You’re looking at a heavy fan. I first saw Jane’s Addiction on November 11, 1990 in Birmingham (and if you think nothing’s shocking, look at the murder rate and mass shootings in B’ham over the last year—or recently outside of HUSH). I was at the first Lollapalooza, which may pretty quickly have become a cultural juggernaut disassociated from the band, but really started as a Jane’s Addiction retirement tour. These two shows were of such unbelievable rockitude that I’ve never seen anything to top them. I bought the albums. I bought the bootlegs. I learned “Jane Says” on the guitar. (It was the easiest song to learn.) I even dressed up like Perry Farrell during homecoming week when we had “Hero Day” and it’s a good thing I can’t find a picture of it, because I’d probably be inclined to post it against my better judgement.
And then over three decades later I watched—in lame limp almost-half-expected semi-consternated grumpy bemusement, from the Nashville International Airport food court at 10 AM as I ate a sausage biscuit and had a breakfast beer amidst the sorely hungover remnants of bridal parties returning home with crazy stories to tell of hookups and vomit if they could remember them (which they probably couldn’t), as I waited to board a plane to Toronto, where I had tickets to the “Imminent Redemption” tour, where I was going to be sitting something like 22 rows back from the stage on which I knew that I’d see great things—I watched on my phone the videos that two friends had sent of Jane’s Addiction imploding, of Perry Farrell exploding onstage the night before in Boston, and I said to myself: they can’t go on after this, they’re done. And sure enough they didn’t, and sure enough they were.
Jane says, "I'm done with Sergio" He treats me like a ragdoll" She hides the television Says, "I don't owe him nothing, but if he comes back again Tell him to wait right here for me or, Try again tomorrow--I'm gonna kick tomorrow I'm gonna kick tomorrow" —Jane’s Addiction, “Jane Says” From hero to zero. From Lollapalooza to Flopapaloser. Perry Farrell is an asshole. And I know there are two or more sides to every story, but he sure looks like the flatulated stinking backside of this one.
Let's make some good trouble. . . High stakes and high drama. . . Let's stir up that karma. . . Let's launch us a comeback. . . I'll see you when we meet again In the imminent redemption Some are hot in head, remember. . . The sound is bittersweet, man. . . Let's all make a comeback —Jane’s Addiction, “Imminent Redemption”
Bittersweet, indeed. The lyrics said good trouble, man! Good grief. Well, add it to the list of concerts I never actually saw. At least I now had free time in Toronto on my hands on a Wednesday night. (Still waiting for my refund from Ticketmaster.) There was some kind of Book*hug thing going on—indie press, pretty books, not my scene—so pass. Green Lung was playing—dope heavy band; but I didn’t have the stamina to stand around in a stank club getting sonically assaulted and catching Covid—count me out. So my friend Kelly (who was also going to the now defunct show) and I went to the pub, and you know what? That was old-fashioned fun. A few drinks and some nachos. Good conversation. No histrionics. I’ll listen to the albums later. Turns out I don’t want to see people who don’t like each other anyway. I’d rather see people I like.
You know who obviously delight in each other’s company? Pete Rock and Common, that’s who. And we delight in them.
A few days before I headed to Toronto, it came to my attention that the legendary producer and the Chicago stalwart emcee were playing a show together at the Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville. Now that was a venue I dug—Päivi and I had seen Superchunk there, and while we bowled and ordered food, no less! It’s a pretty small space, and I heard about the show at the last minute (or a couple of days prior), so I figured it would be sold out, but it wasn’t, so I was golden.
But even with a ticket (albeit this time without a lane reserved), I almost didn’t go. It was one of those lethargy things. Päivi wasn’t there and I know you’re supposed to be able to have fun on your own, but it would have been more fun with her. My brother-in-law Jerry couldn’t go, and he’s a big hip-hop head, so that would have been fun, too, and anyway I was having dinner with him and my sister and my niece and nephew before the show—scrumptious creamy homemade mushroom lasagna, mmmmmm, thanks Rachel! Good cook, good sister, feeding her roaming brother—comfort food, comfort company—and after that especially I was like, aw, who has the energy to drive into the middle of Nashville and stand around all night alone among strangers waiting for a show to start and be packed in like sardines in a compact space and blah blah blah somebody got old somewhere along the way . . .
But wait! I’m not old, I’m Old School! I’m not old, I’m an O.G.! And thus perking up with platitudes, I commenced to haul a half century of bones to the Brooklyn Bowl.
I got there on time, which I assumed meant that I’d gotten there early, but there was a DJ playing already, and he was playing the oldies but goodies of the 90s and early aughts in one to two minute snatches—Das EFX, Wu-Tang, Meth, Raekwon, Biggie, Fugees, etc. It was spirited but casual. People were rapping along. The room was sparsely filled and although it naturally got more full as the night progressed, it never got packed—there was always room to maneuver and unless you were right up front by the time the headliners got on, you always had a little perimeter of space around you—which surprised me, but I do think the show got advertised rather late in the game and it was a Monday night, so maybe that explained it.
Truth is, my night was made even before the headliners came on. After the first DJ left the stage another DJ came out, not that I knew he was a DJ at first. He was a middle-aged white guy, tall and skinny with long stringy hair and a drooping mustache, and he was fiddling with the equipment, so I figured he was a roadie who was setting up Pete Rock’s gear. He looked like an extra in Serpico, or like an undercover cop pretending to be a functional junkie out for low level intel. But then he started spinning. And a couple of minutes into some pretty sick cuts—he was actually, like, turntabling, unlike the previous DJ—while dude was cutting it up with one hand, he grabbed the mic with the other and started spitting lines I knew very well, having co-collaborated on including them in The Anthology of Rap and taught them several times, namely Edan’s fairly obscure “Fumbling Over Words That Rhyme,” the greatest of hip-hop history lesson raps:
Pure rap music ain't made under pressure Expose a jewel, teach school at my leisure Fumble over words that rhyme with a verse divine I backtrack and think of the greatest of all-time Class is in session, master this lesson Teacher was a student, studied like a Buddhist Reviewin' on the best to do it So let's do this--Nothin' to it Considered the first emcee to blow the spot And do work was Coke La Rock spittin' for Kool Herc Followin' the influence of Herculoid parties, Brothers like Cowboy made you move your body Cowboy would toast for the G.M. Flash And the skills elevated as crews started to clash Flash and Bam, they both sought clientele So Flash formed the Four with the father Melle Mel Four became Five, law became live Routines over breaks, true kings motivate Out the L brothers came the Five Fantastic With Theodore they battled with the Cold Crush Four Few had the confidence of G.M.C. Without the C.C.B.'s there'd be no Run-DMC The Funky and the Fearless Four, Force MC's, the suave Spoonie G And I can't forget the Treacherous Three MC's Fumbling over words that rhyme Fumbling over words that rhyme Fumbling over words that rhyme Come with sound, around and 'round Praise to the Kool Moe Dee, he elevated And changed it with records like "The New Rap Language" Before the first full length LP's There was abstract brothers like the one Rammelzee Run DMC broke through in '83 Outta Queens and started rapping hard over drum machines 808's started shakin' up floors ["It's yours"] With T La Rock's complex metaphors A primary influence on L.L. Cool J T La Rock's futurism must've been respectable 'Cuz Tragedy from Queens was young but very technical Shan was eloquent, Kris was intelligent The 'R' was all of the above with added elements Slick Rick the Ruler was a screenplay producer Ultramagnetic had the vision for the future Big Daddy Kane getting raw at The Apollo And Kool G Rap was probably the sickest of all of 'em Jaz from the BK, Percee and Finesse from the BX Prince Po and Pharoah came next Wu with the G-Z-A, G-F-K N-A-S, one of the best out today Any MC that's addin' on to the list Pump your fist, but first give praise to the true scientists
And as I heard these words I knew so well, delivered in the cadence and tone in which I’d always heard them, it dawned on me that this undercover junkie roadie was in fact the mysterious man Edan himself! Unadvertised, his face heretofore unseen by me, here stood Edan, a.k.a. The Humble Magnificent, whose first single was titled “Sing It Shitface” and whose first self-released full length (Primitive Plus) looked like this:
Yes, this cutting rapping slicing and dicing back alley gangly looking homie in a cast-off funeral jacket and a Snidely Whiplash stache without curlicued ends was the very Edan who gave us “Emcees Smoke Crack Remixx” and “Torture Chamber” with Cut Chemist and Percee P and the arch sonic architect who put together the wacked out multi-layered multi-tracked masterpieces Echo Party and Beauty and the Beat.
Friends, I was in the presence of un-self-aggrandizing underground dopeness. And it was pure unadulterated bonus! He wasn’t even listed on the website when I got the tickets. Turns out he was the DJ for the opening act, Your Old Droog, a Brooklyn MC unknown to me but who it turns out has dropped 14 albums in the last 10 years (!) and who came out after Edan had been up there for about 10 minutes doing his thing and the Droog at first struck me as pretty aggro for a laidback Southern older Monday night crowd, which was also about three quarters Black folks, so of course I wondered what they’d make of this lil’ bit defensive at first white emcee from up north, but that was just that Brooklyn battle vibe coming through transplanted to the Brooklyn Bowl Cashville stage, and son could totally spit, there could be no doubt about that, so everybody eased into digging it, all ecumenical like, game recognizing you know what.
And the rhymes were tight but what I will remember most was Edan cutting up the NBA on TNT theme music (!) and then getting everybody rocking to a bass heavy remix of the Golden Girls theme (!!) and following it up by giving a girl in the crowd a plastic rose. When the whole night was over I went to the merch table, where he stood unmolested, unnoticed, and bought two records off him, in cash, because he didn’t take credit cards natch. All I had was a hundred dollar bill and he gave me back a batch of crumpled change, saying thanks, shaking my hand. It was an honor to smooth out the well-wrinkled green.
And then, without much time in between, the back curtain came up revealing a basement-like setting complete with old TV, pop culture posters, record crates and a guitar and a much-to-be-used-throughout-the-show couch. A DJ came out and at first I was like, Pete Rock is on some Benjamin Button ish, but in fact it was DJ Dummy, who would help out as the night progressed. And then Common came through the stage-prop door:
I’ve got a lot of love for Common. He wrote one of the afterword essays for The Anthology of Rap (the other was written by Chuck D), my co-editor and friend Adam Bradley helped him write his memoir One Day It’ll All Make Sense, and we shared the stage of The Lincoln Theater in Washington DC for a launch event for The Anthology. (You can see him and Kurtis Blow and Adam and an untelegenic me being interviewed prior to the event for PBS by the admirable Jeffrey Brown here.)
Old pro that he is, he established the positive, personal vibe right off the bat, recalling how he had come down to Nashville in 1991 to visit his Tennessee State-attending cousin (he also name-dropped Fisk) and to play some clubs right before dropping his ‘92 debut Can I Borrow A Dollar?, back when he was still called Common Sense. The affection for the city was genuine. He warmed us up with some rhymes and urged people to text random words to a number that he would later scroll through to do an extended freestyle jag. Then to great applause Pete Rock came on and everything jumped up even another notch.
There was such a beautiful affinity between the two veterans. Common drew the producer out on some of his most cherished productions, Pete and DJ Dummy made beats in real time, Common brought a lady up on stage and they sat on the couch as he came up with localized mack daddy rhymes on the spot (and joked that he didn’t want to get shot by her significant other), they did a medley of short snippets of classics from the 80s and 90s (Audio Two’s “Top Billin,” Eric B and Rakim’s “I Ain’t No Joke,” Run DMC’s “Sucker MCs,” some stuff I can’t remember, and a little bit of Fugees and Biggie), Common did that crowd-generated freestyle and spit plenty of his hits and a couple of deeper cuts, and the two got the crowd hyped from the floor to the wrap-around balcony with a rendition of “T.R.O.Y. (They Reminisce Over You)” that honored the late great J Dilla. It was a knowledgeable and enthusiastic crowd of old heads with a few twenty and thirty-somethings mixed in, folks were rhyming along and waving their hands in the air like they just don’t care and had in fact been caring and listening and rhyming along for decades by now.
Perry, you should have been there. You could have learned a lesson. Pump your fist, but first give praise to the true scientists, for real, they reminisce over you, my God.
—Andrew DuBois
“Dreamin’” (from the new collab The Auditorium Vol. 1)
Pete Rock talks Ahmad Jamal and the inspiration for Nas’ “The World Is Yours”
“Get ‘Em High” (from Kanye’s first LP)
Pete Rock and DJ Dummy making beats live on stage for Common to rap to later
You know Pete Rock’s remix of Public Enemy’s “Shut ‘Em Down”? Here’s Common and PR on the mic instead of Chuck D and Flavor Flav1 and it’s also mixed up with the Pete Rock remix of Das EFX’s “Real Hip Hop”
“I Used to Love H.E.R.”—play alongside the aforementioned “Fumbling Over Words” for today’s rap lesson in rap history
Pete Rock and CL Smooth’s great elegy “T.R.O.Y. (They Reminisce Over You)” with Common substituting lyrics memorializing his dear friend, the late genius J. Dilla
Speaking of that US Women’s Water Polo Team-supporting mad jester of rap Flavor Flav, I was elated when the clockmaster himself tweeted a pic of yours truly on a panel at Harvard with my man Adam Bradley and Jamaica Kincaid: