On Kendrick Lamar, and the eternal greatness of Hip Hop.

Watch this video. In its entirety. It may be the most honest, touching and beautiful musical moment of the century so far.

The young guy in the natty suit? That's Kendrick Lamar. Probably the best young rapper out there at the moment. The guys around him? That's basically everyone else who's ever been big in west coast Hip-Hop. The Game, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mos Def; they're all there.

They're passing him the torch. Publicly admitting that he's the new thing in their genre. At 3:50? That's Kendrick collapsing into tears, overwhelmed by this outpouring of love and support by his childhood heroes. Wouldn't you do the same, in his shoes?

If I'm honest, I haven't always been an open fan of Hip-Hop. As a kid, growing up in upper-middle class Toronto, I was ambivalent about it. Most of my peers were throwing themselves into it, eating up Eminem, Dr. Dre, 2Pac, all the big names of  the time.

I hung back. I didn't feel right about liking it somehow. Sure, I wanted to dance to it. Sure, these guys were fascinating. But it felt a bit like a party I hadn't been invited to. What right did I, a white kid who probably grew up as far from the projects as it's possible to be, have to like this music?

Maybe the problem was that I was listening too hard to the lyrics. I thought my peers who wore chains to school under their dress uniforms and changed them for baggy jeans and Lakers jerseys as soon as they got home were faintly ridiculous. Poseurs. What did they really know about anything 2pac was saying? How could they possibly relate to 50 Cent or Eminem? Rosedale and Forest Hill were light-years removed from Compton or 8 Mile. How phoney could you get?

In a word, I was worried about being like this guy.

This kind of sums it up, doesn't it? What more base hypocrisy can there be? How can you pretend to relate to this music when you wouldn't dare set foot in the neighborhoods it comes from.

But something became clear to me watching that last video with Kendrick. I don't really need to worry about it, because that's the way it's supposed to work. White kids are supposed to buy this music. By doing so they make black artists from impoverished and marginalized communities rich, famous and powerful on their own terms. That's part of the magic.


Hip Hop, in the end, is much more than just a genre of music. It's a community. A big, beautiful family, with a tremendously open heart and an incredible ability to look after its own.

As evinced in that first video. Can you imagine a bunch of aging rockers getting together and doing that for a young new band? A bunch of aging DJS? Country Singers? Hell no. Egos and agents and record labels would nix it before it ever happened, or worse, try to capitalize on it and fuck everything up.

But in Hip-Hop, people are loyal. They support each other. Each new young rapper to make it big is a win for everyone in the community. There's no bitterness, no backbiting, just support.

Take Dr. Dre, for example. Here are some songs he didn't write.

Still Dre? He produced the beat, sure, which is what makes the song. But did he write any of the lyrics? Nope. That was Jay-Z. Even Dre's bit.

This is just understood, is the funny thing. Nobody who knows anything about Hip-Hop would claim that Dre is any less of an artist for not writing his own raps. Far from it. His beats are universally recognized as being legendary. It may well be the highest honor in the game to be deemed worthy to rap on a Dre beat.

Forgot about Dre? Nope. This one's Eminem.

Once his artistic relationship with Snoop was over, he discovered Eminem. This is what he does. He picks the talented young rapper of the moment, launches them to stardom, and makes a hit single with them to keep himself in Lamborghinis for another few years.

Now it's Kendrick. He's the best new rapper in Compton. He comes to Dre's attention. Dre signs him. Kendrick writes his lyrics and joins a distinguished company. Dre gets a new commercial lease on life. Win-win. Totally without ego.

There's a coherence to the evolving saga that lends it a certain operatic grandeur. Every rapper is a character in the unfolding drama. They have a role to play, a niche to fill. One generation rises, has its moment, and then bows out gracefully to the next. The cast of characters is continually replenished, but ultimately there's room for everyone.

What the Game, Dre, Snoop, Mos, and everyone else on that LA stage understand intuitively is that Kendrick's success doesn't diminish theirs; far from it. Rather it fulfulls the promise they made all those years ago to kids in Compton, Inglewood, and every other disenfranchised neighborhood in America. That they could get out of the ghetto too. On their own terms. Not Whitey's.

And in that spirit, here's Kendrick's first big song. His breakout hit. Or maybe it's just the one that first got my attention. Either way, it's awesome, and I hope you like it as much as I do.

Ladies and gentlemen... HiiPower.

On Mayer Hawthorne and being pretentious.

Ok, so in my last post I may have been a simpering idiot.

Here's why.

I love this man, despite his completely negating my views by virtue of his existence. That's soul. Detroit soul. The essence of the charts for decades. What America first started partying to. What was I thinking? What computer has, in the end, that kind of soul? Not a one. He recorded that himself. And I, a pretentiously self-confessed electronic music junkie who thought the band was dead, couldn't stop dancing when I heard it.

Find the album. It will restore your faith in a lot of things.

But enough words. This is a music blog. My mistake here is that anyone gives a shit what I have to say. From now on, dear reader, if you're out there, I promise to give you music. Not stupid ramblings.

Why I'm Bored with the Band

I grew up on rock music. It was the touchstone of my adolescence. In my earphones were Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. Then eventually came Lennon and McCartney, the Stones, Traffic, Dylan. I remember exactly where I was when I first heard the Freewheelin' Bob Dylan on a borrowed CD player lying in bed at age sixteen. I felt as though a world was opening that I hadn't yet even guessed existed.

I learned the guitar, and can still play at an open mic night kind of standard. I lived and died with the great men of forty years ago. Eventually, after a few books, I could almost tell you which Beatle was in London on which day, which may have been a bit obsessive. But there was something about living and breathing and laughing with the living (mostly) legends of forty years ago, who had made music you could still get a bar dancing with today. I'll always remember where I was the first time I heard Revolver. Or, for that matter, Highway 61 revisited. Beaches and open sky and the sound of music that could still tear at the soul after all that had happened, and probably through all that will happen. In some ways, the golden years will always be the sixties and seventies.

Begrudgingly, I began to concede that good music existed that had been made post 1980. Gradually my ears began to open. I heard sounds that had been outside my repertoire of acceptable until very recently. Radiohead had released Kid A about four years ago.

It may just be that hindsight is 20/20, but the fact is I was stuck, musically. I was in a bit of a rut. New bands were coming along that I could dance to, and increasingly what I wanted to do was dance, not sit around on a floor or on a couch passively and attentively listening. And some, like Radiohead, were more interesting than I could explain. Because of the strangeness of what they were doing. The alien element.

Then Daft Punk happened, and to be honest, a musical era ended and another began. I was hypnotized. How had they done this? These were sounds that I hadn't suspected could be made. On some strange level, Hip Hop, which I had come to accept after a bout of childish resistance in the 90s when it was the done thing, had presaged it. It felt in the same ballpark somehow. As though it were somehow tweaking things in the same way.

I knew nothing of Detroit or sampling or the early turntablists. I just knew I was hearing something I'd never really heard the like of before. It was in the back of a mobile camper on the way to my cousin's wedding, playing computer games and listening to Harder Better Faster Stronger that I left the rock scene. I would have denied it long after, but something had irrevocably changed.

What I since know, and couldn't yet appreciate, was that the reason they were new sounds to me was just that. They were new sounds. Period. Nobody had made sound like this before.

It was a combination of things. It was partly the sound of one continent hitting another. Of kids in Paris or Berlin or London putting their own stamp on some of the music they were hearing from across the Atlantic. It was partly that somebody figured out there was an art to scratching two records. It was partly new and exciting drugs that were changing how people partied. And it reached its apotheosis when personal computers became cheap, portable, powerful and ubiquitous.

Robert Moog invented the synthesizer in 1964. It was a giant, boxy thing with a keyboard. Only the richest rock bands, and at that only the best, were even able to use them. A few weeks ago Google had one that was immediately downloaded to your browser when you logged onto Google. You may have seen it. It was their doodle. That's how much more powerful modern computers have become.

With more of your computer's power, programs exist that allow you to take all music that's been made before this point and chop it into its constituent elements. You can mix tracks. You can invent completely new sounds by twiddling the dials on your computer's synthesizer programs. And any musician, at least in some circles, who's worth their salt will have a lot more than just one.

The bottom line is, and here's the tragedy, that a lot of music made before this point is simply bunk. The computer is capable of producing all of those sounds pretty damn accurately. They've been made. In essence, the computer is the ultimate instrument. Whatever sound you can imagine, with a little time and patience, can be made with it.

This is not to say in any way that the music that has been made, and continues to be made, with guitars and drums is inferior. It remains, in some cases, incredible music. The remark is merely that it is a lifestyle choice. A pleasant anachronism. One is into rock these days in a way similar to the way that classical music fans, jazz fans, or even hip hop fans, to some extent, are into their respective genres. It's a choice. They define themselves in these idioms. It is not the dominant force. It's not what the kids are listening to.

The boundaries of music are being pushed out by a different set of people. They're not in the limelight. It should be clear I'm not talking about the LMFAO's or the Skrillex's of this world, and the anonymous party rock that dominates mainstream culture right now. Pop is still pop, and it springs eternal. It's become crass and jagged lately, but that's a failing of society. Not of the fact that marketing people have figured out what sells now. And what that is is electronic music.

Electronic music doesn't even really do justice to what we're talking about here, to be honest. The different genres of music that have developed that owe none of their music to conventional instruments are too numerous to be listed here. House has evolved from Disco, Dubstep and Drum and Bass from Reggae and Ska in Britain. God knows where Ambient came from. Electro, Techno, Tech House, Electroswing, Deep House, all have followings of their own as subgenres even within just one of those broad terms of description. And to the ear that's looking for it, they have an infinite subtlety of distinction. It's like wine. Superficially all the same. But you look for the flavours, and they're there.

It still has its roots in older music, don't get me wrong. Indeed, the real art form is in making something new from something old. From taking the music of the past and making it continually relevant. Continually present. Electroswing is probably the best example. By self-consciously choosing to base itself around the sounds of the twenties and thirties, it has created a mood that is all that was great about Weimar Berlin, with the power of contemporary production values.

I will continue to listen to rock and roll. Every so often the mood will descend to throw on Honky Tonk Woman and get down and dirty, or sit down with Abbey Road or Animals. Just as I make concessions to all great music. But the cutting edge? The down and dirty? The countercultural force? (Though Rolling Stone's recent cover may spell the death of that.) That's with electronic music now. And I don't think that's going to change anytime soon.

But hey, maybe like rock, swing, and jazz before it, maybe it's 'just a stupid fad.'

The Top Five Expat Musical Moments.

Everyone who leaves where they've been familiar, the people they've grown accustomed to, and the places they've been happy, and tries to strike out on their own in a new place will occasionally be overwhelmed with nostalgia for what they've left behind. That's just fact.

You've been there. It's a different age. You've been away. Maybe it was as far as the university town in the next state or province, maybe it was across continents. But a lot of us now, I think, have done some time somewhere that's not quite home.

Sometimes, though, the right song can conjure up what you've lost in a very tangible way. Sometimes that makes it okay, and sometimes it sets you off in a reverie you're not coming back from for a while. And sometimes a song just nails the experience so well you can't help but note it somewhere. A blog, say.

Here's a brief top five songs that, for me, make it feel like home. If you're there, celebrate it. It's a special place.

Five: Send me on my Way, by Rusted Root

First things first, lol at this video. Remember the nineties? When hippies were still around? Hell, I say that, for all I know they're still out there, dancing to the never ending drum circle that I can't help but picture these guys' lives being. But fuck it, they look like they're having fun. Party on dudes, party on.

But this one really is just nostalgia in four minutes. And I feel like that may be universal. Who out there does this song not conjure up memories of a simpler time for, when woolly mammoths had attachment issues and your birthday party was your biggest ensuing headache? Granted, it's the nineties I'm craving when I listen to this one, not a particular place, but it's also about craving a time that's irrevocably lost, and an innocence that will never be again.


Four: Who By Fire, by Leonard Cohen

OK, so I can't really deny that this is a personal one. But I don't care. This song is Canada to me. I don't quite know why. Perhaps it's just because Leonard Cohen is one of those strange guardians of the Canadian Soul that show up from time to time. There's a few about. Neil Young's probably one.

But I hear this and I think of paddling. Being alone in a canoe on a calm night, as the twilight creeps in, and there's nothing but you, the water, and a song. (Purists may scoff at bringing an Ipod in a canoe. To them I say, have you tried it? With the right playlist?)

And yes, it is based on the Yom Kippur prayer. That, my friends, is quaking before the Living God.


Three: London Still, by the Waifs

This lament for days gone by strikes a chord beyond its Aussie circumstances. It's the sort of comfortable nostalgia that you wake up with and carry with you as you go about the first few rituals of your day. You function, you walk around, you get yourself a coffee and linger over it a while. But you're miles away. With friends you've lost touch with, and who you hope someday to return to.

Two: Wagon Wheel, by Matt Andersen

This is the version of the song you should be thinking of when you see this. It's one of the single most affecting live performances I've ever seen. The spontaneous moment of joy that this guy creates is too powerful not to like. I didn't really follow up on this guy, but I didn't feel I needed to. I'll remember his name. He did that. Once.

This song, and admittedly I don't have a rock solid source for this, is apparently an old Dylan track that Old Crow Medicine Show reworked from a bootleg album, and when Dylan heard what they'd done he gave it to them. I hope that's true. It's the pedigree a song like this needs.

It's the universal longing of the road. The sense of heading home, but never quite getting back to what you once knew. Running from the cold, from bad debts, and from other women, but trying desperately to return, and loving the journey as you make it.

I ration this song. I'd hate for it to lose any of its potency.

One: California, by Joni Mitchell.

More a sly smile of recognition than a song. Something friendly, that you can return to whenever the mood descends. It'll be there when you get back. You may wander off, but this is a touchstone that isn't going to fade with time. It's the sound of killing time in the airport as you get ready to head home.

I'll never have anything less than love for Joni Mitchell. Other songstresses may steal my affections for whole years. Regina may be prettier. Feist may be fresher.  But I can't help but find myself returning from my dalliances to that first love.