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Pop Rock Nation

Author: GG

  • Friday Throwback – Mentirosa

    I’m sure you all have been there. You’re working, or just hanging out and all of a sudden for some reason that you can’t even describe, a song just sticks in your mind. It doesn’t even have to be a song you’ve heard recently, or in the past 15 years. Mentirosa is that song for me. Why? I have no idea. Here’s what I remember.

    I went to Tower Records with my dad and all of a sudden saw two albums with singles that were on the radio. One was Mellow Man Ace’s album, which featured Mentirosa. The second was by this guy named Louie Louie, who had a single Sittin’ In The Lap Of Luxury. I’d love for the story to end with me looking at both albums and putting them down and walking out of Tower Records. But I think I got dad to buy Louie Louie, which was a terrible album.

    So why is Mentirosa in my head today? Who knows? Maybe someone lied to me. But I doubt it. I think it’s just one of those things that you can’t explain, but if I don’t make this the Friday Throwback, it might never leave my head.

    Check this out baby.

    – I really had no idea that Mellow Man Ace not only still recorded, but was also in Cypress Hill before they came out with an album.

    – “He told me you was drinkin’, and wasted my dinero.”

    – The problem with this song is the idea that he thinks his girl is a liar and a straight skeezer, but then still thinks of her as the possible woman for him. At what point are you looking for someone else? Oh at the end of the song.

    – Let’s be serious here about something though. The reason this song caught on had more to do with sampling Santana than anything else.

    – “Today you tell me something, y manana otra cosa.” Greatest line of all time.

    Now, that song is out of my head.

  • VH-1 Hip Hop Honors ’08 – Quick Thoughts

    Unless I’m mistaken, I don’t think anyone on this site talked about the Hip Hop Honors show from earlier in the week. I know that Money Mike was possibly not even going to be able to watch the show until later in the week. I wasn’t able to live blog it, but did get to catch most of it.

    I love this concept, this show, and everything about why VH-1 does this show. You wonder why VH-1 does this and not say, MTV or BET, or even a network channel.

    What happens when I watch this show (and previous years as well) is that I smile. I simply smile throughout the entire thing. It reminds me of when and why I fell in love with hip hop in the first place. We hip hop fans are a funny bunch. We dislike far more of the current music that hip hop artists produce today than we like. The music from our youth will always be better than what’s out now. But damnit, if you talk bad about the art that we love, get ready to defend your stance. For hours. We are a passionate bunch. We’ve had to sell people on the fact that being an emcee is just as much of a honed skill as anything else. You don’t think so? Try rapping. We’ve had to let those know that while Whitney Houston’s voice is a gift, so is Jay-Z’s flow. And we never feel as if anyone thinks our music is on an equal plane as rock music. All of those things come back to me when I watch this show. Every year.

    The cool thing about this show is that it’s a show of acknowledgment. You can argue as to why certain people are honored earlier than others (I’m sure being able to show up with your crew intact is one of the reasons), but really, I don’t care. Hopefully, all the right folks will be honored eventually. This year, Cypress Hill, De La Soul, Naughty By Nature, Slick Rick, and Too Short were honored. As has been the case with the previous shows, to “honor” the hip hop legends, current and former hip hop stars come out and perform some of the honorees previous hits. And then the legends themselves get on stage. It was great to see Slick Rick on stage performing from his throne. Cypress Hill got the show started off with a bang and had a great live performance. And how did they get Naughty By Nature back together? I thought Treach and them didn’t get a long? But I was probably most excited to see De La’s performance, and I’ve included that below.

    Hopefully VH-1 continues to run this show. For people like me and those who are much bigger fans of the culture and the music, it’s maybe the best thing that VH-1 has done or will ever do. Hopefully we’ll get Money Mike’s thoughts when he gets the chance to watch the show.

    You can watch it online if you didn’t catch it on the tube at VH-1.com or check their schedule to see when they are showing it again.

  • Friday Throwback – Feels Good

    After recently listening to Raphael Saadiq’s excellent The Way I See It, I started to remember when I first heard his voice. I was either in the 8th or 9th grade and all of a sudden his group, Tony!, Toni!, Tone!, was on the radio all the time. Their single Feels Good was actually a bit different from what was on the radio at the time with its soulful and slightly funky sound. But if I didn’t hear Feels Good on the radio at least 10 times a day around that time, something was wrong with my radio. That’s how popular it was in the Bay Area.

    – I was just telling someone the other day that more dance choreography should feature cartwheels.

    – I’m going to ask someone what they should say if the rhythm feels good to them. If that someone says, “Uh, uh baby,” I’m giving them ten bucks.

    – Hopping too. We need more hopping on two feet in dance choreography.

    – That guy is rockin’ a pink blazer.

    – Tony!, Toni!, Tone! has done it again.

    – That was Mopreme Shakur by the way, who was Tupac’s older step brother. He rhymed under the name Mocedes.

    – After all that goofy dancing, they bust into some MJ in the last 2 seconds?