I used to love the Wu-Tang Clan. They took my school by storm, by which I mean the three kids in my year who listened to hip-hop. I skipped lectures to go and buy their second album, Forever, and then rushed home to listen to it. It was a glorious hour or so before I realised the album was crap. I listened, willing it to be better than it was, much like I did when I first watched The Phantom Menace, which is dreadful apart from the Darth Maul lightsaber scene, which is possibly the greatest ever “good action scene in an awful movie”, probably contested only by Samuel L Jackson’s death in Deep Blue Sea.
If the way that last sentence jumped around without really focusing on any one point annoyed you, then welcome to my issues with the way that streaming sites such as Netflix, Tidal and Apple Music have affected the way that I consume hip-hop, and music in general. Everyone seems so excited by the fact that music is more accessible, people can find new artists more easily and it’s cheaper, without focusing on the potential negatives, not least of which is that idiots can more easily listen to your favourite music.
A person I consider to be a cultural charlatan recently looked at my phone, saw I had been listening to SZA and immediately clicked on to the album themselves. The next time I saw them, they were banging on about her so much that I could no longer enjoy her work and contemplated emailing to ask her to consider immediate retirement, using as a mitigating argument the fact that this weapons-grade time burglar had started listening to her.
When I first listened to that Wu-Tang album and realised it wasn’t as good as I had initially hoped, I forced myself to continue listening to it. I was a student and an album purchase represented a big expenditure for me, so I played it over and over until I grew to like it, and eventually to love it. That obviously didn’t happen with The Phantom Menace and I still maintain that film is a crime against humanity.
Things are different now. A few months ago, I discovered that one of the Wu had released a new album. Raekwon Da Chef, so called despite not even having a BTec in food technology, was one of the most exciting members of the Clan, once releasing an album so seminal that people forever referred to it as “the purple tape” and everyone knew what that meant, bar anyone who had bought it on CD or vinyl. I opened Spotify, listened to each track of the new album for about 30 seconds, and decided it was good not great, and have not listened to it since.
Whether this is good or bad is open to opinion. An argument in favour of streaming would be that, before digital, I forced myself to enjoy an album that was actually bad, but now I was able to listen to Raekwon’s new album and realise I wouldn’t like it before having to fork out money for it. But that’s not what life’s about. Consuming art should involve investment and risk.
I felt a sense of pride when I bought Snoop Dogg’s Tha Doggfather, and then was able to relay to my friends, family and people in the street that it was less enjoyable to listen to the album than it would be to watch your house burn down.
My problem is that we are all listening to music in a more disposable fashion. The concept of tracks or albums being “growers” is increasingly rare and this has an effect on the way music is being made. Tracks have to be catchy and immediate, which is arguably why we are hearing more reinterpretations of familiar tracks. Streaming could be responsible for that awful Play That Song track composed to the theme of Heart And Soul. If that isn’t a reason to shut down streaming, if not all recorded music, then I don’t know what is.
This theory is, of course, undermined by the gargantuan success of Kendrick Lamar’s Damn, an album devoid of any obvious catchy hits. I saw him in concert recently and London mayor Sadiq Khan was in attendance. I was excited by this and emailed to ask if he would appear on my podcast, Hip Hop Saved My Life. I was informed by his office that his diary was crazy and so he could not come on. This was despite me not having suggested a date. I took this to mean that either he didn’t want to be on the podcast at all or he expects to be busy for ever. This story is included only to let you know I don’t like Sadiq Khan any more.
The truth is I am essentially a fat old man screaming about how scary the future is. But I do think that the way in which we are listening to music is forcing people who make music to scream louder to get our attention.
And it does mean that straight after reading this you can immediately go and listen to Tha Doggfather to hear for yourself how truly appalling it is.