Michigan-based graphic designer Logan Walters recently uploaded 21 albums by Wu-Tang Clan and their extended family into his iTunes app. As a working visual artist, however (with “mild OCD” that he blames on his mom), Walters says
I need to have decent-quality album art for every album on my computer, which currently equals over 90 gigs. The problem was that almost all of the Wu-Tang album art was horrible (ODB’s two albums being the only real exceptions) — no offense to the original designers, but as iconic as they might be they’re looking pretty dated these days. So, armed with inspiration from what Olly Moss and others are doing (as written about by me here, and later by Kottke here) and a book of Blue Note Records covers, I set out to remake all 21.
Thus far, he’s done 12 of these so-called “Wu Note” artwork mashups. His latest, above, reworks the cover of RZA’s 1998 album, Bobby Digital in Stereo, right, replacing its “blaxploitation” palette with the cool hues and playful typography designer Reid Miles fashioned for jazz greats of the 1950s and ’60s. While, to this writer, not all of Walters’ “remixes” are Wu-bangers, these pieces for Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Return to the 36 Chambers and GZA’s Liquid Swords are a sweet delight. Now, all we need are liner notes. That, and better graphic design in hip-hop.
You know: The kind you’ve seen erupt over and over in Black females since D near-dangled his dingle on MTV. Even more, what’s weirder: That the pallid Roth would choose to mock himself this way, or that D’Angelo has taken nearly a decade to follow up his last album, Voodoo?
The real question, though, is when Jump Smokers‘ “My Flow So Tight (Anti-Breezy),” released last month, comes on in the clubs, with its harsh verses (“There’s a curse to this last name ‘Brown'”) and brutal hook (“Chris Brown should get his ASS KICKED!”), does he dance to it?
It’s no secret that Katie Couric, above, had some serious problems with the ratings when she took over the CBS Evening News in 2006. For a couple of years, there, her future didn’t look good, and management reportedly started speaking in low tones about pulling the plug on her broadcast.
But that was until she triumphantly body-slammed Republican VP hopeful Sarah Palin in September 2008, with a series of interviews that almost certainly helped nominee John McCain lose the November election, that boosted Couric’s viewers by millions, and that proved she was not to be messed with.
So: Where do you go from there? You go where Hillary Clinton, FOX’s Sean Hannity, CNN’s Kiran Chetry, and The Washington Post‘s Ruth Marcus have all gone: With Auto-Tune, the so-called “T-Pain/Cher-style” vocal processing technology that’s sweeping the nation.
I don’t know how, until this very morning, I missed the April 15 New York Times profile of white rapper Asher Roth by former VIBE music editor Jon Caramanica. (“To Be Young, Rapping and White,” it was near sacrilegously titled.) But it was certainly worth the wait.
Fluid dynamics—the movement of particles in flow—remains one of the most intractable areas of study in all of science, with fluids in action being among the hardest phenomena to model, even with a very high-speed supercomputer.
The same may be true of hip-hop, if the relative absence of scholarly writing on the principles of the art form is any indication. Enormous swaths of text have been, and are being, composed on hip-hop’s master narrative: The Bronx, poverty, Kool Herc, Danceteria, Run-DMC, etc. Meanwhile, others delve into rap’s social and sexual politics, ad infinitum.
To my thinking, though, the real excitement truly, absolutely, lies near hip-hop’s epicenter, and its most elemental, fundamental questions; those corresponding to its mechanics.
For example, Why does rhyme work? Why does the act of mating like sounds grab a listener’s interest? I mean, when you think of it, why should so simple a trick hold the fascination of grown men and women, or anyone older than an infant?
Or, how do artists make word choices, winnowing away all possible semantics until they have crafted a narrative, or maybe a diatribe?
From what does rhythm derive its power? When a rapper speaks confidently over a strong meter, what new sound is he, by fusion, building, different from either his voice or the track, alone? Is this singing? If not, why not? How is doing this different from the way people made music before hip-hop’s advent?
And, most of all, when these and other queries are considered all together, how, and why, does hip-hop function as a system, one of both cognition and action?
Or, as Dr. Adam Bradley says in his amazing new text, Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop, in one of a seeming cluster of elegantly parsed, yet deeply thoughtful insights, “The MCs most basic challenge is this: When given a beat, what do you do?”
He continues:
“Rap is what results when MCs take the natural rhythms of everyday speech and reshape them to a beat. The drumbeat is rap’s heartbeat; its metronomic regularity gives rap its driving energy and inspires the lyricist’s creativity. ‘Music only needs a pulse,’ the RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan explains. ‘Even a hum, with a bass and snare—it’ll force a pulse, a beat. It makes order out of noise.’ Robert Frost put it even more plainly: ‘The beat of the heart seems to be basic in all making of poetry in all languages.’ In rap, whether delivered in English or Portugese, Korean or Farsi, we hear two and sometimes many more rhythms layered on top of one another. The central rhythmic relationship, though, is always between the beat and the voice. As the RZA explains, the beat should ‘inspire that feeling in an MC, that spark that makes him want to grab a mic and rip it.’
“Rappers have a word for what they do when the rhythm sparks them; they call it flow. Simply put, flow is an MC’s distinctive lyrical cadence, usually in relation to a beat. It is rhythm over time. In a compelling twist of etymology, the word rhythm is derived from the Greek rheo, meaning “flow.” Flow is where poetry and music communicate in a common language of rhythm. It relies on tempo, timing, and the consituitive elements of linguistic prosody: accent, pitch, timbre, and intonation.”
There are so many good things about writing like this: The clarity of Bradley’s language; the gentle way he uses technical terms, in order to bring readers into his secrets; the subtle manner by which he alludes to hip-hop’s global impact; his ear for pounding quotes; the good sense to mate RZA and Robert Frost, maybe for the first time, ever; the fact that all of this occurs within the book’s first six pages.
I had to make certain that Adam Bradley would be the guest, today, on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, April 17, at 2 pm ET. And so he is.
You can hear his ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.
Liquid Generation vomits up their Garbage Pail Kids parody, Garbage Fail Kids, above, with a riff on chanteuse Rihanna’s alleged assault by R&B singer Chris Brown. (Note the carved text, “CB WUZ HERE,” in her right shoulder, not to mention numerous bite marks, including a chomp through her skull.) Go ahead. Laught it up.
Copeland: Baby’s got belting power. Photo by Carol Friedman
Harlem native Shemekia Copeland has been making a name for herself as a singer of gutsy, earbusting Black music since childhood. Born into blues royalty, the daughter of now deceased Texas blues guitar legend Johnny Clyde Copeland, she’d often accompany her dad onto the stand, right, where she’d wow audiences with a voice womanly beyond her years.
She’s still doing it. Though not yet 30, Copeland sings songs full of the attitude, soul-weariness, and hard-earned wisdom that is the hallmark of her trade. On her new album, Never Going Back, songs such as “Sounds Like the Devil,” “Rise Up,” and “Limousine” portray a woman beset with calamity, but facing it undaunted; tired and often demoralized, certainly, but absolutely not giving up.
Shemekia Copeland is a guest today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, January 23, at 2 pm ET.
Then, Joe Stevens, half of the transatlantic directing team Randall Stevens with Nicolas Randal, will talk about their 2008 short, Made in Queens. The film documents a group of Trinidadian-Tobagonian youth living in said borough who, as a hobby, build “enormous stereo systems jury rigged onto ordinary BMX bikes.”
The gargantuan “Basszilla,” above, posed with its creator, crew leader Nicholas Ragbir, features
Four 16 volt car batteries powering four 15” bass speakers in back, two 6.5” mids over two 6×9” mids up front. Two 3000 watt bass amps and one 2000 watt mids amp. DVD touch screen with navigation and music equalizer. 22 tooth chainring. Heavy duty chain, rims, tires and custom-welded support brackets.
Made In Queens is screening tomorrow at the Queens Museum of Art, as part of the Queens International 4 exhibition (January 24 – April 26). “Rumor has it,” says Joe, “the crew and a couple of the bikes may even be on hand.” Hopefully they’ll find parking.
Then, Barack Obama’s inaugural address on Tuesday has been widely hailed by people of every stripe, and on every side of the political spectrum. In The New York Times, Gordon Stewart, a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, said the address was filled with “fine language” and “thrilling sentiments.” Meanwhile, Clark S. Judge, a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, called it a “marvelous,” “deeply American” speech.
But was it? Wouldn’t that depend on what vision one has of America?
Ronald Takaki, emeritus professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of the book A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, above, believes that Obama’s speech rendered a picture of America that, though inspiring to some, leaves out far too many Americans.
You can hear Shemekia Copeland, Joe Stevens, and Ronald Takaki by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.
Thus far, he’s done 12 of these so-called “Wu Note” artwork mashups. His latest, above, reworks the cover of RZA’s 1998 album, Bobby Digital in Stereo, right, replacing its “blaxploitation” palette with the cool hues and playful typography designer Reid Miles fashioned for jazz greats of the 1950s and ’60s. While, to this writer, not all of Walters’ “remixes” are Wu-bangers, these pieces for Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Return to the 36 Chambers and GZA’s Liquid Swords are a sweet delight. Now, all we need are liner notes. That, and better graphic design in hip-hop.
