Verse of the week

a new series. once a week, meaning one less original idea per week. will it last? will it provoke debate and stimulate rap-fuelled fun? who knows - a galactic mystery.

all hail the inaugural GMS Verse Of The Week - 2007 week 25

R.A. The Rugged Man on 'Renaissance' by Hell Razah

For our first venture, everybody's favourite husky-voiced beard-tugging tramp-rapper and Wu-Tang bbq-chef R.A. The Rugged Man obliterates a loping soul sample with a Kool G Rap-style polysyllabic onslaught. This looks to be a single taken off Hell Razah's Renaissance Child - the most underrated album of 2007, in GMS' non-existent half-year round-up. At any rate, they've paid for a video using loose change found down the back of a sofa, and featuring a nice fuzzy hat that Hell Razah's mum was planning to throw out.



"On the real", Hell Razah and his other guest, Tragedy Khadafi, both put in verse-of-the-week level rhymes in what amounts to a Black Market Militia posse cut, with a nicely urgent hook from Timbo King. But, having spent the first half of the video fending off invisible bees while various sub-Wu henchmen stay well clear and inspect each other's winter-wear, Rugged Man owns the song, claiming his status as rap incarnate by invoking a head-spinning succession of genre greats.

It's enough to make GMS get its Pitchfork on: "This makes R.A. the anti-Mims - promulgating an organicist-historicist relationship to hip hop culture and the artistic muse that rebuts the self-actualising natural-rights rhetoric of 'This is Why I'm Hot'." Word to Michel Foucault. Anyway, it makes KRS One's perfectly good Hip Hop Lives sound real hokey by comparison.

R.A. The Rugged Man - 'Renaissance'

Yes oh yes, I guess, suggest the rest you fess
I'm Tribe Quest, I'm Moe Dee Wild West
Treach, 40, Jazz Jeff, Slick Rick, I'm Doug Fresh
I'm def, I'm Canibus before he met Wyclef
Original, I don't bite
I don't need nobody to ghostwrite
Kool G Rap strike the mic
I recite the type of hype
That you like, I'm Sweetback
I'm Uptown Saturday Night
I'm Black Ceasar, I'm Rudy Ray Moore, Dolemite
I'm an assassin rappin'
I'm Grand Wizard Theodore when he invented scratchin'
I'm Wu-Tang Killa Bee, epitome of Public Enemy
Gamblin', hustlin', like Smooth and Trigger be bitter, b
Bums diggety-diggety,
Das literally, I'm Pun in the middle of Little Italy
Didn't do diddly, gettin' me
Listen to me
I'm all good, I'm hood
I'm Ice Cube before he turned soft and went Hollywood
I'm Poetic from Gravediggaz
I'm ODB, I'm Headquarters
I'm Ted Demme, I'm Paul C
If I ain't better than B.I.G., I'm the closest
I'm Richard Pryor before multiple sclerosis
I'm beef, I'm gold teeth, peace
Mantronix, Stetasonic, Symbolic, Bambaata, Soul Sonic
I'm Dre, The Chronic
Melodic with logic Islamic
A poverty prophet
Economy robbery, cock it
I probably properly droppin'
It gotta be honesty
Opposite of novelty, rock it
I Herbie Hancock-it
I'm Onyx Throwin' Ya Gun
I'm Funky 4 + 1

Buy Hell Razah's Renaissance Child
Buy R.A. The Rugged Man's Die, Rugged Man, Die