Good Ass Blog

SHREDDING!!! #5

Lightnin’ Hopkins

My man’s take on Green Onions makes everyone else’s idea of “cool” look lame by comparison. I promise this is the last vid I’ll be stealing from A.V. Club writer Christopher Bahn’s Great Vintage Blues for this segment.

The Ambulance Chasers #1

Maury Levy

Unsung Source Material #1

This photo, from the November 1978 issue of National Geographic, was recreated in an oil painting by Susan Pileggi, mother of author Nicholas Pileggi, who penned Goodfellas and it’s sourced material, Wiseguy. The painting shows up in Goodfellas when the action (re: near-fatal kicking session set to Donovan) breaks for a late night snack with the boys and Tommy’s sweet, old, willfully oblivious ma, who paints in her spare time (played by director Martin Scorsese’s mother, Cathrine, in a mostly improvised scene).

By the way have you heard they’re working on a Goodfellas TV show for AMC? Is that allowed?

Today on Shuffle #3: BET Throwback Edition

When I was in middle school I was a little weird fat kid with few friends and way too much TV time. One of my favorite blocks of loud ignorant noise for young people was Rap City followed by 106 and Park on BET (I think there might have been an hour in the middle where I watched The Simpsons, or DBZ, I don’t know, I’ve watched too much television). You got all the new hard shit on Rap City, then on 106 you watched the same ‘ol radio rap from the past few months in countdown format. 106 was the black TRL, a modern Soul Train to rival the modern American Band Stand. Rap City was the second coming of Yo! MTV Raps, it’s set, “The Basement”, was a magical place of trillness, and you had to freestyle, no matter who you were. Here’s a few of my slightly less overplayed favorites from the Big Tigger era. It’s really Timbaland heavy, but everyone loves fresh baked nostalgia right?

The Knoc- Knoc-turn’al

Knoc-turn’al was a Dr. Dre ghostwriter with decent hype-man abilities and too much punctuation in his name, but he managed to get Dre to produce a single with Missy Elliot on the hook before everyone forgot about him. Despite his actual flow being westcoast mediocrity defined, I still really like this one. Missy does that weird ODB/Busta/James Brown/Jeezy/Muddy Waters raspy-moany thing that I’m always cool with, she may have saved this track. As Dre’s beats go this may be among his the most underrated, not his most innovative but it’s infectious, still in my head to this day, it made concertinas gansta.

Snoop Dogg (What’s My Name Pt. 2)- Snoop Dogg

A fitting sequel to a genre defining G-funk track. That Knoc video was kind of like Snoop’s for “What’s My Name Pt. 2”, except Knock-tun’al had duplicates of himself in a diner. Snoop put duplicates of himself in a roller-disco, that’s also a Chuck Taylor, that belongs to a giant Snoop Dogg duplicate. It’s so fantastical, I’m in greasy spoons all the time, I’ve never even been to a roller-disco, let alone one shaped like a shoe. I couldn’t roller skate to save my life. While you were I out learning to roller skate, I was at home, watching Snoop do it on TV.

Big Head/Jade’s A Champ- Ms. Jade

That Snoop track also had a pretty sweet Timbaland beat so now’s as good a time as any to go off on my Timbaland tangent. I’ll start with Ms. Jade, who again, is not a great rapper, but they were really going for something weird here, it’s like runoff from “Get Ur Freak On”. The Devo energy domes, the kooky special effects, the phoned in cameos, it all very much appealed to me in those days. However, when this premiered on 106, they had a little powwow with the crowd to gauge their opinion, a staple on those kinds of shows, and nobody liked it, they all seemed to prefer the little snippet of “Jade’s A Champ” that played at the end of the vid (it starts at 3:08, they used to do this all the time). These days I side with those kids, but enough about a permanent guest rapper’s middling album from 2002. Moving on.

Raise Up- Petey Pablo

Ah, here’s something you can genuinely appreciate. Petey Pablo will never be mistaken for an all time great, but when I first heard this on Rap City, I knew it was gonna blow up and catch on at 106, he’s great here, this was obviously some shit he had to get off his chest. And Timbaland does some of his finest work ever, the sample is from Hossam Ramzy, an Egyptian world music composer, the kinds of guys that don’t seem to write songs under five minutes long. Hell, the clip used in Raise Up comes in five and a half minutes in. Where does he find this stuff?

We Need A Resolution- Aaliyah

Here’s another, the sample from this one is out of the score for “Incognito”, a low budget 90s thriller. Again, I’m stunned, I wonder if he heard it in the movie or if he actually sat down and listened to the soundtrack? And Aaliyah, hanging out with giant snakes and, sitting in space chairs, wearing Queen Amidala makeup. Otherworldly, but completely in her element. This is a goddamn music video. This is why everyone still misses her.

My Projects- Coo Coo Cal

Okay, so this one is Timbaland free, I picked it because it’s a turf song like “Raise Up”. This is the first and last anyone ever heard of Coo Coo Cal, but it’s a strong, hood ass single, with some trunk rattling production work from a low level dude called Bigg Hank and some better than average trap lyrics from Cal (Allmusic says his co-writer was avant-garde jazz composer Henry Cook, I think this possibly a case of mistaken identity, but I pray that it isn’t, because that’s nuts). Also, I always like to see video hoes in exciting new places like the laundromat.

My Block- Scarface

I’ll end things here with another turf song. This is a late period masterpiece from Scarface, here he rides a piano sample from Roberta Flak’s “Be Real Black For Me” (ala MOP), this is one of them real classy joints. Scarface reminisces about simpler times when the world, for him, hardly went past the sidewalk outside of his house. This is one of my all time favorite music videos as well. A single shot moving through a hood, Scarface’s life, and the recent history of black America. Real black, it is. Shit, I’m homesick.