Anti-Climacus

Hip-hop is a generational thing, I've discovered. If you want a quick way to separate someone about my age from someone as little as 20 years older, ask them if they like rap music: the odds are against it. By the time I had any consciousness at all of the cultural world around me, there had already been Sugar Hill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC and the Beastie Boys. It was really something to have been young in that late 80s-early 90s hip-hop golden age, with great producers making use of old soul and r&b records, an increase in live instrumentation, neat integration of politics and social realism, Tribe Called Quest, or Pete Rock, or De La Soul (especially the trippy conceptual De La Soul Is Dead), Chuck D rapping his reading list, Arrested Development, etc etc etc. It was great then, and only becomes moreso in retrospect.

"Jazz (We've Got)" has been my favorite A Tribe Called Quest since I've had a favorite song of theirs. From The Low-End Theory, blurbed in a late-90s Rolling Stone beginning with "The nice guys finish first," purchased in an actual record store in an actual mall. It's a laid-back song; boastful, but playfully so; and excellent at high volume on an early summer day, driving with the windows down. Nothing more or less--but why should it be?