GFUNK In Yo Trunk: The Art Of Storytelling

I recently heard someone say that there are only so many ways for hip hop artists to talk about money, cars, and women and, consequently, isn’t it time for artists to pick another topic to talk about? I could not agree more. Don’t get me wrong - I still love my money, cars and bitches music (I think if a hip-hop head denied this then he/she would be a liar). However, while listening to Excuse Me Miss by Jay Z and Pharrell the other day, I could not help but get sucked in to the music and think about this a little more.

Jay-Z is one of the greats at storytelling, and does not just rhyme for the sake of making money and/or selling records without attention to the detail of his wordplay. Compare him to someone like Lil Wayne. Now before you put a hit out on my unborn children for hating on Wayne, let me clarify, I am not. I love Wayne, I do. I own the majority of his catalog. Mixtapes and albums alike. The only person I know who does in fact own more is, of course, The Brain who, as a native of New Orleans, was able to get his locally released music before digital music took over.
With that little confirmation of my appreciation of Wayne being said, let me say this. Yes, sometimes he says crazy, off-the-wall shit that does not make any sense. Lines like:

Swagger tighter than a yeast infection/
Fly, go hard like geese erection...
Or this one:
I leave her pussy Microsoft/
Like Windows Vista.

Or even better yet:

When I was 5 my favorite movie was The Gremlins/
Ain't got shit to do with this but just thought I'd mention.

I don’t know about you but I can tell when he is deep in his Styrofoam cup and fucked up to the point that he has a stream of consciousness rap comprised of nonsense (yeast infection swag….really???) along with his classic in your face, tongue in cheek lines. It takes intelligence to put it all together, and I am not taking that away from him. I also understand that all hip hop artists are not alike and that the artist has to create a product they feel comfortable with, at the same time producing something that the public at large wants to hear.

Hov said it best on Moment of Clarity:

If skills sold, truth be told/
I’d probably be, lyrically, Talib Kweli/
Truthfully, I wanna rhyme like Common Sense (But I did five mil)/
I ain’t been rhyming like Common since.

The entire second verse describes what the music business is and how it affected him as an artist. In the end, he had to say fuck perception and go with what made sense to him as the artist. As the first interviewed on Oprah’s (how did she end up here?) Master Class, he attributed his success in the music business and in the business world as a whole to staying true to who he is as a person, amongst other things. Rather than following what everyone else was doing, he forged his own path and opted to approach things in his own way, based on what was right for him.
Jay did not pattern himself after anyone. He did not make himself a cookie cutter rapper that went through the warehouse and picked one fast car, one chain, one video hoe, one catchy beat, and one drug reference to build his career on. While there are of course money references, car references, and hoe references, Hov never sacrificed the art that hip hop was built on (specifically storytelling) to make his way.

There are countless artists who have able to take the now popular references of money, cars, or women and incorporate them not just into the bars of the song but the plot of a story found in those bars. Excuse Me Miss is evidence to this fact. Jay must have been inspired by Slick Rick, the master storyteller himself, and somehow along the way the inspiration the greats like Jay or Slick Rick gave to the young heads coming up must have died.

How did hip-hop evolve into primarily one-liners? I miss the days of the story and more importantly, I miss the days of the storyteller.
Put that in your trunk and thump it,

GFUNK