Midnight Marauders, Nate

1) Time will dull the splendor of innovation. Time is undefeated. 

2) Even if you haven't heard this album... come on, son. You've heard this album.

3) Kool Herc is arguably the first MC. He's the father of all this shit. Go back and listen to him. There's just too much road between here and there.

4) They don't show that movie where the train comes right at the screen anymore. 

5) It's a great album for drums. If all you want is the clear, crisp sound of break beats, this is a well-serving document.

6) Regarding "Butter": Listing a bunch of women's names in a song always works. Shout out Lou Bega. Shout out Petey Pablo. Shout out Ludacris. 

7) This album is a key piece of Uncle Greg's "No one likes jazz but everyone likes to be seen as liking jazz" hypothesis. A LOT of jazzy beats going on here, but no actual jazz, despite the insistence that someone's got jazz. How's that for a low end theory?

8) Fun to imagine how people who were raised on Big Daddy Kane felt when they first heard this. Fun to think about the first person to ever see a sundown and how freaked out they must have been.

9) Regarding "Verses from the Abstract:" MF Doom / Zev Love X flow on this thing. Wish we were listening to MF Doom this week instead of this shit. Remember "That's That?" Give an MC a rectal hysterectomy? Remember "Accordion?" Dripping off the beat kinda, dripping off the meat grinda? Remember "Hey!"? For the record, this is just some shit that I thought of, y'all? It is nice to be reminded how many dudes and crews were in the Native Tongues orbit. The Beatnuts! Forgot about the Beatnuts. 

10) Fine. Whatever. It's great. It's the inflection point, the tip of the triangle, the corner that rap turned before gangsta became the default modal for 10+15 years, the moment that the genre moved out of the park and onto the street. It's East Coast as hell. It has told us everything it has to say, with aplomb and style, and its style has been expired. 

11) Young Busta = young Shaq. Lord Jamar = young Dion Waiters. If you get it, you get it.

12) I wish we were listening to UGK this week. Gripping on the wood. Port Author, Texas. Free Pimp C. "Fuck My Car." Pinky rings. C-Note and Big Smokin' Mitch. Damn dude, what life could have been.

13) "Check the Rhyme" still goes. "Scenario" remix still goes. 

14) This review is over.