Monthly Archives: June 2001

MC OJ and the Rhythm Slave: “What Can We Say?”

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This year, 2001, marks the 10th anniversary of the ground-breaking New Zealand hip hip album “What Can We Say?” by MC OJ and the Rhythm Slave.

Back in 1991 I had mixed feelings about the OJ/Slave experience. I thought the song “Positivity” and its video was pretty choice, but by the time I saw them open for De La Soul I thought they sucked and joined in with the audience in booing them.

But things change with time. Just look at the photo of them on the back of the CD liner. There’s OJ with a monobrow and kinda chubby-looking face. His right arm is stretched out. That arms is now covered in tattoos, and he’s made his name as a tattoo artist and mate of Robbie Williams. Slave, in the photo, looks young and fresh-faced. In some of the music videos he looks like he’s 12 years old. Ten years later he looks and sounds much older, like an old man from the swamp.

All sorts of rumours are flying around regarding the time around “What Can We Say?”. Is it true that they smoked so much of the substance espoused in track nine that they claim to have no recollection of the giant trousers in the “Joined at the Hip Hop” video? And does OJ really not remember the “Yo, Easy Shop!” ads? Ah, who cares? It’s all part of the OJ/Slave experience.

What was the charm of the duo? OJ didn’t sound like a rapper. He sounded like some guy you went to school with who wanted to be a rapper and/or a panelbeater. But then, maybe if it wasn’t for him the skinny white guy in Supergroove may never have picked up a microphone. Slave was the good-looking and good-sounding one. He’s got this cool drawl that sounds like it should come from someone older and more ethnic than him. Put the two fellows together and… I’m not sure what you get, but I don’t think it’s ever happened before.

So to celebrate ten years of “What Can We Say?,” here’s a track-by-track analysis of the album.

Joined at the Hip-Hop

The first track kicks off the album by introducing us to the family of MC OJ and the Rhythm Slave. There’s MC OJ, of course, and the Rhythm Slave. They give us a number of metaphors in which the close nature of their relationship is expressed. Just in case the title proves to be a little “uncomprehensible” OJ raps, “unlike Siamese twins who are joined at the hip, we’re joined at the hip-hop.” We are later introduced to the other two brothers in the “completely unrelated” family of four. They are the “people of straw”, that is Mark Tierney and Paul Casserly, otherwise known as The Straw People. Guest vocals from Bobbylon round out the track. A different version of this song was released as the single. It had funkier, bassier music and without Bobbylon’s vocals.

Positivity

Based on KC & The Sunshine Band’s disco classic “That’s the way I like it,” “Positivity” offers advice for dealing with the little things in life that can stress us out. The advice offered is to keep a positive attitude and express yourself. They urge us to remember that “that’s the way of the world, man”. The positive vibes flow throughout the song, and at one stage we are reminded that “there’s more to life than dollars and cents” – stark contrast to the later track “Money Worries.” Finally, the most important advice is given: “don’t listen to what they say, listen to the Rhythm Slave and MC OJ.”

Body Rhymes (Protect Yourself)

Taking their duty as role models of young people seriously, OJ and the Slave take some time out for a musical public service announcement. Following in the footsteps of A Tribe Called Quest’s “Pubic Enemy,” the boys advise their listeners to play it safe and use a condom when having sex or having “a slice of yes”. The benefits of doing this, as OJ explains, means that “if you wear a hat you can play and spray and play all day.” The track also joins the large number of New Zealand songs that can boast guest vocals from Teremoana Rapley. Her sweet tones gently urge the listener to “make it safe to play.”

Sway Like This

Mixing reggae and hip-hop, and again featuring guest vocals from Bobbylon, “Sway Like This” is a very laid back, six-minute excursion into the rhythm of the streets, the rhythm of the dance floor. Slave’s deep dark vocals intertwine with the baseline, while Bobbylon’s singing wanders over the top. While Slave sounds real good on this track, OJ doesn’t really have the necessary darkness to his voice, leaving him coming across as some guy who’s trying to sound all dark and sexy, but sounds more like he’s got a sore throat.

Rhythm Business

In the chorus of this track, OJ and Slave try and sing like a soulful ’70s funkster, but as they can’t sing, let alone soulfully, those vocal stylings ought to be filed away in the same place as Supergroove’s second album. “Rhythm Business” is mostly a song about itself. Musically it sounds like the sort of track that’d get played in background of a cooking and lifestyle TV show. It has a few crazy samples (“Wanna live in my house? I’d like ya to.”), but the lyrics aren’t really about much else than the grooviness of the music and the need for world peace.

Money Worries

This is an utter classic. Positivity can only go so far to dealing with the woes of the world, when you ain’t got no money it can really suck, and “Money Worries” describes the frustration of being broke. The pain of having no cash is underscored by the searing guest vocals of Mikey Havoc who wails “Moneeeey! Moneeeey!” to which OJ and Slave rap, “I ain’t got none, I wanna get some.” But it’s not all bad. One thing that’s free is being able “to rap about money worries”. Ten years down the track we can only hope that money is no longer a worry for the boys.

10.55

A moody, slice-of-life portrait of life one night in Auckland or “the AK town”. Activities include observing the petrolheads (“that’s a nice Cortina”), getting money out of a cash machine (“a modern curse or a dream?”), checkin’ out the fly Gs, getting some junk food, watching a fight and the joy of finding a $50 note. Their social conscience is exercised with an observation of a glue-sniffer (“everybody’s got a vice and it’s cheaper than booze”). The second half of the song is jazzy, moody instrumental piece, accompanied by street sounds. Auckland, 1991, represent.

Doc Martens

A performance from bFM where OJ raps about his favourite footwear, Dr Martens boots. Run DMC had “My Adidas,” OJ has his Docs. Slave doesn’t appear to share the same enthusiasm about Docs, so he instead raps about how much of a bad arse he is, and “baby we was meant to be.” OJ then raps about how all the ladies love him and his boots. It should also be noted that this song was sort of covered by the Hallelujah Picassos as “MC OJ and His Boots.”

Marijuana

This may be the raddest song in the entire world. Predating Dr Dre’s cannabis concept album “The Chronic,” OJ and Slave’s “Marijuana” revels in the pleasures of toking on a fat-arse joint. Several, in fact. All aspects of smoking dope are examined, including getting the munchies and the dries and the appearance of a policeman. But it’s not just about smoking marijuana, the chorus (“Drugs, drugs drugs, drugs, drugs! Marijuana! Marijuana!”) shows that by calling it “drugs”, they are more into doing what their parents and teachers warned them against: MC and OJ and Rhythm Slave said yes to drugs.

The One About Girls

This is the song where OJ and Slave talk about how incredibly sexually frustrated they are. Establishing in the beginning that they “want a sexy butt to chew,” the boys start off on a mission to score some tasty booty. Trying to impress girls by asking if they’d seen them on the cover of More magazine (!), or commenting “my, you have a beautiful bust,” doesn’t seem to work. Rejection comes hard and fast, even with the killer line, “baby I think you’re pretty damn spunky.” Finally they manage to score with some hottie at a club, but – oh no – it turns it out it was a dream. Then they (he?) meet a real life 22-year-old babe, but her hotness turns them into a nervous mess, and it turns out she’s got a thing for Bobby Brown. Let’s hope that OJ and Slave are doing better with the ladies now.

“What can we say?” is an excellent album, and one of the finest examples of Aotearoa hip hop. Scour your local second hand record shop for this ‘cos it’s a gem.

Choice

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One of my favourite words is choice. Not as in, “you have a choice between red or purple.” Not as in, “choice apples! 50c a kilo!” But rather choice as in “choice, bro.”

The first time I heard the word choice being used with this meaning was in 1984. One day one of the bad-arse Maori boys, who knew all the rad breakdancing moves, started saying it. At first I thought he was saying “Joyce” (who’s Joyce?), but as soon as I figured out that it was choice, I too started describing things as being choice.

Any good Kiwi slangtionary will have choice amongst its list. Various synonyms are given to help define it. Words such as excellent, nice, cool, awesome, and very good are usually suggested, but none of them really define the true spirit that choiceness is. The meaning of choice is a classic example of, “if you have to ask, you’ll never know.” Choice is choice.

Choice is really part of life as a New Zealander. It’s almost like it’s part of the genetic make up. Almost that you can’t help say it, and sometimes you say it and you’re not even aware of it. I found these two examples of the ingrained effect of choice.

This is from a discussion on benbrown.com, where someone had accused Ben of fabricating a discussion between him and Ani:

KMB: I don’t know if Ani (a Kiwi) would really say “Swell!” Maybe “neat!” or “choice!”, but “swell”?

animoller: Hahahaha, you people are morons. Of course he didn’t fake it. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard all day. I do say swell. I do not say “choice”.

benbrown: You do so say “choice!”

dakota: Yeah, I’ll have to side with Ben. You say choice.

And this is from deangray.org, where he describes doing a skydive:

Before I could gather my bearings or muster my senses back into order, my instructor carefully pulled the goggles from my eyes.

My instructor: “How was that?”
Me: “It was.. uh.. choice.”

“Choice” was the only superlative my brain and mouth could manage at that particular point.

See? Choice is there, whether you like it or not. Choiceness flows through your veins, it is in the air that you breathe! Choice is everywhere.

But there have been times where I’ve felt self-conscious about saying choice a lot. I’ve tried to stop, but somehow it just wasn’t possible.

So I eventually realised that choice is part of me and my cultural heritage. I don’t have folk dancing, weaving or pottery to define who I am culturally, but I have choice and all its associated choiceness. Yes, choice is choice.

Melbourne: Part One

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It happened all so suddenly. My father was going to Melbourne on business and arksened me if I wanted to come along ‘cos he had enough frequent flier points for me to fly for free. Yeah, ok.

I kind of forgot about it until about a week before I was due to go, and realised I’d better get excited. So I found myself on the four hour flight across the sea without much of a traditional tourist thing happening.

At Melbourne airport I used the toilets in the area where the baggage carousels are. On the wall near the sink was a unit for the disposal of syringes. So, Australia has a bit of a problem with junkies, and indeed syringe disposal units are found in most public toilets, but who exactly would be shooting up in the toilets in the customs area of an international airport? Maybe I’m missing something here?

There’s a special 20 cent coin made to commemorate Sir Donald Bradman. He was a cricketer, quite a good one, apparently. The first time I got a Don 20 cent, I was really annoyed. See, a few years ago Caltex had this promotion where with every $20 of petrol you got a free rugby collector medal and each medal featured an All Black. So when I got the Don 20 cent, it looked just like the rugby coins and I was annoyed cos I thought someone had tried to use this cricket coin as legal tender and I’d ended up with it. Then I turned it over and saw the Queen’s profile on the back. Oh.

I went to the Old Melbourne Gaol. It was pretty cool. It’s a three-storey-high cell block, and most cells have a small display about a notorious former inmate, or some aspect of the prison. There were a lot of bad arses there, and many hangings. When a fellow was hanged, a plaster mould was made of his head, because back in the day it was thought that the shape of a person’s head could determine their personality and destiny. Nowaday, we know that the size of a person’s arse determines their destiny.

In the place of honour is the Ned Kelly section. Not only is the death mask of Mr Kelly on display, but so is his famous DIY armour. I didn’t actually pay much attention to the display, so I can’t remember what Ned Kelly did, but it must have been pretty bad because he was hanged.

I also paid the Melbourne Museum a visit. It was full of many different things, but two exhibits really stood out.

As a New Zealander, I am supposed to get really angry that the stuffed skin of Phar Lap, who was born in New Zealand, (and if horses could have citizenship, he would have been a New Zealand citzen, mate) is housed in the Melbourne Museum. But as I don’t care, I’m not angry.

Phar Lap, whose belovedness is attributed to the fact that in a time of ecomonic hardship, he was a sure bet at the races, is displayed in front of a red curtain. Creepily, his horses veins stand out under his skin. It should also be noted that Phar Lap is hung like a horse.

Also of interest was the Robinson’s kitchen. Yes, rescued from the set of “Neighbours” was the set of the kitchen of the Robinson’s kitchen. I stood behind the counter and pretended I was Charlene, who’d come over to see Scott and, oh look, Helen’s baked some biscuits! My fantasy was soon ended by the arrival of a bunch of school kids.

I saw “Mamma Mia”, the musical based on the songs of Abba, but we don’t like to talk about that.

I met up with Matt and Olivia and asked them where I could see a real live junkie. Apparently the place to go junkie spotting in on the trams at about ten in the morning, when they’re heading into the city to get a fix. See, we don’t have junkies in Aotearoa. Except in Christchurch. Everyone else just smokes lots of pot.

I should also note that I had a really nice lunch, coffee and dinner with Matt and Olivia and the Melbourne posse.

I also got the names of some cool streets to check out. First on the list was Brunswick Street. It’s a really long, straight street with lots of really cool shops on it. I discovered a shop that sold interesting books, comics, zines and bongs. It was quite a novelty being in a country where it’s legal to sell bongs, they don’t have to be called “decorative vases”.

Another really long straight street with lots of shops on it was Chapel Street. My favourite was the Chapel Street Bazaar, which is the grooviest second hand shop I’ve ever been to. They had Smurf figurines! I also found some books of matches which commemorated the 100th anniversary of Te Aroha, back in 1980. Just what were those doing in Melbourne? Maybe someone’s mum back in Te Aroha send them over?

I had a good time, and can state that Melbourne is rad. Any city in which a right turn is executed from the far left side of the road has to be rad.

Hooray for Suck

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Automatic Media, the company that owns Suck.com has run out of money and has put Suck on hold. This is very sad because Suck has been around for about as long as I’ve been on the internet, and in that time it’s been dearly admired and very inspirational to me.

There’s that saying that only 1000 people bought the first Velvet Underground record, but everyone of them started a band. I think Suck is a bit like that as far as web sites go. Or, at least that’s how it was for me.

The first version of my web site was pretty dull. It wasn’t quite your average run-of-the-mill personal web site, but it was pretty close. All I had to inspire me were the personal pages of a few geeks that I knew, and little else. Then I started paying more attention to what Suck was doing, and everything changed for me.

Suck was this web site where every day someone would write a few hundred words about something. Sometimes it would be too American for me to understand, but other times it was really good, often funny stuff. I had one of those lightbulb moments.

I didn’t have to write about the same old stuff that everyone else wrote about! I didn’t have to write one neat little page about my likes and dislike, or have my CV online. Instead I could write about whatever was pissing me off or making me happy at the time. That felt liberating.

And if Suck could write about things that only really meant something to a person raised in America, and it didn’t leave me feeling too alienated, I figured I could write about New Zealand-based topics without fear of alienating non-New Zealand visitors.

Suck also learned me a few things about design. I realised that I didn’t need a coloured background or nifty icons or animated gifs to make my page palatable. Just a narrow, easy to read column of text was all that was needed. If the written material isn’t good enough to hold the interest of a reader, than an animated gif isn’t going to help.

Suck became part of my weekly web surfing rounds. Wednesday was the best, ‘cos it was Filler day. If Suck disappears, it will be Polly Esther’s words and Terry Colon’s pictures that I will miss the most. Filler, most of the time, consisted of dead-on observations about people my age and the rad, sad and bad things they do. I never really liked the crack-smoking Canadian rabbit, though.

So unless a whole lot of money (or love) comes the way of Suck, it looks like it might cease to suck. I feel a bit guilty – I used to always drag the banner ad frame down so I couldn’t see the ad. But then, banner ads are dead (or are they?).

It’ll be pretty sad if Suck goes away forever. But six years of Sucking is pretty good, especially in internet years. But enough moping, it’s not quite time for boo-hoo-papa-smurf mode yet. Hooray for Suck, whatever its fate is.

Inorganic Rubbish Collection

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When I first moved to Auckland and was looking for a flat, I was disappointed at the large number of horrible-looking suburbs. Driving along streets I noticed piles of rubbish stacked up on the front verges of many properties. What sort of horrible city was I moving to?

Then I discovered it was the magic of what is known as the inorganic rubbish collection. Some cities don’t have inorganic rubbish collections because they think it looks messy. Those places are missing out on all the fun.

In Auckland, it only happens every two years, so when it does take place it’s a very special time. People get really excited about it. It’s the time where if you don’t live in a shitty neighbourhood, you can pretend you do as your neighbours fill up their grass verges with piles of old crap waiting to be hauled away.

Back when I lived in Mount Eden, there was a nearby street with almost all cheap flats down one side of it. Walking along that street to work I would often see old fridges, washing machines and unidentifiable rusty, twisted metal sitting out on the grass waiting for someone (who?) to take it away. Because the city rubbish contractors don’t take that sort of thing, it would all just sit there and gradually fall apart.

But now all those old mattresses, falling-apart couches and failed papier mache works of art will have a place to go to. Soon the yellowed grass will see the sun as the inorganic rubbish collectors come and do their thing.

One of the cool things about inorganic rubbish collection time is the scavengers. People go out looking for stuff they can take. This is especially common in wealthier suburbs, where people throw out stuff that would be happily used by others with less money (I saw a newish-looking lounge suite – a couch and two chairs – stacked up outside one place). It’s a great thing to see someone suddenly stop, pull over and squish an unwanted couch into the back of their stationwagon.

I’m pretty much keeping myself confined to the house until all the rubbish has been collected. On multiple occasions I have been out walking and seen a chair or table and thought, “hey, that’s actually in pretty good condition. All I’d need to do is sand it down, give it a coat of varnish, and reupholster the seat and I’d have a perfectly good chair!”

Of course, this fails to take into account the following:

  • I have no garage or suitable work area.
  • I have no sandpaper or painting equipment.
  • I do not know how to upholster.

In reality, the chair would probably sit in my lounge for a few weeks before it started to go mouldy or smell and I’d sneak it out on the front lawn in the middle of the night waiting for someone (who? The inorganic rubbish fairy?) to take it away.