If you read to the end, you can hear the imeem playlist of this list. Log in to imeem to hear all the songs.

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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!

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Updating this blog is not my favorite thing to do. So to encourage myself to blog more often and keep my folks updated on what’s going ons with me, I’m gonna start making lists when I can’t think of anything else to write about. Look for more lists in the future! (If you have a potential topic, please e-mail me, because I run out of ideas pretty fast and I can imagine sometime pretty soon writing “Top 5 Favorite Top 5 Lists.”)

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If you know me, then you know I have an affinity for the musician Prince. It’s a little weird, because I can’t really identify what speaks to me so much about his music besides its awesome-ness. So there’s really no better topic for my first list than my favorite songs by Prince.

In descending order (scroll to the bottom for an imeem.com playlist, if you have an imeem account, you can hear every song.):

10. Musicology (2004)
For a long time, Prince’s main flaw – at least to me – was his misunderstanding of hip hop. Although he rapped in songs dating back to the 1990s, he was pretty terrible at it. This song was like his signal to the world that he was through trying to “get” hip hop, and return to what he knows best, and that’s funk. He namechecks Doug E Fresh, Chuck D and Jam Master Jay, and how they appreciate(d) the real old school like Sly, James Brown, and Earth, Wind & Fire. And that bass groove is so filthy and clean at the same time.

9. Let’s Go Crazy (1984)
I wasn’t gonna put years down, but when I noticed the first two songs on this list were released 20 years apart, I felt like I needed to acknowledge that Prince has been the man for like my entire lifetime. Everything about this song is dope, from the spoken word intro that makes no sense and the organ flourishes, then the drum machine kicks in, then that rockin guitar riff…I could describe the whole song to you, but if you get it, then you get it. And if you don’t, then you are a disgrace.

8. Cream (1991)
This was not among my favorite Prince songs until I saw him in concert a few years ago. You know, I always thought of this song with like backup dancers and him making bedroom eyes at everyone in his vicinity and stuff, but at the show, he sat on a rotating stool alone on stage and accompanied himself on acoustic guitar – and that was it. And the part in the song when he goes “You are fine” – and the audience sang along with him, he stopped and goes “I can tell you really mean that don’t you?” At that point, I felt like the radio dj that Chris Rock plays in the movie “Pootie Tang,” when he starts breaking up his studio and yelling “Pootie too good! Pootie too good!”

To make it even more g, he claims he wrote it front of a mirror, so apparently it’s about himself.

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What would you do if you were performing one of your hit songs and Prince got up on stage and took the place of your guitarist?

Many shouts to Nas and the director of this viral music video: Rik Cordero (Asians represent…)

Hotness. For clarification on my views toward Fox News, go here and here.

UPDATE (7/14): I heard rumors that Nas was gonna show to that China earthquake fundraiser in NYC Chinatown over the weekend. But who knew it was actually gonna happen? Publicity for the upcoming album? Yeah of course, but he took the time to explain his presence instead of just showing and specifically said he was there to “support the Asian community.”

Dag Nas, you’re creeping back into my Top 5 dude…

Since it is so busy here at work, I will review Lil Wayne’s new release “Tha Carter 3.” I know he’s the world’s hottest emcee right now, at least to all the hip hop Internets nerds. Now I’ve only heard him on a couple songs in the past and I will say he’s a lot better when he’s not on a track alone. Whether he is the guest star or he has a guest on the song with him, he becomes a lot easier to listen to when it’s not just him. I don’t find him a bad emcee, I just don’t find him to be enjoyable at all to listen to.

The most of what I know of Lil Wayne is he has kissed Baby on the lips and that would be fine if not for the really scary relationship they seem to have. You know, how Weezy calls Baby his Daddy, and has rhymes like “Baby is the Daddy, my Daddy is a Baby, Now I’m the Baby of my Daddy who’s a Baby” or some shit. It’s creepy because that’s not actually his f-cking father. The rest of what I know of Lil Weezy Ana is that he once dated Trina and cried when she broke up with him, and Gillie da Kid supposedly ghostwrote a lot of his better rhymes from early in his career. Oh and Wayne also is addicted to sizzurp…

So because I can’t really stand more than a lil Lil Wayne (see what I did there?), I have not listened to his new album, or really any of his albums or mixtapes. So I will review “Tha Carter 3” based on song titles alone. (more…)

Happy 50th Birthday Prince. I wrote you a little prose poem.

I have never seen Prince up close. Not like my homie Bao who saw him and his entourage at a record shop in Minneapolis. Not like my friend Connie who was running through the Detroit airport to catch her connecting flight and stopped mid-stride upon seeing Prince and his entourage. Not like Visionaries leader Key Kool who recorded his first demo at Paisley Park and walked into a room only to see Prince sans entourage.

I’ve seen him in concert once: back in 2004, when he was on tour, doing his old hits for the “last” time. (We all knew he would keep doing his hits. When you write and record songs that are nothing less than masterpieces, why would you ever stop performing them?) I would say it was a life-changing experience, if it didn’t sound so stupid. I choked up twice. To my left was my “date” – Vudoo Soul (we’ll talk about this another time) – to my right was a white family of five, with a youngest child about 7 years old. Behind me was a row of 6 or 7 35-40 year old Black women wearing purple. In front of me was, well, a lot of air because I was in the second balcony.

I was at the concert because of the gracious donation from my lifelong best friend Dave, who surprised me with a ticket one night several months prior. Serendipitous doesn’t begin to describe. Literally no more than 2 weeks before that ticket-as-gift night, I had made a list of things I wanted to do in my life. Item #1: See Prince in concert for free.

A lot of people see Prince and they see the chunky platforms. They see the svelte figure and effeminate body language. They see the pompadour, the racial ambiguity, the sexual expression beyond what we’re supposed to find appropriate, the sometimes scratchy/sometimes mellifluous falsetto. They see what appears to be an inability to grow a full beard/mustache. They see the multi-millionaire painting the word SLAVE on his cheek with eyeliner. The man who changed his name from Rogers to Prince to the symbol, giving music stores fits about where to display his CDs in their alphabetically-perfect world. Then the Artist. Then back to Prince.

In short, they see a freak. Everything he’s done seems to be exactly what nobody else would do.

And he’s built a career, no, a legend, by doing things nobody else would do. “When Doves Cry” was a dance song that features absolutely no bass. Unheard of at the time, and still never replicated to that level of success. When contemporaries embellished their life stories through song, Prince only told the absolute truth, and held the specifics and names in his own head, never giving too much of himself away. All the pain and sadness came out, but you had to listen to the music, not just the lyrics. Rumor states he once recorded a song about his father that was so emotional he destroyed all tapes before anyone else could hear it. When he makes music, all he knows how to do is tell the truth, sometimes against his own better judgment.

He would ask his band to play 3 hour shows, jump into their cars and zip across town to play another 3 hours to a different crowd. Anything to play for people. Anything to avoid talking to them. He only knows how to talk to you through performing for you. He’s notoriously soft-spoken in person. And what really would you expect? Because Prince is all those things that make people call him freak, and that means young Rogers Nelson, growing up in Minneapolis, was all those things too. And if interacting with the people around him was difficult because of their judgments about him, then why wouldn’t he channel all of it into his music?

Sure, he’s a rock star. He built a mansion, keeps the gate locked, has his famous friends over. But he’s different about it. His mansion is in Minnesota, his home state, not California or the Hamptons. He unlocks his gate often, holds a weeklong music festival on his property, lets everyone in. When other rock stars come over, he opens his garage to the public, let’s them walk right up next to him and watch a jam session.

Prince doesn’t know how to talk to strangers. He probably doesn’t know how to talk to friends. His stage show runs 3 or 4 hours because he’s telling us everything he wants to say every night.

When I saw him live, I felt like he was right in front of me. In contrast to the elaborate stage shows, the “40 muthafuckas on stage,” different backup dance crews, the fog, the strobe of today’s big stars, the everything to make you forget the central character on stage is just that: a character, there sat Prince, strumming an acoustic guitar on a rotating chair, so nobody in the crowd could feel deprived of seeing his face. Inviting people from the audience to come on stage and dance to his music – and sing lines from his songs. Calling his band “too funky,” pouting off to a couch on the side of the stage and flipping through a magazine until the crowd begged for him to come back. Letting us sing along to that “wooh hooh hooh hooh” part at the end of “Purple Rain” for like 10 minutes as he closed the encore.

He helps remind me that sometimes you really do leave it all on stage. Not once did he look like he wanted to rush through the rest of the show and get to his dressing room and watch SportsCenter. I wouldn’t have been shocked to hear he had to be carried to his hotel the moment he disappeard under that stage. I also wouldn’t have been shocked to hear he went to the Paradise Rock Club and played another 3 hours.

He helps remind me that yes, it is OK to open your soul on a mic; and yes, it is OK to close it when you step away from it.

A lot of people see Prince and see a freak.

I look at him and see the exact same thing. That’s why he’s beautiful.

This entry can be read in its entirety at BPRLive.org.

Ten long years ago, I was working as a delivery driver, passing the summer before college started up again wearing a tuxedo shirt and bow tie, drinking customers’s sodas, then telling them, “Sorry, we ran out of Sprite, do you want Poland Spring instead?” In other words, they were good old damn days. I could drive around the city – and surrounding areas – with my new license, my mom’s car, and a tape deck that worked most of the time. People sometimes ask how I got to know my way around Boston so well, and I tell them they can trace it back to the summer of 1997.

Getting sick of hearing Natalie Imbruglia and Eagle-Eye Cherry every 45 minutes on the radio, I turned to my boy A+ – shockingly, not his real name – for some music I could record onto a cassette that wouldn’t get boring through the grind of 10 hour days spent mostly behind red lights, counting out tips in coins, and looping in circles trying to find where Atlantic Ave actually starts.

A was ready for me. “These some West Coast Chinese rappers man,” he said. “Like a mix between the Pharcyde and Ras Kass – but Chinese!” A isn’t Asian, so please forgive him for not knowing that Key Kool and DJ Rhettmatic (formerly of Brotherhood Creed) – collectively known by some as Kozmonautz – were actually of Japanese and Filipino descent respectively.

Those who know, know that one of the standout tracks on their independently-released debut was “Reconcentrated,” Key’s dedication to the 120,000+ Japanese Americans unjustly incarcerated during WWII. I could write an entire post about what that song has meant in my life, but I’ll save it for another time. I’m really back in 1997 right now because I want to get to Day One of the Visionaries, the supergroup that first recorded together on “Visionaries (Stop Actin’ Scary)” off the Kozmonautz joint. In fact, they recorded the song two years earlier, but it didn’t make its way into my tape deck until 97.

Read the rest of this entry here.

Bon bon kids. Welcome to another Appreciation post, it’s been a minute since I’ve done one. To catch past entries in this vein, click here.

Now that we got that out the way, let me bring you to Summer of 2000. I was less than two months removed from college graduation and working my very first real world job, which was pretty much nothing like the real world. I was a staffmember at the Organization of Chinese Americans, and was spending two weeks in Atlanta for the annual National Convention. It’s crazy that I was 21 and in charge of mad shit for real. But I can look back and appreciate that my experiences at my first job out of college – stressful though it was – really instilled me with a lot of confidence in my abilities to get stuff done. And that time in Atlanta was also interesting because 4 separate dudes I met there offered to set me up with women they knew. No wonder they call it HOTlanta.

Irregardless, that summer was also the first time I met the R&B group Kai. The name was short for kaibigan, the Tagalog word for “friendship,” and as you probably expect, they were 4 Filipino cats from the Bay plus – as you may not have expected – one Chinese dude who sang bass. They were signed to a major label, I think it was Geffen.

Although I had been taking performance poetry kinda serious for like a year or two by then, they were kinda next level for me because I had actually bought their CD single when I was in college. Maybe that seems like small-time nowadays because of the way that buying music has changed, but at the time, it was pretty big news that I could walk into Media Play in rural farmland Hadley, Massachusetts and buy a Kai CD. You young’ens might not get it, but Kai was as big API celebrities as we could imagine at that time, aside from maybe Margaret Cho. But she sucked anyway.

Read the rest of this entry at BPRLive.org

Is Ghostface the Greatest Of All Time because of this kind of shit? Or in spite of it?

Either way this shit had me cracking up.

“Call some-f*ckin-body and get the f*ckin doll aite?”

So long 07!

Nostalgic today because of yesterday’s news about the Juice Crew. Awesome. Peep the ill trio of Masta Ace videos below.

Kool G is actually my favorite member, but something about Masta Ace is mad timeless.

I got a lot of positive response to this entry I did for BPRLive.org three days ago, so in the spirit of laziness, I’m crossposting here.

Please read on.

Hands down, the greatest song of the melodramatic arena rock era that took place in the late 70s/early 80s was “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey. I have a hard time believing anybody could disagree with this sentiment. There’s something for everyone: the boy meets girl under less-than-ideal circumstances story, the insightful observations about human nature, the repetition of the word “on.” I think people usually assume its some overly cheesy pop song with no meaning, but there’s poetry in them thar lyrics. Please check the following trio of haikus, taken directly from the song, and devoid of their original context and punctuation:

People living. Just
to find emotion hiding
somewhere in the night.

Just a city boy.
Born and raised in south Detroit.
He took the midnight.

For a smile, they can
share the night. It goes on and
on and on and on.

So perhaps Journey’s connection to Asian artistic forms led them to their most recent band-related decision, which was to bring on an actual Asian to front the band. Arnel Pineda – the lead vocalist for a bar band who covers Journey tunes in the Philippines – is their new lead singer. Holy shit!

Click here to read the rest of this post at BPRLive.org

I begin this blog post with two pieces of information, which will seem unrelated. Please bear with me.

1. Yesterday, over at the Hyphen Magazine blog, there was this really interesting entry about the stage revival of Joy Luck Club. Interesting not because I’m a big Amy Tan fan, but more about the personal story that Neela, the post’s author, shares about being 15 and naively loving the movie because any representation – no matter how simplistic and self-loathing the material – was better than no representation. It brought back memories of purchasing Sex Packets by Digital Underground (on cassette!) when I was I guess 10 or 11, and actually feeling kind of proud when the guy in the skit was telling the packet dealer, “give me the Chinese girl man.” It was like, I never heard anybody say anything about Chinese people – except Chuck Norris, who had me actively hating the Chinese villains – and so I was like, “Cool! Digital Underground likes Chinese people! That’s probably because they’re from California…”

2. The Boston Red Sox victory parade was held yesterday as well. A bunch of people at work headed down there, as did my mom. Exciting times, I mean we haven’t had a major sports championship parade in Boston since, man, like, almost three years now! I can barely remember 2005 when the Patriots had the thing, then in 2004 the Patriots and the Red Sox won, and if I stretch, I can vaguely recall 2002 when the Patriots won the Super Bowl. Imagine, for some toddlers, this is their very first Boston team championship! But the one thing that has struck me as really bizarre for several years is the songs the Red Sox have chosen to affiliate themselves with.

The two I’m thinking of are “Dirty Water” by the Standells and “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond. The former is about how Boston is home to “muggers and thieves” and how women have to “be in by 12 o’clock.” The latter is about a couple in love that basically grows up together (but the song was used as a sing-along in the movie “Beautiful Girls,” which took place somewhere in rural Massachusetts – the connection to New England is weak, I know). The Standells were a California band from the 19060s, using a 12 bar song structure most closely associated with the Delta blues. Neil Diamond is from Brooklyn. Are these really the best songs the Boston Red Sox could find to represent themselves?

Click here to read the rest of this entry (at BPRLive.org)