Random As Rhyme

The first hip hop album that I ever listened to was the Bullworth Soundtrack and while it wasn’t your average starting point but it served as a great way to get introduced to a variety of different to shelf hip hop artists as well as a few unknown ones. One of the lesser know artists on the CD were the Black Eyed Peas at this point they had a nice underground head nodding style and I dug it.

The song was called Joints and Jams and sounds way different than the crap, excuse me, music they put out today.

After hearing this song I searched out more music by BEP and was greeted by some genuine treats, amazing fun and funky hip hop tracks. For example the track below,Bridging The Gap is another favorite of mine

Listening to the sound they had before in comparison to what they have now one can easily conclude why they switched.  Their old style appeal to real hip hop heads and back packers where as their new sound has a more mass, mainstream, pop appeal. More appeal equals more units sold which leads to more money in the pockets of will.i.am, apl.de.ap, Taboo and Fergie.  Some people don’t like to point fingers at exactly who killed the old sound but I am going to go ahead and point mine.

Who would have figured such a sometimes attractive sometimes not package such as Fergie could be the harbinger of death to what was once a great hip hop group? I am not sure how much influence she had over the groups new direction but things started changing around the time she arrived, actually I suppose one could also blame Justin Timberlake for lending his vocals on Where is the love, but I would rather blame and post pictures of her.

I wish the old BEP would come back and the new one would vanish but until that happens (never) there is youtube:
Fallin up
Weekends
BEP Empire – Produced by DJ Premiere bet he won’t fuck with them now

Having worked in a retail environment for about three years I thought moving into an office environment would mean that I no longer had to endure the pain of listening to music I could not control. I figured I had left the weekly top 40 and the monotony of seasonal music behind me. Fat chance.

At my first job one of the big wigs had a decent computer speaker setup that I assume lacked a headphone jack since I don’t recall him ever using headphones. He had quite an eclectic taste in music, one day Jack Johnson, another Alanis Morissette, and on Fridays Cypress Hill.

On the other side of the Office another big wig would crank the free Jazz music which meant us grunts stuck in the middle got a weird sonic mish mash of music that didn’t really match nor did we like. It was terrible, listening to a mix of two types of music you don’t want to hear when ie6 is being an incompetent bastard is a great way to become red in the face.

At my new job I briefly sat near the accounting department that loved to listen to Easy Rock or something of the like… I LOATHE Easy Rock. I will probably do so until I am 65 and my hearing is so muffled and brain so frazzled that I have the radio on to keep me company.

While some of the problem is they type of music conflicting with my own personal preferences the bigger issue is that I have no control over the volume or content of what’s being played.

If someone was playing my itunes library aloud it would annoy me just the same because I might not want to be listening to the song that is currently playing at that time of the day, or maybe I don’t want to listen to any music at all, few things are worse than taking off your headphones and being greeted with this.

I am all for music at the workplace but I wish people would purchase and wear headphones. I wear headphones 90% of the day, heck they are on right now and nothing is playing, as a courtesy to my fellow employees and as a way to tune them out. I encourage you to do the same.

If you are in a position of power at your workplace and you can play your music out loud without any one complaining please, please, please at least have the decency to turn it off when you leave the office leaving it on is a serious dick move. I already know you make more than me, that is evident by your car, condo, hot wife.