Beats Before Bars..My Prop-ular Opinion

It was 1999, on the corner of Aberdeen Rd & Lewis RD. in my home town of Hampton, VA.  I remember chilling outside in my drive way listening to my walk man radio and hearing this song with a sample that sounded so familar.  I'd only heard stuff like this from songs off my 36 Chambers album.  I didn't hear what the artist on the track at the time was saying.  That's not what caught my attention.  It was the sample that took me away.  Something about the way

"I know I can't afford to stop..For a moment...That its too soon...To forget"

masqueraded on this track as the hook really took me away.  It was overwhelming, to say the least.  The drop in the middle made my hand become a hammer that couldn't stop nailing the invisible wall I imagined myself beating on to pattern after the melody.  To this day, I still get that same feeling from that song. 

Today I know the words by heart and if this joint sparks in a club, I become a part of the essence that feels (not a mistake) the air.  The only reason I know the words, is because of the beat.  The only reason I gave Mos Def a chance, is because of that beat-- I guess he should thank Ayotollah for that.  The words only made the song more meaningful for me.  If you try spitting over that beat, and your lyrics are half ass,
a polite fuck you is all you'll ever hear from over here.  Something about that beat, made everything better than it ever should be.

Fast forward to 2001.  My boy Jerome was pushing tapes in the hallways at $5 a pop.  Kazaa had them retarded download speeds back then and my lack of patience won't having that.  So I broke'em off for a copy of Reasonable Doubt, no doubt.  Jay-Z wasn't an artist I was checking for like that.  Hard Knock Life got me interested, but nas still had my ears on lock.  That's just how things were.  That all changed with "Feeling It". 

See, I'd heard many Jay-Z tracks and they were catchy, but I never really paid that hustle babble a second thought.  Hell, what did a lil nigga like myself need to hustle for, I worked in the mall at Fine's Menwear, I had two dedicated parents, a group of friends to ball with, instead of ball out with.  My life was chill-tastic.  If you had worries, none taken, period.  My ears never pictured a smooth and jazzy sample doing anything more than taking the place of some nyquil on the brain.  It was different hear.  That women sang to my soul.  Jay's words weren't just words, they were a part of the melody.  Trust me, the instrumental is lacking without his cadences.  But I didn't even hear what he was saying.  I just heard the bars and the way they were streamed along with the beat.  Then I heard Dead Presidents and my idea of what a good sample to use for a nice hip hop beat changed.

And it continued on like this.  I remember the first time I heard Represent by Nas.  Who knew Illmatic was actually his first album and not the album that housed "If I Ruled The World"?  I was ignorant of truths like this because of the radio and my lack of care to search and find.  DJ Premier reign supreme at this point.  I wasn't even a Gangstarr fan.  Nas introduced me to Premo.  To this day, I only know the first couple of bars to Nas Is Like, and its not his fault.  Premo does too much in the background for Nas's message to even seem important enough to waste my blind focus on.  I wanted one thing, and one thing only, that instrumental.  I need to put my bars on that beat.  I needed to open up my mind on paper through lead with that beat at the forefront of every rhyme I wrote.  If the words didn't fit the flow, I knew the beat wouldn't be satisfied with my work.  And I had no intentions of upsetting that masterpiece of a production.

You see, I use to write.  Hell, I still do write.  But when I was in my years of 15 - 19, I wrote to every beat I couldn't learn the words to.  I wrote my own verse to Quiet Storm to mute Prodigy.  When I heard You're Da Man on the radio, I went home and searched for the instrumental for days.  I had to have it.  By the time I got to college I had a nice little collection of instrumentals, I remember leaving alot of my albums at home, like my moms and pops would enjoy them or something.  "Here you go guys, you can hold onto these until my four years are up; just think of it as a generous loan." 

By this time, I had so many Heatmakerz beats, that I didn't have enough written to read to them.  Not to mention that some of those beats weren't even by Heatmakerz or Just Blaze, there was some other guy.  He'd been on The Blueprint, but I had overlooked him.  Dame gave him a chain, for those "okay" bars he spit on the Dame Dash presents mixtape.  Something West?  Kanye..that's it.  He wasn't a rapper though, he was a producer.  He produced Heart of the City.  NO WAY!   He produced, This Can't Be Life.  WHEN!? SAYS WHO?!  He collabed with Alicia Keys on You Don't Know My Name.  WTF!  WHO IS THIS GUY?  Now I'm using my keyboard to beg Kazaa for all the Kanye West (he wasn't Mr. then) instrumentals it would allow my bandwidth to support. 

By now, I had a college connection,

so needless to say, I spent alot of time on the computer, but I wasn't studying.  Who gives a fuck about Blackboard!  I dove into his beats.  The way he sampled, the way he looped cuts, it was new to me.  Through The Wire still gives my goose bumps goose bumps, because of how much feeling comes out of it.  Very basic sample, but it was such an intelligent choice.  And he made these great songs, I realized his depth as an emcee about a year after College Dropout.  Those beats man.  They were indescribeable.  No one was doing anything better?  I know how wrong I was about that now.  Ever heard of 9th Wonder? 


Shit just keeps changing, but that's the fun apart about keeping up.  I'm so glad I stayed up long enough to be introduced to Hi-Tek, Double-O, Charles Hamilton, SMKA, Illmind, Jake One, N.E.R.D., Statik Selektah, J Cole, and Big K.R.I.T. 

 Beats break me down.  Words add a personal feeling of the artist.  The words stick more now than they used to.  It doesn't take me a month to hear the artist, compared to it taking me less than a nanosecond to hear the beat.  But I'll always choose a beat over a poet.   Its how I hear the music.  Its how it reasonates in my soul.  Poetry was never that "great" to me.  I hear your messages.  I feel your expressions.  But man, that kick drum.  That guitar sample speaks to me.  Is that Aretha Franklin or Chaka Kahn?  Nope, that's definitely Anita Baker.  Did they get that melody from Daft Punk?  Who Cares?  I do!  Beats before bars...