“Bridging The Gap”

“Bridging The Gap”

One thing I like about Hip-Hop is when an artist can step out of his own first person perspective and tell of the story of another person from a third person perspective. Watching a clip on folkstreams.net called “cigarette blues” I noticed some parallels between blues musician Sonny Rhodes tale with those of some contemporary rappers. In the song he talks about a young lady who he was in love with or admired but whose nasty smoking habit lead to her early demise. It has always intrigued me when an artist can step out his own world to show that he is conscientious of both his environment and listener by crafting art from an observational standpoint. Sonny Rhodes during the video explains some of his bluesy music as message he preaches similar to how a sermon is delivered in a church. When I heard the song many other hip-hop narratives came to mind which were similar in content. One particular one was Nas’s first verse on “I Can” where he spits a similar narrative of a young lady whose talent and beauty left him in awe but her dependence on another harmful substance also brought some negative unwanted effects in her life.

On deeper thought I noticed another connection being that Nas father was a blues musician named Olu Dara. Matter in fact Nas collboarated with him on one his recent albums. I also noticed that Nas has a very bluesy style of lyricism mixed with the style of “kicking” intellectual street knowledge that he more than likely picked up growing up in the biggest housing projects in New York City known as Queens Bridge. A lot of Nas’s music screams a blues influence from his slow and sorrowful production to his critical narrative on many of his songs including “If I ruled the World” to “The Message” to even “Fried Chicken”. In a sense it just bridged the gap and shows how influential blues music can be with contemporary forms of art.