Songs of the Week, #1 and #2

Okay, so this whole song of the week thing, like much of this blog, has been an itinerant thing. But for the moment, at least, I'm trying to get it back up to speed. So here we go.

Song 1:
"Return of the Crooklyn Dodgers"
by the Crooklyn Dodgers '95 (Chubb Rock, O.C., Jeru The Damaja, DJ Premier)
(Clockers OST)

This song took my 14-year-old breath away the first time I heard it, leading me to spend way too much on an imported cassette single of it (imported from the US of A...this is my dark Mexican past we're talking about here) and play it until it was warped in the middle, so somewhere around the middle of playing the tape on either side, the other side of the tape would play, warped and reversed. Kinda like a chopped and screwed track come to think of it.

I've never since heard a triangle used on a track. The cello is dope too. I'm not being ironic about the use of the word "dope": this is one of the greatest DJ Premier productions ever, and as anyone who knows their hip-hop knows, DJ Premier is one of the all-time great producers, so that's really saying something.

And the verses, uniformly framed around the crack trade and how it nearly ruined Brooklyn (inspired by Clockers, the movie it was composed for), are all excellent, although O.C. (of "Time's Up" renown...and not much more) comes off vanilla in comparison to Chubb Rock's classic fat man voice spinning up his ridiculous crack cocaine genesis theory (although, yeah, fuck Barbara Walters! um, I guess) and Jeru The Damaja at the top of his game. Example, paraphrased in my post of a few minutes ago:

Excuse me while I light my spliff but some choose to sip
so bullets hit brains, when bottles hit lips.

Devastating track. In the best way.

Song 2:
"Doobie Ashtray (Chopped And Screwed)"
by Devin the Dude
(Chopped Up [Swisha House])

Actually, this was song of the week #1 awhile back, but I misposted it, so it didn't get out there. The original should be heard as a point of comparison, but man, this is my favorite chopped/screwed song ever, and the inspiration for a song I'm working on for the upcoming Orlean Cooper LP The Cards Don't Lie, currently titled "Dropped and Screwed." Reducing a song about being fucked up, sad, and without weed to the speed of Chris Dudley is ingenious. It's also a pretty funny song. Devin is a god of perversity.