Rapper's delight

Or my delight, I should say. I've been stewing in a lot of music this summer, thinking about why I love what I do. feel like I am more inclined to pick rap music apart and find all the little details that make up the whole. Anyway, this summer people are talking up a storm about Drake and Eminem, but there are little moments of hip-hop perfection that have come and gone that no one really addresses anymore. And there are new artists that are largely obscure. Here's a few absolutely incredible artists.

Lyrically and musically an utter masterpiece.

The Pharcyde - Passin' Me By - 1993



Alarmingly violent, but the catchiest song ever. I love, love, love it. I feel like Nelly isn't really taken seriously any more even though he used to sell 870987098790 albums, but you can't deny this song is brilliant.


Nelly - Country Grammar - 2000



Gorgeous in every sense.

Calle 13 - La Jirafa - 2006




This guy, Da Vinci, is a Bay Area rapper who I just discovered. Debut album is just out, you can download it - it's called The Day the Turf Stood Still. New voice, tackling gentrification. A lyrical MASTER.

Da Vinci - What You Finna Do - 2010

Shiva in Your Boots

A(nother) trip to the Met. Before spending forty grueling minutes taking notes about a nineteenth century American dining room chair (ah, I'm so collegiate), Anj (who needed to go for another class) and I looked at some South Asian art. I am kind of floored how so many statues with the same names (Shiva, Buddha, Bodhisattva) can actually be so varied, each inhabiting their own cool grandeur. And the best part of all them is definitely the hands, which are always in some elegant pose. I have an odd habit of trying to mimic the pose the statue is in, as if I'd find out some secret if I knew what it felt like to stand in such a way. Or, in this case, to pose my fingers. Doing this, I glanced over to the class of high schoolers and saw a fifteen year old kid whose pants were in danger of falling to the floor doing the same thing.

Our House, Bauhaus

I was rather moved by the Bauhaus exhibit at MoMA. Not only did it bring back memories of the sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly architecture of Tel Aviv, but it sort of allowed me to understand the kind of art--simple, but elusive---differently. I don't count myself as really good at interpreting the layers of meaning art, but I did in fact find meaning in many of the things I saw. Anyway, here's a poem about it:


A Life in Bauhaus

Let me build you a house
that reminds you of childhood
with simple lines and light
a balanced space made of shapes
we all know

Let me paint you a picture
that looks like childhood
blocks of color, people made of lines
but it is soaked in our feverish dreams
our cool happiness
our flighty anger and our heavy sorrow

Let me make you a cradle
that reminds her of childhood
the crushing breathless beauty
of our little baby girl

---

Below: typical Bauhaus apartment building in Tel Aviv

Borne Back Ceaselessly (and Gleefully) Into the Past (With Some Guitars, Instead of Boats)

Here's a new blog. This is a manifestation of the disjointed musical obsessions and other various observations on anything---books, news, clothes, television---that might take residence in my brain and eat away at it until I write it down.

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I think sometimes the most glorious kinds of music is not necessarily the the shiny new stuff, but is when someone takes something old(er) and molds it to their talent. One of the best examples is the Beatles with "Twist and Shout" which was not a terribly exciting song before they got their hands on it. I've realized that a lot of the classic rock guys I've been listening to do this quite often (Led Zeppelin deftly inserting Elvis' "That's Alright" and "Mess of Blues" into "Whole Lotta Love"; Jackson Browne singing "Stay" by the Zodiacs---shout out to Dirty Dancing there; Creedence Clearwater Revival doing "Susie Q." I think of these things as a nod to an "older" time, but now that I think about it, they were just doing stuff from a decade or so before. It was still a skillful glance backwards at their rock forebears.

On the same note, I guess I used to think covering a song wasn't as noble as writing your own but I realize how fucking fantastic some covers can be, even if their originals were just as good. "Proud Mary"---again with CCR--was a great rock song before Ike and Tina Turner got their hands on it. And then it became another kind of great rock song. And then Glee got their hands on it, and it became another fabulous incarnation.