Stuff. A couple of rants… in OD

So, the restlessness has gone, thankfully.

Everything is in place for this wedding on Sunday. Got my suit, shirt, tie, shoes, gift and card. A friend has already agreed to laptop sit for me and I’m getting picked up tomorrow.

Apart from that, not much is happening.

Those of you who live here wiil know this, but yesterday was A-level and GCSE results day. This means two things. One: papaers full of pictures of good looking females getting their results (if you thought that was bad, schools have been using how good looking their female students are as bait to get papers to go there for results day) and Two: people moaning and bitching about how much easier exams are today.

I’m sure I’ve ranted about this before but, here we go again: I would not like to be a schoolkid nowadays. Before, how well you did in your exams merely reflected how much you studied, unless you are one of those people who just do well in exams. Nowadays, your fucked if you do and fucked if you don’t. If you do badly, it’s your own fault, you should have worked harder. If you do well, don’t bother celebrating, the only reason you did so is because the exams have gotten easier. Nothing to do with you working your arse off to earn the grade. You can’t have done that, surely.

The truth is, no-one, except the person themselves knows exactly how much they deserve their grade. You didn’t spend every single minute of every single day with them. I’d like to say to these folk: put your money where your mouth is. Pick a subject, publish on public record your result for that subject then sit this years exam. Under exam conditions. If things have got easier, you should get a better mark now than you did before. Oh, and don’t worry if you got an A, there’s now the A* grade.

Been catching up on some TV as well. Channel 4 has an urban culture thing going on at the moment, so been watching some of that. They showed Exit Through the Gift Shop which is a stunningly good film and one I highly recommend, The Antics Roadshow, directed by Bansky which was about pranksters there’s a couple more i’ve just downloaded.

And there is How Hip Hop Changed the World. Presented by Idris Elba (Stringer from The Wire) I thought it would be an intereseting 2 hours about hip hop and it’s influence. Instead, we got a top 50 show with some dubious choices.

Let’s start with this: one of the top 25 was Timbalaand and The Neptunes producing for Justin Timberlake and Britnet Spears. To be sure, that was a big moment. The first time that hip hop beats had sucessfully been merged with commercial pop. But somehow, this was above the discovery of the break beat and the creation of G-Funk, which not only defined an entire era of hip hop but also broke the West Coast through as a significant part of hip hop, showing the guys from New York that LA could do this as well.

At number 10 is So Solid Crew. Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved 21 Seconds when it came out and couldn’t wait to see what else they were capable of doing. Well, it turns out that WAS what they were capable of doing. So why the fuck did they make it higher on the list than NWA and Eminem? NWA, aside from the quality of the music, was a huge influence and broke through an insane number of MC’s.

As for Eminem? White rappers EVERYWHERE need to bow down and worship the guy. Till he broke through, white rappers were compared to Vanilla Ice. He was absolutely the first to be credible and, just when you thought he couldn’t top The Slim Shady LP, he goes and drops The Marshall Mathers LP and does just that. Yet he was apparently less influential than a group with more emebers than they knew what to do with, one good song and a shitload of legal issues.

Number one was Barak Obama becoming President. All because he admitted to being a Jay-Z. Really? Really? Pick one of the moments I talked about above. (Well, except So Solid.) Or East Coast Vs West Coast. Run DMC and Aerosmith. Salt N Peppa. Missy Elliot. Rakim. The creation of scratching. None of them were more infuential on hip hop than Obama winning the election? Really?

It’s a shame, because this documentary could and should have been so much more than it turned out to be.

And with that, I must depart.

Will