Blue Scholars refuse compartmentalization
May 30th, 2008
Today on the HUB lawn at UW in front of an audience that was too young to recognize J.J. Fad’s “Supersonic” when Sabzi spun it, MC Geologic waxed poetic on the nature of contemporary hip hop. In answering the hypothetical question “what kind of hip hop do you play?” that might be asked by someone unfamiliar with the sound of Blue Scholars, Geo recalled the good ol’ days when “you could bump NWA and PM Dawn and De La Soul… even Vanilla Ice… and it was all good. Like you can’t listen to Kanye if you listen to 50 Cent. Sure, Kanye’s better, but I listen to both.”
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On one level I was struck with the truth of that statement; *I* had those tapes back in ‘91, ‘92, ‘93. High school days. “100 MIles and Runnin’” EP, “Raising Hell”, “Fear of a Black Planet.” I even had that Vanilla Ice album. (Hey, you did too; don’t lie.) When it was all “rap” to me. Sure, there were plenty of great – and better – artists on their way up, but my memory was that when shopping for hip hop, the average suburban kid like me had very few choices.
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Fast forward to 2008, though. The art form is 30-plus years old. Artists abound. It’s a bit like the categorization of “rock” music – does it matter to me if it’s Elliott Smith or Deftones or The Catheters or The Wellwater Conspiracy or Beck or Viva Voce on my iPod? Nah. They’re all filed under “Rock.” Just like People Under the Stairs, J5, DJ Shadow, Krush, Run DMC, RJD2, Giant Panda, Crown City Rockers or Aceyalone. It’s all hip hop, right? And while it never needed to be accepted to someone like me, think of how important that progress is to the people that are earning a living from it. Today, intentionally or otherwise, the Blue Scholars pointed out that legitimacy to (at least) this listener.
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Confidential to Geologic: Black Eyed Peas was a favorite of mine, too, before *she* came along. Ugh. I’d like to officially declare her the Yoko Ono of hip hop.
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