Music Recs!

[brigdh]

Oh, flist, source of all knowledge: give me recommendations for 'smart' hip-hop. By smart, I mean with lyrics about politics, culture, racism, sexism, art, religion, etc.* Links to downloads would be awesome, but are not necessary.



* This is not to say that there's anything wrong with hip-hop with lyrics about dancing, drinking, hooking up, Apple Bottom jeans/boots with the fur, etc. I love that kind of hip-hop also. I just love it to the extent that I don't need help finding it, and probably already have too much.

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Fort Minor's The Rising Tide. Worth the price for "Remember the Name" alone, which is ostensibly a history of the band but really a meditation on being an artist: "Ten percent luck/twenty percent skill/fifteen percent concentrated power of will/five percent pleasure/fifty percent pain/and a hundred percent reason to remember the name."

The album also has lots of politics and social commentary, including "Kenji," a song about the internment camps for Japanese-Americans based on the history of the songwriter's grandfather.