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Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock

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Two things I have personally noticed in my thirty six years of living on this earth that I find kind of fascinating with regards to rap/hip hop and white people:

1) A majority of the white people that I’ve ever heard say “I like all kinds of music… except rap or hip hop” fall anywhere between Uncomfortable Drunk Relative to Lectures About Gadsden Flags And Blood Purity on the racist scale[1]

2) The rest of the white people that I’ve ever heard say “I like all kinds of music… except rap or hip hop” are usually trying to say “I really only like old school rap and hip hop”

Even if you were to remove the racism element from #1 (which I guess we can do now in America as Chief Justice Roberts declared that racism doesn’t exist, and that is why the Voting Rights Act could be gutted), that opinion would originate from roughly the same sentiment as #2: the generational lament that today’s music can’t stack up to the past. The people in the first observation above, when they’re not being bluntly racist, typically find fault with hip hop as being an inscrutable expression. They will typically point out that the lyrics are impossible to understand, that the music is too loud/shallow/nonsensical, and that the images associated with the music is cause for concern. You know—the same stuff these people’s parents said about The Beatles post drug experimentation. The people in the first observation typically didn’t like disco in their youth so there’s really no frame of reference to help them get hip hop. It is a foreign language. (And these people typically don’t like foreigners either.)

The people in the second observation usually find fault in modern hip hop with regards to message. Today’s hip hop doesn’t speak to them, whereas early hip hop did—either out of straight-up nostalgia or because early hip hop was seen as more fun. I fully admit that I am in this group. The analogous mindset here with rock would be preferring the ’62-’65 catalog of The Beatles over their later work, or Rumours over Tusk, or anything danceable (’80s) over anything remotely aggressive (’90s). There is a demarcation point somewhere in all of us, usually tethered to our formative years, that prefers the simple over the complex when push comes to shove.

An example: the same year that saw “It Takes Two” released by Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock also found N.W.A releasing Straight Outta Compton. Chances are you were attracted to one over the other if you were in your formative years at this point. If you were attracted to fun songs you probably liked the former; if you wanted something a little more real or aggressive, the latter. “I like the Whopper, fuck the Big Mac” or “I’m knocking niggas out the box daily”: you can love both, but one probably gets a little more love.

“It Takes Two” is the opening track on the debut album of the same name and it’s sampling of Lyn Collins’ “Think (About It)” instantly put it into the canon of American music. The song is hopelessly infectious and awesomely addictive. It is fun personified in audio form. There were more influential artists and songs before and since “It Takes Two” but there truly might not be a more perfect hip hop song than this. I was 10 years old when this song came out and it greatly affected my purview of hip hop, probably to the detriment of nearly everything else that has been released after it. It’s not that I hate or am bothered by more modern hip hop, it’s just that this song wound up hitting me at the exact right moment and I have loved it—and other songs from this era, admittedly—ever since. It is such a fun fucking track.

“I wanna rock right now
I’m Rob Base and I came to get down
I’m not internationally known
But I’m known to rock the microphone
Because I get stupid, I mean outrageous
Stay away from me if you’re contagious
Cause I’m the winner, no, I’m not a loser
To be an M.C. is what I choose-a
Ladies love me, girls adore me
I mean even the ones who never saw me
Like the way that I rhyme at a show
The reason why, man, I don’t know
So let’s go”

Lyrics like this aren’t capital-I Important or heavy, but you know what: it doesn’t matter. They are fun to say in unison during an era in which hip hop was more interested in sophomoric humor and egotism, and an exploration of words and the expansion of slang. This is what I grew up with. It’s so hard to not overlove it. Stephen Erlewine once wrote, “There are many critics and listeners who claim that Rob Base & DJ-EZ Rock’s ‘It Takes Two’ is the greatest hip-hop single ever cut. It’s hard to disagree with them.” I can’t sum it up any better than that.

I will gladly admit my membership to observation #2 above while always thinking that the people who subscribe to #1 are damn idiots. If you can’t enjoy this song you are probably bad at life.

[See post to listen to audio]

[1] Note: this is not to be confused with someone who says “I don’t like rap or hip hop.” I’m specifically talking about people who make it a point to say that they literally like everything but that genre. Like I’m supposed to believe you’d rather listen to opera music before ever listening to a song by Kanye or Common. You are full of shit. (For the record, I also have a problem with people—mostly urban white people in my experiences—who “like all kinds of music… except for country.” Heaven forbid a Brenda Lee track touch your ears. It might make you vote Tea Party in the next election.)


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