Sunday, March 12, 2006

Relating Posts - Spoken Word on HipHop

One: I mentioned the True Lies video on GNN two posts ago. The excellent spoken word artist bringing this statement is Taalam Acey.

Two: With Jay Dee's tragic death, the hiphop thing lost one of its good guys. Moreover, rap is an extraordinarily self-referential artform and hiphop is constantly redefining. Again and again the question is (and has to be) asked "where is hiphop going?".

Three: A couple of weeks ago we went to visit Dave Chappelle's Block Party, and we noticed that the Dead Prez were somehow exposed in that movie. To me, they are not on a par with artists like Mos Def and Common, and I wish I would've seen more entertaining Mos Def and less Dead Prez. Anyhow, they were good for a change, and the movie was a blast.

Bringing it all together: Dead Prez have one very good LP called Let's Get Free (2000) with the single It's Bigger Than Hip Hop. Taalam Acey now took the pumping beat from that single in order to make a critical review of the hiphop situation (before Dilla's death, though): Check out When the Smoke Clearz from 2002.

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