While I'm Waiting in the Dirt
Lord Infamous - Anyone Out There
I missed a newsletter this week. Most of you dear cherished readers probably didn’t notice, or care. I agonized over it though, because I feel like I owe you consistency, and I feel like I owe myself the value that comes with being consistent. Of course, no one is writing me to ask, beg for these little musings but I’m telling myself that somewhere out there, beyond my paucity of vision, lies an audience waiting for that little inbox notification to jack up that sinking serotonin and save them from the shackles of Instagram’s endless scroll.
The thing is, I had a bike wreck and smashed up my little man ribs. Seriously, I got the wind knocked out of me, and it was frightening and thrilling and reminded me of my meat and bones and how they’re not soft and springy like a young tree but are stiff and brittle like the chunks of bark on an old tree and my god it fucking hurt and I was shocked at the sound I made when it happened holy shit what was that and it was a good half hour before I could walk my bike back to lock it up and go clean my wounds.
So that’s been my week. Honestly, between a diet of Tylenol, muscle relaxers, a heating pad, and Benadryl thrown in to make it all complete (because allergies / hyper-sneeze sessions with a bruised rib are a god damn joy), it’s been a bit hard to sit down and write anything coherent or even worth bothering to read about music.
However…
It was good for going deep down a path I’ve been taking here and there lately and one that seems particularly fitting for the Halloween times. So, let’s talk about Memphis rap for a minute.
If you’ve read any of my long form stuff on Musik Klub, I’ve written a bit on Miami Bass. I’m a huge Miami Bass fan, and have been since I was a teenager. The Memphis stuff came around when I was a bit older, but I can remember seeing early tapes like 8 Ball & MJG’s Comin Out Hard at Cactus Records on Shepherd in Houston around 1992. They had a great rap section, filled with all that early Southern rap like Geto Boys, Ganksta N-I-P, and Disco Rick. Anyway, that tape confused me for years because they’re from Memphis, but on the cover of that tape, they’re driving by the Houston downtown skyline. Only recently did I read about that being a label decision, since they were on Houston label, Suave House.
Truthfully, I never gave it that much time. I liked backpack rap, I guess, and felt Memphis guys were corny or something, which is messed up, like some form of self-hatred because although I wasn’t born in the South, I’ve spent most of my life there, or like how I’m half Mexican-American but somehow thought I needed to learn French as a kid, and not Spanish (a decision that haunts me psychologically to this day).
Well, just like there is a parallel relationship between codeine / lean and Houston rap, the strange combo of pills I was on was just narco enough to get lost listening to hours of old Memphis bootleg tapes, watching videos of gangster walking, old Rap City appearances...I went deep. Memphis has my renewed respect. And while I may not be able to connect with current rap, particularly Trap and Drill music, I hear how Memphis set that up.
Memphis rap music is scary shit. In the same way DJ Screw is scary shit. Smoked out / Loc’d out. I think of something I saw in the documentary Modulations, with regard to Jungle / Drum n Bass coming out of this period where the drugs were no longer fun, that the Summer of Rave went dark because the drugs gave birth to the paranoia. And if your daily life is filled with the types of trauma associated with racialized poverty, particularly in the crack rock 90s, then dusty beats lifted from horror movies and rapping the persona of serial killers while high as shit could make a whole lot of sense as a metaphor for the actual daily horror of living. There’s a lot of pain and confusion masked in this tune.
Anyway, in time for Halloween…
Like what I’m doing here? Let me know by suggesting it to someone else that may like it. Not into this song? Stick around for the next one, it may be what you didn’t know you needed! Remember, there are only two genres of music here at SERMONS!: good and bad, and I have too much to do to waste time on bad music
Truth is, I don't know nothin' bout nuthin' when it comes to where Lord Infamous came from, and really don't do him enough honour here as a an imaginative storyteller constructing horror as a means to express whatever compelled his dark side, as well as anyone else in Memphis. Why it would seem easier to suggest where that could come from to the likes of Three Six Mafia but not have the same thought regarding Freestyle Fellowship, who's batshit crazy song "Way Cool" is legitimately unnerving, may all come down to how each group sold itself in the first place-but still doesn't defend me from falling into the type of trap that makes me equate grittiness with some sort of social reality. Would I do the same in discussing Death Metal bands like Obituary? Truth is they both were tapping the same well, a love of horror movies. So, forgive my ignorance, dear readers, it was a fool's mistake, the kind made when someone thinks they're smarter than they really are.