Chains

Chance the Rapper - Chain Smoker

It was the end of last November—cold, snowy—and I was in a place only a lifestyle of being up at five A.M. after playing gigs can lead you to. Chain Smoker was a jam that I would rinse during early mornings as I trudged my way to school. My destination was the campus, but I was still wondering where I was heading.

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Chance is my dude right now. I was first exposed to him by the homie Seanny. He'd bump Chance's Acid Rap mixtape in his car as I mindlessly sat in the passenger seat. I initially dismissed the collection. I was waiting until I heard some official release from the Rapper because whenever I hear the word mixtape, I immediately don't care. Besides the standout Cocoa Butter Kisses, I didn't really give it a...chance even though it's actually much closer to a proper album than it is your traditional mixtape.

Long after that exposure, I was reintroduced to him through the homegirl Sasha, who is editing this blog right now (let's see if she leaves this part in (I am definitely judging her (your) ego once this drops)). I gave Cocoa Butter Kisses a proper listen and started incorporating it into my sets. It was a perfect smoke-break song (it's longer than five minutes and he sings about “cigarettes on cigarettes”!), but so much more than simply that. I decided to seek out what else dude had to offer. 

I started getting tracks from all over the place. I grabbed Juice because this random lesbian would come to my Hip Hop nights and request it every time she came through. I found Favorite [sp] Song and figured it would hit with the Childish Gambino feature (that shit bangs with the kids) on that Mary J. Real Love (or possibly, the O.O.G., Betty Wright's  Clean Up Woman) sample. I dug Everybody's Something because of its sampling of Slum Village's Dilla-produced masterpiece Fall in Love. But it still took me a while to get into Acid Rap in its entirety.

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Chance's style is so humble (the outro on Acid Rap is a phone call to thank his dad for the things he’s given him) and even as his prominence grows in the game (endorsed by Kanye as one of the best new artists), that humility does not seem to diminish. His timbre is inimitable and his lyricism has a cleverness that exceeds mere punchlines at the end of every stanza. His constant smoking and different perspective on the world make him relatable and intriguing to me. At the top of Chain Smoker, under the warm opening piano notes (which I dare you to wake up to and not feel like it’s going to be a good day), Chance mutters, "If this is my last shh—my last shit...Uhhh...It definitely be mad important” with an understanding of how fleeting his music career (or possibly even his life) is. That “Uhhh” in there isn’t some warm up unh to get on beat. It’s a tentative, self-questioning stutter. He always has a self-consciousness that offsets the bravado in his lyrics. While he brags of being “a good looking, motherfuckin, mother—shut yo’ mouth” (how does he say motherfucking, but not motherfucker?! So great) and feeling his own music in his car so deeply that he forgets to put it in park, he exclaims, “I hope you love all of my shit!” It’s far from the typical, “my shit’s the bombest”. He's still hoping for his audience's enjoyment.
Chain Smoker was a warm welcome into the world. It builds slowly enough and hits in an early morning way. It paired perfectly with the following:

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I was shown Wonderful Everyday around this same time by my other homie named Sean, who was DJing one night and on some I-need-to-show-you-this shit. There's a beautiful harmony when an artist, whose album centres around drug-induced lucid dreams, covers a PBS children’s show’s theme song.

This track has a subtle feature from Wyclef. I always hated Clef’s improvisations post-The Carnival, like his weird, throaty “ehhyyy”s and whatnot. Somehow, Chance and co. make it tolerable. It’s like Chance perfected Wyclef’s steez.

I love a track that takes forever to build and this doesn’t bang until halfway through. One time I was playing this as we were adjusting the sound in Red Star, but had to cut it short, because there is absolutely no bass for two minutes. This flip on the Arthur theme song (I know they’re anthropomorphic and all, but let’s get real. Buster is Arthur’s black best friend, right?) was my first exposure to Chance’s clique The Social Experiment. Letting a track breathe is the beauty of the group. Their recent release, Surf, displays a ton of this, giving piano or trumpet solos just as much time as lyrical verses.

Sunday Candy is one of the standouts on Surf. I just watched the video and it made me like the song even more! While he raps, "you sound like 'why the gospel choir got so tired?'" the chorus is some guttural belting over steel drums and piano notes that would make anyone prance to. Some tap dance group did a fitting performance to this at one of the Latitude 53 patio parties. The dance was ok and cute, but I was more impressed by the song choice. 

Familiar, a song about the consistent commonality of girl personalities, is my other choice track. The hook declares, "Excuse me, but you look familiar." I may have accidentally been playing it one night as I introduced myself to this girl I recognize from around the way (she looked familiar, sure, but I just wanted to play the song).

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If you go down The Social Experiment rabbit hole, you’ll find Kanye’s new prodigal Chicagoan, Vic Mensa. He’s featured on Cocoa Butter Kisses, which I didn’t realize until just now. Vic’s The InnaneTape is in the vain of Acid Rap, though his latest work adopts the intensity of G.O.O.D. Music (U Mad is my fucking jam of summer ’15. The video is bombz [that all black straight jacket?! sheeyt]. I actually prefer it over Ye’s All Day. ennnh… that’s not true. I think they’re on par with each other. Really I just mix the two of them together every time I play them). Vic has veered as much as Chance has held steady. It’ll be interesting to see how the two diverge. One of my choice tracks of the mix is Orange Soda, which I played on the night the NDP won ‘round these parts (geeeet iiiiit?). “To give you what you need…” I don't know where I'm going with this anymore. This is starting to read like I'm going through a rabbit hole.

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Chain Smoker and Wonderful Everyday got me to get my ass up in bad times. Looking at his body of work along with that of his cohorts, even in good times, is inspiring. 

The Firm of Song & Associates

I tend to fill my sets with jams for the people that are always around: my homies, the regulars I like, the staff. I could care less about the actual patrons of the bar. This might be why I feel like I'm not a name that draws in crowds. The whole reason I started DJing was to listen to music I wanted to hear while drinking. Playing jams for these specific people, though, brings about the issue of association. A song gets redefined from something I casually listen to into so-and-so's favourite song that I play out just for them.

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Sometimes I'll find a song when I'm trying to branch out of my comfort zone and before I develop a relationship with the song, I'll find out about other people's experiences with it. In my early days at Red Star, I decided to look into a bunch of classic rock and came across CCR's Long as I Can See the Light. This is a great end of the night jam especially when played to a nearly empty room with all the candles lit on all the wooden tables. Besides all of that, this is the jam I play for the homeboy, Rene, the bartender. He's told me some beautiful stories that he’s associated with this song. It's a song that reflects friendship and loss for him. This song is now ingrained in my head as the bald, bearded man behind the bar's song forever.

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Girls...girls are typically the fucking worst thing to attach a song to and I do it far too often. I always look to the cutest girl in a room and try to figure out how to keep her dancing or bobbing her head. I once played Yacht's Psychic City and this girl I was styling looked over and danced her arms at me to the chorus all, "come on over over"-like. She was skinny and lanky, so her gestures were so specific to her steez. I played the song again like an hour later, because I had nothing more in that vain. She left, but this song will always remind me of a certain wave of arms and a come-hither stare.

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I was hanging with this girl recently and it nearly destroyed all of my DJing ability (which isn't much, but whatever...). I usually don't expect anyone to come by my gigs when I invite them to come out; so, when this girl actually showed up, I was pretty caught off guard when she walked in. The night turned the fuck out. We got drunk and sloppy and the room got out of hand. I had the most fun playing that night. For a brief moment, music sounded sweeter and I was better at what I did.

Weeks later, things went sour and I was left wanting to rid myself of my entire music library. Everything reminded me of her. The song she walked in to; the song she kissed me for playing; the song she drunkenly sang in the cab back to her place, all of them integral parts of my sets and songs I'll need to play for a while still.

Post Malone - White Iverson

Post Malone's White Iverson was the first song I got into once the dust settled. It's an ignorant, new school jam filled with cliche, current slang that I can completely turn my brain off to. I was first told to check it out by the homie Mike, the porter at The Bower. I didn't listen to it immediately, but his description of a Riff Raff-steez jocker singing a PartyNextDoor rip-off kind of intrigued me for some reason. It wasn't until I was debating leaving this girl's place one morning when the homegirl Corin convinced me to actually give it a listen. I needed anything to clear my head. I left and loaded up this song.

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"Post Malone", I like to think stands for "after her. Me Alone". White Iverson is a moody track that drops a nearly immeasurable amount of current slang (the chorus repeats how homie is "susin'" over this girl); there's a ton of bragging about how he's on the brink of blowing up; and though he's being lame over some girl, he still talks about having a bunch of hoes. Beyond the inanity of glamour-rap tropes, however, are very conceptualized basketball-themed rhymes fitting to the theme of the song, which I'm still convinced is a love song…

Hold up. I just realized that this song, if I'm correct, is about Love and Basketball, the favourite movie of the girl I was just talking about. Fuck. Maybe I need to stop playing this joint out...Well, I've already gotten into this post so I'll just finish talking about this song. Maybe I won't think of it as a love song after all.

Let’s start again. The song is about Post's hoop dreams. He "ain't rich yet," but he's on his way there. He's "with some white girls and they lovin' the coca" and cleverly drops, "like they O.T. [Genasis, rapper of the summer banger Coco]...Double OT". Not mind blowing wordplay but I definitely laughed. I could go on and on about every basketball reference in this (oddly no Mailman references for someone with post and malone in their name) like his allusion to The Answer's infamous Practice diatribe and I'd be saving you the time of giving this an in depth listen, but really, I'm already getting too deep into this relatively hollow track. I highly doubt Post Malone will have a career as lucrative as #3's and will be more akin to a rookie that blows his knee out in summer training camp.

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I holler at Corin pretty much every time I play this. It's a good reminder that there are good people surrounding me. It can be a pleasant thing to associate people, places, or moments to songs. It might simply be your best friend or a glance from a cute girl. It can also be terrible (like how Natalie Imgbruglia's Torn was the first song that came on MuchMusic when my first girlfriend dumped me). I don't know what the best way to attach songs to people or moments is, but it happens and it's going to constantly happen when you pay too much attention to music.

Just Like That

Keith Murray - The Most Beautifullest Thing in This World

Keith Murray's The Most Beautifullest Thing in This World has been a mainstay in my sets for years. I like beautiful things. I can appreciate ridiculous redundancies and blatant disrespect towards grammar. This battle-rap steez, Erick-Sermon-produced jam full of non-sequitur braggadocio has all of that. I couldn't tell you when in time and where in space I crossed paths with this song; it's just one of those classics that's inexplicably in my life. So, who (who?)(who?) really cares?

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Battle rap, at its peak, is an art of wit and cleverness, but there are many valleys where paths lead to streams of rhyming glamourized yo' mama jokes. It's entirely about ego and trying to diminish your opponent's self-confidence. Keith Murray attempts to claim the ultimate position. How can you do better than the most beautifullest? That's TWO superlatives! The extremity of being the top of the pile of the top of the pile is impossible to top!

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Keith Murray deftly articulates his wide range of synonyms for being the best and does it in every pocket you could possibly be in on this beat. It takes a rare breed of MC to rhyme multisyllabic words within the same sentence and then change your rhyme scheme midway through the next. That's, straight up, accomplished in the first two lines of the song! Throughout the rest of the track, Murray seamlessly flows through staccato, hard consonants and machine gun flips, and closes each verse with an exaggerated, dramatic delivery comparable to a cliché slam poem.

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It's an accessible song and I'm sure it was radio-friendly at the time, but this is a jam for the heads. You're welcomed into the song with a warm scratch (one so comfortable you could call it back rub rather that a scratch), but then you're thrown right into an overwhelming amount of understated pop culture references as Murray makes the assumption that his listener knows what's up. He goes about embalming your crew with a certain je ne sais quoi; a little of his brand of "you know how I do." He spits the most subtlest (...) reference to New Edition ever written in rap. And then we find ourselves at another accessible/inaccessible juncture: the warmest place in my heart: nerdom.

I loved Hip Hop before I even got into the nerdisms of comic books and genre TV and I had already loved this song before really even analyzing the lyrics. So, there was a day when the stars aligned and the universe decided to destroy my brain. "You're through," says Murray (and rightfully so), "I'm Interplanetarian like Doctor Who." This is the deepest cut of nerdery possible. Doctor Who in '94 was not quite the cultural phenomenon it is now. Initially, I simply gave him props for repping the Doctor. But THIS motherfucker Murray had the balls to explore how much further his ship would take him. I thought Interplanetarian was a completely made up word from Keith. Nah. He just dropped the name...of a Doctor Who villain...who was defeated by the Doctor...through the use...of an ancient language. That is out of this world. That is beautifullestness.

[Let's pause here as I go have a cigarette]

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I actually have no idea what this song is supposed to be about. There doesn't seem to be any sort of running theme other than him talking about himself, which is totally fine. A battle rapper always needs to let you know who he is. So like any true scientist, Murray starts defining his subject by saying what it's not, "Not Quincy but I'm Back on the Block..."  His lyrics that followed built a working definition of who he is which leads to him eventually dropping what he's more than. Science...

It's a very strange feeling when a rapper makes you feel ignorant about rap by rapping about a rapper. While saying what he is more than, Keith showed me how dumb I was with his boastful claiming of, "I come sweeter than Jeru, and damage an amateur." I would see Jeru the Damaja on MuchMusic with his high­-rising, pillbox hats or some other headwear similar to turbans and thought he was some foreign rapper that happened to get some airplay. You never knew back then with Much, they played some random ass shit. I'd read "Jeru" and stop there, thinking the pronunciation of the latter part of his pseudonym was an exotic [duh­-MAH-­zhuh]. I left it as something I didn't understand and changed the channel. I later found out that he was just an underground Brooklyn rapper on some Primo beats calling himself the Damager. I should've realized that it was just a typical Hip Hop standard of flipping the phonetics. I should probably listen to more Jeru...

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I always wanted this to be a love song. Between the title and Erick Sermon's use of the same Isley Brothers sample that's used in Big Poppa, it would make sense to be a love song. I'm alright though because there's always Prince's The Most Beautiful Girl in the World to fill the space of a love song with a similar title (find this song yourself because Prince songs are hard to find free links to).

Even though it didn't turn out to be a love song, I still hope for the day that I get to appropriately nickname a girl "just like that". I've yet to meet someone fittingly worthy of the title most beautifullest. I tried it once, but unsuitably. I didn't actually think this girl was that beautiful. I was just caught up because I'd see her at Hip Hop shows and her name turned out to be Justine. It was all right there! I also never actually met her and I still have no idea who she is. I'm just a creep that listens to too much rap music.

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Keith Murray's The Most Beautifullest Thing in This World is a classic cut that'll be taking up space in my collection for a long time. He flexes his skills and says a lot of words, but really it's simply a dude orbiting around a single topic: himself. Though Keith Murray wouldn't fall in most people's list of top ten rappers, this jam would at least fall into my top ten most beautifullest songs. 

Bey on Bae

Mos Def - Ms. Fat Booty

As much as I hate the question, "What's your favourite song?" (in what context? In the club or at home? Damn you, High Fidelity), Ms. Fat Booty is typically my go-to answer. Yasiin Bey's former self pretty much defined where my proper taste in Hip Hop would end up. The soul-sampling chorus and song referencing make me dig for more music; a flow so casual and intricate that you get something new nearly every time you listen; and, simply and plainly, it's a rap song lacking ego about falling so relentlessly in love then being dissed just as quickly as it started. I need very little more to get on board.

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Like most things I've come to truly enjoy, I didn't initially like Mos Def (He will always be Mos Def to me btw, though respect to Yasiin Bey. Like, who else in the game is blessed with a rap name based on a constantly used expression. Like, if that were the standard I'd be DJ Like Like). In the eighth grade, I was, with a peppering of The Pharcyde and Digable Planets, still rollin' deep with Puffy & the Family and all the jigginess that Bad Boy kept company with. Forgive me. I never really followed gangsta rap back then and I was ignorant to the intellectual options of non-confrontational lyricism that Hip Hop offered at the time. I remember changing the channel from Rap City when the video for Black Star's Definition came on because, I mean,  I was super shallow and I thought Mos and Talib Kweli were really odd looking.

Eventually I was sold on him. When I first started hunting for vinyl, his name for some reason shot to the top my list. I was upstairs at Foosh looking for Black on Both Sides, but it was already four years after its initial release. Instead I left with a Rawkus re-issue that had Universal Magnetic and If You Can Huh... on the flip. Rob said something to the effect of, "Oh I didn't even know we had this. I should probably pick one of these up." I didn't know him at the time, and it may have just been a good salesman's technique, but I left there happy to have copped what I did.

So, I went out after listening to the record and ended up finding the Black on Both Sides CD actually really easily at HMV or one of the now dead music stores. CD popped in deck. Play-button pressed. This is fucking great, was thought. Then...track four. "See I know..." It was familiar from hearing the hook in the clubs, but, like, y'know...getting drunk happens there, which makes for trying to find songs later on a difficult task. "...with some bangin' ass Asian playin' lay it down and lick me up. WHAT?!" HOOOOOLD UP. Back button pushed.  I need to know every single word he just said...

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Most people know this song for the amazing line "ass so fat that you can see it from the front." Easily the best lyric describing a big ol' butt and making this song worthy of its title. Obviously, Mr. Definitely never heeded the Poisonous warning of never trusting a big butt and a smile as he continues on to describe this bitch who'll eventually break his heart. His assumptions of her based on her appearance and how she carries herself turn out later in the song to be pretty spot on, so naturally, the lyric where he's completely wrong about her is the line that appealed to me most in this early encounter: Is sugar and spice the only thing that you made of? No. Sharice is a bitch. The answer to that question is no. The innocence that little girls are made of is no longer present in this terrible woman.

Lyrically, an hour later he finds this out as "sounds from Jamaica" are playing. I could NEVER figure out what he was saying at this point. There were no lyrics in the liner notes of the CD, and I could never put my ear close enough to the speaker to figure out what the fuck he was saying. That was until I finally saw the video when someone's handstyle popped up with the lyrics. I thought he was saying "some mans from Jamaica" (wrong, too many syllables) or maybe some slang I didn't understand. Geez. That was one of the most relieving moments of lyrical realization for me.

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I tried memorizing this song without ever looking up a transcription of the lyrics. I probably looked up more things he references than the actual lyrics. Is that dumb? I, for the sake of this blog, just looked up the lyrics and found out that the reason I never knew who Jane Kennedy is was because it's Jayne Kennedy. Turns out...a proper reference to a fine woman.

They finally make a connection and dance to Lovers Rock with her folded fingers on his waist. I knew of Sade, but looked up Lovers Rock after this and thought, Yo, wait. I know this is setting up the scene where you guys are whispering to each other on the dance-floor, but what the fuck kind club are y'all at that has a slow jam break? I've never been out when this has happened. I've heard of the idea of junior high dance theme nights and I think there's an R&B night that gets thrown once in a while around here, but I've never been around when slow jams were honestly being played for the floor. I once played out a Sade cover at like 8 P.M. and was told it was killing the vibe. There were like two people in the bar. I don't even understand playing jams like that in a spot with a dance floor.

They done been seeing each other for a bit and things all look great. More Sade is about to get played, this time it's Sweetest Taboo in the bedroom, where it's far more fitting. But maaan, she's playing him so hard! As she leads him to the bedroom, she's singing Gregory Isaacs. I was never and still am not very familiar with Gregory Isaacs, but the song is If I Don't Have You. She never quite finishes the lyric ("Iiiif I don't...if I don't..."), a testament to the genius writing of this song.  Get out, Mos! He's caught up, mesmerized by her sweet singing...and dat ass. She pulls him in to believe that she needs him oh so subtly, but nope. Damn, Sharice got game.

The road Mos walks is a tough one. And he knows just how many steps he took along the way: one step too close to this girl. That's what makes the sample used throughout, Aretha Franklin's One Step, brilliant. Aretha sings about needing to stay one step ahead of her love to avoid heartbreak. Mos doesn't get as far as she does and is that one step too close to getting fucked over. 

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This jam, man. "Simple and plain. Simple and plain," as the man himself would say. Basic human nature of being infatuated and being crushed. Sample, boom bap, raps about butts. While the answer to what my favourite song is will remain that that's an incomplete question, if you're persistent enough I'm going to default to Ms. Fat Booty.