Bamboo Banga'd

So I finally got down to Strictly Business and this EPMD is on some strictly funky shit. Those rolling loops are so slippery that when EPMD comes in slurring like the best night out ever, you almost drown in the slobber. Between this and Mr. Scarface is Back I think I have wide enough proof that the whole old school preferentiality is a blind seeing-eye dog. It's like it doesn't matter if your block is being shot up or your party's being rocked, as long as you geet dooown. On that note, though, I wholeheartedly support The Cool Kids in whatever warped nostalgia they're dropping on hip hop. There were plenty of problems with the sound, like the beats being louder than the dirge-like power outages that play over them, but Mikey and Chuck are on some Buckaroo Banzai extra-dimensional time warp that synthesizes whatever you had no idea you needed from a rap show. That opening disclaimer that it's like the Beastie Boys reborn in Black is almost self-sabotage because the pretension in bringing '88 back is far more palatable than "I got more stories than JD got Salinger."
And so then MIA came back with the power, power, and in groundbreaking feminist logistics upended the Studio A soundsystem when it tried to take over the reigns of harnessing that power. It was as if the aural quality was built on the choice laid out in Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival and they went with hegemonic roar. Where the MIA's calls to the people began and the sirens directing them to the bomb shelter ended were one wondrous blur. But after the cool kids declared the concept of rocking a show to be so old, MIA came out in a wheelchair with some methamphetamines saying "fuck placebos!" Missing the string section for Jimmy or having the speakers do Neal Pert on your eardrums were almost worth it when you were upfront watching MIA grind like the snake 'fore the legs were cut off, the audience at a biblical beck and call. And her hypewoman? Dayumn! I don't know who the female rapper they brought out in place of the Wilcannia Mob, but I've never seen limb contortions like those. All three of them were whipping the crowd with lassos aimed right at the knees, like Trina devouring some nerve-shattered video boy with her sexual appetite.
Did you know you could Double Dutch using a person as a jump rope?
I think her third world populism was self-sabotaged by the opening video in which a bald Asian called for a complete overthrow of the government in favor of the minority, as if the majority doesn't get duped by elections, but it still tapped a basic tenet of the inability of representative democracy to represent the world town, because the world town can represent itself, thank you.
Capping it off I made my out during the encore, caught Pg-13 rocking out at the bar and realized the sound people had it wrong because way in the back of the club that part of the rainforest destroyed to make way for soy production was rocking the climate like it's inhabitants didn't have to fight for their homes. For ten minutes that soundclash gelled like the inner bone of a cattle.