The blog of Michael K.
(which I suppose is a lot better than the first post title that came to mind - "4 All My N****z in New Canaan")
Courtesy the Pitchfork Top 50 Re-issues list....
I need this album. Badly.
The Third Unheard: Connecticut Hip Hop 1979-1983
"Mr. Magic, who built the Southern Connecticut hip-hop scene on his own after hearing Kurtis Blow's "Christmas Rappin'", spends nine minutes defending the rap abilities of the Constitution State, concluding with an ode to loyalty: a roll call of Connecticut towns. Magic's point is that the Connecticut scene could step to anything coming out of NYC, and while that may not have been completely true, CT did produce a worthwhile crop."
"It's reasonable to assume, then, that Mr. Magic's scene was extremely committed to itself, yet still reaped the benefits of New York's close proximity-- it was an insular scene, but not devoid of influences."
Recently I've been trying to hash out, in my own mind and in prose, the mix of geographic, social, economic, ethnic and cultural particularities that make this place that I grew up in, that I come back to, this tiny, rocky (geologically, mentally), oft-discounted region that I cannot quite escape being colored by - southern Connecticut - unlike any other place I've been to or know of. I can't help it, this is just what I do. It's a project to uncover a parallel to something like the idea of a "Polish mentality" - call it the "Connecticut mentality". That reviewer's remark may indeed describe the CT hip hop scene of the early 80s - but it is more insightful than he knows. Proximity to NYC, and a barrier of comfortable, sturdy provinciality riddled by well-chosen influences are just a couple of the many aspects of Connecticutness, as I see it.
So that's the historical stuff; obviously, though, the tracks here are fun as hell. Mr. Magic's introduction is followed by two tracks from Magic's 12-year-old nephew Pookey Blow: one of them, "Get Up (And Go to School)" samples the heavy auxiliary percussion and sparse guitar hits of Herman Kelly's "Dance to the Drummer's Beat", adding some cartoon-dreary synth and kazoo solos, all while Pookey laments being in school, falling asleep in English class, and wasting time when he could be rapping. In the end, though, Pookey agrees with the title's directive: "You gotta go to school and learn all you can, if you wanna be the president of"-- I think (and hope)-- "Japan."
Seriously, how cool does that sound?
Courtesy the Pitchfork Top 50 Re-issues list....
I need this album. Badly.
The Third Unheard: Connecticut Hip Hop 1979-1983
"Mr. Magic, who built the Southern Connecticut hip-hop scene on his own after hearing Kurtis Blow's "Christmas Rappin'", spends nine minutes defending the rap abilities of the Constitution State, concluding with an ode to loyalty: a roll call of Connecticut towns. Magic's point is that the Connecticut scene could step to anything coming out of NYC, and while that may not have been completely true, CT did produce a worthwhile crop."
"It's reasonable to assume, then, that Mr. Magic's scene was extremely committed to itself, yet still reaped the benefits of New York's close proximity-- it was an insular scene, but not devoid of influences."
Recently I've been trying to hash out, in my own mind and in prose, the mix of geographic, social, economic, ethnic and cultural particularities that make this place that I grew up in, that I come back to, this tiny, rocky (geologically, mentally), oft-discounted region that I cannot quite escape being colored by - southern Connecticut - unlike any other place I've been to or know of. I can't help it, this is just what I do. It's a project to uncover a parallel to something like the idea of a "Polish mentality" - call it the "Connecticut mentality". That reviewer's remark may indeed describe the CT hip hop scene of the early 80s - but it is more insightful than he knows. Proximity to NYC, and a barrier of comfortable, sturdy provinciality riddled by well-chosen influences are just a couple of the many aspects of Connecticutness, as I see it.
So that's the historical stuff; obviously, though, the tracks here are fun as hell. Mr. Magic's introduction is followed by two tracks from Magic's 12-year-old nephew Pookey Blow: one of them, "Get Up (And Go to School)" samples the heavy auxiliary percussion and sparse guitar hits of Herman Kelly's "Dance to the Drummer's Beat", adding some cartoon-dreary synth and kazoo solos, all while Pookey laments being in school, falling asleep in English class, and wasting time when he could be rapping. In the end, though, Pookey agrees with the title's directive: "You gotta go to school and learn all you can, if you wanna be the president of"-- I think (and hope)-- "Japan."
Seriously, how cool does that sound?
About me
- Michael K.
- Observing the things in my personal cosmos: music of a catchy sort, soccer, hockey and other sports, theories of place, media and culture, academic life, history, nature, politics, the international, the parochial. You never know what you might get. For generosity of the spirit.
- My profile
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Previous posts
- What, they still don't realize it?
- Earlier this evening my friend b.f. of the pleasin...
- "I am gonna live in Sweden, when my work is done..."
- There, there.
- Parallel-allel-allel
- Love: Me - Firebombing: Dresden
- Of fences, fingers, and the first of perhaps many ...
- Cheap shot...
- I think that's my stapler...
- What I'm working on at the moment (Sun. afternoon)
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