop Consortium ‘Human Shield’ Bomb the Bass ‘Bug Powder Dust’ Leftfield (feat. Afrika Bambataa) ‘Zulu Nation’ The Prodigy (feat. Kool Keith) ‘Diesel Power’ Dizzee Rascal ‘Fix Up Look Sharp’ Cypress Hill ‘Rock Superstar [Live Version] Lethal Bizzle ‘You’ll Get Wrapped’ NWA ‘Fuck tha Police’ DJ Shadow ‘Midnight in a Perfect World’ Pharoahe Monach ‘Simon Says’ West Street Mob ‘Breakdance Electric Boogie’

Keep it real,

E-Dogg


* Roughly 1987-1993