So I Guess We Should Address It, Huh?

Somewhere in between moving my shit from my bedroom to scattered apartments, apartments to a dorm room forever away from home base, I went on cynical autopilot, which can probably be excused. What’s the point in keeping up with Wale when you—be careful with that turntable, guy, it’s the only core around which I’m able to currently orbit. I remember bitching to Clay in a cab in October how hip-hop had largely decomposed into something not just chintzy and stupid but fundamentally bland. I mean, I love MTV Jams too, but one can’t live on Fabo and Ace Hood alone.

The Saharan swath of post-millennial hip-hop, specifically the latter half of the decade, has felt meager, pocked by occasional oases but ultimately desolate. Some parochial assholes (who haven’t yet come around on Cold Vein, so fuck ‘em) retreated into the confines of drab boom bap, deluding themselves into thinking Sean P moved the excitement needle beyond a quarter chub. But a good number of us slogged through like Clippers fans, bags not over our heads but beneath our eyes from late nights mulling over Planet Asia’s discography trying to figure out if he didn’t suck. A rap nerd needs spiritual sustenance, and the Church of Weezy in all its immensity only served to highlight that nothing was near Wayne’s stratosphere, save a few spectacular 3 Stacks cameos.

So how did we get to this point where “Hohhhhvuhhhh!” sounded like gospel (Lil Wayne: “Chuch.”) again last Sunday and my hands were all clammy while refreshing Tip’s Twitter for, like, two days straight waiting for his next cataclysm? When did I start caring about Q-Tip again? It’s dizzying, so let me retrace for a moment to assert what the hyperbole tells us is true. 2008 gave us Badu’s opulence, Black Milk’s great leap forward, and Invincible’s emergence, among a slew of other happenings. Chet, Clay, Mark, et al. have chronicled this stuff already, so, if you’ve forgotten or haven’t heard this stuff, acquaint yourself and come back. I’ll gladly wait. If you can, snap a photograph of your facial reaction when “Give The Drummer Sum” comes on.

Thoroughly enthused? As you should be, but the terrifying great thing is this rap shit seems to be growing more fascinating by the day. Check it.

Brewing in the bowels of the internet has been a legitimately gripping spat between two perpetually-shelved MCs: Joe Budden and Saigon. Perhaps it’s become more engrossing than most Youtube bullshit because the situation is akin to watching a kid with a stutter and another one burdened by headgear beat the shit out of each other in the schoolyard—there’s an ineffable anger that comes with an inferiority complex, caused here by never seeing major label success. Sai supposedly provoked Budden, but who really knows (or cares), prompting Joe to record the marginally insulting “Letter to Saigon,” which incited the meh “Underachiever.” And I cracked a few jokes like “what’re they going to argue about next, whose album isn’t coming out first?” Then things got infinitely more interesting. “Pain in His Life,” Budden’s second round jab, was actually pretty great, Joe flowing deftly over a fluttering burner of a beat, “I been in his shoes / I just took ‘em off.” Then Sai proceeded, completely unperturbed, to drop “Pushing Buddens.” Quoth Clay: “Look at Saigon just fucking clowning Joe Budden.” Indeed: “You making homo jokes / Hardy har har / But it’s your son playing with Barbie dolls, pa / Joey, you better buy him a basketball / ‘Fore you catch the little nigga suckin’ dick in the bathroom stall.” Misogyny aside, that’s outlandishly demeaning (read: great, and: gross). Then Sai, sneering like a Thorton brother, boasts monosyllabically, “Done.”

Legitimate beef probably died, arguably with Biggie and Pac, but definitely after Curtis made it a marketing strategy, shouting down at every relatively relevant rapper before his release dates with the Iovine machine following suit and fabricating rifts in a vain attempt to generate buzz around questionably talented weed carriers-turned-spitters. This is all the sort of stuff that probably pricks up the ears of Nah Right frequenters but ultimately doesn’t have much resonance, and in comparison to the other mega-events detailed here it might feel insignificant. Still, hip-hop is, moreso than any other form of music, a sport; compelling competition is what it is regardless of platform. And though it seems the battle is petering out between Saigon and Budden—conflicting reports claiming one or the other squashed it (getting accurate reports on rap beefs is like trying to get reliable Soviet intelligence in 1961)—there was something admirable at the core of this. The format, each rapper releasing their punches in succession on alternating days, seemed almost quaint, and, more urgently, it yielded two diss tracks actually worthy of our attention. Which hasn’t occurred in ever.

From the asshole of the Okayplayer boards to, um, a lavish bowling alley, Katie Couric (Ms. Katie) interviewed a disarmingly sincere Lil Wayne two Tuesdays ago, the implications of which I’ve still only processed about 31%. It was Tha Carter III of Weezy interviews, bizarre but somehow so inexpressibly right. It’s funny that Couric would take the time to frame the interview with b-roll from concerts and explication regarding Wayne’s record sales when she could’ve elected to just roll “A Milli” and everyone would have felt considerably more well-acquainted: no one can canonize Wayne like Wayne, who bounced erratically between somber, incensed, and giddy.

No portion better exemplified this, um, self-understanding than when he explained his moniker (Wayne as opposed to Dwayne), straining at “[my father]’s not in my life. And he’s never been in my life… so I’d rather be Wayne” and, upon being asked if his father knew his line of reasoning, looking into the camera and grinning, slyly but with contempt, “He knows now.” Or this part:

Katie Couric: “How do you remember [your lyrics if you don’t write them down]?

Lil Wayne: “That’s the best part about it. Everybody asks me that. I always tell them: it’s because I really am It.”

Capital “I” because he definitely intended it that way. The colossalness of Weezy is stupid to toy with at this juncture, and chronicling this interview might feel excessive, but when he stops being the most engaging human being in music I’ll stop racking my thesaurus for words with which he’s already slapboxed in his hallucinatory existence. The man, as further affirmed by this awkward exchange, lives his life swimming through his own self-fashioned reality, peeling through the squishy folds of his brain with alacrity while we stare the clock at work wondering what would be a suitable time for a Starbucks run. He’d be an iconoclast were everything he said not fundamentally true within the confines of his universe, which incidentally has no confines, simply because fathomability isn’t his steez. So, sorry, I’m going to gawk at every time he slices his ink-drenched skin to reveal his composition. You think you/we/I/your imaginary friend is infatuated with Lil Wayne? Quoth the man: “You ain’t got nothin’ on me.” Fucking incredible.

Wayne was a major component in the spectacle of “Swagger Like Us,” and then so was MIA, bursting and doing an admirable-times-a-hundred-thousand-trillion job accompanying the rap royalty of last year’s monumental posse cut. On a vast stage, it truly felt like the event it deserved to be: four icons letting their egos run into an oil tanker-sized pool of indulgence. And fun, too. See Tip asthma attacking Kanye, the group huddle around Hov, and Weezy lending MIA his chapeau. Even the live band (it’s okay to just have a DJ and a beat, Grammys) couldn’t distract from the enormity of the silence that pervaded Wayne’s “Chuch!” On a night when Robert fucking Plant won album of the year, it still felt like rap was rightfully proud.

Which brings me to the Tuesday night following the Grammys as I’m watching TI (who incidentally has the best verse on that track) and his inexplicably enjoyable MTV production, Road to Redemption. Yeah, it’s righteous and a bit sappy, but who knew TI was this engaging? He hinted at this sort of humanity on “No Matter What” before cleaving himself into his schizophrenically smooth personas yet again on Paper Trail and it’s not like MTV producers aren’t asking the questions Tip wants to be asked, framing his introspection in a pleasant light, but when he recounts the story of why he was apprehended for buying guns in a parking lot (I won’t spoil it. It’s quite the yarn), concluding it incredulously, “Was it right? No. Did it make sense at the time? Absolutely,” you’ll probably hear a slight shifting noise. That’s the sound of your ass sliding forward in its seat.

As a PR move, it’s shrewd. The show depicts Daddy Tip caring for his six(!) kids lovingly and the whole premise of the show is TI’s intervention in the lives of wayward youths as part of his community service in an attempt to get his sentence reduced. Which isn’t to say it’s disingenuous. Tip comes off as a contrite realist, and it seems he genuinely wants to atone for his wrongdoings. When he takes a young hustler to a mortuary to see a dead drug dealer, he tilts the kid’s head up, imploring him to look at his possible future. It’s startling stuff and the young’n is obviously scared, but Tip’s glassy-eyed adamancy is telling. He seems disquietingly wise, which makes you wonder how he’s been rather knuckleheaded at certain vulnerable points of his life and then what kind of cognitive dissonance he possesses. That question serves as enough incentive to follow his diatribes and exploits further.

Oh, and that new Wu track is hot, but isn’t it nice that Raekwon’s impossible follow-up isn’t saddled with the additional weight of trying to “save hip-hop?” If the Chef rolls out some impeccable coke rap odyssey, we’ll applaud and exalt a dope record instead of a fleeting sign of life from some sickly genre. ‘Cause Invincible’s already shocked that bitch with the paddles and she’s currently taunting Common while sending flirty Facebook messages to Danny!

And don’t it feel good? On the initial track of Jay-Z’s artistic rebirth, he iterates, “You will respect me, simple as that,” and we do this because his tone commands us to listen and comply. The hand-of-God strength that forces that line into our immediate reality doesn’t come from his bank account, his success, his sexual pursuits, or his business savvy—sure those are ego-boosters—but from pure self-affirmation, like he could have spoken those words from the basement of a homeless shelter without a dollar in his pocket. I am important. I have something to say. Andre’s made the second half of that statement more explicitly (almost verbatim, affirming his region along with himself) and countless other artists have implied as much. It’s as if we’ve been starved: for a time, let’s hope it’s not fleeting, we’re bombarded by a slew of competing dialogues, all of which compose a vivacious scene of which we’re reaping the benefits. Yes, even Kanye’s incessant yapping is integral. After all, if he’s not around, who’s Freeway going to punch out at the 2011 Grammys?