Top 10 Favorite Songs that Reference a Place Name in the Title
If you read to the end, you can hear the imeem playlist of this list. Log in to imeem to hear all the songs.
10. The Bridge is Over, Boogie Down Productions
Not to say stuff that everybody already says, but the Youtube era of beef is wack. While it can be entertaining for laughs, in general, I’d rather hear a rapper, you know, RAP. You wanna dis a rival? Do it on a track. KRS-ONE bodied MC Shan on not one but two tracks! (South South Bronx!) Looking back though, you can see it’s kind of a jerk move, and in a way it seems like KRS was making a calculated move to boost his career on the back of a lesser emcee. While that’s not very nice or considerate, you gotta respect the man’s hustle.
I still feel bad for Shan though. His contributions to the game are looked back as the developments that allowed KRS-ONE to become KRS-ONE, and not appreciated for their own merits.
9. Bombs Over Baghdad, Outkast
First of all, why did this song come out ten years ago and it still sounds futuristic? What does that say about us now? You all remember the video for this song? When it came out, Bao pointed out the contrasts in Dre’s and Big Boi’s sections, where Andre’s is very active from the beginning, where he wakes up in all these bright colors and starts running, and all these kids start running after him – Big Boi’s is kinda the opposite, its like he said “No running or kids or colors. I’m gonna climb from this car into a bus filled with girls dancing.” And the director just said OK.
As that contrast in styles became more obvious when they grew older, it made for some really interesting music, until they started to grow too far apart to be considered partners anymore. In recent years, it seems like Andre has gotten over himself and is going back to rhyming, which really is where he belongs. (I admire the experimentation with music and acting, but his best verses as an emcee are among the best verses by anyone ever, whereas the other stuff can be good, but does not bring the funk on a similar level.) I love both of their stuff, but they are even better together.
8. The Hollywood Paradox, The College Boyz
Long story short: In middle school, I began to develop opinions on sociopolitical issues and conditions, and a big part of that was exposure to hip hop artists like Public Enemy, 2Pac, N.W.A., Da Lench Mob, and even 3rd Bass. the College Boyz was another one of them. This song just deals with the idea of how hard it is for a Black artist to make it in an industry that has not treated Black artists well. And the Isley Brothers sample is just…woooo. Weird though that the lead emcee in this group had a solid voice and flow, and real dope content, yet he’s known more as the Black guy in Judd Apatow movies. I guess the lesson in this song is mad true, even for the dude who wrote it. (Yeah, Romany Malco was the dude from the College Boyz.)
BTW, the summer before 9th grade I saw them in concert at City Hall Plaza. That was the year someone pulled a gun and everyone went running – but it wasn’t during the College Boyz set! It was during that pop-rock group Mr. Big!
7. Last Train to Clarksville, The Monkees
What? The Monkees? Yeah whatever I think they’re cool. I know they were put together by a television producer and were really a corporate creation, but 3 of them were talented musicians, and the other was Davy Jones. That combo really did make some ill ass music. This song is from the point of view of an American soldier saying he’s off to Clarksville, from there he’ll be shipped off to the Vietnam war and “I don’t know if I’m ever coming home.” To me, it’s an anti-war song. For a band put together by a corporation, that is a pretty loaded statement. (BTW, the Monkees have a very interesting story, if you think you’re too smart to listen to their music or care about them, then whatever hater.)
6. Midnight Train to Georgia, Gladys Knight & The Pips
Gladys did not write this tune herself, but she may as well have. I know there are several versions of this song by different artists, but I could listen to this one all day. I like when songs can hint at desperation without saying it in so many words. It’s such a beautiful phrase, that she would leave the comfortable life she knows because “I’d rather live in his world, than live without him in mine.”
5. Erotic City, Prince
DAMN. I know Erotic City is not a real place, but Prince makes it sound real. Ha. This song feels like a cousin to “Computer Blue,” kind of like “That’s the Way Love Is” and “I Heard it through the Grapevine” by Marvin Gaye are cousins. With this song, like with really many or most of Prince’s songs, I can listen and get down and enjoy it, but if I want to, I can also concentrate and pay attention and just question, what made him do ___? Like the multiple voices at different speeds thing? It sounds so right, but…how did he know he should do that? More proof that Prince lives on a different level than the rest of us.
4. Straight Outta Compton, N.W.A.
Growing up out East, I don’t think I’d ever heard of Compton before this. And I feel this is easily Eazy E’s best verse of all time – I know Ice Cube wrote it – and among Cube’s and Ren’s best verses too. I get the feeling they knew they had to come as hard as they could on this track and DAMN they really did. It’s just relentless line after line of descriptions of what they have done and what they are not scared to do. It really makes you feel like they were as real as gangsters come. You know, it really set the tone for their entire careers. Of course, everyone knows now they weren’t really what they said they were, but it doesn’t matter, because they said it with such conviction that as far as we are concerned, that shit was 100% truthful.
3. Georgia on My Mind, Ray Charles
I know most people love Ray Charles, maybe cuz they seen the movie about his life, or maybe just cuz it’s always impressive when blind folks can do stuff that sighted folks assume you need to be able to see to do. I really don’t know, I never saw the movie, so I can’t comment on it. What has always drawn me to Ray Charles is his vocal phrasing. All the soul and emotion comes out in when and how fast or slow he sings each word and syllable. The unexpected pauses, the lurches from low to high and back, from soft to loud and back. Early in his career, he was more traditional in the way he sang, but as he became more established, he just made every song sound like it was in its comfortable imperfect home in his throat. Like if he was singing it, you wouldn’t want it to end.
Of course the historical context of this song at the point in his life that he sang it only adds to its emotional weight.
2. Brooklyn’s Finest, Jay-Z f/Notorious B.I.G.
I admit, I didn’t cop Jay-Z’s 1994 debut album until 1998. I knew of him, but wasn’t really a fan. So I never even heard this song until after Biggie had passed. It’s so ill because you can almost picture them in the studio basically pointing at each other after each verse like, there’s so much energy on the track, it just sounds like two dudes challenging each other to match flows. But years later, I read that Jay recorded his vocals like 2 months after BIG did. WHA?
There’s so much more about the song too, like was BIG actually dissing his own wife with that line about Tupac? And did you all know that Jay removed one of Biggie’s lines, that part when he doesn’t complete his verse and Jay goes “aha,” Biggie actually had said “most hated in California” but Jigga didn’t want anything to do with that beef, so he took it out. Imagine what a different road hip hop would have gone down if that line had stayed in?
1. Crooklyn, Crooklyn Dodgers
Crooklyn Dodgers was that ish man. The beat by Q-Tip was phenomenal. The verses, damn. It even comes from one of Spike Lee’s most personal and thus underappreciated flicks. The return of Special Ed (JT Freeze!). Wooooo. The other two members of the “group” were Buckshot and Masta Ace. All these dues would be legitimate legends if the world was fair, instead they are consistently unappreciated. The way it opened up with Ed’s verse “Panic/ as another manic depressant adolescent stares at death/ now what’s left/ when there ain’t no God, and a whole lotta pride/ there might be a homicide/ so let the drama slide…” DAMN!
This also set the template for the Crooklyn Dodgers 95, you know, with Chubb Rock playing the Special Ed role (beloved veteran who hasn’t been heard from recently), Jeru playing Buckshot (bubbling current emcee with undeniable appeal not wholly accepted by the mainstream), OC playing Masta Ace (a style that can never grow old yet criminally underrated), and Primo doing Q-Tip (legendary producer). But when the recent Crooklyn Dodgers came out with Mos Def, Jean Grae, and Memphis Bleek, and 9th Wonder on the beat, they kinda didn’t get it right. I like them all enough, but the combo didn’t fit the mold laid out by the first two (plus Jean Grae ain’t even from Brooklyn!). A better combo woulda been MC Lyte, Joell Ortiz, and AZ – with Pete Rock on the beat. Oooooh. I have butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it. (BTW, the Chubb Rock verse in the 95 version is still one of the dopest verses in history.)
When the New Jersey Nets move to Brooklyn in 2011, they should change their name to the Brooklyn Dodgers and use this as their theme song.
Tags: music