Nashville, Wake the Fuck up!: Classic Kanye
It turns out we have a budding Kanye in our midst with local rapper Classic and his group Preppy Punk Thug. I stumbled across this video on YouTube in which Classic lays out a diatribe of how he's the local hip-hop scene's messiah. He was less than thrilled when he lost 101.1 The Beat's "Grind 2 Shine" contest to Mt. Juliet's Squints, whose style is deemed by Classic to be "ridiculous wack". At first Classic comes off as fairly affable until he takes a sharp detour towards Kanye-ville by proclaiming himself the "Jesus Christ of this rap shit when it comes to Nashville." He claims that he's not just "being cocky," but rather "just being honest." This is where it starts to get good. For the next three minutes he rails on and on--with all the hip-hoppin' bravado of a Cash Money Millionaire--about how he's the best thing we Middle Tennesseans have got and repeatedly uses the "y'all are crucifyin' me" line.
This made me realize how far from the ground my ear is in regards to our current local hip-hop scene. I haven't heard of Classic or Preppy Punk Thug, and by video's end I was sold enough to head over to their MySpace page to check out the beat jamz.
I surfed over in hopes of finding some revelatory quality that would open me up to a burgeoning musical underground that has left my honky-ass behind. Looking for a game of catch-up to play, I really wanted to like it and--with the first track, "Where'd You Get Your Swagger" setting the lyric "where'd you get your swagger? Jackin' off my dick" to a keyboard line that reminded me of Talking Heads' "Naive Melody" (just barely)--at first I did. However, my enjoyment turned from earnest to ironic as I took a listen to "Into the Sky," which has a cringe-worthy tone-def chorus that reminded me of how much more I enjoyed the video Jack Silverman showed me yesterday by local artist RAYZER BLADE:
As you can see, my first blind foray into Nashville's hip-hop underground has not gone well. I now ask you, the reader, who's the dopest MC in Cashville?
Also, in Kanye West news, the rap superstar has added another snafu to his list of ego-bruising blunders with an SNL performance this past weekend that was marred by an epic Auto-Tune fail. As made clear by footage of the performance, Nat King Cole he is not, but he's still far from P. Diddy territory. I actually kinda liked it in all its bizarre flatness. Unfortunately, NBC is clamping down on all YouTube users who try to upload a decent quality video of the performance, which explains the crappy version that I'm posting. It's the best I could do. Check it out!
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