Great Rap Verses #1: Goodie Mob, "Goodie Bag" (Cee-Lo Green)

Available On: Soul Food (1995)
Verse: 2:03-3:45

First of all
I stand a little more than five feet tall
But we can still brawl nigga, I ain't scared at all

So begins one of the most epic "fuck me? Fuck YOU" slow builds in rap history, Cee-Lo's "Goodie Bag" verse, a furious cascade of words that should, even post-Barkley, remind the world what a great rapper Cee-Lo Green was before he decided to make amazing soul albums instead. I mentioned this track yesterday sort of as a joke, but I was being honest about that verse: like many of the great Andre 3000 extended enders (i.e. "Royal Flush," "What A Job"), Cee-Lo uses this track as an opportunity to go WAY beyond the proprieties of the other Goodie Mob verses, and I think this was by design.

Big Gipp, T-Mo and Khujo deserve major points as well, but this is obviously meant to be Cee-Lo's joint and the band acts accordingly. Cee-Lo luckily wasn't the star he was today, so it wasn't unreasonable that he would get a standout track without being thought of as the general focal point of the group. In fact, he barely figures in what some would argue is Goodie's signature song "Dirty South" (he sort of just hangs around in the background of the video, too). Like Outkast, Goodie Mob had the talent to rest a particular track on one emcee, or do a group track, and expect great things either way.

What makes this verse so great? I'll try to explain, even as I don't think I have a developed enough vocabulary (does that even exist?) to describe what I like most about the tricky rhyme scales and syllable-specific intonations and uniquely southern vowel stretches (my linguistic skills are, alas, not so cunning). Basically, what I like about it is that it sounds like Cee-Lo had a verse prepared, did it straight on the microphone, and then just kept going into the chorus after the words on the page were finished, eventually working himself into some kind of mad freestyle that culminates in a shared breath of relief from both rapper and listener (as well as everyone else in the studio at the time): "Oooooh, shit!"

This is remarkable for two reasons. These days, most popular rap songs have their individual lines dubbed, one at a time, so as to create the impression of an invincible rapper who need not breathe off-mic, and rappers can sound laconic as hell without having to worry about keeping that flow for the rest of the tune (in a way, hypemen perform a similar sort of function live). What's missing from that technique is the sound and character of breathing and pause, one of the most important tools in a rapper's arsenal since at least the days of Rakim. There's NO WAY that could be the case, though, with Cee-Lo's verse here. Particularly toward the end ("I'm comin' through, I'm comin through/Oooh I can't even stop"--3:25), you can hear him veritably gasping for air, getting more and more charged with a mad inspiration that prevents him from cutting himself off, but at that same time it takes a lot out of Cee-Lo, who doesn't have the virtue of laying one intonation after another digitally, leaving the cutting and pasting to the producer. Just look at the way he sort of gasps "We're from Atlanta (breathe) G (breathe) A (breathe)/That is where we stay": everything about the end of his performance here seems unplanned.

This brings me to the other reason the verse so intrigues me, which is that it seems to be a rare instance of a written verse subtly transforming into a freestyle, albeit a freestyle that still goes in on the same themes that Cee-Lo had been writing about throughout Soul Food. I think this poses a challenge for a rap critic, because there seem necessary differences in criteria between evaluating someone's freestyle (did he/she manage to get off some good lines? Was he/she topical, not repeating the same whack shit?) vs. written words (is the wordplay strong and original enough? Does the verse have an overall arc, or sound more like a grab bag of random thoughts?). Cee-Lo straddles that line, and in fact this track made me begin to question whether I was going about the process of claiming what was and wasn't a dope twelve bars all wrong. Part of the power comes from the delivery, but part of it also comes from cheering Cee-Lo on as he continues to top himself, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen bars in.

Cee-Lo's solo career now is strong enough that I don't mind him not rapping on his new album, but I do hope Goodie Mob gets back together soon, as their music has held up way better than almost anything else from the 90s (they have that in common with Outkast, too). Frankly, I haven't even gotten into why I like some of the other devastatingly cool lines ("I still swing low with the lumberjack/track" is a favorite), and maybe with time I can concentrate more on the words themselves. But with some people, delivery is king, and Cee-Lo's verse definitely requires at least two readings, even to scratch the surface of this mightiest of verses.

I would also suggest checking out "Git Up, Git Out" From Southernplayalisticadillacmusik and "Big Ole Words" from Cee-Lo Green Is...The Soul Machine for two other great Cee-Lo verses. Two among many. No rapper has ever stood as proudly "a little more than five feet tall" and still sounded so giant. Well, maybe Prodigy, he's like 5'6. Let's hear it for the short folk.

Ears To The Street, Eyes To The Sky: Nathan's Favorite Albums of 2010

My personal favorite moment of 2010 music-related esoterica was while watching the Olivier Assayas movie 'Carlos,' when "Sonic Reducer" by the Dead Boys blared over Red Army terrorist Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann's (aka Nadia) car radio as she tried to outrun the Swiss border police. Anyway, here are my ten favorite albums of 2010, with apologies to worthy candidates like Gorillaz, Sleigh Bells, Liars, Neil Young, etc. I also still haven't heard 'Apollo Kids' amongst thousands of others so this list is as always subject to post-publication grafting.

1. Gil Scott-Heron, I'm New Here
A decade in and out of Rikers on cocaine charges has evidently failed to hinder the great poet's capacity for adventurous, cutting lyrical commentary, even as I'm New Here seems immediately and evidently a less political, more personal beast than many of his 70s funk classics. Everybody these days seems to be combining blues, jazz, rap and electronica, but Gil jumbles these elements as a means of evoking a specific locale--New York--exploring what the city used to be, what it is now, and what it could be, in dreams. As a recent NYC transplant, I find it sings with the expectations of an exhilarating, enlightened materialist take on urbanity. I'm New Here is brave in its sequencing: it ranges from acoustic Smog covers to tracks of brief recited verse to torch songs, all of which add up to a virtuoso deconstruction of popular American music, hip-hop, and basically everything else on the remainder of this list.

2. Janelle Monáe, The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III)
I've spent a lot of 2010 belaboring the point that The Archandroid is meant to contain the second two suites out of a total of four, so I don't know if it's exactly fair now to bestow such accolades on an ostensibly uncompleted work. But everyone must know by now how good The ArchAndroid is, and the level of energy and creativity that goes into potent genre-crosses like "Cold War," "Locked Inside," "Wondaland," and 15 others would be staggering enough even if Ms. Monáe wasn't already perhaps the greatest live performer in the world.

3. Big Boi, Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son Of Chico Dusty
Confession: Were it not for the lugubrious Jamie Foxx-assisted slow jamz business "Hustle Blood," this would be #1 on my list. Having scrutinized every errant Big Boi mp3 for years as Jive and Def Jam battled for this album's soul, it's wondrous to discover how deep and how virulent a strain of ear-crack this still is, no matter how old some of the tracks are. Song-for-song and verse-for-verse, Antwan Patton has improved his delivery and increased the breadth of his subject matter, and he demonstrates heretofore unnoticed insane skills as a producer. Andre 3000 may be our Prince, but Big Boi is our George Clinton, with the longevity and next-level rhyming skills (peep "The Train Pt. II") to match.

4. Caribou, Swim
Dan Snaith, aka the best Math PhD in the biz, has never done anything as awash in different forms of tension (something that dramatically sets him apart from his dance-y peers) as Swim. A track like "Leave House" starts off in DFA Land but veers into something scarier, more minimal; a track like "Kaili" messes with the parameters of balladry and atmosphere in a way that seems...well, mathematical. And, as my colleague intimated, "Odessa" has the opening firepower of a "Born Under Punches," which is to say this is a finely-tuned audio experiment, every note and motif carefully applied, that also happens to be enjoyable to listen to.

5. Nü Sensae, TV, Death and the Devil
Vancouver is one of many hubs in Canada for some of the best hardcore punk being produced in the world today, but what separates Nü Sensae from heavyweights like Fucked Up is that they bring a simplicity that outstretches even the earliest conceptions of the form--no epic guitar overdubs here, just distorted bass and drums and some searing lady vocals on top. Almost every track on TVDATD provides a different kind of amphetamine rush despite/because of this simplicity. This album isn't diverse, it's obverse--every idea the band has, they throw it in your face.

6. Freddie Gibbs, Str8 Killa EP
Gibbs, as far as I know, is the first rapper of note to come out of Gary, Indiana (apparently the Hoosier State has traditionally been short on lyrical talent), and the perspective he lends, coming out of a city with the highest percentage of African-Americans in the country (to say nothing of a significant pop dynasty), is unique--but that alone doesn't sum up why the 35-minute Str8 Killa sounded so much better than most longer players (in both senses). Gangsta Gibbs has the flow and deep register of a young Tupac, and songs like "Str8 Killa No Filla" and "National Anthem (Fuck the World)" are direct and high-energy examples of no-bullshit hardcore hip-hop. At EP length, this is a chaff-less debut from a unique, perhaps needed new voice.

7. Grinderman, Grinderman 2
Grinderman and Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, respectively my favorite albums of 2007 and 2008, still hold up better as collections of discrete middle-aged ramblings, but neither hit as hard as Grinderman 2, which takes the Nick Cave persona down unpaved paths of absurdity and self-flagellation as the band truly masters the idea of fuzz-as-feeling ("Worm Tamer") and makes occasional lapses into California stoner rock (see: the last half of "When My Baby Comes").

8. Marnie Stern, Marnie Stern
Up to now, one could enjoy Marnie Stern's music without really understanding what she was trying to do. Is this experimental mathcore, just intense rock tunes with insane drumming, or what? Her new self-titled release helps simplify what we should have known all along: Marnie Stern makes guitar records, and Marnie Stern is a great guitar record, and (on an unrelated note) Marnie Stern is the best guitar player in America. Quote me on that if you want, or just listen to the first twenty seconds of "Nothing Left," and see if it doesn't give you goosebumps like the end of "Cinnamon Girl."

9. OFF!, The First Four EPs
I found it hard to listen to The First Four EPs at once without unconsciously comparing the furious hardcore within to Black Flag's collection The First Four Years, which featured all of the early material recorded when Keith Morris was the singer. Now Morris, who formed OFF! with former members of Redd Kross and Rocket From The Crypt, is doing basically the same thing he did with Black Flag and Circle Jerks, and yet OFF! never sounds like a throwback. But that's the beauty of early 80s hardcore, in a way--elements can be appropriated and diluted by all the pop punks in the world, but the original core sound is always conjurable, and always compelling.

10. Cee-Lo Green, The Lady Killer
If the tunes weren't this good, I would complain that Cee-Lo needs to rap more. And he does, but The Lady Killer proves his cartoon soul croon to be just as mighty and flexible an instrument. "Fuck You" was deservedly a big hit, impassioned and thoughtful enough to bypass some (but not all) of the music industry's censorious forces, but the other soul homages, stretching from the North Philly sex-beat of "Fool For You" to the aggressively hooky Motown "It's Okay," are just as criminally relistenable, one after the other. Even the Band of Horses cover at the end has the air of a slow jam classic, and I still listen to it all the time.