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A Vulture Ate My Homework · Hip-Hop Now Podcast

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Coming up on this week's episode of Hip Hop Now podcast, Eminem is working
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on a documentary all about stands. My thoughts on the new album from Kanye
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West, tadd Dallas Sign Vultures Part one and can you separate art from the
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artists? And I'm not only talking about Kanye Let's do it. Welcome to
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Jimpop Now, POPATSK. If you from the future, you know what to
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do? Show as out about that. Don't disrespect the leg lack hip hop
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is say this today, escape rating to the business. What up y'all?
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I am your host Vegas and this hip Hop Now podcast a podcast specifically designed
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you caught up on all things hip hop, music and culture that happened throughout
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the week. Big shout out to the patreon supporters over at patreon dot com
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slash hip Hop Now and if you would like to join the illustrious people who
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are now listed below on the you know if you watch it on video below
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on the ticker. These are past and present supporters of the podcast over at
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Patreon dot com slash hip Hop Now and if you would like to learn more
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about that, I put the link in the description of this episode. Big
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shout out to hip hopdx dot com, All hip Hop dot Com, Source
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magazine, and a couple of places where I get some of these stories from.
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Let's get right into the business. Say, unless you've been living a
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lifetime under a hip hop rock you have heard the term stand. It's a
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term used to describe fanatics, not fans, but crazy people. Right.
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You love your artist so much, you defend them like you know them.
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You defend them like you're own a payroll. You're kind of crazy with it.
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You're not just a fan. You don't just enjoy the music, you
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don't just relate to them. You're crazy and you probably want to kill them.
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Now. The reason why, the reason why I went that far is
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because if you've been living under hip hop rock. Stan is a term that
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comes from the popular Eminem song Stan, which was about a fan named Stan
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who was obsessed with him with Eminem and wrote him letters and got to the
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point where he was such a fanatic and looked into Eminem's music so deeply that
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he eventually and I'm not going to spoil it, but you know it just
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didn't end well for him that after that song, that name was what people
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refer to when there's over zealous fans right now. Obviously, most fans that
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you would call us stand. We got a lot of bars today. Uh,
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fans stand a lot. But most most fans that you referred to as
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that, they're just over zealous, right They just say some things that most
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fans don't write, you know, like, hey, you know jay Z's
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better than Michael Jackson. No he's not. But maybe you love jay Z
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so much that you ignore the accomplishments of Michael Jackson. Maybe I don't know,
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And for some people maybe that's debatable. But that's an example. But
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obviously it goes on and on. For those that already are aware, I'm
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explaining it for those who don't know. But considering how popular the word or
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the term stand is in hip hop, and it's kind of taking on a
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life of its own. Eminem is exploring world of superfandom in a new Stands
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documentary. This is coming from Hip HOPDX dot com. I'm gonna re real
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quick. They got it from Variety. On Wednesday, February fourteenth, Variety
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reported that the Detroit MC is set to co produce a documentary titled Stands,
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which is a reference to his fictional song about a devotee of music. Who
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ends up? I mean, for those who never heard the song, I'm
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not gonna spoil it, but he ends up killing himself in his girl.
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You should check it out. Very dope song, one of the best songs
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of hip hop history. After Eminem doesn't respond to his letters. That's the
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key, right. Stan has since become a recognized term both now and verb,
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used to convey obsession, typically for artists and celebrities. So this is
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going to be released later this year via Shady Films and let's see what the
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director, Steven Leckhart said, describes it as revealing, edgy and disarmingly personal
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journey into the world of superfandom, told through the lens of one of the
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world's most iconic and enduring artists, Eminem, and the fans that worship him.
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So where this is going to essentially focus on Eminem stands, right,
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because that's typically like over zealous, obsessed Eminem fans are referred to as stands,
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but they kind of do that with everybody. They're going to explore that
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part of it as it relates to Eminem, but also just as it relates
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in general to artists. I think I think I like this. I think
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Honestly, this would have been dope for fifty years of hip hop, but
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there was a ton of things in Who's this? I mean, I'm not
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going to say, hey, all right, that's it. No more hip
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hop documentaries because fifty years of hip hop has passed. But I don't think
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there's ever been a documentary that I'm not aware of that would concentrate on terms
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in hip hop, extremely popular terms that have become a part of hip hop
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culture and lingo. Right, stan has Right. I remember using that as
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a validation for Eminem's impact because there's so many dudes that don't listen to Eminem
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that you stand when they're referring to not Eminem fans, but just any obsessed
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fans. Another term that kind of took on some of that maybe not as
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popular, but a lot of people to this day, including rappers, still
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mention it ether. I remember that was just the whole definition was just like,
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you know, I got that ether for you. And usually that means
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and it says whatever Rick Roll says, I don't care what he says.
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It usually means you're gonna get smoked in this battle, you know, or
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whatever the competition is. And obviously that's referring to the NAS disc record towards
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jay Z back in two thousand and one on his birthday, Jay Z's birthday.
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There is ether right. It was so impactful in the hip hop game
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that it became a slang word used or term used for a nihilation in hip
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hop. Hey, these are the facts. These are it's the history,
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fan, what you want me to do? So I think I'll check that
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out when it drops. I mean, I'm behind you. I am behind
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on hip hop docs. At some point, I'm just gonna pick a day
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and I'm just gonna binge him because I didn't see Run dm C yet,
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I didn't see Dreads from Black Sheep Joint yet. I still ain't see the
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Bizmarcky joint. There's a lot. I did see Little Brother, and if
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you want to know my feelings on that, just check out my videos.
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I have an episode actually dedicated to reviewing that documentary. So I'm going to
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do more because there are plenty of people like me who either didn't know some
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of these documentaries existed or never got the chance to watch them. And you
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know, time is money, so you got to take the time. But
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maybe I'll start to do that like beginning in March, I'll watch one or
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two of them and then put out a full episode reviewing them. Right.
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So, last week, if you're in the future, you know the dude,
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get on out of here, Get on up, out of here.
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Kanye West released his collaborative album with Tadd dallas Son entitled Vultures Part One.
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This is part one of three projects to come. And let me say this,
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At first, I didn't even know it was out, which makes sense
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because typically how you know some of these projects are released is the promotions.
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It's the build up to it. You know, you see it everywhere,
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you see a video, you see it being promoted everywhere. Well, one
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of the reasons why it just wasn't in your face the way it would have
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been in the past or past Kanye projects is just because he keep talking,
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right, he keeps saying things that anger people, and especially anger people of
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power, and not saying that anybody blocked him or anything like that. But
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I could see it not being a priority to promote it, whether it's him
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and his team not taking efforts to promote it. Even though they did the
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Super Bowl thing, which was low budget but it worked out for them.
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Financially. Before I get into the album, and I'm gonna be brief,
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let me just say this first, because of who I mentioned, right,
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Kanye West has said a lot of things that I do not agree with.
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Right. It doesn't matter if you're talking about black folk, men, women,
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or Jews, doesn't matter. I don't agree with a lot of stuff
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he said. And I remember when he dropped that one album with the Mountain
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in the background. This is when he had the Magna had on and Trump
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was in office and he was Trump Trump, Trump, and I remember I
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was curious to hear what it sounded like, because you know, I do
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a news podcast, so I figured, oh, maybe I'll talk about it.
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There's some people who are curious, maybe not curious enough to press play,
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but are curious. And I remember with that album, I was like,
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man, musically, this album is dope, but lyrically it is not.
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And a lot of it had to do with what he was saying,
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right, A lot of what he was saying on you know, news outlets
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and all of that about Trump and society and black folk and all of that
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was in his lyrics. So it's tough to like really get into something if
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you don't agree or relate, right, That's what voltures is. It is
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a very complicated situation. I remember the day came out, I had it
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in a queue to listen to. I went to this. I went to
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the liquor store. Don't worry, I ain't. I ain't an alcoholic or
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nothing like that. I just needed some brew for the super Bowl, right,
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And while I'm in there, a couple of the young cats that worked
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there were having a debate about Kanye West, and I knew it was off
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the strength of the new music that was out, and they were all kind
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of conflicted, right. Some agreed with things I'm saying, and then there
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were others who were making he was black, who were kind of making excuses
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for what Kanye was saying, even about slavery being a choice. I couldn't
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believe what I was listening to. But I do a hip hop news podcast,
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so I just wanted to listen. I didn't want to interfere. I
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wanted to hear it play outs, since they chose to speak freely in the
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hour way I'm trying to get the brute and I just remember thinking, like,
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Wow, this is why he's still a draw, because there's a lot
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of people who have no problem with what he's saying, not necessarily because they
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totally agree, but because they dig that he's free to say what he wants.
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There's a generation that don't care about any other principles and what came before
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and yo, you need to have a job for this. They do not
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cared. They want to be free and they see him as that. Now,
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let's just get to the bottom of it right before I get into this
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album. He obviously and admittedly in some cases, has mental issues, but
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I think he needs more help, and I think a lot of people are
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enabling him in some ways, and I think the success tells him he's doing
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the right thing. Even if it's the craziest marketing risk you could ever take
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with your life and career, he will do it because Kanye, before Maga
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hats, before what he said about black folks and Jews, before his mother's
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passion, saw that if he did something to get people's attention, they would
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all pay attention to him and a lot of people would check it out or
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buy it. And he's been doing it with every album ever since. I
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think this started with I want to say Graduation with the him versus fifty cent
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thing and from now on you got the Taylor Swift moment, you got everything.
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George bushtone like black folks, I think that was a little bit earlier,
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but you know what I mean, Like it was a it was just
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kind of like he was going to say what he wanted to say, no
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matter what the subject was. And that's what he's doing now, and that's
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what he's doing on Voltures one. Now. Is it just littered with that?
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No, A lot of it is the Kanye you know, a lot
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of it, right, A lot of what he's saying, Like you can't
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really zero in on him saying something about a woman law, he's a woman.
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He's been saying that right when you like them. But then there are
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things he says that are like the clips you hear of him talking, you're
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like, and he's like doubling down on it, and it's like now,
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the album is sixteen tracks, about an hour in length. It is a
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quick listen if you ask me, I probably honestly only skipped about two or
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three joints and that had more to do with the features than him where it
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just didn't sound good. But musically Kanye West, if not for nothing he
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can still produce. I hate to say it to y'all who don't want him
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to have anything left. He can still produce. He can produce for these
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young cats, and he can produce well, as we saw with some of
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the Pusher t stuff for the Boombat pads. He still has that now.
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Obviously, you know, he's always had help with production, and he also
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wraps over other people's production, so it's not solely a Kanye West. But
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nevertheless, I think with this album, if Kanye had never said any of
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the things Maga had, slavery was choice. Things he says about Jews and
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the subject matter was I don't know the opposite right in support of right pro
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black, pro Jews and all of that. Right. Again, they're not
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whole songs about this stuff. It's just lines that he has sprinkled throughout the
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project. I think people would love this album. Now, when I say
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that, and this is kind of how I review things, I will say,
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if you're a Kanye West fan from the past and you haven't liked anything
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since My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Fantasy, this ain't for you. If
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you've liked most of what Kanye's done, including a couple of albums like Yeezus
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or whatever and Ato eights. You might like this album musically if you have
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written him off because of everything he said and how out of control he is,
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and you know the fact that you think he needs help and you don't
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want to enable as far as streams and record sales, this is not for
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you. And if your boombat cat it's not for you, it's not for
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you. Should do I like it? Is it one of the best of
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the year? Nah? Nah? I think there's just it's too difficult to
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judge Kanye West albums without putting them up against his previous work. And if
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your motivation is to walk your wife around butt naked while you got a mask
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on with big boots and just say things to incite people and then turn around
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and apologize and turn around and have it come out with it in your lyrics
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like it's just as messy as his life seems, so then you have it.
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And lastly, so speaking of Kanye and artists and artistry, one question
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that arises via situation like r Kelly or Rick Ross and most recently Freddie gives
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can you separate the art from the artists? To me, you can,
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but it's complicated now, examples. I think personally that if you are into
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the music so much that the music is this separate thing for you, then
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you can't separate it. But I think if what that artist does outside of
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their music is in the lyrics, then you can't separate it because they rapping
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about it, because they're singing about it. And that's one of the reasons.
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Like I was a huge R. Kelly fan fan. When I tell
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you huge, I mean every album, every remix, an unreleased album,
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Like I had all of this just in my catalog and I would listen to
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it frequently, and at some point I couldn't separate the artists from the art
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once it was just complete fact of who he was and it was all in
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the music. Some of my favorite records are now tainted because they were about
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situations that would you know, landed him in jail. I just talked about
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Kanye in his situation. It's easy to separate it if the music is about
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different subject matter, but the artist puts whatever he talks about that's controversial in
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his music to justify it, and it becomes difficult to separate the artists from
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the art. Now, some can still do that because they don't see it
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as being such, even though he's saying the same thing in the music.
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But then there's a whole other category of separating art from the artists. And
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with this example, I could easily separate the two because I think it comes
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down to do you really care? Right? Rick Ross, for the longest
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time he talked about you know, drug his name is pattern after a notorious
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drug dealer, Freeway. Ricky Ross even almost to luck with the bed and
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you know that's coke rhyme's and drugs and blah blah blah. And then people
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came to find out that he was a correctional officer. Now, I don't
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know about you, but some CEOs they may have a badge. They ain't
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good, you know what I'm saying. And no one knows if that's what
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he was doing or whatever. But at the time he denied it because it
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went against all the things he talked about in his record. I'm are now
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well, let me just say with the Rick Ross thing, I did not
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care, you know why, Because this is the difference. I can separate
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him from what else he used to do. Like if he worked in Burger
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king, I'm not gonna be like, ah, you worked in Burger king,
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you ain't a boss. To me, hip hop is all about,
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you know, the different genres, the different types of rappers, the different
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types of subject matter. It's all entertainment. I see no different from me
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picking up grand Theft photo or the latest Super Mario game. Right, I'm
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a grown man. I could choose between the two. Both are not real.
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That's how I look at it. So when Rick Ross came out everything
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he was saying, I was like, Yo, he really doing that.
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I don't know. I don't think so I don't care because I never looked
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at rappers, whether they're gangster rapper or whatever, is always saying what they
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did was a thing in reality. And if there's many rappers that talk about
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drugs and guns and cases and murders and stuff like that, which I look
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at as being equivalent to action movies or books, excuse me, or mafia
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movies or books with the same subject matter, no one would have to go
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and do these crimes in order to talk about it. Right, Robert de
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Niro doesn't have to be a mob boss in order to play one. He's
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an actor. Rappers to me are storytellers, right. They could be telling
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their story from the past. They could be telling a man's story, they
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could be telling a bunch of stories. They could be influenced by stories from
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other meetings. That's how I looked at it with Rick Ross. The music
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was good. I liked what I heard. I did not care that he
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was Officer Ricky. It was funny. But at the end of the day,
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did Rick Ross really need to be a drug kingpin in order for you
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to like his music? I don't think so. I think it would have
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been more complicated if he really was, right, because, for one,
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you're going to jail now, and two now people have to think, well,
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that's not something to brag about, right, But if it's all in
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the vein of entertainment, and you don't look at movies like Good Fellas and
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Scarface and all of that as being entertainment, also, I mean, what
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are we really talking about? Can't be good for them and not for hip
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hop? Now most recently talk about separating Freddy Giggs, Freddy Gibbs, Freddy
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Giggs too. Right now, he had a whole bunch of things happened all
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in secession. Right he got jumped by presumably allegedly Benny the Butcher's Peoples and
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his girlfriend at the time was pregnant and he was trying to look the other
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way or go the other ways, say it wasn't his whatever, and she
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was, she was. She exposed him, right, Pictures came out.
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One picture came out. I'm not even gonna describe it. You could just
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google it yourself, Freddie Gibbs and a couple of keywords and you'll find what
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was out there, right, hashtag spready Gibbs. You know what I mean.
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But in hip hop, that's all kinds of els, Like fifty years
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of hip hop, that's all kinds of ours. There was a point in
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time where if that happened, anybody they had done, they had finished,
26:30
no one's gonna work with them. Nothing. Now, in a lot of
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ways, these were private photos. This wasn't nothing he did publicly. It's
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something he said to her. And because of the situation, now he's been
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exposed. Apparently something else came out recently and he laughs at it, and
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I think. And he's also featured on Kanye West's album. When I hear
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new verses from him, I don't even care. I don't even care because
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the first time I press play on Freddy Gibbs. It never crossed my mind
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to be like y'all. I wonder if he'd be taking pictures of himself sending
27:11
them abroads. Man, I don't care as long as you not doing nothing
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crazy, right, like messing with underage women. Right. I know he
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had the alleged rape charge I think when he was like overseas or something like
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that a couple of years back. That nothing ever came of that, so
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I don't know. And I can't just assume because somebody accused you that you're
27:37
guilty. I'm just sorry. You just can't right, You're guilty, guilty,
27:41
you know. But nevertheless, this stuff that's happening. To be honest,
27:48
it's funny, it's still an l but his music is dope, and
27:57
it's really nothing that I mean, unless you start rapping about it all crazy
28:03
maybe, but that's probably a skip. So it does not bother me to
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have these things happen. Now. I can't listen to your music no more.
28:11
You are out here looking crazy. Listening to Freddy Gibbs' music won't have
28:15
no positive or negative impact on me at all. And I feel like a
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lot of insecurity comes into play when people judge like that and a lot of
28:27
Now, I don't get me wrong, I ain't saying I want to get
28:30
caught out there like that because it's got to be embarrassing. But if he's
28:36
taking it, well, why do you can't. As long as the music
28:41
is dope, as long as the music is focused like it's always been,
28:45
who cares. Some people can't separate the artists from the art. And I
28:55
get it. I mean, because there are people who want you to at
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least live or be what you rap about in some ways, and if you
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calling yourself a pimp, then they look at it like a pimp wouldn't do
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that. And I can't lissen to you again. Like I said earlier,
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hip hop is entertainment. I see it no different as any other form of
29:22
entertainment that chooses to have different subject matter. And it's not all positive.
29:30
You just make a choice whether you want to hear it or not. But
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I think in certain instances can I judging artists strictly on his art or does
29:44
his or her life have to uh, you know, play a role basically
29:49
and whether or not you like it. Right, We talked about Megan Thee
29:52
Stallion and Nicki Minaj and the Megan Meghan's law line. And for a long
29:57
time I used to you know, I used to feel some kind of way
30:00
about Niki, Like, yo, you kind of like supporting these I get
30:03
it, you know, he's your husband and your baby father and that's your
30:08
brother. But what's good with the pedophiles? Right? Like? Why is
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that a trend? Right? Like? I get the details of it,
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but why is that a trend that surrounds you that you kind of defend?
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But some people still press play, people still listen. You know, there's
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more people who support her than not. And I think the same goes for
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Rick Ross, same goals for Kye R. Kelly might be the only one,
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but he's locked up, found guilty, but he might be the only
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one where the majority rules and they do not rule in his favor because of
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his actions. What do you think? Do you think? I think you
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could separate the artists from the art right Kanye's situation versus Freddy Gibbs situation?
31:10
Does either matter to you? Does it matter if it's in the music?
31:14
Does it bother you? Leave your comments in a comments section below. You
31:18
can follow me on social media at Vegas World, I in C and check
31:23
out the audio version if you don't always have time to watch the video.
31:27
It's available on all platforms. And check out my new series exclusively on YouTube
31:34
called Tale of the Tapes where I pull a cassette out of my garage and
31:40
talk about it for like two minutes or so. And I got a lot
31:44
of joints from early nineties. I didn't realize I had that many sets still
31:48
in my garage. But it's a dope series. And we got twelve joints
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if you had released now more to come all the way into March until next
31:59
time, y'all. I'm not a crit I'm fair