AFOS Blog Rewind: Currently a tough assassin in Suicide Squad, Will Smith started out aiming for girls' hearts by impressing them with his rhymes on Fresh Prince

The following is a repost of my October 1, 2014 discussion of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, particularly "Def Poet's Society."

I've been sent music journalist Brian Coleman's second Check the Technique book to review for Word Is Bond, and the new volume, part of Coleman's series of books of exhaustive interviews with rappers and beatmakers about classic albums they recorded, contains behind-the-scenes stories I've always wanted to read about Black Sheep's A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing and Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... One chapter I didn't expect to enjoy was the chapter about DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's rise from a sensation in Philly to national chart-toppers, thanks to 1988's He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper, the first double album in hip-hop history.

The chapter notes that He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper's double-LP format stemmed from the duo's original conception of the project as a scratch album to showcase Jazzy Jeff's turntablist skills. In the late '80s, a scratch album was unheard of, but today, they're a commonplace thing in hip-hop. For example, DJ Qbert recently dropped simultaneously on iTunes a scratch album and a more accessible-sounding album loaded with guest features by rappers, and those two recent Qbert releases were sort of like if He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper got split into two separate albums instead of being the mammoth two-headed beast we know of today.

That story of He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper's evolution from a DJ-only album to a showcase for both the skills of Jazzy Jeff the beatmaker and Will Smith the storyteller is an interesting read. So are the recollections of the trouble the duo got into with New Line Cinema over "A Nightmare on My Street," their proto-horrorcore track about the '80s and '90s New Line cash cow Freddy Krueger, and Jazzy Jeff's tidbit about him and Smith turning down the script for House Party (Coleman was unable to interview Smith, presumably because Smith's too busy being one of the biggest movie stars in the world).



He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper is best known for introducing the massive 1988 hit "Parents Just Don't Understand" (which isn't my favorite track on the album; that would be the Bob James-sampling "Here We Go Again"). The album doesn't contain the duo's much more frequently quoted theme from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air because, of course, the hit sitcom--which based its "inner-city kid in a mansion" premise on pop music industry bigwig Benny Medina's life as an extra member of the household of his mentor Berry Gordy--didn't exist yet, and its premiere on NBC was only two years away.

It's great that He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper has gotten the oral history treatment. But I wish The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air received the oral history treatment somewhere else as well, even though the famously bitter and still-disgruntled Janet Hubert, who wrote a tell-all book about how much she hated working with Smith on The Fresh Prince, would probably refuse to participate and then write another tell-all book about how much she hated seeing an oral history about The Fresh Prince.

http://afistfulofsoundtracks.tumblr.com/post/64053822694/freshprincesubs-tick-tock-clock-by-raphael-de

The show never got much shine from TV critics when it first aired, and it still doesn't--today's critics remain more taken with Seinfeld, Friends and Roseanne as '90s live-action sitcoms. Sure, The Fresh Prince's storylines weren't exactly groundbreaking and formula-defying like Seinfeld's, and Roseanne did a better job at seriousness--when The Fresh Prince tried to get serious with an occasional Very Special Episode, the results would often be preachy and only occasionally effective and genuinely wrenching--but I find myself rewatching The Fresh Prince more often than Seinfeld. Okay, it kind of went off the rails after Hubert was fired and the producers pulled a Darrin on us with a new Aunt Viv, but otherwise, The Fresh Prince is a funnier show than Seinfeld. There, somebody had to say it.

The end of an era: Live365's demise means the demise of AFOS as a radio station after 13 intriguing years on the air

My very first blog post of 2016 was originally going to be either a piece about Electric Boogaloo, the Cannon Films documentary that's now streaming on Netflix, or a piece about Creed and why I like Ludwig Göransson's original score from that film so much that I'm adding the score to AFOS rotation. It was going to be a typically quiet and uneventful slide into the new year here at this blog, right? [Dana Carvey's John McLaughlin voice] Wrong! Live365, the Bay Area Internet radio hosting platform I've gotten along well with--it's the company that's powered AFOS for 13 years--ended 2015 with a huge announcement.

Recent changes in music licensing regulations and the end of the Webcaster Settlement Act, which allowed for low-revenue Internet radio stations to pay lower royalties to record labels than those paid by the likes of Pandora, have resulted in Live365's investors leaving the company and Live365 laying off nearly its entire staff. The company has already moved out of its longtime Foster City office space.

The future doesn't look good for Live365. The company informed its Pro broadcasters that it will allow them to continue running their radio stations until January 31. I'm one of Live365's Pro broadcasters, so that means, yes, unless Live365 is somehow saved by a new group of investors or it gets some other kind of 11th-hour rescue, AFOS is going off the air on January 31.

My response to that is this: good. It's time to call it quits as an Internet radio broadcaster.

I've seen a few Live365 Pro or non-Pro broadcasters tell their listeners that they either have started to look for other streaming platform options or have shut down their Live365 streams to begin streaming independently. I won't be doing the same for AFOS. Some of the enthusiasm I had during the first few years of running the station has simply disappeared. The audience for AFOS has also disappeared, although there are still one or two listeners who holler at me on Facebook or Twitter. Why listen to a 24-hour station when other platforms allow you to curate your own playlists with ease or when you can simply YouTube any piece of music you like? (I don't even listen to Internet stations anymore. I prefer to listen to DJ mixes. The Internet has changed so much since 2003 and 2004. Those years were when my listeners were at their most responsive and vocal, so I used to do hour-long shows where I would read aloud their e-mails to me. And then one day, the e-mails suddenly stopped coming, so without those e-mails, I stopped doing mailbag shows.)

I still listen to the film and TV score albums that my station's programming is comprised of, so I've continued to update the station playlists once or twice a month to attempt to keep the station from sounding stale. But I haven't talked into a microphone and recorded original content for AFOS since 2009. I got tired of not getting paid for speaking on the mic.

I never earned a dime from AFOS, much like how college radio DJs who currently host score music radio programs (just like I did when I was a university student) or any other kind of program don't get paid by their stations for spinning music. But I never intended to earn a dime from AFOS anyway. I did all this only because I like to stream score music and I'm passionate about the work of a few film composers, many of whom are prolific (Ennio Morricone), while others aren't as prolific and really ought to be prolific (like David Holmes or, from the rugged lands of Shaolin, RZA, who's better at film scoring than acting).

I don't want to write listicles anymore

Every time I see a numeral followed by a plural noun followed by "That You Didn't Know Were This" in an article hed, I feel like punching a millennial hed writer in the face.

It didn't used to be this way. In fact, about a year ago, I used to write some of my blog post heds like this. But then over time, my tune changed. It started changing when I saw the following depressing snapshot in somebody's tweet.

Why have there been so many articles in the past few years where people list things? Is this all part of the rise of the borderline-autistic nerd? So his need to count things or list them and be fastidious and organized about what he likes or hates has to dominate the format of everything I read on the Internet now? "The listicle concept lends itself to digital media more so than any other medium. With ubiquitous clouds of content to select from, choosing something to read or information to digest can be downright cumbersome"? Fuck that noise. I want cumbersome. I want to read full-bodied paragraphs. I don't want to read grocery lists anymore. I want to see thought put into lists, just like I how I want to see thought put into anything that's not a list. I don't want disposable, less-than-150-words shit that's made for smartphone zombies to easily digest because they're too damn lazy and feeble-minded to scroll through an article with both substantial and substantive content on their phones.

Even Chris Rock's new film Top Five isn't immune to this habit of listing things--the characters in the film rattle off lists of their five favorite rappers or comedians--hence the title Top Five. The only listicles I like reading these days are any of the ones Rock himself was asked to assemble, the ego trip interviews with beatmakers about their favorite sample flips or the A.V. Club "Inventory" pieces. The "Inventory" listicles have always been smartly written. Everything else is mindless and lazily written click-bait.

Jack McCoy used to theorize during Law & Order about how the first Menendez brothers trial's hung juries put an end to "the Oprahfication of America," the first and last place where I heard the word "Oprahfication." I wish the original Law & Order were still in production so that the murder of some douchey Silicon Alley news site CEO that EADA Cutter has to prosecute would cause McCoy to complain about the BuzzFeedification of writing. (Not all of BuzzFeed is awful, by the way. A few good pieces about Asian Americans in hip-hop have been posted by BuzzFeed, which, for a while, I didn't know is being run by Jonah Peretti, the brother of the very funny Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Chelsea Peretti, a fact of trivia that intrigued this Brooklyn Nine-Nine fan when he found out they're siblings because it makes me wonder what dinner with the Peretti kids was like. Maybe it was lots of "Mom, Jonah's bothering me in .GIF form again!" Anyway, BuzzFeed's also got Alison Willmore, who's an excellent film writer, and Kate Aurthur has written for them several terrific hard news pieces about all the homophobia, misogyny and racism that's still prevalent in showbiz. It's the rest of BuzzFeed--the .GIF-heavy listicles about pointless shit--that makes me want to punch out a millennial editor.)

The BuzzFeedification of writing has caused me to decide to never write another listicle again, whether I'm writing for my own blog or Word Is Bond or any place else. A few months ago, I wanted to write a Word Is Bond post that would have been a rundown of hip-hop videos that are filmed in one long take. But then I noticed other hip-hop sites are succumbing to the listicle format too, and that's also made me regret dragging Word Is Bond down with me during the two listicles I wrote.

Hip-hop videos that are filmed in a single take are a fun topic, and I still feel like writing about it, but there's got to be other ways to structure that topic and make the hed look attractive and tantalizing without making it all appear to be yet another pointless listicle or a parody of terrible listicle writing that would show up on the Onion's clever BuzzFeed and Upworthy parody site ClickHole. As I try to figure out those other ways, I'm swearing listicles off forever. You'll Never Believe The 9 Reasons Why I'm Swearing Them Off Forever.

Psych.

"Let's go get some barbecue and get busy," a.k.a. the best Fresh Prince episode ever

I've been sent music journalist Brian Coleman's second Check the Technique book to review for Word Is Bond, and the new volume, part of Coleman's series of books of exhaustive interviews with rappers and beatmakers about classic albums they recorded, contains behind-the-scenes stories I've always wanted to read about Black Sheep's A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing and Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... One chapter I didn't expect to enjoy was the chapter about DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's rise from a sensation in Philly to national chart-toppers, thanks to 1988's He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper, the first double album in hip-hop history.

The chapter notes that He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper's double-LP format stemmed from the duo's original conception of the project as a scratch album to showcase Jazzy Jeff's turntablist skills. In the late '80s, a scratch album was unheard of, but today, they're a commonplace thing in hip-hop. For example, DJ Qbert recently dropped simultaneously on iTunes a scratch album and a more accessible-sounding album loaded with guest features by rappers, and those two recent Qbert releases were sort of like if He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper got split into two separate albums instead of being the mammoth two-headed beast we know of today.

That story of He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper's evolution from a DJ-only album to a showcase for both the skills of Jazzy Jeff the beatmaker and Will Smith the storyteller is an interesting read. So are the recollections of the trouble the duo got into with New Line Cinema over "A Nightmare on My Street," their proto-horrorcore track about the '80s and '90s New Line cash cow Freddy Krueger, and Jazzy Jeff's tidbit about him and Smith turning down the script for House Party (Coleman was unable to interview Smith, presumably because Smith's too busy being one of the biggest movie stars in the world).

He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper is best known for introducing the massive 1988 hit "Parents Just Don't Understand" (which isn't my favorite track on the album; that would be the Bob James-sampling "Here We Go Again"). The album doesn't contain the duo's much more frequently quoted theme from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air because, of course, the hit sitcom--which based its "inner-city kid in a mansion" premise on pop music industry bigwig Benny Medina's life as an extra member of the household of his mentor Berry Gordy--didn't exist yet, and its premiere on NBC was only two years away. However, I do know of one place that contains the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme--in its rarely heard entirety--and that would be "The Whitest Block Ever" on AFOS, every weekday at 10am Pacific.

It's great that He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper has gotten the oral history treatment. But I wish The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air received the oral history treatment somewhere else as well, even though the famously bitter and still-disgruntled Janet Hubert, who wrote a tell-all book about how much she hated working with Smith on The Fresh Prince, would probably refuse to participate and then write another tell-all book about how much she hated seeing an oral history about The Fresh Prince.

The show never got much shine from TV critics when it first aired, and it still doesn't--today's critics remain more taken with Seinfeld, Friends and Roseanne as '90s live-action sitcoms. Sure, The Fresh Prince's storylines weren't exactly groundbreaking and formula-defying like Seinfeld's, and Roseanne did a better job at seriousness--when The Fresh Prince tried to get serious with an occasional Very Special Episode, the results would often be preachy and only occasionally effective and genuinely wrenching--but I find myself rewatching The Fresh Prince more often than Seinfeld. Okay, it kind of went off the rails after Hubert was fired and the producers pulled a Darrin on us with a new Aunt Viv, but otherwise, The Fresh Prince is a funnier show than Seinfeld. There, somebody had to say it.

I'll always admire Seinfeld for its disregard for Full House hugs and other equally cuddly Miller-Boyett clichés, as well as finally giving Julia Louis-Dreyfus--who, before Seinfeld, had a less-than-great stint on SNL and was the highlight of Fresh Prince co-creator Andy Borowitz's otherwise bland day care sitcom Day by Day--a shitload of material that was worthy of her comedic talents (Elaine's my favorite Seinfeld character who isn't Bookman the library cop; Bookman is, of course, the greatest character Seinfeld came up with). But Seinfeld is also a very white show with several unfunny and stereotypical moments involving characters of color (and I'm getting less enamored with the show when its star/co-creator, who really should have kept his mouth shut when he was recently asked about the subject of the push for more diversity in comedy, instead chose to respond to the subject with "Who cares?"). The Fresh Prince doesn't have that race problem. Seinfeld would never have done an episode like "Def Poet's Society," where white privilege gets mocked instead of celebrated and reinforced. That brief mockery of white privilege and, of course, the frequently quoted moments of both classic and not-so-classic poetry are why "Def Poet's Society," which was written during the show's first season by John Bowman (a white veteran of SNL and In Living Color who later co-created Martin), remains my favorite Fresh Prince episode, as well as one of my favorite episodes of any '90s sitcom.



Like I said before, The Fresh Prince's storylines weren't exactly original. The "making up a fake poet or musician in order to get into a girl's pants" storyline is as old as "locked in the bank vault with Mr. Mooney." But what "Def Poet's Society" does with it is hysterical. There's the very name of Will's fake street poet Raphael De La Ghetto, network TV's first and only gag about the odd-sounding band name of De La Soul, as well as the inspiration for an Asian American YouTube star to dub himself Timothy DeLaGhetto.

There's the sight of Jazzy Jeff, who, like Smith, had no previous sitcom acting experience but wasn't exactly as charismatic as Smith, taking his lack of range and--just like in all his other appearances on the show--somehow building out of that lack of range a genuinely funny take on the sitcom staple of the lazy and weird best friend character. What about Buddy from Charles in Charge? Nah, Jazz was funnier.

There's British actor Joseph Marcell's lousy impression of an African American street poet when Will talks Geoffrey the butler into donning an Afro and a dashiki to bring to life the reclusive Raphael De La Ghetto (a name that's so great I have to say it in full every time). My favorite part of Marcell's scenes as Raphael De La Ghetto--other than "Cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them!"--is a moment that goes unnoticed by the studio audience, and it's when he's unable to keep his fake American accent from slipping when he says "Mask your fears."



Finally, there's Smith himself, no longer nervously mouthing the lines of his co-stars like he did in the Fresh Prince pilot (at the end of the poetry club night scene, he's mouthing Jazz's poem, but that's part of the episode's script this time). He's already the confident and charismatic lead who would continue to help anchor, along with the late, great James Avery as Uncle Phil, The Fresh Prince for five more seasons.

But in recent years, the funniest part of "Def Poet's Society" for me has ended up being neither Jazz nor Geoffrey nor Will. It's any time that Mr. Fellows (Jonathan Emerson), Will and Carlton's English teacher, claims he knows the work of Raphael De La Ghetto or makes that hilarious post-poetry-reading O-face over what he thinks is the brilliance of Raphael De La Ghetto's prose. Mr. Fellows is every single culture vulture I ran into at UC Santa Cruz. He's every white person in the audience who stupidly applauded both Warren Beatty's shitty rapping and Amiri Baraka's cringeworthy line "You got to be a spirit!" back when I saw Beatty's white savior film Bulworth in Santa Cruz in 1998. He's also every single douche in Williamsburg or Silver Lake who claims he was into this band or that band before everybody else.

Like when Tajai from Souls of Mischief tweeted that "Eventually #Hipsters bathe, shave and become the 'out' republicans they are," eerily about a year before the Republican Party's hipster ad, leave it to hip-hop to speak the truth about the fraudulences of hipsters. In the case of The Fresh Prince's classic "Def Poet's Society" episode, it did so long before the present-day form of hipsters existed. Now that's worthy of an exhaustive oral history.

Tip-Top Quotables: "Late-night talk is a Johnny Bravo suit if there ever was one," plus a few other great lines this week

(Photo source: Blu-ray.com)

My favorite monthly section in old Source magazine issues was "Hip-Hop Quotables," in which the Source editors printed out their favorite new rap verse of the month, from the first bar to the last. "Tip-Top Quotables," which I've named after that Source section, is a collection of my favorite quotes of the week from anywhere, whether it's a recent TV show or a new rap verse. "TTQ" won't appear on this blog every week. It'll appear whenever the fuck I feel like it.

* "If you're ever in a 90's thriller DO NOT GO TO THE FAIR"--comedian Karen Kilgariff, live-tweeting Sleeping with the Enemy

* "Julia's 90's eyebrows make me feel abusive"--Kilgariff

* "Trauma from years of abuse melted away when he brought her to his job and forced her into a Van Morrison montage so beautiful"--Kilgariff

(Photo source: Redefinition Records)

* "The horns on 'Moving With The Gang' for instance just about stretch through the mesh of distortion and crackling fuzz, but it provides a natural lo-fi authenticity that many try to emulate today. It sounds like an aged cassette you picked straight outta' the shoebox and click-clacked into the player."--my Word Is Bond homie Hardeep, describing one of the early '90s demo beats hip-hop producer K-Def recently unearthed from crates of his own beats

* "Oh, it's terrible. It's unbelievable. And the commercials are so loud. And the thing about the music in Hannibal, it is very trance-y, in a way. When it's working, you're in that reality, you're not even in your living room anymore. And then when the commercial comes on, it just jars you right back. It's a bummer, I hate it."--Hannibal composer Brian Reitzell, on his dislike of NBC's commercial breaks during Hannibal

* "Student debt has tripled in the past decade. It has surpassed Bob Marley's greatest hits album as the thing seemingly every college student has."--Last Week Tonight's John Oliver

* "In recent years, states have slashed funding for higher education by 23 percent. Public institutions have responded by raising tuition rates, forcing students to take out ever larger loans. Why else do you think that colleges have so many fucking a cappella groups? They know they sound stupid. They just can't afford instruments anymore."--Oliver

* "Let me speak right now to all current freshmen in college who have student loans: okay, you need to stop watching this show right now. You don't have time for this. Get out there and enjoy the fuck out of your college experience because you may be paying for it for the rest of your life. I'm serious. Drink beer from a funnel. Kidnap a mascot. Find out if you're gay or not, and even if you are not, have some gay experiences. Do it now. It doesn't count. Become that weird guy on campus who rides a unicycle from class to class. Find out whoever the Winklevoss twins of your school are and steal their idea for a website and shoot fireworks out of every bodily orifice you can fucking find."--Oliver



* "And us non-white-dudeish artists have to stop longing to be put in the box of mainstream late-night talk show hosts. Late-night talk is a Johnny Bravo suit if there ever was one. We diverse voices, as usual, have to create our own boxes and continue innovating America's pop culture... like always. And then we have to try to act not surprised when 'mainstream' (read: white and male) steal it... like always."--comedian and one-time late-night talk show host W. Kamau Bell, on late-night TV's frustrating lack of diversity (and here's another reason why I like Bell: he's the only comedian of color who would use the Johnny Bravo episode of The Brady Bunch as an analogy to describe the increasing irrelevance of late-night talk shows)

* "Most people don't realize this, but you can quietly remember September 11, 2001."--Jenny Johnson, rehashing a tweet from last year, but it's a terrific one

* "MEDIA: Stop calling Ray Rice beating Janay Rice 'a domestic dispute.' It was DOMESTIC VIOLENCE! They weren't just arguing about the dishes!"--Hari Kondabolu

* "But wouldn't it be productive if this collective outrage, as my colleagues have said, could be channeled to truly hear and address the long-suffering cries for help by so many women and, as they said, do something about it? Like an ongoing, comprehensive education of men about what healthy, respectful manhood is all about. And it starts with how we view women. Our language is important. For instance, when a guy says 'You throw the ball like a girl' or 'You're a little sissy,' it reflects an attitude that devalues women, and attitudes will eventually manifest in some fashion. Women have been at the forefront in the domestic violence awareness and prevention arena, and whether Janay Rice considers herself a victim or not, millions of women in this country are. Consider this: according to domestic violence experts, more than three women per day lose their lives at the hands of their partners. That means that since the night of February 15 in Atlantic City, more than 600 women have died. So this is yet another call to men to stand up and take responsibility for their thoughts, their words, their deeds and, as Deion says, to give help or to get help, because our silence is deafening and deadly."--CBS sportscaster James Brown

The last five things I've written over at Word Is Bond

Rocky Rivera (pictured with her "GRLZ" and "Ain't No Way" collaborators DJ Roza and Irie Eyez) is one of the artists whose albums I most recently reviewed for Word Is Bond. I'm glad to have been made a part of WIB's review team in 2013.

Shad, Flying Colours (November 7, 2013)
"Top it off with a well-chosen Jay Z sample hook and you have another tuneful banger along the lines of 2010's 'Rose Garden,' which was produced by returning beatmaker DJ T Lo, as well as one of many highlights of Flying Colours. Good thing Shad and Skratch Bastid sampled one of Hov's verses from the enjoyable 'Otis' instead of Hov's really imaginative 'Cake cake cake cake cake cake' verse from Drake's 'Pound Cake.'"

Rocky Rivera, Gangster of Love (November 12, 2013)
"As usual, executive producer and Beatrock label founder Fatgums works his production magic on another solid-sounding Beatrock album, which is also an album we need right now: a fierce antidote to what author Jeff Chang referred to as a painful summer for racial justice, the summer of such delightful moments as the Zimmerman acquittal and Levy Tran's 'Asian Girlz' debacle. Rocky is one Asian girl--or rather, woman--who doesn't play that 'I love your sticky rice' shit."

"10 Hilarious Rapper Impressions" (November 25, 2013)
"Whether it's Pharoah's impression of Kendrick's flow, which seems to have been inspired by K.Dot's killer guest verse on DJ Khaled's 'They Ready,' or former MADtv regular Aries Spears turning DMX into Sally whenever she orders food in When Harry Met Sally, these impressions are so entertaining that for a few minutes, they've made me briefly forget about the dual heartbreak of the creative stagnancy of a late-night show I grew up watching and the unjust demise of a late-night show that could have become a game-changer for progressively minded comedians of color."

Rapsody introduces a little anarchy in her video for "Dark Knights."

"12 Great Albums That We Didn't Review This Year" (December 19, 2013; co-written with Hardeep, Matticus Finch and Paddy)
"'Footnote: Kendrick ain't mention no females! Rapsody, we gotta change that!,' says DJ Drama during the Raleigh spitter's 2013 mixtape. With bangers like 'Lonely Thoughts,' which features a laugh-out-loud funny guest verse by Chance the Rapper, and the Dark Knight Rises-inspired 'Dark Knights,' which has Rapsody and Wale dropping the nerdiest Batman references outside of nerdcore, Rapsody proves she belongs on Kendrick's infamous 'Control' list of the game's most skilled MCs."

"Music Videos That Stood Out In 2013" (December 25, 2013)
"Director Patricio Ginelsa picks up on the tune's fake '90s vibe and surrounds Bambu and Geo with animated graphics straight out of Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock's 'It Takes Two' video and backup dancers with moves from old Queen Latifah videos. You keep thinking, 'Yo, is Blossom gonna Cabbage Patch her way onto the set at some point?' The 'Books' video could have just consisted of the '90s R&B throwback material, and it would have been a decent video. But no, Ginelsa had to throw in footage of Bambu and Geo starring in a fake sitcom about an undocumented Filipino immigrant called Tago ng Tago (it's Tagalog for 'always hiding'), and that turned a decent video into a great one."

My last few reviews for Word Is Bond

I joined the Word Is Bond crew in March, and since then, I've been enjoying writing about artists I'm familiar with (Bambu, Adrian Younge) and artists I'm not so familiar with (The Doppelgangaz). Here are links to--and passages from--my first five album reviews for WIB.

The Doppelgangaz, Hark (March 12, 2013)
"I don't think I've ever heard bursitis mentioned in a hip-hop track, let alone any kind of track, outside of Al Bundy and his elderly musician friends singing a 'We Are the World' parody about how 'We are the ones who wear bifocals and have bursitis.' That's an example of how unique and original The Doppelgangaz are as storytellers."



Bambu, The Lean Sessions (March 19, 2013)
"The new EP may be far from a last hurrah for a skilled emcee who'd rather devote more time to family and community activism, but if Bambu wants to completely quit the game, The Lean Sessions proves that he has a future as an astute TV critic ('Man, they keep killing black people on Walking Dead, so I switched/Breaking Bad been my shit, that 40-ounce got me blitzed')."

Adrian Younge

Ghostface Killah and Adrian Younge, Twelve Reasons to Die (April 14, 2013)
"Younge has taken elements of Morricone's sound--the fuzz guitar riffs that are highlights of Morricone's Danger: Diabolik and Once Upon a Time in the West scores, the chimes and the wordless melodies--as well as some touches from other film composers (like the sitar towards the end of 'The Sure Shot,' which is reminiscent of Manfred Hübler and Siegfried Schwab, or the piano licks that are all over the RZA's projects, like his Ghost Dog score), and he's brought his own stamp to them. Younge has provided Ghostface with the imaginary soundtrack for the superhero movie he must have always wanted to star in."

Trebles and Blues, From My Father (April 30, 2013)
"This kind of dramatic, trying-to-overcome-barriers material can turn kitschy or sappy. Think unintentional laugh riots like 'Accidental Racist' or any of the family photo slideshow videotapes that a lot of my Filipino parents' friends would subject their party guests to back in the '80s and were often soundtracked with ballads by Whitney Houston and Surface or, ugh, any non-Sid Vicious version of 'My Way' (let's face it, yo: Vicious recorded the only take on 'My Way' that's worth a damn). But fortunately, From My Father, an instrumental work as effective and beautifully crafted as The Blue Note, is neither of those things."

Eric Lau, One of Many (June 24, 2013)
"The best way I'd describe U.K. neo-soul producer Eric Lau's sound would be 'It brings to mind the minimalist production wizardry of Dilla, but without any recognizable samples and perhaps with a taste for crumpets instead of donuts.'"