Artist: Black Rob Song: “Whoa” Producer: Buckwild Year: 2000
Take a peek at Buckwild's Wikipedia page if you wanna go down a fantastic rabbit hole and discover a bombastic discography of quintessential NY 90's hip hop songs. Coupled with his work alongside his Diggin in the Crates crew (a moniker for finding the best records to sample), which includes everyone from Lord Finesse to Fat Joe, proves Buckwild is an unsung legend. Think Big L's "Put It On," Biggie Smalls' "I Got a Story to Tell," Jay-Z's "Lucky Me," Akinyele's "Sister, Sister." But nothing can compare to the sonic enterprise Buckwild and Black Rob embarked on when the two met on the 2000 track "Whoa."
In Rob's "Whoa," Buckwild's musicality and keen ear factor heavily as a major portion of the song's success. His crew's name is indeed integral to their production style when you dig a little further into the sample he uses. Take a listen to this song:
Did you hear it? Fast forward to 2:10 in and you will. You'll listen to those glorious ten or so seconds of strings that Buckwild eventually turned into the introduction to Black Rob's tremendous opus that is "Whoa." Before the husky voice drops and the beat breaks, those are the strings that give me goosebumps. How Buckwild found and structured a few seconds of this French composer's 1970s record into the foundation of Black Rob's utterly chaotic banger "Whoa" is breathtaking.
---
Black Rob was a rapper relatively unexposed to the mainstream before Whoa, though he was signed to Diddy's infamous Bad Boy label and had released a record prior. I have no idea why Black Rob was not catapulted into a greater level of superstardom, especially backed by such a large label. But, the industry is fickle and when rap hits mainstream, who knows within those confines what happens behind the scenes. Rob had a salty gruffness in his voice that was the right amount of grit when peppered onto Buckwild's sample. As the sample loops in the beginning of the song, Rob explains the meaning of the colloquialism of "Whoa" while giving the listener a five second period to prepare for the auditory and neurological bomb about to be unleashed on us.
And while the production style of Buckwild is implicitly the backbone of the track, what is the central role of any successful MC? To communicate a story in a unique and spellbinding way; using their own tool belt of lyrical flows, alliteration, general musical stylings, certainly, but ultimately their role is in finding a way to connect their audience to the song. According to LeRoi Jones' (Amiri Baraka, 1963) Blues People, there "is an old African dictum: 'The spirit will not descend without song'" (p.41). Humanity is connected through music, it is in engrained in our very DNA. The heritage and performance of Black music is predicated on expression of emotions (Jones, 1963). Jones further points out as the tradition of Black music moved from work songs to Afro-Christianity music, ultimately reaching modern eras of R&B and Hip Hop, he highlights how the voice becomes the central role of a song's musicality (Jones, 1963). The call and response structure of the song's chorus shows Black Rob requiring the community to confirm his ubiquitous stories. Black Rob manages to make his aggressiveness sound inviting, to make us want to hear more; to want to hear his stories, and to hear how he feels about them.
Warning: There is an upsetting amount of times Rob uses a gay slur (which I will intimate to you as being the"f word") in this song. Digging deeper into the broader homophobic complexities of these stories and of the man behind them will sadly remain a closed topic as Black Rob passed away Saturday April 17th, 2021. Luckily, "the Spirit will not descend without song."Rest In Peace Robert Ross aka Black Rob. Thank you for your music.
Part of this article was published in a different form on April 8, 2020.
Comments
Post a Comment