Pete Rock and CL Smooth – They Reminisce Over You
Hip Hop as an expression of black culture feels like a now forgotten notion in popular music. Like Blues, Jazz and Rock and Roll before
it, the cultural and socio-economic factors that went into nurturing these art
forms is sometimes forgotten when accepted by the mainstream.
For me (and I assume a lot of people out there), Hip Hop grows
out of a specific black working-class culture (New York to be specific). I
Love the fact that we are allowed to culturally appropriate things we admire,
the things that move us, but sadly in Hip Hop only the easiest to identify
elements of what bought the music into existence is what is focused on.
Well the whole point to the old-man rant above is that the
eponymous release by New York’s own Pete Rock and CL Smooth exemplifies all
that I believe Hip Hop is all about. The thing is, it’s not just in the bars it’s
in the instrumentation; the horn trill main melody that repeats is sweetly nihilistic, the horn stabs and the way it almost distorts from the dirty
samples over it, all of this makes me think of the streets of New York.
The
horns remind you of the rough and tumble of New York, the distortion is almost
like standing on a loud street corner, you feel the restlessness of the struggle black New Yorker's (and black american's in general).
The horn is what really prompted this post. The horn samples
are important because they link the black influenced music of the past, Jazz, and
bring it forward to what was the new main form of popular black musical expression.
From the message in the lyrics to the beat, this song says way more about
the environment it came from in the instrumentation alone, in a way that does
what music is supposed to do and transports you to another world. That is why I
like the song, and I hope you do too!
If you disagree with me, think I’m God’s gift to man, made whole! Make sure you drop a comment. I will thank you for it, then I will find you… And I will kill you… I kid
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