Lyte as a Rock

I’ve always loved MC Lyte for her flow, vocal tone, style and lyrical choices (as far as I know, she was the first emcee to take a stand against espresso-based coffee drinks), not to mention allowing Audio Two to introduce the song "Lyte as a Rock" with the following exchange:

[Milk]
Do you understand the metaphoric phrase 'Lyte as a Rock?' It's explaining how heavy the young lady is. You know what I'm saying King?

[King of Chill]
Yes my brother, but I would consider 'Lyte as a Rock' a simile because of the usage of the word 'as'.

[transciption courtesy of the Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive]

That’s some edu-tainment right there…You don’t hear Dipset distinguishing between synecdoche and metonymy and I, for one, think we are the poorer for it.

Anyway, in another instance of me shamelessly copping stuff from Jay’s site, I present Lyte’s new song "Wonder Years", produced by DJ Premier.

Now many people would say that advising people to drink more water after they turn thirty - as Lyte does here - is not a suitable subject for a hip-hop lyric, but I beg to differ. To me that’s actually more hip-hop than a lyric about how you were a major drug kingpin back in the eighties (when you were six). Why? Well, basically, because it’s true. Real emcees talk about real things.* Which reminds me…

I’ve been re-reading a lot of the hip-hop scholarship lately and maybe I’m just noticing it now because people don’t say it very much anymore, but I’m struck by how many academics use the phrase "keeping it real" as the foundation of their arguments about hip-hop and authenticity. Like, "see! They’re bragging about how authentic they are! This must be important!"

Which it is, but I wonder how they then interpret it when people refer to their current circumstances as being "mad real" (as in, "the situation is mad real, son!"). I had always taken the word "real", when used in this context, to mean "intense", "hectic" or "stressful", rather than "authentic". Which makes the phrase "keeping it real", more about an emcee’s ability to produce stress in others than their commitment to objectivity in their lyrics. In the nineties, when the phrase was current, I actually got the impression that people used it as a rhetorically sophisticated combination of the two…like authenticity and stress were semantically linked…like you couldn’t have one without the other…like being honest always automatically invited conflict into your life to the point where it wasn't even worth the trouble to use two separate words.

NEW YEAR'S WISH

A few minutes after midnight, I received the following mass text message on my cell phone from Alien Ness (pictured in the previous post); it is an apt sentiment, and I, in turn, direct it to you:

"Wishing all my peoples & peoplettes health, wealth, & knowledge of self in 2006 ‘till infinity!"

WORST. LEAD. EVER.

Oh, and as someone who takes writing more seriously than you might think, I had to share this, from an article about the future of psychotherapy in last Tuesday’s New York Times:

ANAHEIM, Calif. – The small car careered [sic] toward a pile of barrels labeled "Danger TNT," then turned sharply, ramming through a mock brick wall and into a dark tunnel. A light appeared ahead, coming fast and head-on. A locomotive whistled.

"Uh-oh," said one of the passengers, Dr. Martin Seligman, a psychologist and a pioneer in the study of positive emotions.

But in a moment, the car scudded [sic] safely under the light, out through the swinging doors of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and into the warm, clear light that seemed to radiate from the Southern California pavement.

"Well," Dr. Seligman said, "I don’t know that I expected to be doing that."

One of several prominent therapists who agreed to visit Disneyland at the invitation of this reporter, Dr. Seligman was here in mid-December for a conference on the state of psychotherapy, its current challenges and its future. And a wild ride it was.

"One of several prominent therapists who agreed to visit Disneyland at the invitation of this reporter"? Are you kidding me?

*Don’t mean she’s soft, though…Her response to Roxanne Shante’s "Bad Mama" is still one of the roughest dis songs I’ve ever heard. Like, to this day.