![]() ![]() His death, a cultural news event that was inescapable anywhere in the United States, was large enough to cross the musical boundary in a way that the mere success of a band like Guns n’ Roses, or the outrageousness of their frontman Axl Rose, was unable to. No other figure from the world of rock music has even a fraction of this pull. The other week, in a comment on someone asked about the impact death has on the ‘love’ for a person the presence of Kurt Cobain as a meme with hip hop is one of the consequences. While Jaz-Z barely rose above that level in November 2012 with this snippet: Tinie Tempah shows he’s taken his view of the world from PR-puff-piece reporting with the following January 2013 facile comments: The references are far wider than the lyrics too Tyler the Creator, almost tragically, displayed the deepest Cobain knowledge on display for referencing Kurt Cobain’s baiting of Rolling Stone. ![]() Hip hop’s level of engagement with Kurt Cobain hasn’t moved on at all since Eminem rapped “my favourite colour is red, like the blood shed from Kurt Cobain’s head” a full decade ago (Cum on Everybody.) What’s immediately obvious is that these aren’t precisely highly inspiring lines. Previous articles and online discussions have documented his presence within lyrics, in the past twelve months I’ve noted “you a broke N****, kill yo’self Kurt Cobain” from Waka Flocka Flame on Gucci Mane’s Trap God mixtape Kayne West opting for “rocking flannels all summer like Kurt Cobain,” on the song White Dress (from The Man With the Iron Fists soundtrack) while The Game opted for “so strange had to blow they mind, Cobain” on the title track of Jesus Piece the up-to-the-minute burst of “Kurt Cobain even died because you scrutinise” from A$AP Rocky song Phoenix released earlier this year. On the other hand, however, acknowledgement of Kurt Cobain has become a relative commonplace within hip hop. Cobain went so far as to state that “rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock,” which acknowledged its impact accurately, yet there was no cross-pollination - Nirvana’s music existed in a solidly guitar-based milieu with nothing bar that nod of respect. It’s an easy album for non-hip-hop punk rock-orientated music lovers to like given the extreme sonics, the densely layered sound and the talented polemical vocals on display it even earned Chuck D a Sonic Youth cameo. Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back featured on the list of Top 50 albums in his Journals as a sole representative from hip hop. When Public Enemy were nominated last year for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum they explained that the band had “brought a new level of conceptual sophistication to the hip-hop album, and a new level of intensity and power to live hip-hop, inspiring fans from Jay-Z to Rage Against the Machine to Kurt Cobain.”īeyond the desire to name-drop a still iconic superstar, the reference does display the one real indication that Kurt Cobain acknowledged the world outside guitar-based music. ![]()
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