Baring Teen Balladry on the Radio Today, and Performers Still Rarely
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26 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE Music continued from page 25 While the album consists mostly baring teen balladry on the of love songs, unlike on One radio today, and performers still Kiss not every phrase begins rarely write their own material. with the word baby, and the But as the liner notes to One portrayals of romance are a bit Kiss are careful to point out, more grown-up. The man and some of these girls were more his love are still elusive, but the than singers, and the girl-group girl is asking for more than boom enabled them to establish hand-holding: she also wants careers as songwriters: among friendship. On the album open- them were Stevie Wonder col- er, “Crazy Annie,” she’s even the laborator Syreeta Wright, a 17- post-Woodstock era. On the one doing the leaving. year-old Mary Wells, and Dusty cover, clad in a dark brown Any Way That You Want Me Springfield’s biggest influence, pantsuit and tunic, she cruises a sold 500,000 copies, but the Evie Sands, who has two early dirt road on her ten-speed, her bigger deal for Sands was the singles included in the set. long hair flowing, the very pic- inclusion of “It’s This I Am,” Sands’s 1970 debut album for ture of the carefree and liberat- which she describes in her liner A&M, Any Way That You Want ed new woman of the 70s. She’s notes for the reissue as a “thrill Me, reissued for the first time by not even looking at the camera, and personal milestone ...the UK label Rev-Ola in September, as if to imply that she just hap- first time I had gotten to record picks up where the girl-group pened to cruise into the frame and release a song I had writ- box leaves off, tiptoeing into the in her special carefree way. ten.” The rest of the record con- sists of songs that had already been made hits by everyone from the Troggs to Jackie Ross, but “It’s This I Am” is the most memorable moment; the song has since been covered by Beck and Beth Orton, and Belle & Sebastian are such fans that they backed Sands on two dates on her European comeback tour in 2000. A whisper-quiet, splendor-in- psych drift of faraway strings, electric piano, and indeterminate twinkling sounds, “It’s This I Am” is Sands’s haunting response to the firm prescrip- tions set for her and every other girl singer of the era. It’s a libera- tion anthem, and she asserts her dynamism in a rich voice, sure and melancholy: “I’m that great divide / That never was at all / That’s neither large nor heavy / That’s neither light or small / It always was and will be / Forever through all time / It’s here and there and nowhere / Always is / It’s this I am I find.” She’s defin- ing who she is rather than who she is in relation to some absen- tee heartbreaker boy. And she is beyond definition. v CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE 27 Books TRIKSTA: LIFE AND DEATH AND NEW ORLEANS RAP NIK COHN (KNOPF) The Bounce Remains the Same Nik Cohn tried to influence New Orleans rap but all he got was this lousy nickname. By Robert Mentzer hite, British, and push- the city and its music, from now throw your hands up. and try to keep Choppa’s nose ing 60, Nik Cohn never his early fascination with Jelly Cohn knew the music, but to the grindstone.” He even W fit in with New Orleans’s Roll Morton to his first visit he didn’t feel it until the 90s, writes lyrics: “Bend it over, rap scene, but for a brief period there in 1972, while on the after he was diagnosed with catch the wall /Wobble wob- in the late 90s and early 00s he road with the Who. Though he hepatitis C. Hep C’s symptoms ble for me.” explored its margins as a jour- later moved to New York, he include insomnia and exhaus- It’s not giving away a nalist, talent scout, and manag- continued to rent a house in tion, but to hear Cohn tell it significant plot point to say er. Triksta, his book about this New Orleans for several the diagnosis forced him to that the deal eventually falls period, is partly a memoir, part- months each year, describing live his life in a new, reener- through and Choppa defects ly a meditation on hip-hop, and the city as “the lover I could gized way. So he catches a to Master P’s New No Limit partly an exposé of what’s under never be free of.” And he knows parade float in New Orleans Records. Bounce insiders the glittering surface of the New Orleans’s hip-hop scene, blasting a bounce track, bristle at his attempts to turn music industry. But mostly it’s which centers on bounce, a Magnolia Shorty’s “Monkey a regional genre into a nation- a story about hubris: Cohn’s an club-centric, bump-and-grind on tha Dick,” and it connects. al success. One producer all outsider who tried to harness style. Cohn puts on his musi- “The effect was baptismal,” but calls Cohn a carpetbagger, and influence the scene and cologist’s hat to explain that he writes. killing people,” he says.) Cohn and Choppa is deaf to Cohn’s failed in spectacular fashion to bounce is “patterned on the Cohn’s initial research brokers a major-label deal for talk about broader career do either. call-and-response of Mardi leads him to Earl Mackie, a one of Mackie’s artists, Choppa, strategies. “They love me all Cohn, the author of 1968’s Gras Indian chants,” but Jehovah’s Witness whose label, and is initially granted a budg- over,” Choppa tells him. Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom another way to put it is that Take Fo’ Records, specializes et of $250,000 from Warner “Baton Rouge, Shreveport, (often cited as the first book of it’s hip-hop with the formal in sex raps. (Mackie’s faith Brothers to make an album. “I Lafayette. Everywhere.” rock criticism), has been rigidity of a square dance, prevents him from releasing would select producers,” he Triksta is full of interactions obsessed with New Orleans with the MC commanding the records advocating violence, writes, “provide song ideas, like this, where Cohn and the since childhood: he writes crowd—bend over and touch but he believes sex is an hire guest artists and singers artists seem to be talking past vividly and enchantingly about the floor, now turn around, acceptable theme. “It beats and live musicians as required, continued on page 28 28 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION ONE Books continued from page 27 for Granta, the Guardian Cohn’s in his element when a kind of memorial. Certain contains not one reference to each other. Bounce’s rules are Weekend magazine, and he’s looking closely at hip-hop’s passages have an eerie pre- Katrina. He had no interest in inflexible, and Cohn’s ideas British GQ , and its seams allure, especially how and monitory tone, as when the pursuing new subject matter, simply don’t match up with his occasionally show—the why it titillates white audi- mother of once bounce pro- he recently told the New York artists’. Cohn wants an ode to chronology is scrambled, and ences. He’s conflicted about ducer describes the decay of Times. “When I get behind the independent women and single the stories of many characters gangsta rap and devotes her neighborhood: “Now there mike, I got a whole ’nother mothers, but Choppa just are confined to a single chap- numerous pages to his love- was nothing left, just wicked- mind frame,” he said. “I rap wants another remix of his ter. But the book has a com- hate relationship with it, but ness and crime, and God was about what they wanna hear.” familiar hit, “Choppa Style.” pelling theme in Cohn’s rela- for Cohn the hedonism of mocked ....But he would not Master P recently addressed Cohn leaves a voice mail for tionship to New Orleans as bounce accurately reflects a be mocked forever, no, God the disaster by releasing producer Supa Dave suggest- well as his constant grappling very New Orleans worldview: always had the last word.” Hurricane Katrina—We Gon’ ing a change to a bass line, and with race, particularly race in “Fantasy, braggadocio, myth— Katrina also reveals just Bounce Back (Gutter Music), an the message gets played in the pop music from the earliest these weren’t just fancy words how difficult a task Cohn cre- album by bounce supergroup studio to riotous laughter. days of rock ’n’ roll to the pres- for lying, but a sort of ated for himself: even the the 504 Boyz, but most of the Choppa nicknames Cohn ent. He worries that his obses- art....That was how I came to hurricane couldn’t rewrite the tracks wouldn’t sound out of “Triksta” during a pot-fueled sion with black musicians has think of New Orleans: my city rules of New Orleans hip-hop. place on any of No Limit’s late- studio session, after first call- “some taint of idealization, of beautiful lies.” Rapper and Cash Money 90s releases. Resilience is at ing him “Nik da Trik.” Neither the flip side of condescension,” Triksta was written and Records president Lil’ Wayne, the heart of bounce—Triksta name is exactly affectionate.