Monday 28 March 2016

Rapt

"Fuck Tha Police" by N.W.A. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jOqOlETcRU

I've tried really hard to learn how to listen to rap music because African-Americans have always made transformative and transcendent music, but I confess to both a cognitive and existential deficit when I listen to this genre: it all comes too fast and too nimbly for my auditory processing neurons (they're slow and not clever), and even when I can make a very basic sense out of all the words, the worlds they describe are really difficult for me to understand, what with my being a middle-aged, Euro-descended, twice-divorced, middle-class Canadian who has most of what he can deal with trying to figure out the world he's living in.

But those beats are gonna get to you, regardless of your origins and attitudes and age. Luckily (even though it wasn't hiding), I found this number, a brilliant rock (it's a fucking genuine fucking diamond) in all the roll of contemporary life. I was already a self-embroiled grown-up when it came out, and I remember hearing about it, but I didn't ever listen to it (I was busier back then). Now that I have more time, I realize what I was missing, and how narrow and stupid I was about music I wasn't used to; I still am, but less so, I hope.

It's a miracle, this more-than-a-song song. It takes you from your world (if you're a middle-aged, Euro-descended, twice-divorced, blah, blah, blah Canadian) into its world. It's like reading Shakespeare, except you get to dance.

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