To start off, I noticed that Eminem is back. He has a new album entitled Relapse. As someone who was very much into the Eminem scene back in high school, and even through early college, I was curious to see how he had evolved, if at all...
If nothing else, the song is a sophomoric (SAT verbal study-guide word!), overly-emotional tour de Marshal Mathers, showing more symptoms of depression than symptoms of empathy and maturity. And then I remembered my high school experience, and realized this is exactly why I used to like Eminem. It's like David Wooderson said in Dazed and Confused, "That's what I like about Eminem, man. I keep getting older, but he stays the saaaaaame age."
I also saw Rick Ross' new music video. It inspired me to write an onion-like article entitled "Hip-hop Artist Makes Reference to Scarface". And then my second Coors Light washed that motivation away.
And while I realize that writing original music is time-consuming and difficult, hip-hop has taken music borrowing ("sampling") to a whole new level. Of the four songs that I watched on MTVJams, two of them sampled Steam - Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye. TWO!! out of FOUR!! I think that the producers are digging pretty damn deep into the old hit-lists.
I will post the video for one of the songs that uses the Steam song below. Because it is Jay-Z. And this is only included because I want to illustrate how to respectfully and appropriately cover a chorus, so take notes. This video represents that genre of music that I really respect and appreciate, but don't listen to nearly enough; a thoughtful and purposeful vehicle of talent, ideas and emotion. I am suddenly ashamed at the number of T-Pain songs near the top of my iTunes most-played list.
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