SOUNDTRACK: BIG DADDY KANE-Tiny Desk Concert #708 (February 19, 2018).
I remember Big Daddy Kane, of course, although I don’t think I knew any of his songs. As far as I can tell, Kane hasn’t released an album since 1998. But his voice sounds great and he seems pretty content to rap his old hits.
The smooth operator, Big Daddy Kane, still emits that same palpable swag he did as a lyrical heartthrob during his heyday. He strides into the room and fully commands it with his presence.
One of the greatest to ever bless the mic, Big Daddy Kane treated Tiny Desk to an office block party in the true essence of hip-hop. Kane, aka Dark Gable, was a breakout member of the seminal Juice Crew in hip-hop’s golden era during the latter part of the 1980s. He popularized quick-cadence flows and multisyllabic rhyme schemes.
He performed a short set of classics, including “Smooth Operator,” “Ain’t No Half Steppin’,” “Raw” and a bonus freestyle. Through his warm, engaging and devilishly self-effacing style, the pioneer used an interlude between songs to address the intergenerational divisiveness defining rap today and the importance of fans of all ages supporting whatever they like, while “focusing on what’s positive and keeping that in the spotlight.”
The Concert opens with a great drum beat and a funky bass line for “Smooth Operator.” The rather wimpy keyboard riff with the sax is kind of a wasted opportunity to give fuller sound to this song.
It’s interesting that Kane–whose voice still sounds deep and full–keeps the old songs with incredibly dates references like “Freddy Krueger walking on Kane Street.”
Mid song Kane says, “stay right here Ben… gonna make this into a family affair. Are there any smooth operators out there?” They sing the riff. Then, “Let me see whats happening behind me. Jay Dub (John Williams) on sax, is he a smooth operator?” He is. Kane tells him to “Make yourself at home” with a good solo.
While that solo is going on, he says “certain members of the band just can’t wait till their turn (looks at keyboardist who had been playing with the solo). He says, “He’s been with me a long time, he’s the baby of the crew we call him J Minor (Judson Nelson)–most places we play he’s not supposed to be there, he’s not old enough. If I ask you to play like a grown man, how’s that sounds, baby? He plays a smooth solo.
Kane: “I forgot there was another verse. I was having so much fun looking at them.”
We should keep this party going. I saw a couple of these people looking at their watch. Some of you all might be on lunch break I don’t want to mess it up
“Ain’t No Half Steppin” starts off with simple sax and some more dated lines: “Friday the 13th, I’m gonna play Jason.” (Rappers loved horror movies back in the day). He gets the crowd into it: “Say it like it’s 6’o clock Ain’t no half steppin’.”
“Let me hear you once more… I lied, just one more time y’all.”
After the song he says, “I’m enjoying myself. This is all right for real I might fill out an application for a job here next week. this ai’iiht.”
“I’m gonna do one more song and then were gonna shut it down and this ain’t got nothing with y’all getting back to work, I’m starting to get hot in here.”
A great drum beat starts off “Raw” which is followed by that crazy squeaky sax. And there’s this one last pop culture line: “The rhymes I use definitely amuse better than Dynasty or Hill Street Blues.
Mid-song, a cool faster drum beat is added–I love the snare sound Matt Lambert gets and then the whole band kicks of for a great riff on bass and sax to end the song–it’s a shame it ended there as it was really taking off.
People don’t want him to leave, so they do a freestyle. A cool slide bass line from Benjamin Geis and staccato piano. It’s my favorite music of the show. And the speed of his freestyle rap is really impressive. And he (virtually) drops the mic and is off.
It’s a great old school set.
[READ: Summer 2017] The Long Earth
I have read nearly everything that Terry Pratchett has written (I kind of drifted a bit towards the end, but I’ll catch up eventually). Anyway, I was in the bookstore in Bethlehem, PA and saw this book. It’s a series I’ve known about but didn’t know very much about. I decided to check it out to see what it was all about. I don’t know very much at all about Stephen Baxter except that he’s a hard science fiction writer, meaning he focuses as much on the science as he does on the fiction.
So how does this pair–a hard science writer and a comic parodist of fantasy work together? Well, honestly the story is much more Baxter than Pratchett. Although since I haven’t read any Baxter, I guess I can’t say that legitimately, but it’s definitely not very Pratchetty.
Well, maybe some of the character interactions are kind of Pratchetty, but certainly not like any of his Discworld characters. As with any co-writing experience, I wondered how this story was constructed. So I found an interview with Stephen Baxter from around the time they finished writing the fourth and final book
How did the idea for the Long Earth series come about?
The whole thing was basically Terry’s idea. He’d started work on this project and short stories set in this world back in the ’80s but he got stuck with it. He wanted to have a very human, level way to access these words. You don’t need to get there on a rocket ship, you can just walk in. At the same time, the vision for the end was going to be out on a galaxy somewhere.
We’d known each other for years and [about] five years or so ago at a dinner party, Terry [said he] was going through his archives looking for unpublished short stories and things like that and he came across an aborted project from about 30 years ago. We were just talking about that and it just struck me as immediately a great idea because it’s so simple and yet it’s got endless possibilities. By the end of that [party] we already had the storylines and Terry was going to send me the material.
Terry was having trouble seeing so Stephen did the typing and then “We fixed each line and each scene together.”
So that’s that sorted.
Baxter also says “it just struck me as immediately a great idea because it’s so simple and yet it’s got endless possibilities.”
And that is the truth. The story can be summed up pretty easily. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 