In Continuum.

Over at Digg.com just last night, I was reading through a list of the worst rappers that ever existed in the music industry, ever since the 'art' of rap first started. I saw the name "Chingy" on the list, and the reason for him being on the list was because "this guy's beats are terrible and his lyrics are stupid, degrading and barely literate at best". Well, I thought to myself, I don't remember the other songs with very different beats and lyrics, and not to mention the degrading nature of a lot of hip-hop songs out there. Given, I don't know the genre of music very well because I have stayed away from its influence for so long. But then again, perhaps there is a reason why I have refused to pollute myself with the kind of material they play over the airwaves, perhaps there is a reason why I quitted listening to the radio four years ago and have not tuned in to a single radio station ever since. It is a genre of music that is not just a cup of tea that is not of my particular liking, it is a cup of tea that makes me feel depressed about the mainstream music industry. In fact, this genre of music is probably the only reason why I would agree with my sister that the English music industry does have its rotten music. It's that bad, to me.

But hip-hop was never the kind of music that I despised, or even rap music. Here's a big confession to all those who doesn't know me well enough: I used to listen to rap, a lot of it. It was back in the 90s, I'm sure the lot of you remember it with fond memories. It was when every genre was changing in a way that it distanced itself from the 80s. Everything was a little different, something happened when the clock struck 1200 on the first day of 1990, and every genre of music went through a transformation somehow. Rock was a little different, disco music became a little different, hip-hop music became a little different. The rock bands that used to write anthems and performed in giant arenas gave way to bands like Nirvana, the kind of bands that was born out of the garage down the street. Things were different back then, but it is strange - and a little sad - how eight years into the 2000s, and we have yet to define this decade yet. I wonder what people are going to think about thirty years down the road at this decade in music, if they are going to take anything away from it at all. I can't imagine anybody looking back and thinking "Wow, thirty years on and 50 cent is still this good!". I don't see it happening. 

Anyway, the 90s was great. It was when I moved away from my sister's influenced on boybands like the Backstreet Boys and N'Sync, when I needed a musical identity for myself in the household. My sister was defined by Chinese pop bands and those boybands, my mother was defined by classical music and opera, while my father was defined musically by his lack of musical identity, if that makes any sense at all. And as for me, I wanted something different from the rest of the family, something that was going to trigger my face when they hear a certain kind of song with a certain type of beat. So I affiliated myself with rap music, and it was all about rap music back then, nonstop for the most part of the day. It is ridiculous enough for a white man trying to rap, but I bet you have never seen a 13-year-old Chinese boy rapping in his bedroom. I didn't even know what in the world those rappers were rapping about, I didn't even have internet back then to look things up. I was making up lyrics as I went along with the beat, bobbing my head up and down to an invisible audience and a fist cupped around my mouth to simulate a microphone. You can stop laughing now.

I listened to a lot of different kinds of rap back in those days, the days when 'gangsta' rap was still youthful and young, when Eminem was still writing lyrics on the back of his right hand - he is a left-hander. Those didn't appeal to me, however, because the people in those songs were always pissed off for one reason or another, and all they wanted was to have sex or kill somebody with a gun. They all had a lot of problems, 99 problems to be exact, and there were not a lot of ways to solve those problems either. So a lot of them came together and wrote verses to songs and try to make them rhyme like poetry, but you don't recite these words like poetry - you try to fit them into a certain drumbeat in a monotonous voice. It was refreshing at the beginning, but I got tired being pissed off and angry all the time, you know how emotional contagion works. Then, right out of the blue, somebody's rap music caught my attention and it became the reason why I loved rap music - Mr. Will Smith. 

I was trying to study last night at two in the morning, but at that time of the morning nothing was being absorbed very well. A wave of nostalgia came over me like a warm blanket, and all I wanted to do back then was to look up all the old Will Smith music videos, and that really felt good on my part. It is something I don't exactly tell a lot of people about, but Timothy back in high school probably knows because I introduced his music to him and he loved it back then. I remember those after school days when we used to stay in the classroom and try to learn his rap, and we both ended up looking like idiots to the rest of the class. But they didn't understand, nobody understood how cool rap was. It was cool, and with Will Smith it was even cooler. Rap fans are going to look at me now and probably go "What?", with the drawn out "a" in the middle. It's true, not a lot of people are going to associate him with rap music for sure. People nowadays are going to see him as the alien-busting, zombie-killing, robot-fighting Hollywood actor that got nominated for a few Oscars. Maybe if you are a little older, you might remember him as an actor in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air back in the late 80s and the early 90s, but him and rap music? At least in the Asian context, Will Smith and rap don't come together in the same sentence.

But his music was good, and it is still very very good. They don't make rap music like that anymore, and here is a man who proved that you don't need to be angry to make good rap music, or curse as if you are using those words as punctuation in your songs. A rap can be about a city that you love, the feeling of cruising down the road in your car, or just something about your beloved son. No clubs, no drinks, no bling, no sex - it's all about the music now. In fact, not a lot of rappers, or singers, have the ability to come up a title that doesn't make any sense at all, and still make me love the song anyway. Seriously, what does "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" means? The spelling is all wrong, and it doesn't make any sense! But nobody cared, I didn't care. I loved every bit of that song, and I still love that song immensely even now. Everybody knows how the song goes during the chorus, everybody knows how to sing to "Na na na na na na na/ Na na na na na na" in that song, but not a lot of people are going to remember "Ella, ella, eh eh eh" in a few years, I bet. 

They don't make rap music like that anymore, or music - period. This is how you can be a famous producer in today's context, however. You don't need to write good lyrics, you don't need to rap at all. All you need to do, is to take somebody else's song, add a cool hip-hop beat to it, yell "Hey" in the background and then you will get featured before the name of the original artist that sang that song. That is how things work now anyway, you don't need a talent to be famous. You just need to yell "Hey" in the background to get a platinum record. So here's a trip back to the old days when rap music was still good, when the Big Willie Style ruled. Let's go back to the time when it was possible to enjoy rap music, when things were less aggressive and more, well, good.