On Raekwon's 92-Second "Gorilla Rap"
The 1:32 minutes worth of left-on-the-cutting-room floor, but-still-occasionally-extremely-fiery rapping is a tradition that dates back to mixtapes circa way before the internet was even really invented, but it fits in the climate now, too. From album (which, ask Jadakiss, isn't dead) to single to "snippet" to 16 random bars that sound like they were recorded off of a transistor radio half a block away, the downsizing of the discrete bit of sound you get when you see the word 'Raekwon' and hit download is not necessarily for the worse. Something like the stormy "Gorilla Rap" is like a particularly amusing, day-brightening email, text message, bit of ephemera--you probably won't return to it, except maybe by accident one day, but it'll supply that warm feeling for like three or four appreciative minutes. String enough "Gorilla Raps" together and all of a sudden you look up, it's 5pm on a Friday, 70 degrees outside, and you're gone. [Splash]
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