For about the past four years now I’ve been working with children with disabilities. One of the kids I see frequently chooses to watch music videos as his reward for doing a good job on his work. Needless to say, he’s one of my favorite kids that I have ever worked with. The big homie has loved nearly everything I’ve pulled-up on YouTube for him (especially “Full Clip“), that is, of course, until I came across this live video of Qwel performing “The ‘IT’ in ‘Keeping it Real’” at his UGHH.com in-store appearance. Qwel is so rapid-fire that I think the kid just didn’t really know what to make of it.
Anyway, the reason I’m writing is this: Right before I went to find some different videos for him one of my coworkers stepped into the room and a student asked what he was doing. His response? “Keeping it real.” In a strange and very, very lame way it made my day. Not only was it extremely coincidental, but it was also absolutely hilarious to me. Although, I’d say having a tool-like “Keep it real” beneath your name in your senior yearbook, courtesy of a candy-ass yearbook staff, is a bit funnier, even if — word to Kool Keith — this particular student was shamelessly representing (what?) his nuts.
I have plans to post another video from Qwel’s UGHH.com in-store a little down the line, which is why I’m choosing only to include the link (above). However, TECB has an absurd amount of upload space left before we have to renew our upgrade with these greedy WordPress freaks, so here’s the audio stream to the song in mention where Qwel examines the meaning — if any — to the “it” in “keeping it real”:
I love what he says at the end of the track: “See, the thing that pisses me off about rappers most of all and their endeavors and journeys to ‘keep it real’ is these motherfuckers lie so much that the average audience thinks that we’re all liars.” I’ve had that quote hanging on my downstairs refrigerator since I wrote it down and planned on using it for my senior seminar thesis paper, but it never made its way into the paper, so on the fridge it stays.
And, lastly, because none of us ever came around to making a “best of the decade” blog entry, I figure that mentioning here how Qwel’s The Harvest (entirely produced by Maker) and Freezerburner (produced by Meaty Ogre) would both be in my top 10 of the last ten years. Maybe even of all time. In all genres. Hate on it.
Filed under: Hip-Hop, Music, Throwback Rap Attack Tagged: | Freezerburner, Galapagos 4, Maker, Meaty Ogre, Qwel, repping your scrotum, The Harvest
