ONE FEWER BITCH

I got a real treat the other night in form of the N.W.A basic cable doc The World's Most Dangerous Band. I gotta say it was pretty edgy for VH1; enjoyment was compromised only when Ren broke my heart around the 60-minute mark by slandering Metal in a confused attempt to debunk censorship. Talking about we're all Satan-worshipping child murderers. Yeah so? 

Things turned sad with the death of Eazy-E, preceded by that horrible scene where his lawyer read a statement in which, at death's door, Eazy called out to his estranged and mourned "brothers in N.W.A". It struck me immediately that barring medically-induced amnesia, this is how Axl Rose is going to die someday. All alone and alienated, waging some imaginary war, betrayed and bitter, twisted, paranoid, and diseased. Like Sting, right? This should be stopped, but is still preferable to the Michael Jackson option where Rose transforms over decades into a mangled and bleached ghoul who feeds on the souls of children and the agony of those under his control. Like Madonna. 

That was Thursday but then in the shower this morning I was thinking about Dimebag as usual, but then it occurred to me that N.W.A and Public Enemy are the Slayer and Metallica of hip hop. One pair is ultra-violent and cartoonishly harsh while the second is baldly political and literate. Kerry = Eazy; Flav = Kirk. Slayer (above) bravely pulled back the curtain on Orange County, where demons and genocidal surgeons ran wild while crack and corrupt police ravaged N.W.A's L.A. On the other side, Metallica took a broadly fatalistic and bitter view of a war-crazed and avaricious white-dominated society; Chuck D of P.E. ostensibly hoped for a better future but was so (rightly) devoted to confrontation and exploding myths to paint any but the bleakest picture of the present. What's that? Yeah this is what I think about on my day off. Why wait hey where you going?