Most of my taste in current hip hop runs outside of what’s going to hit the Billboard charts, but I think it’s worth commenting on a couple new and (possibly) upcoming releases that could possibly signal a stylistic shift in pop hip hop.

The first, Kid Sister, is still fairly underground, or at least outside the mainstream. November 2009 saw the release of her first real album, Ultraviolet, which has a chance of doing well on the charts if any of her new singles can get half a chance. I should point out that her single "Pro Nails" (with a guest spot by Kanye West) did have a pop splash a couple years back, but the album took another couple years of adjustments before it came out. Kid Sister’s possible significance comes in her sound, which takes underground club jams and puts them at the forefront. Whereas most mainstream rap caters to current taste and riffs on what’s currently already popular (as the auto-tune flood and a zillion joining the crunk bandwagon before that will illustrate), she’s grabbing what only a few know about and making that the base of her overall approach. At some points, the dance element clearly dominates a song while she herself mostly provides what in most dance mixes would only be a hooky sample. Now, of course, she’s not the first to take the general approach of introducing underground sounds – every pop trend comes from somewhere, after all – but the idea of the music in a song taking just as much of the attention as the rapper isn’t being done much on Radio Rap, and it’s worth noting that she might just make it popular.

The second item isn’t quite so exciting or worth looking forward to. It’s not a surprise that Lil’ Wayne has been working on a guitar-based album, but it might actually see the light of day soon. The consensus by most actual music fans who have heard it is that most of the record is pretty awful, starting with the “Prom Girl” single on down. In some ways the overall sound is boring, reeking of 90’s mook rock rapping outfits like Linkin Park. Still, rappers don’t generally do much with rock (outside of Ice-T’s Body Count work, not really considered rap), and if this album sells, it could set a horrible trend. The one somewhat fascinating song on the record happens to be “Drop the World,” a duet with Eminem that provides the title name and shows that on occasion, Wayne’s lyrics can be not just clever, but perhaps even a little thoughtful. The motif of having reached the peak of one’s accomplishments only to find disillusion, then wanting to leave earth (either through dying or on a spaceship) and “resurrect” to try and find that high again, well, okay, so that’s a huge cliché, but the dual performance here is somewhat convincing both as autobiography and expressed frustration. It’s an angry kind of rap that really bucks the trend of popular rap, and maybe that’s why it’s the only part of the record that appeals to me even though both Eminem and Lil’ Wayne sound more tired than angry at this point. I miss when rappers got angry, even at being spoiled stars with nothing else to achieve, and that attempt provides at least something interesting in an otherwise dreadful album.

Radio Roulette

With so many thoughts and possible subjects for the next blog entry swirling around in my head, all competing for attention and focus, I decided to go with the stupidest. On goes the TV, point the remote, select the “90s” digital music channel, and write about the first full song to pop up.

As “Whatta Man” – a song I’d thought maybe I’d write about someday, anyway, trails off, I prepare. Here it comes. “I Can’t Help Falling In Love,” UB40. In the 90s, pop music had this on-again, off-again flirtation with reggae-derived hits, where we got anything from Canadian artist Snow’s “Informer” to Big Mountain’s hits and Ini Kamoze’s “Hotstepper” along the way. If you really want to learn more about UB40, Wikipedia and other sites have plenty of info, but what really stands out to me about them is that as much music as they’ve released, as long as they’ve been around (over 30 years at this point), as big as they are in the U.K., most of us in the U.S. will really only know them for their cover songs: Neil Diamond’s “Red Red Wine” (back in the 80s); The Temptations’ “The Way You Do The Things You Do” (1990),” and of course their version of our aforementioned Elvis hit as the completion of their trifecta.

Musically, this song keeps it pretty bland, fitting for its placement as a “soundtrack single” (as you may recall, countless top hits from the 90s gained their popularity by appearing on soundtracks). Gone was the edge that infused the band’s early music – keep in mind that they formed in the late 1970s, when reggae and punk shaped so much of the UK musical landscape. Even the horns, which should always add some element of excitement to a pop song, seem mechanical. That’s what makes it different from so many of the reggae-tinged hits from the 90s. Whereas Snow, Shaggy, Ini Kamoze, and even Big Mountain exuded a danger, an exotic sexuality that fit well on a mixtape in between gangster rap songs, this bland cover of an Elvis ballad became an instant adult contemporary staple alongside Richard Marx and Michael Bolton. Wander around in a grocery store or office building long enough and you’ll hear it, then instantly forget it.