Since every rap blog is obligated to make a tribute post every time a rapper dies, here's ours for the recently departed Apache of Gangsta Bitch and Flavor Unit fame.
Weird to see a non Texas rapper die of blood sugar related weight problems, and kinda ironic that a rapper who made this song should die a bedridden obese walrus, but life can be cruel like that :
Apache - Get Ya Weight Up
Still, at least it wasn't Lakim Shabazz or Chill Rob G, eh? Flavor Unit 4eva.
Lakim Shabazz - Black Is Back
Chill Rob G - Let Me Show You remix
the original of let me see it or the remix you posted?
ReplyDeleteremix for me
Like the remix, but the o.g is the best song he ever did.
ReplyDeleteI was pissed off that the 12" of the remix didn't have a nice fat pressing of the o.g with the instrumental.
I have to say that I distinctly dislike Fort Apache, although it has about 20-odd beautiful moments. Wayne still hasn't made the leap to great screen actor and there isn't even much of a great screen presence (as he is in Stagecoach), nor does he have much of a role to play, he just stands there in silent disapproval, Fonda's a little miscast as the Custer stand-in - he gets the stodginess, of course, but he's just too rectitudinous of a guy, the photography is a little too pretty and sharp - more Monument Valley as shot by Ansel Adams than the daguerrotype look of Stagecoach, the wheels in the screenwriters' heads turn a little too obviously and programmatically, and while all the cavalry custom stuff is beautiful in its way, it doesn't really work alongside the Custer plot, which gets overshadowed and downplayed because Ford's always stepping away from the main plot to have a 15-minute scene about men learning to ride horses. And the two don't really have much to do with each other or inform each other. Lastly, the ending is overpraised. Yes, it's very good, but it's all anyone talks about when people talk about Fort Apache, to the point where critics act as if the whole film's this great exploration of truth and legend and useful fictions when all that is just shoehorned in a throwaway ending. It's certainly no Liberty Valance.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't go so far as to say I distinctly dislike F.A, but it's definately overrated and not a patch on TMWSLV.
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly no Red River or Rio Bravo, either. But then those are the best movies The Duke ever did and pretty much the 2 greatest American westerns.
Red River and Rio Bravo the two best Westerns? Red River, to me, is unusually Fordian for Hawks (it's said that Ford helped Hawks with the picture) and I guess I prefer the real thing. Especially since I always lose interest when Wayne leaves and the really Hawksian sex comedy stuff starts. Whereas Liberty Valance, I think, is just about a perfect film. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the dolly in to Vera Miles's face when Lee Marvin walks into her parents' restaurant, but other than that there's not a thing in that movie I think could have been done better. And The Searchers, while very much an imperfect film, has much grander ambitions than Red River and succeeds in making good on them more than it fails. Of course, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better shot in a Western than the 360 pan away from and back to Wayne just before they set off for Missouri. Or a more powerful image of castration, impotence, getting old, whatever you want to call it than when the gun is shot out of Wayne's hand. But unfortunately the movie does have a second half and not in my view a very good one.
ReplyDeleteYou know the way you feel about Dipset in their heyday? I have those same sort of feelings for Howard Hawks. I sort of subscribe to the auteurist theory (with limits, obv' - El Dorado and Rio Lobo are both fairly dire) and him casually imposing all of his, um, Hawksisms on genre movies is what i love about Red River and Rio Bravo or Scarface or The Big Heat or The Thing From Another World.
ReplyDeleteI suppose as far as Wayne's traditional westerns go, TMWSLV is pretty much unfuckwithable, though.
Yeah but the difference between Dipset in its heyday and Howard Hawks is that they didn't, like, attempt to remake The Infamous on Dipset terms. All their shit starts from a Dipset base, they don't go colonizing other perfectly good genres and then add their little incongruous Dipset touch. Okay, that's not true, 'Daydreamin' is a case of Dipset colonizing the lame R&B hook gangsta in love song, but that works because the genre always sucked to begin with so the colonization is welcome. Whereas Red River is this really fantastic dark brooding Western and then all of a sudden Hawks is like, let's go His Girl Friday with it. (Even Russell Harlan's fantastic outdoor photography dries up when it turns into people having conversations about nothing in tents.) Except with no Cary Grant and Joanne Dru just jabbering about nothing. Which Angie Dickinson does a ton of in Rio Bravo but that works because of the comic contrast between her jabbering and Wayne standing there being like, what the fuck is you saying and falling in love with her at the same time. And Thing From Another World I just hate, yet another of his Men Working Together To Do Stuff pictures. Except not a single one of them has a personality or a back story, they're just all running around looking for generators and power lines to light the Thing up with. The girl whose name I forget is great in it though. And yeah, The Big Sleep is a fine movie.
ReplyDeleteI 'unno, I think you could make a pretty strong case for Diplomatic Immunity being them remaking The War Report from a Harlem perspective.
ReplyDeleteYou sort of have a point about The Thing From Another World, but that's why it works for me : generic strong jawed everymen (and Margaret Sheridan) uniting in extreme conditions against a mostly unseen enemy and getting the job done. Great use of shadows too.
Also, the token r&b hook thug in love album track/single genre was great up until 50 ruined it.