Rendezvous at 6:15. Black Sheep at 8:15. You know the deal.
Also, in things which none of you guys care about but I do, I’ve been all about Camden hip-hop this week. I started by watching this really interesting documentary a few days ago about Camden. Not many people take a good hard look at from this angle. I like that this documentary shows it from the point of view of those who live in the streets of Camden. The fish-eye lens thing is a bit disconcerting, but the doc overall is worth a watch.
And it turned me on to a lot of talented rappers in Camden. One of them, above, is the Legendary Shakil. Really love everything about this video (which is NSFW due to cussing), starting the intro where he points out how people talk all about the negativity surrounding Camden but nobody ever searches for talent there. I love how personal the song is, and how while he expresses how dangerous the city is, he still also expresses pride for where he’s from. Pride for Camden? Who would have imagined such a thing exists. But it does, and it’s real, and it’s in your face. Which, as someone who has been listening to hip hop for almost 35 years, is why I fell in love with this type of music in the first place. It took me places I never would have gone otherwise, and it showed me the world from a point of view different from those I got at home, school, and among my peers. It’s since turned into pop music at a mainstream level, but if you dig through the crates a bit, you can still find plenty of what made the music so great in the first place. The Legendary Shakil is an example of that.
(Relax, there won’t be a music round on Camden rappers coming up soon.)