RAW THOUGHTS 12.4.25- Hovi Baby
that shit that makes your soul burn slow.
kinda says it all doesn't it. it was vulgar, it was childish, the beat was actually kinda bad, but i'll be damned if souls didn't burn slow in the wake of ether.
as i write this, it's december fourth. the birthday of one shawn corey carter, known professionally as jay-z. seen as the goat by many, including myself. one of the few non-geminis in the conversation(we can claim biggie, tupac, kendrick, ice cube, andre 3000, jadakiss, our top 5 is the top 5 if you really want to make that argument).
december fourth is also the date where nas(the most mercurial goat candidate) dropped ether. dropping a song where you say that your rival disses women because he's ugly and possibly gay on their birthday is excellent strategy. i would do it. i would come up with the bar "gay-z and cockafella" if it were 2001 and homophobia were still acceptable in hip-hop. hell my dumb ass just realized he said "cock a fella". i just thought nas was talking about dicks because "huh huh gay". this is why he's top 5.
also i have to give jadakiss and the lox at large respect for changing out the homophobic bars at their verzus performances. it's great to see growth from the greats of the game. not just jadakiss's hairline which is actually very strong thus rendering him slightly untrustworthy because if you have a full head of hair and a strong line and you wear a baldie you're probably not on the level. but i'll let my fellow twin sign cook.
so ether. i understand people saying it's a bad song in terms of actual songwriting or whatever metrics you would use to measure quality in songs, regardless of genre. the beat is ass, which is why i hate when people use it whenever a public figure talks shit or does a monologue or whatever in public. if you really knew ball you'd use the "champions" beat but that's a whole other tangent. it's dumb as hell. it relies way too much on homophobia even for the early 2000s. like saying someone is gay then saying they have dick sucking lips sends mixed messages, nas. i guess that's why you called yourself nasty.
but the whole "jay came with facts" thing... okay sam seder. i didn't know this was a debate where you defended the merits of nas's post illmatic catalogue. it's a diss song. jay said that he had money stacks bigger than prodigy. is that actually true? questionable. but it was funny. one of my favorite photoshops which i can't find anymore was the cover of mobb deep's g unit album blood money but with a literal pile of money photoshopped over prodigy and havoc with jay in the background laughing and looking very camel-like.
which brings us to the actual impact. well, impacts.there were many, some small and immediate and others that slowly manifested over time.
ether popularized the whole "jay looks like a camel" joke which... is kind of true. jay looks like a camel from time to time and from certain angles drake kinda looks like an alpaca. alpaca are known for soft wool. it is what it is. jay addressed the camel jokes(i can't really say finally i don't know who asked him to address this, maybe he was just gotten to) on the third and worst blueprint album on the track already home where he says that "he mastered the drought" and that he's half man half mammal. he also started doing a weird version of his signature grunt around this time. it used to be a strong, confident "auuuuuggghhhh" then around blueprint 3 it kind of morphed into whatever they did at the beginning of that song "everybody everybody". you know "ohhhhhhhhh!" doing "ohhhhhhhh!" on a song called "reminder" is probably the zestiest thing hov has done on any track.
also i'm sure 95-03 hov would want me to pause all this talk about men grunting.
deadass. this is the same year he was on a track with robin thicke talking about champagne spilling out out his oui oui. because they're in france. it was called meiple. as in me i play.
this was the jay that was "thirty six in a karate class". the "tae bo ho", if you will. the camel jokes were funny, the "eminem murdered you on your own shit" was kind of a white lie(don't even ask me how), calling dame his puffy might have been valid in some regards but the most lasting impact of ether is that it created the entity known as washed jay.
if you were online at any point past 2006 and you were a fan of hiphop you're familiar with the notion of washed jay. every two months you would see a really awkward picture of jay say, diving into a body of water or trying to throw a football or ride a bike. you'd see him wearing glasses standing behind ricky gervais awkwardly bobbing his head. you'd see a gif of him doing the drums for picasso baby looking like someone's nana in the face. you'd see him wearing awkwardly tight jeans after saying that the young people wear pants that are too small. this is niche early hypebeast/superfuture talk but he wore that ugly hundreds hoodie(redundant) with the safety pins with samurai raw denims. it just looked bad. a lot of reaching going on(p-p-pause). there was a weird period where hov was wearing wings + horns which was weird(more niche superfuture type shit, which we should bring back).
this was a man who despite his wealth, talent, success and intelligence was becoming more and more unsure of himself. someone who blew up somewhat late and was finally becoming more conscious of his age. someone who took a major loss competitively in the public eye and scrambled in its wake. what one does in response to their first true loss in their sport or competition or what have you shows their character. jay, a man who successfully managed to marry art and commerce by writing some of the most well structured(you lot really don't give him enough credit in that regard) rap songs that happened to be pop hits, grasped onto kanye and... you see what he's like.
notice how i said 2006. post ether, there was a lot of plea copping, a lot of "augh, it was so vulgar!", a lot of "i give to charities! i gave to the victims on 9/11", a lot of "nas is a hypocrite is it black girl lost or is it shawty owes you for ice? augh!" but outside of those cracks in the facade, jay still tried to act like the ship was still afloat. he still had those elite performances like the "pump it up" freestyle(that whole "just" sequence...) and "hovi baby".
my tenth most listened to song this year according to apple music's wrap up.
let's start with the beat. although jay shouts out "just blaze and the blazettes" and tells us to "give the drummer some", there aren't actually any live drums on the track. though it really sounds like it doesn't it? according to questlove, just told him that he was just playing them out on his mpc instead of using a drum loop. it does sound pretty organic, though and should be noted as part of just's journey towards using live instrumentation in his production, culminating in songs like "show me what you got(an integral part of the washed hov oeuvre)".
we start with the line "they say a midget standin on the giants shoulder can see much further than the giant", which is a great opening line. this is actually one of the unsung qualities of jay in his absolute prime: he was great at opening verses. he knew how to write a damn lede! on his first album, second to last track, he starts his verse with "mannerisms of a young bobby deniro". i don't know how you outshine "we pattin down pussy from sugar hill to the shark bar" but he did it. on the dynasty intro(maybe my favorite song of his ever, that and only a customer), he leads with "the theme song from the sopranos, plays in the key of life on my mental piano, got a strange way of seeing life like stevie wonder with beads under the durag, intuition is there even when my visions impaired yeah". that sets the stage for the entire album, which is probably the darkest in his catalogue outside of reasonable doubt. of course it's my favorite.
the first verse continues in this vein, addressing our "preoccupation with david and goliath" and how his patience is going to run out and that he will be forced to be a tyrant. he will "stop your run, one of the reasons they call us gangrene", which is a great triple entendre. you know gangrene stops blood from running, the jets(gang green) had a good defense at the time, the roc was "gang green" cause they had a lot of money. this is the hov we know and love.
the second verse opens up with another great set of bars with "i'm so ahead of my time i'm bout to start another life look behind you im bout to pass you twice, back to the future gotta slow up for the present, im fast *redacteds* can't get past my past. how they propose to deal with my perfect present? when i unwrap the gift and the curse in one session." all those time bars... like the different meanings of types of time... he said his present is perfect like his current existence and the gift and the... okay. seven straight summers. he really did it for seven straight summers. there really are only two resting in heaven that can be mentioned in he same breath as him(both geminis).
the flow changes on this track need to be mentioned. the energy, how he just gets more amped up as it goes along. he said he was chasing the hi hats and he was! on the third verse after he told us he had the global phone(telephony was weird back then) he was literally chasing the hi hats that just blaze painstakingly beat out(pause) on his mpc! you cats over felt yourself! you couldn't help yourself! now witness the real for real! who's gassin em?!!
it all seems like everything is on the up and up, doesn't it?
structurally, this song is fine. great, even. it has that clear, almost essay-like progression that jay uses where he has a strong opening line, addresses his points, has a few witty rejoinders, maybe some good double and triple entendres. it hits all of the benchmarks of a classic jay song and hits them with aplomb.
two months ago, i saw the smashing machine on opening day. it pandered to my tastes(the rock? acting for real? in japan? nala sinephro did the score?!!!) in the same way that the safdies did with uncut gems(adam sandler? kevin garnett? some random thick broad i've never seen before?! daniel lopatin?!!!). it didn't exceed them as much as gems did(the ethiopian jew thing was inspired, but i generally enjoyed it. the rock and emily blunt actually have chemistry, the score was amazing, it was a benny safdie movie that's the best way to put it.
the movie is more or less a shot for shot remake of a documentary by the same name about mma legend mark kerr. it focuses on his run in vale tudo and ufc, his first major loss at pride 7 and his burgeoning addiction to painkillers. when mark is in japan, he goes to a pottery store where he's entranced by this particular bowl that appears to have previously been shattered but has marks of gold intertwined with the porcelain. the shopkeeper explains the art of kintsugi, wherein a broken piece of pottery is mended with lacquer dusted with powdered gold. he buys it for his girlfriend dawn back home. it ends up shattered. kind of heavy handed to be honest. so was the attempt to repair it with krazy glue.
the thing that sticks out about hovi baby that separates it from previous showcases is that there's a certain... pleading to it. that's a vein that runs through a lot of jays work between ether and his fake retirement. when you look at lines like, say "so i got the whole rap world on my shoulders trying to see further than i am" or the aforementioned "seven straight summers, critics might not admit it, but no one in rap quite did it like i did it", you know he's still great but it sounds like he's trying to convince someone of something. who he's trying to convince, the public, the media or himself, is left to the listener to interpret. even if you bring out michael jackson at summerjam and have him do uncredited backup vocals on your last classic album, you got called a stan.
the actual slang term stan for obsessive fan was adapted from the eminem song by your rival to specifically describe you. even your response where you said you fucked his baby moms could easily be described as obsessive "stan" like behavior. even if it was low, similar to igor vovchachyn's illegal use of knees at pride 7, the fact remains you took a significant loss.
even a lot of the global phone talk, the gang green and so on doesn't feel the same. the rapper slash exec line, which is one of the first instances of jay talking about himself in that regard, by the way. he always talked about money(and was great at it!), he even talked about numbers a lot but he never felt like he was trying to justify himself the way he does on here. on here it seems like he's trying to deny that he even suffered any type of loss or defeat. of course on blueprint 2(which was actually a better diss than takeover, it focuses on nas specifically and calls him out on being a hypocritical smart dumb goof which he is) he says that he learned a valuable lesson even in defeat. which is kind of trying to have it both ways. a lot of hemming and hawing.
hovi baby is part of jay's attempt at kintsugi. nas shattered him(probably a pause?) and he tried to repair himself and his stature with gold and platinum. in some instances literally. the only ones moving units are "em, pimp juice and us". right after the track where he talks about watching sex and the city with beyoncé. there's some great moments and some technical wizardry but a lot of grasping at straws. and then he retires a year later which...
i really like allure?
to be fair that's probably the most natural response to any type of loss isn't it? to just try and go on as if everything's normal. sometimes you can't really sit with anything you just have to dust yourself off and keep it moving. even if you have jay-z money you still have obligations you need to fill, people and things that need to be taken care of and coping with the totality of what just happened is something that needs to be put off.
it will always pop up, though. no matter how you try to put something off or keep something buried those feelings will always manifest in some way. you might buy some stupid gadget or toy to take your mind off of it for a while, you might try to take solace in other parts of your life, dwell in your professional accolades, but that loss is still there haunting you. no matter how hard you try to convince yourself and the world, you are not the same person.
facing the new person that comes out of the other side of loss is scary. maybe you won't like who this person is or how they react to situations. the only way to find out is to be honest with yourself and how you've been affected. there's a new world out there for you and it may not be perfect but you can probably find your place in it.
"shiny suit theory" is great. i love "in this manila envelope the results of my insanity", that's a great opener. probably my favorite second run verse of his, actually. and i legitimately like "tom ford". old man hov partying with weirdos is a great mental image.
