10tonfunk

“They Reminisce Over You” by Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth

Off the classic “Mecca and the Soul Brother” album, T.R.O.Y. is one of the best hip hop songs ever made. It’s probably one of the best songs ever made. Since much has been written about it, and you only need to listen to the song to know what’s up, I’m not going to go into detail about it. Despite the brags and the boasting, maybe even because of it, hip hop used to, in its own way, be one of the most honest forms of musical expression the world has ever heard,and T.R.O.Y. is honest, raw and true. Go listen to it and you’ll know exactly what I mean.

People are always saying that “T.R.O.Y.” isn’t about a girl, it’s about hip hop. I’ve listened to this song countless times and I’ve never heard it. Common’s “I Used to Love H.E.R.” is obviously about hip hop, as are a scores of other odes to hip hop masquerading as love songs. Sometimes I wish rappers would man up and make a real love song about a woman (or man) instead of these extended metaphors for pot and music.

A popular belief persists, however, that “They Reminisce Over You” is about rap. Popular belief is often wrong — I’ll get into my thoughts on the ‘Twitter revolution’ another time — but there is one instance where popular belief in America is correct, and that’s regarding healthcare. Numerous polls, even those which in which it’s referred to as ‘socialized medicine’ find a majority of the American public supporting a ‘public option’ aka single payer aka public funding of private care (Canada, that decadent socialist territory, has more private physicians, proportionately, than America does). Perhaps Americans realize they enjoy their ‘socialist’ libraries, educations, and police and fire departments. Maybe, despite our mathematic deficiencies, Americans realize something is wrong with this equation: in the last nine years, workers earnings in America have gone up 34%, while in the same period of time, healthcare premiums have increased by 119%. I’ve been listening to Bill Moyers’ amazing May 22nd program on Healthcare Reform, and Democracy Now’s hour long interview with healthcare whistle-blower Wendell Pierce about the tactics he employed as former, “head of corporate communications at CIGNA, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies.” Mindblowing. Worse than you can even imagine.

Yet, despite overwhelming public support for single payer healthcare, the healthcare companies are winning. The public may not be buying their ad campaign, designed by the winners that brought you the Swiftboat campaign (seriously), but Congress is. Their buying this bullshit with the money the healthcare companies and their proxies are giving them. Democratic Chairman of the Senate Finace Committe Max Baucus receives more money from big healthcare (is there any other kind) than almost any other senator. Two of his former aides are healthcare lobbyists. Meanwhile, single payer advocates aren’t even invited to the hearings — dozens of doctors were arrested for disturbing the hearings. That’s right, doctors willing to go to jail to voice their concern over the piece of shit plan Baucus has proposed via white-paper.

Big O clearly endorsed single payer six years ago as senator, now, his wish for bipartisanship has robbed him of nuts. What about what the people want? Lindsey Graham and Olympia Snow can make dry hump each other all over both sides of ‘the aisle,’ but the millions of Americans being bankrupted by their insurance premiums will be too busy hocking their TV sets for cash to buy medicine and doctors visits for their sick children to be impressed by the warm fuzzy bipartisan moment. If these leaders wanted to affect change they could — the climate has never been so ripe. Instead, they tell us to be patient — we can’t risk disturbing our current system (Obama), they can’t risk spend their political capital on something worth buying (Baucus).

In a civilized society healthcare is a human right. At the very least it’s a civil right. I’m sure plenty of people urged desegregationists not to blow their political wads in the 50s and 60s, and I’m glad they were ignored by enough people in the public and in the capital, that schools were desegregated and, several decades later, a person of color could become president.

There were plenty of people during the run up to abolition who protested that freeing the slaves would disturb the economy and destroy social order. I’m glad those people lost the debate. Aren’t you? Should we have waited until the 70s to try to integrate America? Should we have continued slavery because freedom for the slaves would disrupt the economy and cause a dip in the plantation owner’s earnings?

“Ain’t No Future in Yo Frontin’” by MC Breed & DFC

Breed (RIP, dead at 37 from kidney complications) also did a song called “Gotta Get Mine” with a young MC who later put many minds at ease with the line “there’s a heaven for a G.” I think MC Breed was wrong, there is a future in the fronting of the healthcare executives who are making 250,000 dollars A DAY, as 14,000 Americans A DAY lose their employer provided insurance thanks to the financial crisis. If the writer of the latter line, Tupac, was right and there is a heaven for a G, it’s going to be hard finding him there amidst the clots of healthcare execs and lobbyists busy lighting cigars with flaming hundreds and the get well cards sent to people who died unnecessarily because they couldn’t get healthcare in the wealthiest nation on earth (on the infant mortality rate charts America is 45th, sandwiched between the Faroe Island and Guam).

A word of warning to Baucus and his fuckhead friends and supporters in Congress and the White House: while y’all are ballin in your gangstas paradise, they’re going to reminisce over you. Your name will be uttered in the same breath as James Henry Hammond’s and George Marshall’s. You will be remembered for your well-rewarded efforts to keep a nation enslaved by a system designed to maximize the economic well being of small group of individuals (there is ample evidence that a single payer system would bolster the American economy). You’ll be remembered as lackeys for powerful men and women who considered disease, death and suffering to be a justifiable and profitable industry.

UPDATE: Damjan DeNoble at the excellent Asia Health Care Blog has been kind enough to dignify my ranting by commenting on the piece.

At MSGED we’re all about grappling UFC-style with tough questions (we’re way more MMA than MLA) and engaging in meaningful discourse about the big issues of our times: Dennis Rodman’s contribution the genre of meta-movies, jellied ducks blood, waterboarding babies, etc. Some might go so far as to say that we spank these big issues like they were the creepy southern mercenary, we were Steven Seagal, and this was the kitchen of death scene in Under Seige 2 — the greatest film of our times.

In today’s edition of Song o the Day, we pose, and answer that age old question: if this southern rap song was a French cathedral what would it be?

The song in question is “Kentucky Mud” by the Nappy Roots, off their first major label album “Watermelon, Chicken and Gritz”.

The song starts, fittingly enough, with an organ. No sooner has the chorus started then the snares are rattling and a string part crescendos towards the heavens til it sounds like the siren on a police cruiser as it flashes past. The chorus is punctuated by high pitched chimes which could be escaping eerily from the highest register of a pipe organ, or caused by the twinkle of something metallic against stained glass. There’s a brief clapping breakdown that probably doesn’t happen a lot outside of southern baptist congregations but continues the church theme nonetheless. As B. Stille says in a verse toward the end of the song, “Country living, and the country cookin in a country kitchen / Good intention and strong religion, it’s a strong tradition.”

Good intention and strong religion, as well as a big dose of tradition, are embodied in Notre Dame Cathedral — which, obviously, is the answer to the question posed in the title (trying to avoid the world ‘titular’ until I’m mature enough to use it without giggling).

Notre Dame is itself paved with good intentions. Long before the misguided attempts to modernize it during the reigns of Louix XIV and XV that destroyed the tombs and half the stained glass windows, even before the vandalism of those well known jackasses the Huguenots, who were intending to rid the world of idolatry (an admirable task I suppose), the lady of Paris suffered the good intentions of her many architects (the cathedral took the entire Gothic period to build and the current renovation looks to be taking even longer).

Although Notre Dame is one of the first buildings to employ flying buttresses, they were something of an architectural afterthought. As the walls grew higher (in addition to black makeup and Trent Reznor, goths also prefer thin walls) fractures began to occur and the structure was in danger of crumbling. Luckily, the architects were prepared to meet this rather churlish test from the heavens, and they improvised — as much as you can improvise with giant blocks of stone — supports that encircled the building and helped it keep its shit together.

In other good news for fans of French architecture and hip hop, I think I may have figured out what Saint-Denis Basilica would be if it were a rap song.

After work I took an 80 minute bike ride through the Beijing traffic which, although it probably did my health more harm than good, gave me a chance to enjoy a lovely chemical sunset and listen to an NPR Intelligence Squared debate over whether Google violates their oath to do evil or not. The podcast was mostly drowned out by the roar of several million citizens returning home, and the sound of my prostate dying. When that was done, and I was lost somewhere around the mid Third Ring, I switched to a debate over whether or not diplomacy with Iran was working. Liz Cheney was arguing against. Like all Cheney’s, it’s impossible to imagine a laugh of joy floating free from her steely fangs. A cackle as her enemy croaked his final words at her feet sure, but I imagine when a Cheney tries to sing Happy Birthday a wind slams the door shut and blows the candle out.

On a lighter note, the songs of the day both riff on the Eurythmics classic ‘Sweet Dreams’. A classic dance jam if there ever was one. Much has already been made of the merits of that song so we’ll move onto…

‘20k Money Making Brothers on the Corner’ by Re-Up Gang off of ‘We Got it for Cheap Vol 3.’

First up we got the Re-Up Gang, which is basically Clipse+Ab Liva and Sandman, with their song ‘20k Money Making Brothers on the Corner’ off of ‘We Got it for Cheap Vol 3.’ Produced by Dame Grease it’s got a great laid back Sweet Dreams inspired synth beat matched with great swagger by the MCs, most notably in the opening verse from Pusha T, see the excerpt below, where he manages to name check 2 movies by Chinese directors, 1 luxury sport, 1 icon of said luxury sport, 1 luxury brand (and this is not your normal Burberry), 1-2 rap groups — depending on how you want to consider the ‘living legends’ bit, and Ray Charles. And he makes a weird tiger/hocking a loogie noise. Excellent. The other verses aren’t as good, but how could they be?

raisin the bar, im tiger below par
im the hidden dragon and crouchin tiger with that raw
from off beams to gulf streams, who fuckin with my golf swing?
yuch! all you Niggas is my offspring
from ye tall i was in MJG with the 8ball
a livin legend i played them keys like ray charles
you can’t copy the style, or even trace off,
they wanna pusha t mardi gras mask like a face off

(you can lean to it herre)

‘China Girl (Diplo mix)’ by M.I.A. and Diplo off of Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol. 1

Despite his inexplicable fondness for crappy indie rock, Diplo understands the way music from different genres can mesh together far better than most DJs. M.I.A. has a different but equally dope ability to blend genres into a musical product that both retains the flair of the originals yet combines it into something fresh. This track cuts together M.I.A.s vocals, which showed up officially on ‘10 Dollar’ with the chorus from ‘Sweet Dreams’ and some dubbed out electro-y dancehall riddims. Diplo most leaves the ‘Sweet Dreams’ synth alone except for the addition of something that sounds like the croak of a frog and occasional Miami bass-style 808 rolls. But instead of snare rolling his way into a barn burner, every time the momentum gets going he drops back into the echo-y dancehall beat. It’s pretty sweet.

Best line: “Need a visa? Got wth a geezer”

(for a listen click herre)

Honorary Sweet Dreams Edition mention – Pink’s ‘Get the Party Started’ Sweet Dreams remix featuring Redman

It features a classic verse from Redman, who with partner in rhyme (and co-star in How High — one of the greatest movies of our time) was for years one of the most dependable MCs a producer could have on their speed dial. It starts with, “Yo, Funk Doc walk into the club actin’ rowdy,” and you can pretty much guess what happens after that. As a rather hirsute individual — especially in hairless China — I’ll always love Redman for his verse off ‘Da Rockwilder’ (which features one of the baddest drops on any hip song out there) :

Got the cable chooked up. All channels / Lift my shirt, all mammal

(party starter here)