Re: Blowing Dust: Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde :: Hip Hop Ain’t What It Used To Be

One of the features we’d like to implement into FTP is to be able to have reactionary posts/comments/impressions/ideas to a previous post, without having to use the comments section, or use their post space. It’s still a work in progress so we’re not sure how we’re going to do this, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out. For now I’m going to just write a whole new post to give my take on the subject at hand. Expect this to be a feature of FTP. We’re three different people with different opinions; that’s the beauty of it.

I’m sure the sentiment can be argued by countless generations of music listeners across all the different ages, but I stand by the idea that artistically, hip hop was at its finest when I was into it. The mid 90′s hip hop was completely unlike hip hop today. You can still find hip hop like this, you just won’t hear it on the radio – ever. Like all good music that spawned in the 90′s (alt, grunge) the unPOPular was POPular. Nowadays there’s a separate indie, underground scene that is easily accessible with the advent of the internet (streaming music, Pandora, blogs). You see back in the 90′s, ahem, “my day,” the internet wasn’t around for easy access until 1995 or so. We had dial-up internet and everything was at a blazing speed of slow. There were no such things as mp3′s. In fact, when I did discover it, it took the length of the song to encode it and everything was command line driven. “What?” yeah, exactly.

Most people wouldn’t understand the Hip Hop of then. Most would probably remember gangsta rap and the beginnings of east coast playa routines that sparked the east coast/west coast wars, gangstas vs playas; a la Tupac and Biggie, the hip hop martyrs of the time. Most people wouldn’t know that Nas sampled MJ with his It Ain’t Hard to Tell, that Jay-Z used to perform with Original Flavor, that The Roots were best when they stuck to their roots, that Souls of Mischief were part of a larger collective called Hieroglyphics and that Safir took them all on in a live freestyle show and that mc’s like Jeru the Damaja put more prose into lyrics than people care to spell out now a days because back then, people listened to hip hop.

The Pharcyde to this day is my favorite hip hop group. Bizarre Ride is my favorite album. I loved Labcabin also, but it didn’t have the same feel and well, I hate to admit it, without Fatlip, just wasn’t the same. Bizarre Ride is the Pharcyde that I love and remember. Silly, corny, funny, honest, non pretentious lyrics with well produced beats to boot. I mean who didn’t sing “She keeps on passing me by” at the top of their lungs, who doesn’t want to say, “Awww shit,” who didn’t sing the lyricless, dun da dun da dun dun, from soul flower and tell me you didn’t say, “Who is the nigga in charge over hear! Who is the nigga in charge!” The Pharcyde knew how to have fun with their music. And come on, when Slim Kid3 sang his lyrics to a big band sampled beat with Otha Fish, tell me that was not epic, out of control and ahead of its time. The Pharcyde may not have changed your life, it may not have been the pinnacle of Hip Hop, but to me, it was fun, it made me feel good about life and we here at FTP, we love life.

Imani, Booty Brown, Fatlip and Slim Kid3, thank you.