Mr. Bean IIDark Rap Mix, Part Two
March 20th 2008 04:53
Ice-T's 'Midnight' (1991)is one of many rap tracks that sample the massive beat from Led Zeppelin's 'When the Levee Breaks', and its apocalyptic three note riff sounds a bit like Black Sabbath at their most Gothic. Mixing hip-hop and hard rock is one of the oldest tricks in the book, but somehow it never really gets old. On Dizzee's rap metal track 'Sirens' from last year, he says "let's take it back to the old skool story telling shit", just before the big guitar riff comes in. Storytelling over hard rock was "old school" even when Ice-T did it in 1991, as Ice's friend makes clear in the spoken word intro, requesting some "criminal gangster old school stories".
The bombastic 'Midnight' doesn't really have a typical LA hip-hop sound. West coast rap only gained a distinct sonic identity a year later when Dr. Dre's smooth G Funk style hit the big time and proved that you don't have to make a rock-hard racket to prove that you're a badass. The likes of Dre and Snoop are too laidback to make it to my dark rap compilation, but other tracks that I put on it from different parts of America use a similar slow and slick yet dangerous approach. Only darker: they're all the more eerie and menacing because of their slow restraint. Rather than actually sounding violent, they imply that there could be violence lurking around the corner, so stay cool or things could get ugly.
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - 'East 1999' (1995)
Cleveland's Bone Thugs reversed the smooth/hard contrast of G Funk: their music is often darker than Dre's, with dissonant chords, screams and demonic reversed vocals, while their vocals are smoother and sweeter. Halfway between singing and rapping, they're more like Jamaican singjaying than any American style. At times they're so sweet-sounding that you're almost convinced that Bone Thugs are nice boys, but then you catch some of the words, and realise that they're actually the kind of psychos who sing and dance around you while you're being tortured. If you want to read something better than I can manage about the darkness of Bone Thugs, go to Really Long Link where Marcello Carlin claims that they look death "clearly and consistently in the face".
Mobb Deep - 'Shook Ones, Pt 2' (1995)
The hair-raising high-pitched tone in this track is a little like a Dr Dre synth drone, but much more New York. Like a siren from a Public Enemy track then? If it's a siren, it's not at your front door like PE's - it's off in the distance somewhere. Or is it just a paranoid hallucination? While the cold-hearted beat and grim bassline march forward like soldiers with their eyes locked sternly on the horizon, the understated and unnerving guitar lick slinks around it, rearing its impish little head when you least expect it.
Mobb Deep aren't manic like Dizzee or Wu-Tang, but they're not laidback like Snoop either. And they'd never be caught dead singing, or even smiling. This is rap at a its realest. (I resisted the temptation to use scare quotes) The sound of Prodigy's rapping is almost characterless, like he's too cool or stoned to make the effort to invent a style. But that's what makes him so chilling: in a near-monotone, he mentions matter-of-factedly that he might "stab your brain with your nosebone", and fill you with "bullet holes and such". In fact, it's the very people who do have a style that he wants to do this to: "all of those who wanna profile and pose".
This track makes me picture what is perhaps a racist stereotype: I'm walking through an alley and pass a bunch of scary-looking black guys. Instead of hurling abuse at me or making mischief amongst themselves, they silently stare in my direction. I keep my eyes away, and pass by as quick as I can, but I dare not run.
The lyrics are directed at passers by like me, cowards or "shook ones". Or, more accurately, they're directed at people who think they're dangerous thugs, but are actually, at least when compared to Mobb Deep, just terrified passers by, "in the wrong place", speaking "the wrong words" - "They come around but they never come close to." Prodigy claims he's not scared of them, but he's pissed off enough to write a whole song about them, and he needs to smoke a blunt just to keep his mind off them. His verse isn't a provocation or a threat, just a warning. He ends it by giving me a mock-friendly pat on the back, and advising me to "take these words home and think it through, Or the next rhyme I write might be about you."
Mike Jones feat. Slim Thug & Paul Wall - 'Still Tippin'' (2003)
Houston's "chopped and screwed" sound is even slower and cruisier than G funk, so much so that it becomes eerie and spaced out, gliding like a ghost. There's actually nothing very dark in these style-over-substance lyrics, but the way Slim Thug strings his syllables together in that deep demonic voice is almost spine-tingling: "Now look who creeping look who crawling still balling in the midst, It's that six six long dick slim nigga sticking your chick". Ignoring the subject matter, it's magnificent tone poetry.
This song is absolutely packed with "-ing" words, in the present progressive or present continuous tense, eg "Bar sipping car dipping grand wood grain gripping". Often that's what hip-hop is all about: what people are doing, which is usually crime or leisure activities, and what people are still doing, because "ain't shit changed". If you don't know what "tippin" is, or if the real meaning of this string of "ings" goes over your head, then it may sound like they're describing the "creeping" "crawling" effect that this strange sluggish music is having on its listeners.
The bombastic 'Midnight' doesn't really have a typical LA hip-hop sound. West coast rap only gained a distinct sonic identity a year later when Dr. Dre's smooth G Funk style hit the big time and proved that you don't have to make a rock-hard racket to prove that you're a badass. The likes of Dre and Snoop are too laidback to make it to my dark rap compilation, but other tracks that I put on it from different parts of America use a similar slow and slick yet dangerous approach. Only darker: they're all the more eerie and menacing because of their slow restraint. Rather than actually sounding violent, they imply that there could be violence lurking around the corner, so stay cool or things could get ugly.
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - 'East 1999' (1995)
Cleveland's Bone Thugs reversed the smooth/hard contrast of G Funk: their music is often darker than Dre's, with dissonant chords, screams and demonic reversed vocals, while their vocals are smoother and sweeter. Halfway between singing and rapping, they're more like Jamaican singjaying than any American style. At times they're so sweet-sounding that you're almost convinced that Bone Thugs are nice boys, but then you catch some of the words, and realise that they're actually the kind of psychos who sing and dance around you while you're being tortured. If you want to read something better than I can manage about the darkness of Bone Thugs, go to Really Long Link where Marcello Carlin claims that they look death "clearly and consistently in the face".
Mobb Deep - 'Shook Ones, Pt 2' (1995)
The hair-raising high-pitched tone in this track is a little like a Dr Dre synth drone, but much more New York. Like a siren from a Public Enemy track then? If it's a siren, it's not at your front door like PE's - it's off in the distance somewhere. Or is it just a paranoid hallucination? While the cold-hearted beat and grim bassline march forward like soldiers with their eyes locked sternly on the horizon, the understated and unnerving guitar lick slinks around it, rearing its impish little head when you least expect it.
Mobb Deep aren't manic like Dizzee or Wu-Tang, but they're not laidback like Snoop either. And they'd never be caught dead singing, or even smiling. This is rap at a its realest. (I resisted the temptation to use scare quotes) The sound of Prodigy's rapping is almost characterless, like he's too cool or stoned to make the effort to invent a style. But that's what makes him so chilling: in a near-monotone, he mentions matter-of-factedly that he might "stab your brain with your nosebone", and fill you with "bullet holes and such". In fact, it's the very people who do have a style that he wants to do this to: "all of those who wanna profile and pose".
This track makes me picture what is perhaps a racist stereotype: I'm walking through an alley and pass a bunch of scary-looking black guys. Instead of hurling abuse at me or making mischief amongst themselves, they silently stare in my direction. I keep my eyes away, and pass by as quick as I can, but I dare not run.
The lyrics are directed at passers by like me, cowards or "shook ones". Or, more accurately, they're directed at people who think they're dangerous thugs, but are actually, at least when compared to Mobb Deep, just terrified passers by, "in the wrong place", speaking "the wrong words" - "They come around but they never come close to." Prodigy claims he's not scared of them, but he's pissed off enough to write a whole song about them, and he needs to smoke a blunt just to keep his mind off them. His verse isn't a provocation or a threat, just a warning. He ends it by giving me a mock-friendly pat on the back, and advising me to "take these words home and think it through, Or the next rhyme I write might be about you."
Mike Jones feat. Slim Thug & Paul Wall - 'Still Tippin'' (2003)
Houston's "chopped and screwed" sound is even slower and cruisier than G funk, so much so that it becomes eerie and spaced out, gliding like a ghost. There's actually nothing very dark in these style-over-substance lyrics, but the way Slim Thug strings his syllables together in that deep demonic voice is almost spine-tingling: "Now look who creeping look who crawling still balling in the midst, It's that six six long dick slim nigga sticking your chick". Ignoring the subject matter, it's magnificent tone poetry.
This song is absolutely packed with "-ing" words, in the present progressive or present continuous tense, eg "Bar sipping car dipping grand wood grain gripping". Often that's what hip-hop is all about: what people are doing, which is usually crime or leisure activities, and what people are still doing, because "ain't shit changed". If you don't know what "tippin" is, or if the real meaning of this string of "ings" goes over your head, then it may sound like they're describing the "creeping" "crawling" effect that this strange sluggish music is having on its listeners.
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