Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

Get Rich Entertainment sent copies of its recent releases to the Listen & Be Heard office. Editor Martha Mims handed the CDs to me, saying, ?I don?t know whether this is your kind of thing.? I replied that I would not know until I listened to them, took the discs, and headed for home.
The CDs were Flofood by Dark Skin, Town Material by BTA Boyz, and Tha Story Behind Tha Scarz by Khali Hustle. None of the discs came in jewel boxes or cardboard jackets. Each one came in the 1/8-inch-thick plastic cases usually associated with home recording; each one contained its recording?s cover artwork and the printed information of song titles, personnel, and assorted shoutouts. As with all CD reviews for this column, I played each CD a few times, made a few notes, and thought about how to present my comments regarding their contents.

I recalled the term ?moldy figs,? which is how 1940s jazz musicians and fans used to refer to people who dismissed bebop in favor of traditional and swing formats. I also recalled a recent essay by the jazz pianist Kenny Drew, Jr., posted at allaboutjazz.com. It was titled ?What The F*** Happened To Black Popular Music?? (I do not think the letter ?F? referred to ?figs,? moldy or otherwise.) A section of this essay included Drew stating how he learned from his teachers about how music contains three elements ? melody, harmony, and rhythm ? and how hip-hop has reduced those elements to rhythm only.

Going back to when Grandmaster Flash?s ?The Message? was a new song, most mainstream critical opinion considered it and other hip-hop releases, still called ?rap? back then, to be novelty records like ?Ittsy Bittsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini? during the 1960s. Things have evolved to the point where hip-hop now casts a long shadow in the global contemporary music scene. There is no getting away from it, even in its increasing role as advertising tool for selling products having little or nothing in common with the music ? ?My Humps? by Black-Eyed Peas is a good example of this usage ? and ultimately becoming another aspect of Marshall McLuhan?s ?medium is the message? theory of mass communications. ?The Message? is now the medium.

And so what about the CDs?

Drew?s assessment of hip-hop can be applied here: not much is happening in terms of melody and harmony on any of the three CDs. Rhythmically, the drum and bass parts are not much different from any other hip-hop recording. Sonically, all three of them are engineered and mixed to meet a listener?s expectations. There are no surprises here. This music is all straight-up hip-hop.

The importance of these recordings, their collective ?message,? concerns how the participants sound like they are having fun making their music. None of these CDs is going to change the direction of popular music and it doesn?t matter: these efforts are about being part of a community, about wanting to be heard and DOING something to make it happen. These guys aren?t sitting around moaning about how hip-hop sucks and nothing?s any good. They put their own thing out for people to hear. Good for them.

And who knows? Maybe one of these songs will find its way into a commercial someday. Maybe twenty-six years from now, someone will quote from these CDs like people who remember ?don?t touch me/?cause I?m close to the edge? do today. Maybe hearing the music on these recordings will inspire expansion of the musical possibilities in hip-hop. (Although I get the feeling we will be spared the prog-rock version of hip-hop ? Emerson, Lake, and Jay-Z, anyone?) Maybe moldy figs from all nations will join hands, encircle the globe, and break into ?my humps, my humps, my humps my humps my humps.? Or not.

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