Posts tagged Waka Flocka Flame

Waka Flocka Flame’s first hit single, “O Let’s Do It” was neo-crunk blast that slowly rose over month onto rap radio, peaking with an inspired Diddy and Rick Ross remix. But, its Waka second verse on the original song that foreshadows so much of his later work: “One shot man down, his brain go Ka-Pow, Ow, that shit hurts, so don’t fuck around, but here that happens often off in Riverdale, Georgia, you pay the life you live off in Riverdale, Georgia”. Despite the connection of violence and fighting attached to Waka Flocka’s early work, this first single was just the story of a low level drug dealer that knows their life is in constant danger not only by profession, but even more so where they just happen to lay their head at night. 

Chief Keef is already going through the Waka Flocka hype cycle all over again starting with some very local hits  and now slowly getting his feet inside the music industry (apparently a Keef/Kanye collaboration is the works)*. And addition to this hype cycle, Keef is getting the same criticism of Waka Flocka (and most rappers ever for that matter) of glorifying violence, and being a negative influence on rap music and kids—always the kids. This criticism has manifested itself in weird pieces that take this 16-year-old to task for perpetuating the violence of a million plus population city and seemingly not offering a solution to this problem. But, that is some backwards logic, as the videos which have made Chief Keef relatively famous are about as lo-fi as rap music gets, having been produced by mostly him and friends and until recently were entirely local to just Chicago. Speaking to people who actually talked to the Keef: the image that prevails is of a young kid living life—raising his daughter, smoking weed, and hanging out with his friends—in a tough environment rather than a gun-wielding maniac some people try to make him out to be.

Waka Flocka dealt with the same stereotypes, because a black man wearing braids saying lyrics filled with violent content is obviously someone to be feared and couldn’t possibly have anything intelligent to say. And, while I’ve grown up in circumstances far more fortunate than Waka or Keef, it’s easy to connect to these young African-Americans, who’ve receive a fair amount of criticism based solely upon their looks. That’s why the opening lines of Waka Flocka’s “Stereotype” can be so effecting: “Brother dead, daddy dead, auntie got HIV/Lord, can you please get this rage out of me?/Started popping pills cause of shit that I’ve seen/And the shit that I went through as a child”. Waka Flocka explains through his music the unfortunate circumstances, which have lead to his current life, and instead of people trying to better understand him and listen to the words he has to say, people continue to ignore them and stereotype.

*I just want to say this sentence/entire paragraph came from conversations with Chief Keef Scholar David Drake the last month. To give credit where it is due.

DJ Drama is an easy rap figure to hate; he is loud, obnoxious, and a grown man yelling “Mr. Thanksgiving” on your favorite rapper’s songs can be slightly annoying, but he is still one of the most important figures in rap. The actual influence on rapper’s careers—where would Young Jeezy, Gucci Mane, or for that matter the idea of Trap Rap be without him—is interesting, but what I love about DJ Drama is the thing people hate about him the most: the yelling.

The basic DJ Drama shouts are just a lot of boasting and posturing, usually going on rants about how “the streets” need this mixtape or how he has returned back to “the streets” (no matter how many times DJ Drama leaves the streets, they keep pulling him back in). Those adlibs really add anything to a song, but then lines like “I got 3-D glasses for $3.99, but the movie is free” from Gucci Mane’s “Frowney Face” are just too funny not to enjoy. Humor is not all he brings, as Alley Boy’s mixtape Purgatory from earlier this year is improved by DJ Drama’s ranting which increase the amount paranoia to the mixtape.

Sadly, until DJ Drama releases a spoken word album—or my fantasy of Tri Angle Records getting him to releasing a DJ Drama album with him yelling over Sludge Metal happens, this particular admirable quality of DJ Drama will probably stay lost to the larger rap world.

However, DJ Drama is a culprit of rewinding track, which I used to hate with a passion, but now I really appreciate what it can adds to a song. Waka Flocka Flame’s “Robot Rapper” has a running time of over 5 minutes, which would not be too odd, except that the base song is barely 3 and half minutes. Just after all of the DJ rewinding the song begins about 2 minutes into its 5:12 running time, meaning 40% of the song is a very extended intro.

This is nothing really new, as DJ having been mixing—and extending and shortening—songs for years, but a great song might be saddle with a minute of useless yelling that needs to be skipped just so the song can actually begin. While, a lot of people hate this effect, and only listen to NO DJ mixtapes, I’ve actually grown to like these alternate edits of songs. “Robot Rapper” might be fine in its three minute long version, but I have only grown to love its extended five minute form. But, what made me really notice this effect was trying to explain the structure of the song to friend, as I couldn’t explain it as the basic verse-chorus-verse structure was abandoned about a minute into the song.

I would expect structure of “Robot Rapper” to be:
Waka Flocka Flame’s verse

Chorus

Kebo Gotti’s verse

Chorus

Bo Deal’s verse

Chorus (end)

But, in reality it is:

The beginning of Waka Flocka Flame’s verse

Waka Flocka Flame yelling to rewind the track

Chorus

Waka Flocka Flame’s verse

Waka Flocka Flame’s monologue

Chorus

Kebo Gotti’s verse

Kebo Gotti’s monologue

Chorus

Bo Deal’s verse

Bo Deal’s monologue

Chorus (End)

The song is also full of vocal being raised, multiplied, lowered; too many DJ tags piled onto of multiple rapper adlibs, so what could be a simple rap song is rendered near incomprehensible once someone focuses in on what they’re listening to. After one hard listen to “Robot Rapper” it is impossible to not notice the original song could not be nearly as crazy as the version that exists now. Usually, it is easy to prefer hearing a NO DJ version of a song, but this is a case after multiple listens to “Robot Rapper” there is something far more interesting about Waka Flocka Flame’s verse becoming a near chorus of the song until halfway through when order is restored and the real chorus shows up just enough times to qualify for its position.

When posting J-Green’s “Weed, Pillz, and Promethazyne” I said this DJ permanent warping of songs has resulted in some weird rap songs by the likes of him and Juicy J, as they pick and choose from different songs (or even mixtape skits) to create their own Frankenstein songs. Andrew Noz broke down the different parts of Juicy “s “Gotta New One”, which steals its hook from a random line from Wiz Khalifa on “Erryday” from Rubba Band Business 2, which itself was a tour-de-force of simple and cheaply sampled hooks (not to say that “Who Da Neighbors” is not awesome: it very much is). However, the cheapness of the songs is highlighted as the hook is of a noticeably lower quality of than Juicy J’s verse and that’s even ignoring the varying sound quality of the other samples.

This is not a new thing at all, as there is a great game to discover how many Cash Money songs hooks you can find in a single song, and most of the members of Three 6 Mafia have been remaking their classic songs for decades, so recycling material is not really new. There could even be a sub-genre of rap music that samples Pimp C, as the idea of paying tribute to Pimp C stopped being interesting a few years back, and is now one of the more strange/bizarre songs every southern rapper feels compelled to do. Rap music began because people sampled older records, but the there is a kind of snake eating it own tail eating the same snake’s tail feel to how a song like “Gotta New One” is created.

The line between mixtapes and album for years has been blurry, but now the songs are even starting to be made through this obscured view where the basic verse-chorus-verse structure is outdated, and if a song is going to stick to verse-chorus-verse it is ripe for strip mining to keep a steady clip of new songs always coming out. Complex did a feature of DJ Drama’s top 25 mixtapes, and as the last fourth of the feature has DJ Drama talking about the diminished importance the DJ has in today’s mixtape world. This is of course too bad for those DJ out there, who enjoy being known for yelling and rewinding track beyond recognition as mixtape DJ’s influence of releasing free music has kind of peaked (have you heard of this little act called the Weeknd). The same cannot be the for the actual music, which is even without a DJ altering the track stills sounds like at least a hundred different things happening in the song.