{"id":49,"date":"2008-06-04T19:04:51","date_gmt":"2008-06-04T23:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/2008\/06\/04\/titus-215\/"},"modified":"2008-07-03T23:18:24","modified_gmt":"2008-07-04T03:18:24","slug":"titus-215","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/2008\/06\/04\/titus-215\/","title":{"rendered":"Titus 2:15"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><em>These are the things you should teach. Encourage and refute with full authority. Do not let anyone look down on you.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>A Tribe Called Quest &#8211; The Low End Theory<\/strong> (1991)<\/p>\n<p><em>Get yourself some toilet paper cos your lyrics is butt.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dustygroove.com\/images\/products\/t\/tribecalled_lowendthe_101b.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"296\" height=\"303\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There once was a time when I pretended to be really into hip hop.  I bought &amp; collected a ton of hip hop albums, &amp; to this day I&#8217;m not entirely sure why, because I haven&#8217;t listened to way too many of them.  My problem with the genre is that I think it has the power to be the single most lasting form of music (&amp; in a sense, in the long history of music to date, it already is), but there&#8217;s just so much out there that requires complete concentration &amp; intense study that I became overly bogged down.  The other side, of course, is that there&#8217;s an immeasurable amount of garbage.  Where do you start, then, &amp; once you&#8217;ve started, how do you end?  What do you avoid &amp; what do you memorize?  In short: what&#8217;s <em>worth<\/em> it?<\/p>\n<p><em>The Low End Theory<\/em> was my first hip hop album, &amp; I can&#8217;t recommend it enough times to anyone who is interested in knowing where to begin.  In a sense, it&#8217;s also where I ended, however, as time drew on &amp; I jammed handful after handful of hip hop albums into my speakers &amp; onto my shelves.  This is one of the few that I am still listening to on a regular, almost day-by-day basis.  I think I get a little intimidated by the genre (not because of its content, give me a break), as further investigation unfolds an insane amount of layers into poetics &amp; performance, &amp; the amount of <strong>words<\/strong> becomes almost overbearing.  At times, this complete bombardment of skill &amp; logistics is arrestingly amazing to experience, &amp; other times you just wonder, &#8220;Why are saying this?  &amp; why do I care?&#8221;  There is no way that <em>Low End Theory<\/em> is any less concentrated or intense than any other hip hop album, but for some reason it stuck with me &#8212; &amp; still sticks with me today.<\/p>\n<p>The beats, we all know &amp; don&#8217;t care to read about again, are jazz.<\/p>\n<p>The lyrics, yes yes yes we&#8217;re all aware, are intelligent.<\/p>\n<p>The flow, duh, is smooth as hell.<\/p>\n<p>From &#8220;Excursions&#8221; to &#8220;Scenario,&#8221; the still undisputed greatest hip hop track ever laid down (this is not just my opinion, either.  This is music history fact.), the Tribe is incredible.  Semi-self-censored, positivity cos we gotta strive for longevity, they make it all look so easy.  Like butter.<\/p>\n<p><code>[kml_flashembed movie=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/v\/JFZLq6R-ZtM\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\" wmode=\"transparent\" \/]<\/code><\/p>\n<p>Check out Busta&#8217;s hat.  Psick with a p.s. like psychology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These are the things you should teach. Encourage and refute with full authority. Do not let anyone look down on you. A Tribe Called Quest &#8211; The Low End Theory (1991) Get yourself some toilet paper cos your lyrics is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/2008\/06\/04\/titus-215\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[305],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}