Tuesday 19 December 2023

My Mind Spray 13

Someone told me I should have included Ice Spice's Deli in my 2023 songs list. I dislike that song for the same reason I disliked Pop Smoke's Welcome To The Party: it's the sound of a New Yorker reciting a buncha generic Instagram captions + luxury Eurotrash brands over a beat which deserved far better. Much like dying, there's 6 million ways a rapper can ruin a great beat.

JayQuan reckons Kurtis Blow's 1980 performance of Christmas Rappin' on Top Of The Pops was #actually live rather than lip-synced. If JQ is right then that means it's the first #actually live rap performance on television ever, predating Funky 4 + 1's appearance on Saturday Night Live by a year. See - the U.K really was an early adopter of rap music.

The most impressive trick Yams ever pulled was convincing us that the rappers in A$AP Mob were big Houston rap aficionados. It quickly transpired that Ferg was laughably clueless and I betcha the only Houston Rap Rocky has ever listened to is Paul Wall's verse on KanYe Pest's Drive Slow. So, it's a testament to Yams' creative vision that he managed to coax Trilla out of those vacuous hacks because that song legitimately sounds like a 2004 Swishahouse posse cut.

Occasionally Rap Genius does come in handy for skoolin' an ignorant Brit like me on 'Murican sports references in rap songs. Case in point: Shaq's "I did it for kicks like my position was Vinatieri's" line from Coyote's 3 Lokos. Expecting me to have a clue who Adam Vinatieri is would be like me expecting David Drake to have a clue who Alan Shearer is.

Whoever holds the rights to 45 King's vaults needs to release the explicit version of his 1997 EP with Lady Champain. Only ever releasing the clean version of it? Like the dearly-departed Maori man said: How Bizarre!

8 comments:

Smell Rell said...

R.i.p Yams

Spartan said...

Can relate to the fourth one; loads of American sporting references in rap go flying over my head.

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

Expecting us to know about niche sports like Baseball and the NFL.

Yohan said...

It took me an embarrasingly long time to figure out what Lacrosse is.

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

If you have to play it with a stick then it's not a real sport.

admiral said...

Gutted to hear that half of the Liks catalog doesn't hit the same across the pond

With the vintage Olde Gold gettin dusty in my cellar
I throw my shit deeper than Jeff Hostetler

Anonymous said...

nice one, steve backley's crying

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

Shout out to Fatima Whitbread tho.

Alkaholiks needed more lines about global sports like darts.