Repairs following the recent engagement (http://mog.com/Cody_B/blog_post/153713, et. al.) with Capitaine Cody of le Rap are finally complete. We lie becalmed for the moment, and the crew take advantage of the respite to compose epic poetry or draw up designs for newer and bigger atomic supercolliders.
But that battle got me thinking a few things. One of them is that I'm glad no one showed up to defend country music so aggressively. The other is that rock, like the great Alexander, conquers territory not by scorching it, but by absorbing it.
How, then, do we absorb rap? And the object here, of course, is to distinguish not its most obvious facets, but its deepest and most universal. In this regard, Cody called my attention to one of the threads woven most deeply into it; something called the "Dozens." This is apparently a kind of verbal combat - strictly playful and good-spirited - with origins in precolonial Africa, whose purpose is to take turns saying something so offensive, so boastful, so completely obnoxious, that the other party blows his cool.
That registered with me. I did it with my brothers growing up, I did it with friends - I do it to this day, in fact (as some of my readers may have noticed), but only with people I feel I can trust and respect: this is the opposite of patronizing someone, which is the truest and most outrageous sort of insult. I was never aware of a name for it (and I don't think "Dozens" really does it justice), but this I can do. I'd never really even thought about trying it in lyrics before.
Naturally I would make no attempt to alter the way I express myself, musically or lyrically, or to make boasts that didn't seem just barely enough like the sort of things I might actually think to deliver the shock and horror required of them.
If I might here address the world as a whole - I am not above negotiation. I will consider terms of your surrender with respect and magnanimity. It is not too late to spare countless lives.
As you consider your next move, relish this almost universally overlooked song by Miles Dethmuffen (a band that might, perhaps, never have reached the audience it should have, but was denied ever having had a chance to by their name).
My Trusted MOGs
M U S I C
U.
P.S. BTW to repair your ship, i'd suggest you apply musical colors paint in at least 3 successive layers and aural attraction shield devices shall be plastered with any sort of tape/plastic sheets to avoid any drop of paint inside of any of the sound amplification tubes as to avoid cosmo-cosmic explosion :))))))))))))))))))))))))
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Whatever you do, don't go the Linkin' Park route. We are rap(t) with attention at your intention. BTW-We have upgraded to a starship due to a massive booty infusion since the last battle. Beam Me Up, Flava.
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° ° ° Seeing the location coords you shall not be far from the Death Valley, all musical loud(gun)speakers are turned toward your ship, don't try to resist or we might be forced to shoot and have you listen to Willie Nelson (and only him, sorry Mr. Nelson you were picked at a random :)) for the next 40 years...
Those battles for an utopic temporal supremacy are pointless, 'cos She will absorb rockers, rappers, zombies, goths, punks, classic freaks in frocks, jazzmen and a few more wild tribes as well, stop these intra-Mog wars and bow low in front your Queen, the Queen of you all...M U S I C
U.
CosmicCommodore Universalis in the Fields
P.S. BTW to repair your ship, i'd suggest you apply musical colors paint in at least 3 successive layers for better impregnation and all aural attraction shield devices shall be plastered with any sort of tape/plastic sheets to avoid any drop of paint dripping inside of any of the sonic buzzers amplification tubes as to avoid cosmo-cosmic risk of meta-explosion. :))))))))))))))))))))))))
My Trusted MOGs
I had no idea you were commanding a royal man of war, Zarp. Really, not an inkling of a supposition. I appreciate your bearings... Rap, hip-hop, rock, everything is fair in Terpsichore's ears.
There she blows, Sir
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The whale should be black...
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I don't have any black whale on hand. Will a blue one do?
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I keed..but,nice whales,B!
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Country is out of my league, I am but a lower seaman on that ship.
Since I have been offered an officers billet on the USS BeBop I think I could hold my own there. Enough to make you seek parlay as a means to escape certain destruction.
What is the significance of the word 'Dozens', where did they come up with that?
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"Though I could not caution all I yet may warn a few: Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools"....
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You've just illuminated something for me with your comment that rock "conquers territory not by scorching it, but by absorbing it." I used to think that was true, which was one of the genuine attractions of it. It was friendly and omnivorous, and it improved - or, at the very least, made just as interesting in a very different way -almost everything it appropriated. But I don't hear that very often anymore, which is why it's hard for me to get excited about rock. It seems content, on the whole, to re-examine and maybe tweak shards of its glorious past. Rawking out has become ritualized. Nobody's playing with grenades anymore....
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Universalis: Enjoyed looking over your MOG. You may consider it zarpex-Endorsed™. The ship is in better shape than it was before. The Rock attacked numerically superior forces in a daytime raid on her own shores, in waters for which we until then had poor charts. At the expense of only a handful of promising young lives, we now have a sense of Rap - her guns (abundant); her gun teams (sluggish); her strengths and vulnerabilities...
Cody, you must know a better word for this. I hate "talking trash"; I hate "the Dozens"... "One-upmanship" is too broad... And it's not just insults or boasts, really, either; it's also wit, sportsmanship, a premium on incisiveness...
Bart: Neutrality seems so easy, till the press gang has you by the shoulders...
I am: I wonder if the BeBop and the DooWop ever met in battle...
Instantly recognizable, B42. And a ship of fools never lacks for recruits.
??If you know how to haul on a lanyard If you're really big on blue If you long to dismember a Spaniard Then we're looking for someone like you??
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ivy: "When Rock saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer." --Plutarch, The Life of Rock
[N.B.; the Greek word "rock" is widely mistranslated as "Alexander."]
But seriously, ivy; there was a post by Brandarius a few days ago that I thought hinted at a promising new direction; there are a good three I know of doing it today. No word for it exists that I'm aware of; the closest may be "singalong," but that's only a fraction of it. Big emphasis on breaking down the distinction between band and audience, performing without a stage, maximum involvement with minimum technology... I'm seeing arable land.
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There does seem to be promise there. Z. I'd hope it would be accompanied by a renewed sense of curiosity about music itself, what it means and how it can be both true to its past and totally new at the same time.
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Rock absorbed everything in the late 1960s, so there wasn't much left to absorb after that, more than the usual accumulation of new detritus. We need to become more isolated from each other for, say, several generations. Maybe a severe Depression or war could eliminate the power grid and generate an interest in subsistence agriculture, after which a new type of music could connect everything again.
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my camp has successfully been pilaged -> white flags are thrown -> women and children gone ->
I also hadn't a clue that this type of insulting had a name -> apparently that's why my friends and I grew into such horrid specimen's of the human race. We put each other through this so often, but by far the funniest was watching my best friend of the time explode in anger when labeled 'Rhino Neck' by the four others in the room, and he was only slightly pudgy back then, but the blind fury with which he attacked us was worthy of the title 'Rhino Neck' ->
Z-Har -> you still on about the downfall of all things rap? Bullheaded you are, but I give you credit for the persistence of the matter, a true passion of hatred will get things squared up nicely, leaving the so called 'rap-era' in a museum downtown, next to more popular tourist attraction and will hence not be visited regularly by anyone of consequence -> my brain hurts from trying to sound smart, OWWW.
I'll leave you to your thoughts then.
baby's on the half tit -> ZZIIINNNGGG