A few, weighty, thoughts on rap music:

1.  It’s a young man’s game.  Listening to it, producing it, performing it - I believe there’s a shelf life on the hard stuff that just starts a pretty hard down-turn at around 33, 34 (that’s young still, I promise).  After that you’ve got Jay-Z rapping about his hard life while smoking a 3000 dollar cigar and buying Beyonce diamond encrusted panties.  I’m old(er) and the thrill of boom-bap and fist-pumping just isn’t there for me anymore.

2.  Rap, hip-hop, whatever you might call it, is as stagnant a genre as any being produced right now.  You can wax on and on and on about the new branches of hip-hop - the nerd-hop, the emo hip-hop, the alterna-hip-hop - but at the end of the day rap has barely made a step forward since 1982.  On occasion I can lean back on the familiarity of rap and be excited that beats and rhymes are still at its core, but for the most part, the genre’s stubborn refusal to drastically change leaves me with a yawn dragging down my bottom lip.

3.  I expect someone reading the above paragraph will argue that I haven’t given enough listens to the new wave of hip-hop currently churning the butter.  I have.  I have spent hours trying to enjoy Why? and his Anticon-on-Prozac stylings.  I have attended Atmosphere concerts and cried a silent tear for a true artist turned mainstream.  I have watched a crowd of 16 year old girls mouth every word to a Grieve’s song.  I’ve done it, and I’m just bored.

4.  Which leads me, the long way ’round, to today’s Daily Choice.   Vast Aire made his name as one part of the indie superstars Cannibal Ox in the early days of underground hip-hop, and the mere mention of his or Vordul Mega’s name gets me riled like the good old days.  And I’ll say this, “Thor’s Hammer” is as much a throwback to 1996 as any song I’ve heard lately and this is where my love of rap still lives, in the hands of the masters, the performers who’ve bucked the trends and bucked my own assumptions of rap’s need for youth, and just keep churning out the solid, head-nodding beat blockbusters.  ”Thor’s Hammer” rocks on a delicate sample and some smoothed out heavy hitting drums, with Vast Aire and crew (Vordul Mega and Ghostface Killah) spitting the fire like the mid-90s never crashed to a halt.

Vast Aire’s new album Ox 2010: A Street Odyssey is out now on Man Bites Dog/Fat Beats.

Vast Aire - Thor’s Hammer