The most interesting thing about Hip-Hop samples is how they can appropriate classic songs and ideas from an era where music was about important things like love, oppression, and politics - and turn them into anthems about, literally, bullshit.
I heard this song for the first time today. It’s a great track, but obviously the ending made my ears perk up. “Party And Bullshit” is a pretty decent Notorious B.I.G. song (and one of the only Ratatat remixes that I ever actually play), but I always kinda laughed at the words “party and bullshit” being used as an anthem for anything, especially because I usually heard this song at parties. As everyone screams, “PARTY. AND BULLSHIT” I got this feeling like, “Yeah, what’s really meaningful about anything going on here right now?”
And so then I heard this song today and realized that my instinctual sentiments weren’t far off the mark. Abiodun Oyewole of The Last Poets explained,
When we rapped, it was all about raising consciousness and using language to challenge people. When I wrote [about] ‘party and bullshit’ it was to make people get off their ass. But now ‘party and bullshit’ was used by Biggie, used by Busta Rhymes, but in a non-conscious way. That’s difficult for us to deal with. [source]
And man, it’s probably difficult for Ray Charles’ woman (who’s good to him) to keep being referred to as a Gold Digger. Dude is blind, she loves him, bro.
(via hypem)
