Okay I am not really one of these people but you really can’t listen to this song on your computer speakers. You have to listen to it on giant headphones or speakers with sub woofers because the bass is such an evil monster it will make you feel like your head is being crushed. Like some James Bond plot where an evil genius is using sound to take control of the world, the first time I listened to this song on headphones I felt like I was getting smacked, like I could actually feel my eardrum reverberating.
As if the initial hit weren’t enough, the bass note rings out with this rumbling delay [1], giants approaching the city. Then it’s a fucking false start. Maybe you had a cassette walkman before an iPod, and the way the song grinds to a halt will remind you of the frustration of dying batteries [2]. I actually instinctively reached to replace some AA’s the first time I ran it.
A second later the song strikes up again, little artificial melodies whistling along over the bass, two really distinct lines that should totally clash but instead strike this hectic clockwork balance that sends the track spinning with momentum. They’re so weirdly aligned part of me imagines that their pairing was a mistake, the wrong card loaded into the sampler or something and then surprise! it worked after all. But producer Droop-E (who was 17 when he made the track back in 2005) clearly knew what he was doing, and although hyphy doesn’t always hit for me, those guys are pretty sharp.
I actually think of this song a lot when people are downing hyphy, or the bay area in general; I don’t think it’s worth getting specific with people’s individual criticisms of that sound but “Super Sic Wit It” does evade all of those. The beat has a ton of open space, and it isn’t too fast to dance to; the three MCs all rhyme fierce and focused: it’s as easily as confident as Jadakiss with Juelz-level punchlines; the very specific yay area slang doesn’t make the song impenetrable to a non-speaker; and their voices are not goofy. I mean, E-40 is his usual dumbly-melodic self but he uses it to his advantage here, the openness of the beat giving him a chance to soar and dip and make funny sounds. I am always charmed by songs where MCs make the own gun sound effects, like kids yelling rat-a-tat, and the previous winner was Big L’s “My guns go boom boom and your guns go pow pow” but 40 definitely takes the prize with “Not the pretty AKs that go “skee-skee” but the ugly AKs that go “stoo-pee.”
Do you know the feeling of loving a song so much and never being able to find the 12"? You don't have to worry about this one, I have "Super Sic Wit It" on three different records, one of which is a collection of Mistah F.A.B. tracks, and two of which are "Hits From the Bay" type samplers. Also, if you needed another reason, F.A.B. could use your support, as he is currently being persecuted by two distinct groups--concerned parents, and Ghostbusters fans.
His recent video for "Ghost Ride the Whip" has been unfortunately banned from MTV and even YouTube after a successful online petition. As F.A.B. explained in an Ozone Magazine interview, "You know how they got the Star Wars, the Trekkies, Star Trek diehard fans? A lot of Ghostbusters diehard fans had started this website really tryna knock me for what I was doin'." Soon after, parents of children who had been injured while ghostriding have been threatening to sue F.A.B. and his label, Atlantic Records.
In the same Ozone interview, F.A.B. responds:
"They try to point the finger at people and say that ghostridin' is dangerous, but there has to be a point in our lives when we become responsible for our own actions. If I go out in the middle of the street in the middle of traffic and get hit by a car, how can I blame you if you had a song called "In the Middle of the Street?" Shouldn't I be wise enough to know what's good for me and what's not good for me?"
He also makes some really good points about how there was no uproar about ghostriding until suburban kids were losing control of mom's SUV and hurt themselves, securing a place in my heart as one of the more endearing and deft rappers in recent memory. Plus how dope would a song called "In the Middle of the Street" be?
[1] you should really go listen to T.I.’s “Top Back” and pay attention to the delay on the snare, Mannie Fresh is a brilliant man and I would like to call delay in rap beats an exciting new future.
[2] if you’re a real nerd, it’ll remind you of the frustration of dying rechargeable batteries, which happened a lot quicker than the alkaline ones, which kind of took half a song.
1 comment:
Who were you talking to and said what downing the bay area? I asked the young girls there on speaker phone last night if they like this song, and they exploded into the chorus with the same excitement of doing every dance to "tell me when to go".
Fuck the bullshit backpack arguments. FUN. Like rap from nowhere else is. Like watching an 11 year-old giggle "pimp slash rapper! it's not my job!" when she's told to clean up the markers. Maybe if we all grew up on that instead of "live and direct, stab ya neck/ ice-pick bloodied up ya whole entire shit/ live shit" or "sixteen in the clip and one in the whole nate dogg is about to make some bodies turn cold" ( come on ), our apathy would at least have some better humor behind it. Fuck.
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