I remembered listening to a cassette version of The Queen Is Dead on my yellow Sony Walkman! I find Morrissey a little tiresome truth be told but he had some serious game and that album saw The Smiths at just about the peak of their powers.
The Smiths – The Queen is Dead
/RjK
“When it comes to rapping fast I’m the Higgs Boson…”
/RjK
This track, from Chicago rapper and actor Common, is taken from his excellent 2000 album Like Water for Chocolate.
It is an oldie but it has been on my mind for a while now. It came on my MP3 player while on shuffle and a couple of the lyrics really stuck with me. I liked them because they were profound, which is a rarity when it comes to rap. I like plenty of rhymes that are boisterous or funny but very few that are deep:
I start thinking, how many souls hip-hop has affected? How many dead folks this art resurrected? How many nations this culture connected?…
It also helps that the beat is amazing, with production from the legendary DJ Premier.
Common – Like Water for Chocolate:
/RjK
Ian Dury and The Blockheads* – Hit me with your rhythm stick | (Helen Chandler guest post)
Hit me with your rhythm stick / It’s nice to be a lunatic. What a great lyric. Every couplet in this song makes me smile. Not in a beaming ‘I’m so happy’ sort of way, but more in a wry ‘ah, very clever’ acknowledgement of Dury’s lyrical elasticity. Ian Dury was fantastically strange, clever and original.
This is taken from Kanye’s third album, Graduation. It has a very catchy hook but the main reason for me posting it is that it contains what might be my favourite hip hop lyric:
I’m like the fly Malcolm X, buy any jeans necessary…
Which is high praise considering how rich a genre it is for vibrant language. It works on several levels. Also, an enjoyable video here.
RjK