THE MÉLANGE AND MELODY OF THE WEST SIDE
Bone Thugs and Harmony, Cleveland, Ohio's explosively tongued balladeers, helped to popularize a style of speed rapping, most notably via their crossover hits, "First of the Month" and "Crossroads". Kansas City's Tech N9ne, one of the most consistent and prolific artists in the culture, ensured this style spread and thrived in DIY and underground spaces for decades.
On a recent episode of "Drink Champs", Twista tells NORE he's the “Michael Jordan version" of Fast Rap. And how can one not concur. Twista is an OG of not only a city but a style and sound that became synonymous with The Midwest and helped to diversify the aesthetics of the culture. His appearance on Ye's "Slow Jams,, reinvigorated our desire for this kind of brilliant verbal dexterity. But what came to be known as "chopping" was a rapid-fire way to rhyme most kids in Chicago in the 90s called "double time." A sped up and often melodic way to stack and twist syllables that pervaded the region, then the planet, but is rooted in the West Side.
Double-time has its own antecedents and particular cosmology; the scatting of Ella Fitzgerald and Cab Calloway churning in the whirlwind of Fast Eddie's Hip-House bravado. Kool Moe Dee went faster than Busy Bee. Big Daddy Kane taught a generation to flip smoother and quicker than ever before. Treach exhibited a brilliantly composed fury with Naughty and there was elation whenever Chip Fu entered a track. The style migrated west to the improvisational jazz workshops of Freestyle Fellowship. Big Pun emblazoned the style in eternity, along with Big when he held his own with Bone on Notorious Thugs. Jay Z and Jaz O used to pass the word back and forth and no wants it on a track with Busta. There's Nelly's Midwest southern drawl, Em's Godzilla challenge and Kdot is deserved of his Pulitzer.
But aspiring Chicago emcees stalked ciphers with these fast raps, as a way to battle and differentiate their flow. It seemed like double-time, this breakneck building and bubbling of language, was a rite of passage. Something you'd have to master to be considered a well-rounded emcee and need in order to even touch a mic at sets like The 606 at Subterranean on Tuesdays or the more vibed out poetry night at Another Level at Lit-X, an Afro-centric bookstore in an equally, rapidly changing Wicker Park, a near West Side neighborhood.
After Twista dropped, double-time became synonymous with the West Side. A style rooted in coded speech; the quick, slick talk of a grifter at the height of their convincing, a preacher in rapture, Bishop Don Magic Juan sanctified.
The sounds Jerry Butler and Curtis Mayfield must've heard between singing in their Cabrini Green Church choir on Sundays then riding the bus to Wells High School Monday morning. Double time is the urgency of the hustler fighting for sonic space in the cluttered market on Madison Ave. The way the street hawker breaks through the cacophony to put a box of bootleg cologne in your hand or the man standing outside Tops and Bottoms lures you inside to cop the latest in matching gear.
Twista's elocution gave way to a murder of crews and nimble rappers finding ways to challenge the ears' ability to hear. Do or Die, of course, recruited Twista for their fall '96 Cadillac classic, Po Pimp. But as early as 1994, Yung Buk from Psychodrama, put a flag in the ground on "Magic, when he rhymes "... from the Westside, Chi-town, Windy City Playas /Bitches gettin' served when they fucking with the bad shit."
And through this army from out West, the city/country got to hear, progressively, more about what, arguably, the most remote and underserved communities were and are going through. Chicago, to this day, is one of the most segregated cities on the planet. And the Westside, in particular, is perhaps one of the most neglected swaths of land in America.
The Westside is a land of lonely bus lines and food deserts, corner store churches and abandoned store fronts. It's Uncle Remus and the ghosts Lupe lamented.
The Chicago Avenue 66 connects the crown of the Magnificent Mile and Navy Pier, where tourists flock to spend millions of dollars, to Austin, where few white people ever roam. The Westside where Mark Clark and Chairman Fred Hampton were assassinated by the FBI and CPD, while Chairman Fred slept next to his pregnant wife at 21 years old. Where Michael Jordan built the house on Madison and Bill Clinton and Mayor Daley tried to push out its inhabitants for the 1996 Democratic National Convention.
Crucial Conflict, who hail from K-town, a Westside neighborhood, made a whole album couching double time rhymes in wild west(ern) themes juxtaposed upon an urban pastoral. On their breakout smash, "Hay” (in the middle of barn), Never rhymes in the fourth and final verse in this ode to herb and euphony, "Ain't nobody too rich, we poor." A sentiment Coldhard expands on in an interview meant for Rap City (that I'm not sure ever aired but lives on YouTube). He says, "That's basically what it's all about, the struggle. That's what's going on in Chicago. A lot of struggling man. Just trying to get by."
Hip-Hop remains a space where some of the most marginalized elevate and center the narrative of the dispossessed and disenfranchised. An inheritor and contributor to this Westside style, is the prolific and gifted, Saba, who creates similar portraits throughout his discography and in particular on his most recent album, A Few Good Things. On the track, "Come My Way", featuring Krayzie Bone, from Bone Thugs and Harmony, Saba starts his verse, "This sound like tube socks on Madison Ave.". In his interview discussing the project on Genius, he goes on to say he " understand(s) the importance of scene setting" and that initially this song was going to be called "A Poverty Song", not as a lament but as a celebration of ingenuity and the fortitude of the people.
Saba is one of the latest and greatest emcees who utilizes this style of double-time or chopping in order to take the listener into a melodic journey through love, loss and maturation. He and his St. Louis collaborator, Smino, are part of a new school of fast paced emcees who bend and sculpt language like Selma Burke and Rammellzee did materials. Accompanied by J.I.D. and Earthgang, there is no mistaking that this sound proliferates from earth in the middle of the country, a space that first heard Muddy Waters run his Delta Blues through the electric amplifiers on Maxwell Street.
In Chicago, Twista is known as Unc. The OG ambassador of a style and city he put on the map. When Hip-Hop was a local mom and pop shop phenomenon that spread hand to hand like Soldiers at War (SAW) standing out in traffic on Pulaski selling CDs. Double time was a note of distinction, some Chicago sauce to throw into the mélange. Twista has remained steadfast in his craft and stayed generous with his co-signs, jumping on generations of subsequent stars' records, willing to lend his voice, pass the torch and share the fire. MJ to AI to Kobe. And the beat don't stop.
