Guestblogs: Snazzy on the Fugees

Snazzy has stated clearly that he is not a poet, and that like most people, he would rather critique than actually do. he says he is not a poet, and not having any evidence to the contrary, i cannot disagree with his own assessment of his literary abilities. what he can do though, is write a mean commentary, and a wicked article. he decided not to take up the Six Degrees challenge, as i have taken to calling the responses to the connections pieces, electing instead to speak on the Fugees. so he's a hip hop head then. by all accounts, he has his head right, and he knows how to communicate fis feelings on one of my favourite bands of all time.

i like this piece. it got me. he captured the feelings of the last part of my teen years, and the decisions that a young music fan with finite resources has to make. "do i buy this CD, or that one? maybe i should buy this one, and copy that one onto a tape from my friend's CD. yeah, i'll buy this CD and we can do an exchange. its all good" raise your hand if you ever had to make those decisions. i did. loads of times. so did all of my boys. and girls. thats how we kept the music flowing. making mixtapes from your friends' CDs, and making copies of those tapes off each other. just so long as you had the latest jamz.

Snazzy brought this one. and he brought it well. if your guest-pieces are going to continue being this good, i'm afraid i'm going to have to stop having these open mic sessions. can't have you out-doing me on my own stage, can i? now if only he would stop supporting that shit team. but snazzy has a gift, i tell you no lies.

Snazzy:

I wouldn’t mind taking Saturday

To be honest, the first time I heard the Fugees I was more interesting in playing basket ball for the first time on a real American court like in Above the Rim, than in listening to a song by a group which had the girl from Sister Act 2. The year was 1994, the place a car driving down a Providence RI street, the song, Nappy Heads. I heard it a few more times during that my first visit to America since childhood, and while I know I liked the song, I can’t really say that the way I feel about it now is the way I felt about it then.

All Flushed with Fever

Next time I ran into the Fugees was 1996, the place watching MTV in my house in Lagos, the song, Killing Me Softly. For some reason I didn’t hear Fugeela before, though I am almost positive that Fugeela was the first single. Ready or Not and Fugeela were more expensive videos, but the Killing Me Softly video is still my favorite video the fugees ever did. The vibe was just too mad.

I Get Mad Frustrated When I Rhyme

So I had heard the three singles, Fugeela, Killing Me Softly and No Woman No Cry before I went to England in January 1997 for my A-level entrance exam. My cousin had the album also known as THE SCORE. I love the fact that How Many Mics is the first thing you hear if like me you skip the intro. The song was mad, but Lauryn went there. I would put her verse on that track against anything done by BIG, Jigga, or any of your contenders for “greatest” rapper. The album kept dropping banger after banger. The only songs on that album that are arguably not bangers are the score and manifest, though I would argue that they aren’t really songs but more experimental. Anyway that album made my trip. I would have bought it as the first CD I ever bought with my “own” money but I recorded it to tape leaving the Space Jam soundtrack to hold forth as the first CD I ever bought. I still know most of the words to every song on the album of the top of my head, and I’m letter perfect when the album is playing. You don’t need to ask me who Michelle Lesley Brown is (Yes I know the skits too!)

It’s Time to Manifest The Rhyme

Aiight in closing, I have bought the Fugees album twice apart from the tape that was my journey into the score. I lost the tape when a teacher seized my sister’s walkman cos I was listening to it during an agric exam (I had like an hour to kill during the exam). The first album I bought was from a friend in A-Levels who was trying to raise money to buy cigarettes. I got it for a fiver. See why addiction is a bad thing! On my way to America for university, it fell out of my box along with a few other CDs. I was fugee-less all through college but with The Carnival and Miseducation, and Napster/Gnutella/School Network I got by. Though a few weeks before I returned to England for my master’s I saw The Score and I snapped it up. Not that I am superstitious or anything, but it was in my hand luggage this time. Peace

Thank God its Friday!