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Slap-Boxing With Jesus

No Mo’ Play In CA

A little disclaimer: some wild random music bender I went on while scouring the Internets inspires this post. So you’ll see a few of those songs here.

I have a dilemma. Perhaps someone can help me out.

See, I’m not the biggest fan of West Coast-based hip-hop. Maybe it’s due to the fact that my first two rap albums ever were Please, Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em and Ready To Die thus leading to an obvious bias, its obsolete, laid-back, G-Funkian sounds that’s been a staple for the past two decades or the fact that I hate Chuck Taylor’s, flannel shirts and Dickies and don’t have or want that “Indian” texture to throw a perm in my hair, but I’ve never really gotten into the music scene too much over here outside of the lesser-known, one- and no-hit wonders. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and the Dove Shack, anyone?

Anyways, this sentiment hit me somewhat when I’d read about local sensations like Wale and The Cool Kids, which had me thinking: are there any artists out here that I can find somewhat listenable without being reminded of Rappin’ 4-Tay [1] or even worse, Dru Down so much? Granted they may have knocked when I was in high school, but I find it a little odd that I still nod my head to “Hurricane” like it came out the other day.

Then it had me thinking: maybe the TIs who run rap know what I’ve always assumed and simply ignore West Coast rap music because there’s no money to be made from it thanks to its deterioration into the most ass-backward genre out today. The only person who’s seemingly managed to escape the Matrix so far has been Snoop Dogg, but now that’s he’s more or less accepted looking like a caricature of his former self it’s surely easy to make as much duckets as they can from him before he goes completely apeshit crazy.

The real problem, however, is this coast’s unwillingness to not sound like a shoddy Dr. Dre knockoff. For all the shit he’s caught over the years, I’ve yet to see anybody try to evolve from his sound, and virtually every major artist here can be Kevin Baconed back to him. I mean, they tried that hyphy shit, but once it was discovered that it was nothing more than a bunch of drugged-out Tourette syndrome patients the Israelis have tried to bury that underneath a mound of shitty “juke” songs. But when Dre is the best thing the West has ever produced, you can’t really blame them for not wanting to shed that mantra.

I’m probably not looking as deep as I should, but I’ve yet to find Left Coast artists who at the very least can keep my attention for more than five minutes. Perhaps if I eschewed my haterism for a little bit, I’d be able to find something other than “I Got 5 On It” to play more often. But then again, if they can’t stop looking like this, then I don’t see that happening any time soon.

[1] His two singles are quite possibly where my own “wishy washy, argumentative-just-for-the-fuck-of-it sucka” shit comes from, but whatever. That’s why you can’t turn your eyes from me anyways.

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