TODAY'S YOUR DAY BABY...WHAT YOU GONE DO????...TELEPATHS AT NIGHT PRESENT...RECORD REVIEWS DONE REALLY FUCKING IRRESPONSIBLY...november of 2005 drama and i got together to start up an audio series to go with the zine strawberry cake...we would call it audio cake...there would be record reviews done responsibly...well not really...more like record reviews done half to fully cocked...the first time we did this was for the game's documentary album...40's and many blunts were consumed...i almost lost my wife to the city that night!...next time we got together we played a round of tennis and then back to drama's crib to do an audio review for mobb deep's blood money...an album we deemed classic at the time...but i'm thinking the venom of some cobra malt that day helped sway that opinion...those two and a planned lean review session to a southern rap album have gone into a blackhole just south of jupiter...however, i was cleaning out my time machine the other day and came across an audio review we did for fatlip's album the loneliest punk...for some reason the occasion called for the drinking of champagne?...20 ounces each of pink champagne along with the ceremonial popping corks off drama's balcony in the beginnings of a frigid toronto winter...lest us not forget the dozen or so joints smoked that day leading drama to make many a bold statement and william brown getting into some serious drunken freestyle raps during washroom breaks...listen to a record review unravel song by song...enter the chamber if you dare...be aware...take good care...
Allright we are up and fucking running...on some christian slater pump up the volume shit...telepathic radio my telepathic friends...and why not start with some old school shit...some CUP CANNABIS SHIT...if you haven't checked out the STRAWBERRY CAKE section of the blog you are missing some yummy cake for your tummy...man that shit is classic...so here is the audio of that interview with drama...who hosted that epic marijuana tasting event...wow that shit was crazy!...i was sooo fucked up man...mid 2000's...taped onto a tape recorder...i had to hop in the telepathic time machine to go back and fetch this for y'all...enjoy!
TELEPATHS AT NIGHT PRESENT: THE WHITE RAPPER CONVERSATION
THE WHITE INTRO
DISCLAIMER: THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO DISCUSSION
ABOUT "THE BEATLES" IN THIS CONVERSATION
drama en sabah: the question i think, is why the distinction?
william brown: why the distinction? that's society though...society loves to segregate and stereotype and break things down into compartments.
drama en sabah: i agree with that, but in this case is it the same elements of society doing it that always does it?...cause in this case i think white rapper is basically a black invention.
william brown: then are people in the hip hop world prejudiced against white rappers?
drama en sabah: if they weren't prejudiced then the term wouldn't exist.
william brown: No matter how highly skilled the white rapper is? like when eminem came out was there prejudice against him?
drama en sabah: definitely, he was the most dangerous of all white rappers...here's the thing, the white rapper came about because in the 80s there was this impression that it could be destroyed and taken away and i think when eminem came out, who was compared to elvis, so you had people saying "oh fuck, here we go again, they're going to take it, take it from a black and we're going to get this watered down version and black people aren't going to get any money and there it goes"...and so i think that's why the white rapper had the skeptical eye placed on them and that's with the black crowd...and with the white crowd they were wondering if they were getting the real deal, the authentic, real story from the streets from a white guy.
BEASTIE BOYS
wb: it looks like the beastie boys were one of the first white rappers...
drama: i'd say they were the first that anyone knows about or that really matter.
wb: and when they started out with the videos for fight for your right and no sleep till brooklyn they sounded kinda corny to me and it looked like they were making fun of rap.
drama: see i never felt like that, because i was a big run dmc fan and the beastie boys had the run dmc cosign from the beginning.
drama: i didn't like paul's boutique, in hindsight it was a good record, but that album right there took them right out of the hip hop realm.
wb: really?
drama: yeah, the beastie boys had one relevant album to hip hop and that was licensed to ill. after that, they did there own thing...they may have been rapping but it wasn't relevant to the hip hop community.
wb: but the beastie boys did have skills and they did have good intentions...
drama: but i still maintain that the beastie boys never had a huge hip hop following, not beyond licensed to ill anyway, and in alot of ways because of this they escaped the backlash that happens to A) popular rappers and B) white rappers.
VANILLA ICE
drama: i think vanilla ice was the next one with impact regardless of who else was around.
wb: do you think history will be kind to vanilla ice.
drama: maybe.
wb: for one, he helped start death row records!
drama: that wasn't vanilla ice, that was suge jacking him for some publishing.
wb:...and ice ice baby is a hell of a song.
drama: it is and this is something you gotta say about white rappers, vanilla ice specifically...vanilla ice got popular and alot of people think he got popular and then people turned against him because he wasn't that talented and part of it was because he was white and so people were saying "that he can't really rap", but the truth is in the 80s and early 90s anybody who had a song crossover....hip hop abandoned them straight up, it happened to run dmc, they're not white, happened to ll cool j...
wb: big daddy kane...
N.W.A.-DOES THIS STAND FOR
'NO whiteWOMEN ALLOWED?'
'NO whiteWOMEN ALLOWED?'
wb: what about white female rappers back then like tairrie b with eazy e?
drama: tairrie b had a song, murder she wrote, that was her biggest song.
wb: so was she the first female white rapper then?
drama: technically debby harry is.
wb: with blondie?
drama: right, she might be not only the first female white rapper, but the first white rapper.
wb: mc serch, prime minister pete nice...i remember them, and i remember buying their album, but i wasn't a fan of their big song "pop goes the weasel", but i remember them opening the door for nas...
drama: yeah, serch heard nas on the "live at the bbq" record and wanted to sign him to his production company.
wb: and i don't remember anyone hating on 3rd bass at that time?
drama: yeah, they were a little more hip hop, they were more b boys, they were more accepted and they worked with more respected underground groups at the time.
wb: what about young black teenagers?
drama: they were a group that chuck d put out, they were all white guys.
wb: why did they call themselves that then?
drama: basically it was just to be controversial, but they also called themselves that because they were saying we're hip hop and we're all the same.
wb: jojo pellegrino?
drama: he's from staten island and staten island is where the wu tang got the wu gambinos from, staten island is where alot of the mafiosos lived, and jojo was from there and he was pretty dope, he had a couple of singles, but he was from the early 90s....vanilla ice did show that there's money to be made here.
wb: you've also got el p with company flow.
drama: i was never big on company flow.
wb: yeah, but he was very well respected within hip hop who went on to form his own label, def jux, which took off and they had a bunch of white rappers like aesop rock and cage, so there was alot of quality white rappers there.
drama: again they never got too big, where people were throwing stones at them...we're jumping ahead now, are we done with vanilla ice? cause vanilla ice i feel is the conversation.
wb: what about kid rock? he was doing that rap/rock kind of thing.
drama: but when he first came out he was pretty much just rap.
wb: i remember he had that high top fade going on.
drama: i didn't get too much exposure to kid rock, he wasn't getting put on too much on the radio.
EMINEM & THE "N" WORD
drama: so then gangsta rap came along and built a kind of force field around itself and so not alot of white rappers were able to penetrate that.
wb: so when did eminem come in?
drama: late 90s.
wb: i remember going to the warped tour and eminem was on it and had just dropped his first album and people were protesting with picket signs and being really angry at all his shock value stuff.
drama: in alot of ways he got it worse then some of the other shock groups like 2 live crew or ice t or nwa to an extent.
wb: nwa got it pretty hardcore.
drama: they did but with eminem...the amount of people that were really trying hard to shut him down was on a different level.
wb: eminem was one of the greatest white rappers ever.
drama: and arguably the greatest rapper ever.
wb: but what would have pushed eminem into a very interesting situation is if he said the "N***** word" in his raps...
drama: he would've never made it though...
wb: you don't think so?
drama: no.
wb: why not?
drama: because...
wb: ...because the situation is very similar to him and say v nasty today, and other rappers who say "oh this is what we grew up around."
drama: right but they're girls though, people are just gonna be mad, eminem would've got beat up...i mean it seems like the 90s were just yesterday but it was a different thing, he couldn't have got away with that, first of all it's not even black people's reactions, white radio and white magazines and all that would've been like "we're not gonna fuck with this," its just not worth the time and effort, now in eminems favour he is talented enough that he might have been allowed to get away with it, i mean, good music conquers all, but i mean considering how bad shit was getting for him and he hadn't even said the N**** word...
wb: but i'm just wondering if he hadn't been co-signed by dre and had been an unsigned rapper in detroit and wanting to make a name for himself, i think it would've made a name for himself.
drama: but he wasn't doing it before he got signed though, if you listen to that "incident" record, he wasn't doing it and if you listen to people talking about his battling days he wasn't doing it, i don't think he could've got away with it...i don't think it would've worked out.
wb: but what separates him from then and now?
drama: but there's no white rappers doing it now though, only the girls are and like i say they can get away with it.
wb: why can they get away with it?
drama: cause no one's gonna beat up a girl, like who's gonna do that?
wb: i know, but the point is that vnasty wasn't saying it out of any history or negative conotations, she was saying this is part of the culture that she grew up in.
drama: i understand that...my friend big tweezy, who's white, he's like "i grew up in Rexdale and drama i guarantee you i've been called n*** more times than you have," but at the same time he couldn't just use the word around black people that he doesn't know, somebody's going to be uncomfortable by it, somebody's going to get mad, that's why eminem couldn't have done it, he would've had to fight somebody like tim dogg!
wb: but then it becomes this bigger point of what is the word and the disarming of the word.
drama: yeah, but quentin tarantino tried to say that, cause denzel washington confronted him for using the word in his movies a million times...i mean, you take a look at the biggie and pac situation which happened over basically nothing, it was fake shit and eventually got biggie killed, so imagine that now, but insteaed you got this blonde haired, blue eyed guy...it would've been a problem...i just don't think you can draw parallels using vnasty and eminem.
wb: but, eventually it's going to happen...
drama: maybe not.
wb: you don't think it will ever happen?
drama: eminem is the blueprint, one of the biggest acts of the last while, so why would someone say fuck it and say i'm not going with that blueprint?
wb: i'm just saying some little white guy right now, who's like 14 and growing up in some circumstance will want to make a name for himself...
drama: ...and getting a record deal and becoming popular?
wb: these days with social media being what it is, i just feel like some white guy is going to rise up on some kind of controversy.
drama: and you're saying this person is not going to know eminem?
wb: of course he'll know eminem.
drama: he's not gonna do it though, how could he be so stupid?
wb: i don't think it's stupid.
drama: who's going to co-sign with this guy?
wb: he's not going to care about cosigns, he's poor and desperate.
drama: then he's not going to make it. you're not going to get some black people saying "i know where he's coming from." you're not going to have a white artist in hip hop, just appear with no cosign and having said the n word. even when people are watching it on tv and you're a white rapper and you're rapping hard core shit and you got no black people in your video, where's the element of realness? is that gone totally? people don't even want the fantasy anymore?
wb: i just think in terms of pure shock value to launch your career, someone will do it.
drama: right, but in this day and age is that even shocking?
wb: i mean, i'm listening to v nasty because of her shock value.
drama: but who listens to vnasty though? she's not really successful.
wb: she's successful.
wb: someone's going to say the n word to big their name up...
drama: ...but who's going to go to the show? shock value will get you to pay attention to someone, like that's how i ended up hearing vnasty, wait...but that's not true, kreyshawn had that "gucci gucci" song so i knew her through that affiliation, but if i just heard that some white chick in her songs was saying the n word i'm not sure i would've paid attention to it. i just find it hard to believe that someone's going to do it, cause eminem never did it. kreyshawn and vnasty had to shut the fuck up about it, riff raff said he wasn't going to do it, so where's the pattern for success? i mean, if gayness isn't shocking people anymore...saying the "n word" might get people to pay attention to you a little bit but i don't think it'll help your career whatsoever.
wb: but i mean in terms of the n word, now's the time for a white guy to come out and test it, just to see where people stand on the issue.
drama: there might be some white rappers that are in a place where they use it in their regular conversation, but they're not going to put a record out...their black friends are gonna be like "fuck what are you doing? I can't get on camera with you."
wb: i see the future and it's gonna happen!
CANADIAN WHITE RAPPERS
drama: who do we have...
wb: ...we got buck 65, classified, peanuts and corn crew out of manitoba,madchild from vancity...
drama: right...i think on the whole canadian white rappers have had more respect.
wb: i think so, i feel like that's not a problem here.
drama: it's not really a problem in america too much anymore, the thing is here in canada, people are so integrated with each other, so you've always seen white guys rapping.
wb: in canada growing up, it's more like who's into hip hop and it doesn't really matter about your skin colour.
drama: exactly. i mean you can go to new york and it's more segregated, you'll see 20 black guys walking down the street together but you won't see too many times like 4 black guys and 2 white guys walking. these guys come from community's where they might not know any white people, so when you turn around and see a white guy rapping, you're like how the fuck did that happen. so yeah in canada we got a different thing.
FAVOURITE WHITE RAPPER?
drama: well i'm not a fan of eminem's new shit, but i'd still have to go with him. i think action bronson's the biggest guy on the streets right now.
wb: i'd have to say for myself that yelawolf's my favourite.
drama: it's interesting cause the art yelawolf does i think it's not necessarily connected to the black community and i think that hurt the sales of his record a little bit. i mean, dre cosigned eminem. def jam cosigned beastie boys...and if he wants more recognition and to sell more records he's going to have to translate his art into something that the urban community can get behind. see i go to alot of break dance oriented parties and he needs to have one of those songs that gets integrated into that scene.
wb: i think we're done with the white rapper...
drama: you think so?
wb: okay, we'll do a part 2...
Okay...yeah...had a great white rapper conversation part 2 with drama on the phone...covered some new shit...some interesting shit...looked forward to sharing it...except i had a relapse and got blackout drunk...godamn 8% beers take you from sober to blackout in 4 fucking cans...they come cheap but they come with consequences!
Well, this is what happened...or so i was told...i got angry...got into a rage...see the thing that always concerned me was when i went into blackout mode...who took over...cause it wasn't me...who took control of the ship?...i guess that's why they call alcohol spirits and all...anyway i lost my marbles and grabbed what was closest to punctuate whatever brilliant point i was trying to make...grabbed the tape recorder that had quite possibly one of the most riveting conversations on the white rapper topic...ever...walked outside and tossed a high arcing...really a nice throw...reminded me of a young Peyton Manning to be honest...
...except i tossed it into a big ass patch of blackberry bushes!
No problem right?...wrong...these patches had widow maker thorns
that would rip your scrotum sack clean off with one wrong twist.
Suffice it to say i've had trouble locating the tape recorder...i give up
after awhile and just sit and eat some blackberries...part 3?...we'll see.
after awhile and just sit and eat some blackberries...part 3?...we'll see.