The Grammys, Twitter, opinions.....last night had all three. I love music. Music can change your mood; Music has the power to change a soul. The politics and talk and opinions surrounding music sometimes leave me with a bad feeling. Don't get me wrong, I have all kinds of stances of what music is good and who I like and all that. Some people just shouldn't make music, lets be real. The Grammy awards are a night to celebrate music (which I love), and to give awards (don't love so much). The awards thing just kinda jumbles things up and it brings so many other things into the night that shouldn't, in my opinion, be there. Shit man, music has nothing to with race, religion, sexual orientation, politics....yes music can inspire people to as a tool for these things, but music is different. Music is food for your soul. It doesn't care if you gay, or black or hispanic, or white....it don't care if you democratic or republican....it just wants you to feel good while you hear it. Giving awards to music brings all that other "wordly" jazz into it and that urks me. Hey, but this is America and have to have a winner in everything....even things that aren't a competition. Admittedly, I don't really even listen to the sort of music that would be up for a nomination for a Grammy, but of course, I know the music. I hear it everyday and if it's good I groove to it.
The reason why I like to watch the Grammys are the performances. I've been a concert junkie since I was 3 years old and my dad took me and my mom to see Stevie Wonder in St. Louis, Mo. He was working as a body guard for Stevie. Now, I don't remember the event at all, but we have pictures and ya'll know how those can sometime morph into a memory. As a child, I do remember going to see New Edition, The Boys, and the Fat Boys.....I also remember crying for a week after Micheal Jackson cancelled his tour date in St. Louis, after I begged my mom for tickets. She actually got them!, and he cancelled. Performances, to me, show the true passion that the artist has for his craft. It also shows that they have enough love to want to project that passion to their fans.
The two performances that really moved me were Imagine Dragons./Kendrick and the Daft Punk/Pharrell/Stevie/Rodgers performance. Yes, I am biased. I'm a life long Stevie Fan (see previous paragraph), and Pharrell junkie, and Kdot.....mayne Kdot.....or should I just call him by his new name...King Kendrick. I'm not a huge Imagine Dragons fan but that performance was sooooo good. The concept that they came up with was genius....yes we have seen mashups many times before but this one fit together so well that it seemed very original. I love that Kendrick choose MAAD City because that cut says so many things. As usual, he was on point with is spittin, he is a technician with the mic......Imagine Dragons brought it too....I was really into the Huge Drums and when they dropped the base on "Welcome to the New Age", the shit had me headbanging. You could sense in the moment that the performance had everyone's attention. It was like being at a concert. I was actually jealous of the people there cause I know the energy was bananas.
The Daft punk performance was just pure soul. I know that it sounds weird with an electronic group's song, but "Get Lucky", just feels like 70's soul music in my dad's basement. The feeling is what makes it. The groove melted into me. To hear Stevie sing a verse was so organic in that fact that I could see him singing it as his own song.....Pharrells positive vibes and realness make most of the music he jumps on feel "Happy". People want to feel happy and I was last night......I just want to talk about one more performance and that was Macklemore and Ryan Lewis - Same Love.
I liked it. I'm not a big Macklemore fan, and yes, I liked MAAD city alot more than The Heist, but for people to keep saying that dude isn't a rapper and this and that. It ain't cool. The homie Jig put me on him a while back and he can rap. You can tell that he love the craft and worked for years to get to where he is now. Yeah, he getting alot of Love, but how can you hate on Love??? The message in the song was enough for me to back the performance. The couples seemed to genuinely be there to profess their love to one another. That's real to me and the type of thing that music can accomplish.....Anyway, that's that....sorry we been gone so long. One.
-tshurn
