New Fangled Old Stuff With Grandpa Lou: Buggin’ Out

As the great (okay, the pretty good) Kanye West once said, "No one man should have all that power." I'm singing that song aloud to entertain myself in a lovely home that I'm house-sitting with a refrigerator full of spoiled food and two dogs that won't stop panting because it's currently 88 degrees with humidity levels at around 85% inside the house so I think I can tell you with a good amount of authority that Kanye West is a lying sack of shit. I want all the power. ALL OF IT!!! You see, Grandpa Lou hangers-on and debt collectors, my lovely city went through a storm on Monday that left 750,000 of us without electricity, so I had to pray to the God of lightning to turn that shit back on.

Guess what? Much like the only true god Vishnu, Raiden does not exist outside of video games. Alas, I am on day two in this newly Amish house in front of a nonfunctioning 70" LCD monolith, season 3 of Breaking Bad lying in front of me on the coffee table as I ponder my electro-impotence (TM Grandpa Lou 2011). D'you know what I did so I could write this out on my laptop?! I had to spend two hours at the McDonalds up the road while my dead battery charged up, forced to eat seven cheeseburgers in the process and subsequently pooping 15 times.

How do people do this every day (not the eating at McDonald's part, though, seriously, you should probably not do that. I'm talking about living without a basic human need such as electricity)? You know when the power's out and you're thinking to yourself, "Oh geez, the A/C's off, I'd better get the fan out of the closet… oh wait." And then you go to make toast and it sits in the toaster for twenty minutes before you realize that everything in your house is designed to not do a goddamn thing without some sweet electric lifeblood? And then you go to make some eggs and bakey on the stove and you forget that even the gas appliance needs an electric igniter and after about 30 seconds you light it with a match and now you don't have nipples or eyebrows anymore? THIS IS HOW MY PAST TWO MORNINGS HAVE GONE. The Amish might actually have something going with their "don't buy electric stuff" mantra, because if you don't know how important power is, you won't particularly give a shit when the power's gone (stay with me here I'm going somewhere with this).

So I saw the new film about my childhood rap idols, "Beats Rhymes and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest" a documentary that doesn't quite hit its mark. Even the name of it is kinda lame, as any fan will tell you that the album they released called Beats Rhymes and Life was a pretty big disappointment. It's like calling an Elvis documentary, "Capes Man-boobs & Flop Sweat: The Pork Sandwiches of Elvis Presley." The film is directed by Michael Rappaport, whom we first saw in the movie Higher Learning, where he played a pretty convincing skinhead and showed a good amount of promise. For this film, he made a daring and bold decision of gaining 50 pounds for the role of Fat Documentarian Michael Rappaport, though sadly the director left most of his scenes on the cutting room floor. In the film, we see the rappers as teenagers, sans status and sans pager, but in the first few minutes we watch their rapid transformation into one of rap's great teams, making, as Questlove notes in an on-screen interview, conscious party records. I remember hearing Bonita Applebum as a young rapscallion and thinking that I would use those dope raps whilst procuring myself some hoes as soon as my voice stopped cracka-lackin'. Sadly, my voice still cracks and therefore, if you need ‘em, I got CRAZY prophylactics.

Q-Tip, 1/4 of ATCQ's membership and 4/5ths of its talent, explains that he essentially dragged Phife Dawg, the other rapper in the group (as if I needed to tell you, oh ATCQ superfan), into superstardom. The group was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to sign to a record deal and wear some seriously questionable clothing for photo shoots, and we watch their rise to power as one part of the extended and loosely adjoined Native Tongue family. The stories told in the first half hour of the movie really propel it forward at an entertaining clip and I was excited to find out more juicy behind-the-scenes info about the group's two certified classic albums, The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders. Sadly, the movie barely touches on this as Rappaport decided instead to show the bickering from the sidelines of their reunion tour from 2008 which is not unlike watching a Happy Days retrospective that mostly shows clips of Joanie Loves Chachi. The documentary makes very clear that the handsome, charismatic and insanely talented Q-Tip was both the most powerful and most volatile member of the crew. In footage of the reunion tour, he was straight up bullying Phife for not being able to perform even though he knew that his former partner needed a new kidney, so don't expect him to call you on your birthday, Busta Rhymes. Poor Phife is shown in a sympathetic light several times as he explains how Very Serious his diabetes and sugar addiction have become, but he seems almost entitled to the fame that Q-Tip dragged him into. Meanwhile, the other two Tribe members, DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammed and the entirely sweet but absolutely unnecessary sometime-hypeman Jarobi, are simply seen as casualties of the bickering and infighting between their more famous childhood friends, something I can relate to because my own childhood friends were and still are total dick faces (you know it's true Joey!).

In the end, power did this team in, as Tip moved on to a solo career (and boning Nicole Kidman) and left his pals behind. These days, Phife spends a good portion of his time as a High School basketball recruiter with Jarobi close by his side, presumably to make sure he doesn't freebase any Jolly Ranchers. Speaking on behalf of 15 year old Grandpa Lou, it would be great to get these guys together again to see if they have any magic left, but right now, I'd be just as happy with a tall glass of ice water and a slip n' slide. Oh how priorities change.