Hit It!

I guess the question is asking whether you believe these abstract qualities exist in finite amounts at any given moment. If they are finite and can be exhausted and then replenished over time, then it would be beneficial to only "use" them when they are most needed.

But I think you could also argue a "fuel for the fire" idea. Being spontaneous and creative all the time will make you more creative and spontaneous at any one time than if you tried to cage up that energy and make it do your bidding. It will just atrophy when it's not being used.

It's probably somewhere in the middle. Or along an entirely different axis in the Blerd Dimension.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now let's talk about hip-hop.

La Di Da Di- Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh. Released April 15, 1985.

LYRIC SELECTION!

And when we rock up on the mic we rock the mic RIGHT!

Isn't that a really redundant line, Ricky D?

All he's saying is that when he raps on the microphone he raps on the microphone very well.

Why not cut the first half of the line?

Well, you could argue that then it wouldn't fit the meter and it wouldn't sound as good and that he's just filling the line with redundant words to keep with the beat.

BUT THAT'S NOT A VERY GOOD ARGUMENT, I THINK!

I think, there's an ingenious reason that the grand wizard Slick Rick uses this redundancy and it's going to tie together the picture and the caption-picture and the words underneath it. And it goes a little something like this:

Let's look at the lyrics that come before this line.

La-Di-Da-Di We like to party.

We don't cause trouble. We don't bother nobody. We're--

just some men that's on the mic-
and when we rock up on the mic we rock the mic RIGHT!

What's happening here is that Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh are concentrating their efforts! Their rapping personas do not extend beyond the act of rapping and that's precisely what makes them so adept at rocking the mic!

What are they saying about themselves? That they're innocuous, inconspicuous, not worthy of being rapped about. They're just "some men" who happen to be "on the mic"

Slick Rick is responding to rappers who merely use their rhymes to talk about all of their ridiculous exploits. He's making an aesthetic argument about hip-hop. And that argument is

HOW you say something is more important than WHAT you say.

A rapper could go up on stage and talk about all the shiny weapons he's purchased, and all the shiny ladies that love him, and all the shiny clothes he bought that are very expensive and how he came up from nothing and all of that could be the 100% bona fide truth but he would still be a terrible rapper if he just read it like a grocery list with terrible rhymes.

So how does Slick Rick challenge this? How does he assert his rhyming supremacy?

By rapping extremely well about nothing at all!

and when we rock up on the mic we rock the mic RIGHT!

That's an undeniably catchy line. He's got alliteration, he's got consonance, he switches up the tempo after rhyming fairly slowly in the opening lines, and the final "RIGHT" goes high-pitched just to really punctuate it and make that "OHHHH!" moment. The elements of his speech are very dynamic. It's like a magic trick. How did he go from being so average to being awesome in one line?!

But he's not really saying anything at all in terms of content. He's showing, he's demonstrating, that he cares about his craft and that the only way to be an excellent rapper is to rap excellently. When you do that, then nothing else matters. You can be a totally regular dude that doesn't stand out in any way. The rhymes trump all. There's no lifestyle for Slick Rick. He's not going around looking to do amazing things so that his rhymes will improve. His rhymes can be about anything and they will sound awesome

BECAUSE ALL SLICK RICK KNOWS HOW TO DO IS BUST SICK RHYMES!

So I hope that justified the length of that seemingly empty line.

The next challenge would be reconciling all of this with the remainder of the song which does nothing but talk about Slick Rick's day and how he does awesome things all the time. Gucci underwear, ladies fighting over him, and the like...

I guess you could say that this introduction frames everything he's about to talk about. Yeah, you should be impressed by how broken-hearted ladies and their mommas can't keep their hands off Slick Rick, but more importantly...the WAY Slick Rick presents himself is what makes these things cool.

Ricky, ricky, ricky, can't you see?
Somehow your words just hypnotize me.
And I just love your jazzy ways,
Oh MC Rick my love is here to stay.

My love is here to stay too, MC Rick. My love is here to stay too.