Them Rappers

I have owned Straight Outta Compton for about 10 years, probably since a period around my 30th birthday when I decided it was important to own every seminal rap record ever made. While that appears as, and probably was, a slightly sad early mid-life crisis thing, it does mean that I have early efforts by Afrika Bambaataa, Melle Mel, Run D-M-C, Public Enemy, The Beastie Boys, Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, Jay-Z, The Roots, Outkast and Roots Manuva on CD and on my iPod (sorry, MP3 player). However, I have never really got around to listening to Niggaz With Attitude's only album that counts. I set that straight this morning on the train.

It happens that I had been listening to a couple of Public Enemy's less obvious albums a few days ago - Yo! Bum Rush the Show and Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age - so given the traditional critical contrast between the two groups I was well primed. To cut to the chase, I find that SOC is almost unmitigated rubbish. Even some of Public Enemy's more laboured efforts have passion and ambition in them. SOC sounds like a BBC children's television director's idea of what rap music is. With added profanity.

There is another rap band that comes to mind and they were notable for two reasons. Firstly they had the first ever pure rap hit. Secondly they are widely renowed for being a pathetic, watered-down, lilly white, half-hearted excuse for a facsimile of the street music that was being produced in the late 1970's. I am talking, of course, about The Sugarhill Gang. The title of their hit almost says it all - Rapper's Delight.

(I found a wonderful 'fact' on Wikipedia about Rapper's Delight, the track being based around a sample (or perhaps copy) of Chic's Good Times: apparently "the song currently holds the record of sampling a previously recorded song in the shortest period of time, less than two months." I now intend to become the new world record holder by going into a record shop later today and buying any of this week's new releases - doesn't matter what - and recording it on my mobile phone or any other handy recording device. While not obviously necessary, I will then avoid any dispute with the Guinness Book of Records by creating a further recording of myself talking over the top of the first recording and copying this second recording onto a CDR. So long as I can manage to achieve all of this within two months I will then become the new world record holder for sampling a previously recorded song in the shortest period of time, and perhaps someone will write a Wikipedia entry about me. Idiots.)

Anyway, the only shocking thing about the supposedly shocking SOC is that it sounds like it could have been recorded by The Sugarhill Gang. Although to be fair, with extra "fuck"s and "bitch"es and "I don't believe in foreplay, just spread ya legs"s. Actually, there is one other shocking thing about SOC. 8-Ball (Remix) by Eazy-E sounds exactly like the title music to The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air -you know, where Will Smith raps about "a couple of guys, they were up to no good, started making trouble in my neighbourhood". It is to my great disappointment that Will Smith's track was recorded a couple of years after SOC, so i can't accuse Eazy-E of ripping it off. However, if Will Smith can copy your music undiluted, then I think it says rather a lot about your music (apologies there to Stewart Lee).

I said that SOC is almost unmitigated rubbish. Express Yourself remains a thoroughly enjoyable romp and, tellingly, quite atypical of the record as a whole. It was primarily rapped by Dr Dre. Now, as everyone knows, Dre is not considered a good rapper. His flow is ponderous and devoid of inflection unlike... well, unlike Calvin Broadus or Marshall Mathers. Even Express Yourself suffers from this failing, but the funk in the backing track and the humour in the lyrics is enough to carry the day. The same cannot be said of the rest of SOC. And where does that leave the revered production abilities of Dre or the supposedly sublime rapping skills of Ice Cube?

Shocking indeed. 1 out of 10. I'll be listening to It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back on the way home, to remind myself what rap music can aspire to.

"I got a letter from the Government the other day. I opened and read it, it said they were suckers."