#cultureNotes

  Credit-Spotify From Illmatic to Stillmatic . From King's Disease I to King's Disease II.  From I llmatic to King's Disease II . And everything in between. Consistency. Evolution. Depth. Range. Versitility. In this his latest outing, Nas, establishes himself as the Master Sonic Teacher. It is two decades short of the anniversary of the release of Ether , the explosively caustic rebuke of fellow New Yorker, Jay Z, wherein Nas described himself as a teacher. It is clear that in those long intervening years he has soaked up the lessons of the school of life and his trade to deservedly and justifiably earn the accolade of Master Teacher. And the evidence is served up hot on King's Disease II , the Master Teacher's specially prepared balme for healing minds. This is the 13th studio album in the Nas oeuvre. He won his First Grammy for King's Disease I . Serious hiphop heads consider Illmatic the greatest rap album ever. Where to place this one then? Sure sign of t...

  The Sheriff at work on one of his videos He seems like a phantom rising from the catacombs. Or rather a clairvoyant siren emerging from the ruinous depths of this our necropolises. Has the urban blight that is our cities from Accra through Konongo to Tamale found its most lyrical spokesman minstrel who mirrors as well the decline of this our Republic? Time will tell. But this time he has come correct. No wonder he urges with brash machismo all competitors to "tighten their basis." There is a new sherif on the block who is taking no prisoners. It is just as well this Black Sherif is sermonizing. He has given us two such sermons bulging with pain and passion. The pain of youth trapped in a country in which class divisions are widening and made the moreso by teasingly graphic displays of ostentatious consumption side by side with gross palpable want. All street level. The passion is entangled in the fiery versified storytelling that plaintively draws urgent attention to the gr...

So I have been digging Sark's newly dropped video for Rollies and Cigars on his No Pressure album. Well the clip rolls off with Sark rolling in in a Rolls. The work has a smooth and uncluttered visual regimen. No visual baggage to disrupt the field of vision. The set feels surgical theatre like. Scrubbed free of the "germs" of too many sequences so the story can be told. Only here the op is about exposing Sark's journey thus far. In life. In music. At the zenith. Mountain top view revealed in camera angles and degrees. I was struck by the halo of green light in which a sharply dark suited Sark moves and spits. Boredom? I guess. With white light. So Something new. Metaphor? Sure. Dude now has the green light to speed so no one can catch him. No pressure babe. Of course the babes appear in this flick but they are clad. Coy. Discreet. Loudly absent. Yet inconspicously present. I love that. I am sick of the surfeit of mega super size almost fabric free rear(you know how ...

  Been feeling Sark's new studio album. No Pressure. It is his tenth. Evidence of his prodigious creativity and output. 10 albums . Anyone in the production/creative process knows just how BLOODY HARD it is to do a work. Dude has dug into his reservoir of creative juices to keep giving and remain relevant in a very fluid creative space where the sophomore album usually does not hit. And then the limelight recedes and its over. Sark has survived. Literally. For over ten years and now the 10th full album. I love the track Anything on this album. I feel in that track a kind of overture to immortality. I think it ranks with some of the best hiphop I have heard. And I have been at this for over 30 years. I was here when the genre was invented by my generation and swept Accra off its feet. The night before Reggie dropped probably the most classic of rap albums, Maka Maka, I was with him and another dude. That is how I got the CD. We have become friends for life. So I have a bit of a...