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Looking Sideways at Your World Since October 2001
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March 31, 2007

Stupid Husband Tricks

When your wife calls your cell from the motel 500 miles away to check in, have Jay-Z’s Kingdom Come playing really loud and shout into the phone that you’re having trouble hearing her where you are. Works best if she doesn’t know you own the record because you don’t - you’re getting it off the subscription service.

“You’re so funny.”

“Well, yeah!”

Side query: with all the superhero references in the title track, is it possible that Jay-Z is nerd enough to have read the graphic novel? Yeah, I know he throws in Spider-Man and isn’t tracking the plot of the book, but it could still be a conscious joke, no?

Posted by Jim Henley @ 11:52 pm, Filed under: Main

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3 Responses to “Stupid Husband Tricks”

  1. Comment by Dave W. —
    April 1, 2007 @ 7:09 am

    Stupid wife tricks:

    http://tinyurl.com/2u3njn

  2. Comment by Cal Ulmann —
    April 1, 2007 @ 10:50 am

    The idea was brought to Jay-z by engineer/producer Youg Gurur according to as told to XXL.com

    The best thing that I can tell you that there’s a song called ‘Kingdom Come’ on the album, which is the title of the album. The way that record came about was from a good friend of mine from college, Lance Williams, he’s one of those dudes that can memorize, he knows how many mics every album ever got. We’re both comic book guys and we’re talking about Kingdom Come which is a comic book that came out about Superman. He was just like, ‘Isn’t it weird where hip-hop is at right now, it’s like Kingdom Come and Jay needs to be like Superman.’ I was like, ‘You’re right.’ I hadn’t read Kingdom Come in so long so I went
    out and bought it and read it. And I’m like ‘Oh shit! It’s parallel, it’s crazy.’ So I’m telling Jay the idea, I gave him the book and he got it. That’s why I love that song because one of the things that Superman doesn’t realize in the comic book is, not only how ill he is as a superhero but his influence on inspiring the rest of his peers that are superheroes. So when Superman jets and says, ‘Y’all shittin’ on me, y’all want the niggas that’s gon’ kill the people and I don’t kill my enemies, I catch ‘em and, cool y’all deal with ‘em. I’m good.” Wonder Woman comes and she’s like “It ain’t just you doing what you do but Green Lantern ain’t doing his thing no more, The Flash ain’t doing his thing, you’re the leader, you inspire them to keep going and doing what they do.” That’s where the parallel comes in. And Jay can take an idea and incorporate it into a song better than anybody that I know and when he finally vocalized it, I felt it was exactly what I was thinking about.

    “He’s saying, ‘I don’t know what life would be in H-I-P-H-O-P without the boy H-O-V not only N-Y-C, I’m hip-hop’s savior, so after this flow you might owe me a favor.’ It’s bringing New York back but it’s also bringing that hardcore hip-hop shit back on top of a beat where Just takes a sample that was used for probably the most pop rap record ever. All the parallels are in there. It’s just a really good record and the people are gonna get it on one level and then a couple weeks later they’ll get it on another level and then they’ll really listen and get every single thing he’s saying in there. I always say he raps on three different levels and you’re gonna get it, eventually.

    By the way XXL has really stepped up their site by adding bloggers over the last year.

  3. Comment by Jim Henley —
    April 1, 2007 @ 10:57 am

    Holy shit.

    Thanks, Cal. THAT was freaking informative.

    You know, it’s a fvcking nicer planet somehow since we geeks inherited it.

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