A Taste of Mighty Mos

I am a major advocate of hip hop. When it’s done right, it’s incredible. One of my favorite artists is Mos Def, the lyrical monster who is set to make his return to the rap scene this summer with his next studio album, tentatively titled The Ecstatic.

I thought I’d share one of my favorite Mighty Mos tracks, a collaboration between him and Japanese producer DJ Krush. It can properly be characterized, in my humble opinion, as awesome:

“Shinjiro” by Mos Def & DJ Krush. Enjoy.

It’s “spoken word,” not “spoken, word?!”

Open Mic yesterday was a nice culmination of song, poetry, and rap (aren’t they all poetry anyway?). Actually, “nice” is almost an insult, and it’s wrong of me to use such an ambiguous word. It was creative beyond belief, and as far as I’m concerned, a bunch of people were inspired to contribute to maybe the next open mic. It was well-written, and I was the n00b of the situation, but it’s cool, it was an interesting experience that definitely did not satiate my hunger of spoken word.

However, despite my “n00b” status as a slam poet, one thing seriously bothers me whenever I watch Youtube or Google videos of other spoken word. Maybe it’s not my place just yet to criticize, but even a complete and utter amateur such as myself knows when someone’s spoken word was just for the sake of rapping words other than curses. Maybe it’s just my preference of poetic flavor, but I can’t stand it when people just blurt out strings of long words that rhyme. “Laterally collateral unreal reality, political interactions, total fatality.” (totally made that up on the spot) I mean, it sounds cool and might make sense after staring at it long enough, but WHAT THE HELL DOES IT MEAN?! I mean, real true poetry doesn’t need strings of big words to look cool. Sure, you can have a decent vocabulary, but look up the words and make sense before you use them.

I’m also bothered by the interpretation that all spoken word is rap. Sure, it can have a lot of rap, but spoken word is what it is: spoken word. It’s a culmination of devices to create almost a song of poetry, sans music.

Just had to get that out of my system.

- Therese