15th
Puttin in That Abstract Work
Now seems like a good time to disclose my swelling Obama complex—especially given how sharply recent posts (and events, I suppose, as well) have brought it into focus. The hope is that this admission will answer some of the background questions raised in our running subplot (like provenance, politics and swag, for example—sorry, readers, can’t go all the way; who am I if I’m not everybody?) while advancing the overall storyline: beats, rhymes. Life.
This week on the CW, we’ve been delving into the sonorous relationship between jazz and hip-hop. I would’ve chimed in sooner, but like B-Rock I’ve been wrestling with my own economic crisis. Why does this matter? Because “Jazz and Hip Hop” also happens to be the street address I’ve listed on my W-2s for neary two decades. (Best believe, we were gettin that gwap in the late-80s.) Never mind that the cities were always changing.
If I’m correctly mistaken, 4/5s of us shared the same address when Tip (of Zeus’s YO TIP! fame) dropped the aforeposted classic on us. Merc and I must’ve played this a trillion times-plus over the hi-fi, and each time we did it was that airy, yazz-guitar infused backbeat that enraptured me most. (No disrespect to Yo Tip!, who spits some of the most mellifluous verses in the biz. Or The Kid, who lays claim to one of the more spot-on impressions.) There was no trouble placing the epic sample—or as it’s known in the Rhymesphere, the only song that will precede my inevitable appearance on a late night talk show—but it took a while before I finally placed the performer. Or rather, before Merc placed it for me, on a CD-R chocked full of favorite spins (and we bumped lots over Christopher Lowell while waiting for the Ewing clan to storm TNN) and labeled in a smudged scrawl that could easily pass for Cyrillic. (I give it four more years before Merc and The Kid are subjects in a graduate-level forensics thesis.)
Turns out the progenitor of that cool was none other than New Jersey’s Joe Pass, a New Brunswick-born son of Sicilian immigrants who was compelled to take up the guitar by a Gene Autry movie. Ever since I came to know this—the Joe-Yo! link, not the Pass-Autry one—I haven’t been able to play one song without cueing the other right behind it. (Hence the sandwich-style formatting to this post.) For me they’ll always be one in the same: fun, chill and as smooth going down as Corn Pops and whole milk. But for the purposes of this discussion, tho, they are my Navy SEALS—only instead of threats, it’s four threads I’m knockin out here with two shots: Dilla, Trane, Tip and the game, for those keeping score.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to a briefing. And by briefing, I mean a nap. A brief one.
~ Filibuster Rhymes
