Black Sunday - Cypress Hill

Track list:

1. I Wanna Get High
2. I Ain't Goin' Out Like That
3. Insane In The Brain
4. When The Sh-- Goes Down
5. Lick A Shot
6. Cock The Hammer
7. Lock Down
8. Lil' Putos
9. Legalize It
10. Hits From The Bong
11. What Go Around Come Around, Kid
12. A To The K
13. Hand On The Glock
14. Break 'Em Off Some

Running time: 43 minutes
Released: 1993

So uh... after one disappointing dip into hip-hop, what to expect from this? Well, for one I don't think I ever took this album seriously, which probably helps, but for another my recollection is that it has some more immediately appealing samples. I am surprised to see how many of the track titles retain familiarity after 20 years.

A klaxon call opens us up, before a loaded loop drops in and then the plaintive call about wanting to lose one's head hits. I am squeezing this listen in after work, before roleplaying because I feel awake and alert enough to, which is a nice change. Working at home helps. The major difference between this track and Black Star is the level of aural interest outside of the vocal. The loop is persistent throughout, but it is hooky enough to latch onto and the scratches, bleeps and horns mean there is more texture to the track than anything covered in yesterday's post.

There is more life in this. Less heart, I suspect, but more life. The whole disc reads like a love-letter to a crappy lifestyle of drugs and guns but it's so... over the top that I can't take it seriously and therefore don't get annoyed by the bad boy advocacy. I know, it's inconsistent and fickle, especially since it seems it really is a love letter to weed. However it never quite sheds a tongue-in-cheek image, cartoonish, at least from the far side of the Atlantic.

The structures are very reliant on high pitched squeaks and scratches to supplement bassy loops and beats. I don't mind this - whilst I would prefer something with a bit more music in the treble the choice of samples and the construction of their hooks provides an engagement that survives the test of time much better than I thought it might. Lick a Shot introduces a pace that had been lacking prior to that. This tune has much less of a "stoner" feel to it as a result, a real urgency in the drum and in the pace of the rapping are a world away from the slower and more deliberate numbers.

There is a whining, strained quality to one of the primary voices that contributes a lot to my image of Cypress Hill as deliberately, and slightly camply, over the top. I can't imagine that is what they were going for but its an image I can't shake as I find myself enjoying the simple constructions allied to vocals that at worst suffice and at best complement the beats well. It is a little bit samey by half-way through but the tracks slide by fast - the whole 14 track album is less than 45 minutes - so this is not a drag.

Ah, there it is. The sample of Son of a Preacher Man in Hits from the Bong really lightens the track. This sample is always my abiding memory of Cypress Hill. Its a pity that they loop the same short sample over and over through the track though. Still it's better than What Go Around Come Around, Kid, which sounds like it samples the Grange Hill (oh the horrors of my childhood) theme tune - but doesn't. I think I have reached my limit - this listen has gone from campy fun to a chore, and my mind from fresh to yawning. A to the m***********g K homeboy. Enough said. Its funny if you squint I suppose. Take it with the over-the-top view and sit there swaying side-to-side, arms crossed and fingers extended in mock pose, serious face on. Actually taking it at face value gives a very different experience.

I would get rid but before I got tired of it I was genuinely enjoying the early parts of this album and I think the same would be true of the latter half if I heard it in isolation. My sense of humour failure mid-way through is not the music's fault. I blame the clocks going back and it being pitch black before 18.00 - its never a good time of year for me. The album ends on a pacier note again, before silence descends and I am spared from pushing my limits any more. I can't quite bring myself to part with any of this because the whole album has a similar feel... one which makes these tunes much more appreciable thrown into a melting pot with others where they can be thrown out as a change-up. Its a flimsy excuse, and maybe one driven by nostalgia; so what.

Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star - Black Star

Track list:

1. Intro
2. Astronomy (8th Light)
3. Definition
4. RE: DEFinition
5. Children’s Story
6. Brown Skin Lady
7. B Boys Will B Boys
8. K.O.S. (Determination)
9. Hater Players
10. Yo Yeah
11. Respiration
12. Thieves in the Night
13. Twice Inna Lifetime

Running time: 50 minutes
Released: 1998

So this was listed initially as "Black Star", hence fitting it in now, but a little looking into it suggested that should really be the artist name and the full album title was where Mos Def and Talib Kweli were recognised by name. I was gifted this at some point past, well beyond the days when I looked to buy rap music, and probably a decade after this was released. I have vague recollections of finding it pretty well done and worth holding onto but then it sank into the pool of things in my shuffle and never surfaced again. I am not moving it down the list with the re-titling purely because having been prompted to look into it again now by the mis-titling, I am interested to see what I make of it.

I wrote the intro above over a week ago. Things have been a little busy, and tonight is downtime that I sorely need. Downtime that allows me to kick my posting into life again. The Intro kicks in, and there is a little bit more structure to it than I expected from the first couple of seconds. Fundamentally though it is a short collection of spoken samples and some name repetition thrown in. Throwaway.

Astronomy surprises me by quoting lines from a British folk classic and I immediately see a problem here. The beats and hooks are, well, not very interesting. That on its own is one thing, but it means that any interest in this track - and possibly by extension the rest of the disc - is going to be in the lyricism and vocal performance. I cannot concentrate enough on the lyrics whilst typing to gauge if there is anything I care for in there. It is a dilemma that will surely raise its head again soon, do I listen and leave this blank or type and miss things and make decisions on only part of the pieces, and it prejudices this project against hip-hop as making the backing the star is kinda contrary to the point.

That said I don't think the surprise is backed up by anything arresting thus far. I try to multi-task and find myself not really caring for the vocal either. So far it seems to have steered clear of my biggest bugbears - glorification of violence and crass misogyny - which gets it a check mark, but at the same time there is no X-factor here. Slow and dull, I am bouncing off it pretty hard from the rhythmic point of view, and there isn't enough there to make up for that. Worst, I find most of the vocal uninspired. That is where they should be knocking it out of the park but up to Children's Story it feels very pedestrian. We finally get a half decent groove on Brown Skin Lady, pity it is accompanied by objectification. Musically it is the most interesting track so far by a mile, there is even a change up in the middle of the track, a feature that has been sorely lacking in the sparse and repetitive music served up until this point. It also feels like there might be some real depth in the lyric from the way it is delivered conversationally, as if happening nearby in a loud location. It is the first interesting aural experience for me, alas ruined by the subject.

We get what feels like an interlude next - patterns that could be interesting if there were lyrics worth a damn. Instead it is mostly empty or facile repetition. All this is doing is suggesting just how far I have drifted away from this style of music as I continue to fail to appreciate any part of what I am hearing - most tellingly I find myself surfing forums that I need to pay attention to reading when I try to focus on the lyrics. 

I am disappointed with this and with myself. It just took my phone ringing (I have given literally no-one that number. Bloody telecoms company selling my deets!) to make me switch back to this tab and start writing again. It just so happens to coincide with a more interesting tune - Respiration - which has more going on, enough that for the first time I can see why I might have held onto this disc prior to now. Alas as the track progresses I find myself slumping lower in my crouch (still typing at a coffee-table) and losing the will to continue. Thankfully there is not too long left. On reflection, I think it was Thieves in the Night that I based the chuck/keep decision on. This is more tuneful and feels purposeful, message-bearing - I suspect some of what came before might be, but I missed it. In any case, this is the nicest of the tunes, but still not enough for me to want to keep.

I suspect this experience plays into the general trend to become more musically conservative as you age and finds me not as open to essentially (re)discovering hip-hop as a genre. I don't think this repulsion is necessarily going to be universal, that I cannot like rap or hip-hop any more. No, I think it is more a case that I am unlikely to find new stuff within those spheres that I appreciate (to be fair, that is not least because I will not be looking). I suspect some nostalgic appreciation of other odd tunes in my library, but for most of the album tracks to be jettisoned in the same way I am deleting all of this disc as soon as it draws closed. A pity.