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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: VH-1

  • 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.

  • VH-1’s Top 100 Rap Songs: Triumph or Travesty?

    OK, so we’re only an hour-20 songs (ed. note, actually, 40 songs…I wrote this Tuesday morning)-into VH-1’s list of the Top 100 rap songs of all time. While I’m absolutely grateful that VH-1 takes the time every year, via its’ Hip-Hop Honors special, to honor the pioneers of hip-hop in a way that the networks you’d EXPECT to be honoring them don’t (hello, BET), I must admit that, as a true school hip-hop fan, some of their choices are severe head-scratchers. I mean, who told VH-1 to honor Missy Elliott before Queen Latifah or Dr. Dre? Hell, Missy’s less qualified to be enshrined in any sort of Hip-Hop Hall of Fame than any of this year’s 5 honorees, who range from “it’s about time” (Slick Rick, De La Soul, Too $hort) to borderline acts like Cypress Hill and Naughty by Nature. Not that I don’t dig either group, but Cypress followed up one absolutely sensational debut with a sea of mediocre albums, while Naughty released a string of excellent singles but never put it together for one truly great album.

    Now I’ll admit. I’m a friggin’ sucker for countdowns, and VH-1’s pop culture specials are usually on point. I’ve often fantasized about being a panelist on one of those “I Love the…” specials. Hell, you could give me a lobotomy and I’d be funnier than Mo Rocca. That said, this list of the greatest hip-hop songs leaves me a little cold (so far) for a couple of reasons.

    Because of my age and where I grew up, I’m always going to give the stank eye to anyone who claims to be a hip-hop authority. That said, VH-1 has already erred big time with a couple of their choices. I absolutely adore PM Dawn’s “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss”, but is that really a hip-hop record? (I do, however, think they missed a golden opportunity by not having KRS-ONE comment on the record). While “Memory Bliss”‘s inclusion is certainly debatable, I don’t think there’s one single person who would agree with the inclusion of L’Trimm’s “Cars That Go Boom”. Miami bass? Certainly. Freestyle? Okay. Hip-hop?? That’s stretchin’ it, folks. Granted, there’s probably a noticeable lack of female emcees on this countdown, which could explain why they shoehorned L’ Trimm in, but any real hip-hop fan who watched that segment had to have at least a little of the taste of disgust swirling around in his or her mouth.

    It also seems like some artists were included just for the sake of a broad representation and so certain artists didn’t take up too many spots on the countdown. I don’t know that Eve even makes a list of Top 100 female rappers, so to have one of her songs (and “Who’s That Girl” of all of them) on the countdown is a bit surprising. And where they got some of the artist choices right (nice to see Jungle Brothers on this countdown, although the thought of Baby Bam in glam-rock makeup will haunt me for the next several weeks), their song choices (“What U Waitin’ For?” instead of “I’ll House You”? Really?…) leave much to be desired. Although I think they substituted because “I’ll House You” doesn’t have a video.

    Of course, you know the whole opinions are like assholes… theory, and I suppose I should be grateful that the network once considered MTV’s stale cousin is the only TV station doing right by hip-hop these days. However, I still would love to see who the panel is that voted for this countdown, so I can smack the person who said it would be a good idea for “Cars That Go Boom” to be on this list…