LET’S TALK ABOUT TALK ABOUT IT’S 10TH ANNIVERSARY!

 

December 2018 marks 10 years since the release of M.I’s debut album and by far, his best and most important piece of work, Talk About It. They say you should give people flowers while they can still smell it. So despite how I may have felt about his successive work, for a moment in time M.I was where he was suppose to be: at the top. This isn’t a famzing letter, although I am a fan… but as a fan, it also affords me the right to be a critic and I have been a down right critic of the man over time. This (dedication) letter will not cover his recent album, Yung Denzel.

Anyway like I said, for a moment in time M.I held the torch, took it higher than you never thought it could get. There’d never been a rapper who dropped an album that seemed so uncompromising as his debut, till he showed up. Prior to his entrance, most rappers in Nigeria tended to bend towards a certain part of the market to gain more followership and airplay. M.I seemed to play it straight (and oh yes, let’s not kid ourselves, there were comprises on his debut, just not enough to drown out the man’s authenticity).

His first single, Crowd Mentality got him his first batch of fans. I was one of them. Critically, it was a success. Commercially? Not so much. Everyone knew he could rap, but so could so many people in Nigeria. The question was could he appeal? That answer came with the second single, Safe, a song where he basically built lyrics around the cadences and lyrics of popular Nigerian musicians at the time. It was a tried and tested music troupe. Take something well-known and flip it. It was akin to 50 Cent robbing all your favourite artists while using their lyrics to do so on How To Rob.

The album was a first of many (I’m not going to discuss how many copies it purportedly sold in its first week, since we don’t have a Sound Scan like chart and we all know the purported amount is hearsay; more likely from the label as a form of packaging. I can’t filter myself, despite knowing a few Chocolate City people and associates). It was the first formal album to introduce us to Wizkid (Wizkid that is now flexing on us with his new acquired accent, lol. Joke!). It was really the first album to put Chocolate City on the national map. Yes, we up North were aware of their early successes with Jeremiah Gyang as well as a stint working with Asa, but the industry in Lagos was not exactly looking up North to Chocolate City till this dropped (much respect to Jeremiah Gyang and D’jinee, that MUST be mentioned. We still respect the forerunners!).

It was the first album to feature the then whole roster of the label or just the people heavily associated with it (D’jinee, Jesse Jagz, Ice Prince), because not everyone was technically signed then (and that’s how much I know about this label). The exclusion of Jeremiah Gyang, possibly had to do with his issues concerning the label, but I’m not here to pour sand in anyone’s garri. It’s a celebration!

So here’s to M.I. Don’t ever say we never gave you your flowers, before we get another rant about how people can’t tell you what they feel about your music, lol.

 
P.S. We’re going to talk about what happened after this album one day, but for now, here’s a toast to Mister Incredible.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 REVIEW

*Taken from my My Movies & TV Blog.

I think in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, James Gunn has written a very poignant movie; a tale of fatherhood (and by extension, parenting in general) and what it means to be a family. Warning: very, VERY minor spoilers ahead!

The first thing to note about Gunn’s second outing with the Guardians is how it is so much about friends becoming family, in this case Star-lord and his band of brothers and one ‘sister’ have gone from a rag-tag team of bandits to essentially a family unit. Matter of fact, in one poignant scene Gamora reminds Peter that she thought he already found a family in the Guardians.

Peter a.k.a Star-lord finally finds his biological father, very early in the movie, which I thought was surprising, but turns out plays to the movie’s strength. Peter is excited as is any child when meeting a long lost father. He’s also apprehensive at the same time for obvious reasons. When Peter’s father turns out to not be what he expected, the movie teaches us its first lesson: sometimes the people who are family are nothing like us and at worst, people we would rather not become or be with for whatever reason and sure enough, Peter finds a very strong reason to abandon the father he’s being looking for for so long. It’s at one time tragic, but at the same time a moment of relief for anyone who’s been bugged down by their own family. This moment resonated with me a lot!

The other Guardians meanwhile struggle with their emotions for each other as well, including a few outsiders. Gamora is forced to deal with her adoptive sister, Nebula’s emotions as we see a crack in the latter’s armour and Drax begins to slowly move away from the loss of his family, not through revenge as he did the in the first movie, but this time through affection for a newcomer. Rocket is beginning to understand and accept that he is as broken as the rest of them. The only one not dealing with any kind of emotional turmoil is Baby Groot, who has child-like issues to deal with.

And amidst all these emotions, comes the movie’s second lesson, one I ultimately believe in more than anything when it comes to family: that family is actually the people you choose more so than those who you’re related to by blood. As Peter faces up to his biological father and the latter’s shortcomings, he realizes that Yondu, the man who ‘kidnapped’ him as a child with all his own shortcomings was more a father to him than his biological. We also find out why Yondu kidnapped young Peter in the first place and why he never delivered him to the individual who paid for him. It’s a very heart-wrenching story with a climatic, yet somber ending.

James Gunn has managed to tell a great family drama through, of all things, a Marvel space movie featuring a family of assassins and space thieves that includes a talking raccoon and a precocious growing tree. Well done, sir! Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is definitely worth the watch and worth its replay value. Can’t wait to see it again! I. AM. GROOT!

P.S. The first James Gunn movie I saw was Slither. Absolutely hilarious!

WHY JAY-Z’S THE BLUEPRINT 2: THE GIFT & THE CURSE IS AN INTERESTING TIME CAPSULE OF RAP MUSIC (& PERHAPS THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AT LARGE)

With rumours of a new Jay-Z album dropping, let's rewind for a bit, shall we? Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse dropped in 2002, a few months after I graduated from high school, secondary school for all you Nigerians, who like to remind the world we call it secondary school here. It’s an interesting album, least of which because it was Jay’s first (and thankfully only) double disc, an idea we’ve learnt over time isn’t as easy to pull off in this genre just like the concept album, something Jay would try his hand at later with American Gangster, but let’s not debate that here (I liked American Gangster, even if some of you accuse it of being a rehash of Reasonable Doubt; Jay has been rehashing his drug past for much of his career anyway. Why complain then?!). Suffice to say, the double-disc is hard to pull off with only two hip-hop acts successfully pulling it off with the least amount of criticism: 2pac for All Eyez On Me & Outkast for The Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (the latter of which you can argue was two solo albums sold together, but that’s neither here nor there).

Blueprint 2 was also the album Jay dropped after the widely successful The Blueprint, which saw him square off against his New York rival and fellow heavyweight- though was thought to be falling off at the time -Nas (and lose, even though some of you claim Jay had the better diss record with The Takeover… ha, I laugh at that! I admit, The Takeover was well produced and the verses well structured, but let’s leave it there). The Blueprint was also a musically produced success with the sped-up soul sample of both Kanye West and Just Blaze (or was it just mostly Kanye who used that technique?!), so you could understand why the pedestal for Blueprint 2 was extremely high! But sequels are hard to pull off (ask anyone who’s tried to make a part two to their famous album) and The Blueprint 2 fell short.

It did so, not because it had bad songs, it did so because it had so much dead weight! Had the album just been Disc 1, aptly titled The Gift, it would’ve been far better (with a couple of additions from Disc 2) and more lauded. The second disc was the problem, the mostly dead weight. For the life of me, I generally can’t remember much of Disc 2, aptly titled The Curse, because it never really stuck. Blame my then age or blame me for being from a different part of the world, whatever, it never really stuck!

Critics (and fans) generally weren’t too receptive of the album, though some did hail it, let’s not lie! Personally, I think Jay’s raps were superb as far as Disc 1 and the production overall- again, mostly Disc 1-was overall great, maybe because it was the pop-oriented side of the album. I do have a soft spot for Guns And Roses from The Curse, just for the novelty of the record and the production on Some People Hate is highly underrated as the whole song might be as a matter of fact. Also, the U Don’t Know remix featuring M.O.P could’ve also created a great balance if it was thrown on Disc 1.

However, this post isn’t necessarily a review of the album (but you can read more of what I think of Disc 2 way down below*) as it is a look into the time in which it was released. Music was still being shipped physically and we were at the cusp of the digital revolution with Sean Parker’s ‘menacing’ music-sharing site, Napster (what a damn near sinister name) about to damn near shred the standard industry model to pieces by allowing users share music for free without paying for it. Something so many of us do freely now, without considering it was once a huge deal. For your music to be pirated back in the day, someone had to get a physical copy of it, soon it was just going to be transmitted through the all-powerful internet. Those early music-sharers were the first trolls of the music industry in the 21^st century… and some of us are descended from them.

Blueprint 2 was also an interesting album, considering the lives and careers of those who were on it at the time. It was the beginning of the era of the super-producer and The Neptunes and Timbaland were at the forefront of it. Both had first made their names producing for R&B acts (Kelis & Aaliyah respectively), before making the jump to other genres. In the immediate years to follow, their sound would be all over the musical landscape from Jay-Z to Justin Timberlake, from Usher to Madonna, from Urban to Pop radio and every genre in between, at times overshadowing the lesser known artists they would work with.

This perhaps might have set a precedent for other urban producers to follow suit with Just Blaze working with Usher on his multi-platinum selling, Confessions in 2004 to D.J Premier remixing Madonna’s Don’t Tell Me (a record he won’t release till years after he did it; the original record by the way was released in 2000) to eventually working with Christina Aguilera on her third album.

The artists featured tell their own stories too. Rap legend, Rakim and then new songstress Truth Hurts were featured on The Watcher 2, produced by Dr. Dre. Both were label mates at a time when we thought the Dr. Dre-led Aftermath would be a full-fledged label beyond just having Eminem as its main cash cow. Well, that expectation didn’t last long as Rakim soon left the label and we never heard from Truth Hurts after her album had legal issues over the sampling on her one hit, Addictive, which also featured Rakim.

Twista who appears on Popping Tags had just begun recording the best album of his career (Kamikaze), which would be led by singles produced by Kanye West. Kanye himself would make an uncredited appearance on the bouncy Timbaland-produced, Bounce. I remember hearing his verse and wondering who is this guy?! A month prior to the release of the Blueprint 2, Kanye was involved in his now famous accident that would inspire his breakout single, Through The Wire in 2003. (I had no idea it was Kanye on the Never Change hook from the first Blueprint till I was writing this.)

Outkast’s Big Boi also brought his protégé Killer Mike who was just making it onto the scene after being featured on group’s The Whole World (what a single). The two appeared on Popping Tags. Outkast themselves were riding on a high after dropping Stankonia, a couple of years back. That album introduced them to a worldwide audience who fell in love with Ms. Jackson, ooooo!

Also recently signed to Roc-A-Fella, were M.O.P. Anyone remember that?! I do. They had just made a scene globally with Ante Up (“What you want now? What you want now?”) and Cold As Ice. *Sighs*, good times!

Blueprint 2 was also the first collaboration between the future Mr. and Mrs. Carter. It was also clear that Beyonce was on the verge of a solo career as she was already becoming front and center of her group, Destiny’s Child, who in 2002 were on a hiatus. HA! If only they knew.

Musically at that period, Dancehall was the alternative urban music of the era, so the inclusion of Sean Paul on What They Gone Do was not surprising. Like I said, this post isn’t so much a review of Jay-Z’s Blueprint 2, but rather a time capsule into a particular time in music. Certainly, the album may go down in history as one of Jay’s more muddled-up work with one Complex review referring to it as an “anticlimactic sequel to a landmark album”, but it’s an interesting look into time.

* Lyrically Meet The Parents is poignant, musically, it comes off well produced, but overall to me it just sounds boring and comes off like one of those records that could’ve been thrown on the soundtrack to one of those DMX movies of that era that featured X and a different martial artist. Some How Some Way also produced by Just Blaze makes up for it and should’ve been thrown on The Gift. There’s something about hearing Scarface that almost makes any record better. Some How Some Way is a great successor to This Can’t Be Life from The Dynasty album.