dumb it down

Now THIS is interesting. The good folks over at Grandgood.com have come up with a somewhat scientific method to estimate the educational level required to listen (read: understand) hip hop songs. I’ve said for years that it’s possible to lose scores of braincells by listening to hip-hop that “ain’t talkin’ about nothin‘” like the kids say. Here’s what Grandgood had to say about their system:

“We have developed a rubric that estimates the education level needed to understand each rhyme as well as, rates the artistic sophistication employed through the metaphors, similes, cultural references, consonantal/vocalic alliteration and overall pattern of each rhyme. We calculate the final score by averaging the syntactic (readability measures) and semantic (artistic sophistication) scores of each rhyme. On a scale from 0 (illiterate) to 20 (post-graduate degree)”.

I think they’re on to something. Although I don’t think that listening to hip-hop has to be a exercise in how in how many big words or similes an artist can spit in four minutes, there’s an inherent value in being able to articulate passion, emotion and feeling in a way that’s sophisticated enough to make the listener think. To this day, when I listen to the Notorious B.I.G.’S “Life After Death” CD, I hear things in his lyrics that I never noticed or paid attention to. And that album is over ten years old. I doubt that Gucci Mane’s latest CD will have that same effect ten years from now, although I respect what he’s doing.

Here’s a post I put on a DJ message board some months back about Lupe Fiacso:

Seriously dude… I think the whole Lupe hateage thing can be summed up in a line by Mr. Carter:

“Do you fools listen to music or do you just skim through it?”

No offense, but I think that most people that call him overrated or whack don’t get half of the stuff he’s talking about. If you aren’t familiar with the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” the line “And I’m brainless/ which means I’m headless/ like Ichaban Crane is” probably makes no sense to you… Or if you aren’t familiar with the Qu’ran “Holy apartments in the gardens in which the rivers flow…” makes no sense to you. If you aren’t familiar with Hinduism then the line, “My other hand throwing ‘We’ without the ‘e’ up/ I got like five more man, I’m something like Shiva” makes no sense to you. Those lines are simple to most people, but they actually have meaning behind the words – which makes them dope.

If you can listen to a song like Dumb it Down and think “this is whack” then I’d be surprised if your brain produces enough voltage to keep air in your lungs. Sorry. I don’t skateboard or collect Kid Robot toys like him, but I respect his artistry and difference he’s brought to hip-hop. Most people don’t appreciate things they can’t relate to – therefore it must be labeled whack.

Most artists are afraid to make a song saying they refuse to dumb down their music. Period. They’re afraid to say “being smart is cool”. Because it actually IS cool. If doing so makes an artist overrated then so be it.

When Georges Seurat decided to make “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” he had to be thinking, “damn, it would dope if I used dots of paint instead of broad strokes like everyone else…“. (I know, I’m a super nerd with a capital “N”) Well…He probably didn’t say “dope” but you get the point. The same parallels can be drawn with hip-hop. That’s why artists like Rakim, Biggie, Jay-Z, Nas, Talib, Mos Def, Phonte and Lupe get the acclaim that they do. They do more than just say words over beats – they make art.

Ok… I’m done.

Posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 8:41 PM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.