The Hip-Hop Jet Set
A lot of hip-hop is regional. Even in this era of Soundcloud and homogenized emo raps, G-funk still bangs in the west, you can practically smell the blunt smoke wafting off much of what comes out of New York, and despite the whole world currently stealing their sound, Atlanta trap still sounds like Atlanta trap. Some sounds are so niche that they haven’t really left their respective cities, save for the occasional mainstream shout out. Sounds like the go-go infused hip hop of DC or the bass heavy bounce of New Orleans.
However, hip-hop also loves to travel, and not just in the mythologized rockstar sense of city-to-city sex, drugs, and non-stop parties. Rappers show more love and adoration of their hometowns than possibly any musical genre in history, but there are plenty of songs about far away places.
A lot of the time, rappers shout out cities and states for the sake of accessibility and commercial success. They make a generic party song, then they namedrop some towns so they feel like they’re invited to the party. (And get some local radio play while they’re at it.) Sometimes it’s to tell a story, like LL Cool J’s encounters with the aggressive women of California in “Going Back to Cali.” Or sometimes it's to make a statement, like Biggie putting out his own “Going Back to Cali” in the midst of the “East vs. West” beef.
Most of the time, these songs are meant to bolster the rags to riches success narratives that many rappers cultivate for themselves. After all, not everyone can afford to travel, let alone dictate where they travel to or what they travel in. But some of these songs have a more specific goal in mind, whether it’s to use travel as a metaphor or to put you in a certain frame of mind. To put you in a place, both literally and figuratively.
So let’s go there together. After all, all three of these songs are incredible. Also, The Main Ingredient, the album where you can find the third song, is a contender for most underrated hip-hop album of all time. Just so you know.
“Montego Bae” by Noname feat. Ravyn Lenae
Go look at some pictures of Montego Bay on Google Images. Sure, it looks a little touristy. Okay, very touristy, what with those resort hotels that make you sweat for your bank account, amongst other questions of greed and environmental destruction, just looking at them. But one can’t deny that looking at these pictures draws out a certain yearning to go. Maybe not to Montego Bay itself. But somewhere.
When I look at these photos, I’m transported to my personal fantasy of tropical paradise. The resorts aren’t there. Nobody is there, other than a handful of people I love. I sit in the shade, I have a stack of books to the right of me, and I slowly make my way through the pile. Once a book is done, I put it down on the left side, and once I’m out of books, the magical force that also provides all the food or whatever else I may need or want provides more. There’s always enough shade and no bugs come out at night. And there’s music.
But that’s my fantasy. “Montego Bae” is Ravyn and Noname’s dream.
So what’s paradise to them? In many ways, it’s not too different from mine. There’s no magical source of food and entertainment, but there is spicy curry and books and something to dance to. However, Noname doesn’t have a problem with the hotels. In fact, she aims to stay in one, because in this fantasy, she can indulge her wildest dreams of wealth.
More importantly, however, is who she’s with. This may have been obvious from the title, (provided you know what “bae” means) “Montego Bae” is not only just a travel fantasy. It’s about love as well.
Thanks to the line “‘Cause a bitch really ‘bout her freedom ‘cause a bitch suckin dick in the new Adidas,” we can reasonably assume she’s talking about a man. So what can we learn about this fantasy man from Noname’s verse? He wants to smoke weed with her. He’s got dreads. They dance well together. He makes the previously mentioned spicy curry and he has no hang-ups about going down on a woman. (As no man should.) How rich he is, we don’t know. But she has money, and he respects that about her. (“So he gon’ fuck me like I’m Oprah, classy bitch only use a coaster.”) He has a canoe that he presumably rows while she reads Toni Morrison. And hey, she’s not averse to giving out some oral pleasure herself.
But the important line, to me, comes at the end. “Protection is a wave, wave ‘cause we be open too/Jamaica thank you for my baby, I’m in love with you.”
The man isn’t just any man. He’s a black man. He’s from a place with a dark history thanks to hundreds of years of English rule. But it’s a country where over 90% of the population is black, thus it’s not only a country with a rich vibrant culture, but one divorced from America, and all the comes with it. She wants a black man from a black paradise.
She’s in love with the guy, but she’s equally in love with the culture that made him who he is. “Montego Bae” is a fantasy song. But it’s also an aspirational one as well. Beauty isn’t just aesthetic, and money can certainly help when it comes to chasing an ideal. But it’s not the source. What’s important is where those ideals come from. What society and culture shaped those ideas, and how they manifest. In this case, it’s a history shaped by a black culture (relatively) untainted by American bullshit.
It’s not just the man. It’s everything he brings with him as well. He’s a fantasy. But he doesn’t have to be.
“Paris, Tokyo” by Lupe Fiasco
“Montego Bae” is a song about wanting to go. “Paris, Tokyo” is a song about actually going.
The chorus of “Paris, Tokyo” goes:
“Let’s go to sleep in Paris
Wake up in Tokyo
Have a dream in New Orleans
Fall in love in Chicago
Then we can land in the motherland
Camelback across the desert sand
And take a train
To Rome
Or home
Brazil
For real
Wherever I go, she goes
Wherever I go, she goes”
The “she” in the chorus is the woman Lupe raps about in the verses. In the first verse, he declares her love for an unnamed women before getting a call saying he could do a show in Japan and get some more scratch to spend in France. He packs up his bags without a second thought. But right as he’s about to leave, the woman asks him to stay. He stops, wipes the tears from her eyes, and says he has to go. But he still loves her.
The second verse is the travel itself. He travels first class to a destination. He doesn’t speak the language, and the locals don’t speak his. But the music and the energy is universal. At the end of the verse, he reveals that part of the joy isn’t just the traveling, but the excitement of getting to go home and tell the woman all about it.
And in the third verse, he does just that. He brings her back gifts and regales her with stories of his travels and lets her know who, and from where, said to say hello. Then he says he’d give it all up to stay with her. But then she says that it doesn’t matter if she travels with her or if he goes it alone. She knows she’s always in his heart. This is what he thinks about as he sits on yet another plane, going to yet another far away land. Only this time, there’s no source of melancholy. The fruits of the road, minus the guilt.
Most rap songs about travel are really about luxury. Or at least that’s the subtext. “Girls, Girls, Girls” and “Pimpin’ All Over the World” will lead you to believe that they’re about women, but they’re really more about the lifestyle. I can meet all these women in all these cities and countries and bring them where I want because I can afford to.
“Paris, Tokyo” is the inverse. Lupe revels in the opulence just as much as the other rappers, sans the philandering. But this time, the grandeur is on the surface. Beneath is a reflection on travel in general. Specifically, who or what we take with us when we go. “Paris, Tokyo” can be read as a sadder song about lovers being separated thanks to Lupe’s career. But he doesn’t rap about missing her when she’s away. He raps about having good times and connecting with people. When he’s home, he’s a little sad about not being abroad. When he’s abroad, he wants to be home.
The cure for this paradox is simple: Love. Not just romantic love, though that’s certainly a part of it. But loving what you do. Loving the experience and the wisdom. Loving what you get to see because you have a career that whisks you around the world. Take love with you, and bring love back.
In a way, “Paris, Tokyo” is a perfect encapsulation of travel. When we think about going, we revel in the fantasy of sitting on a beach or roaming old ruins. We don’t think about the headaches. We want to watch a sunset over Tuscany, not worry about travel documentation or luggage or airport fuckery. Moreover, we don’t think about missing the people we leave behind. But hey, you get a sunset over Tuscany. So damned if you do and damned if you don’t. You might as well relax, and “Paris, Tokyo” is as laid back as it gets. It’s about letting it all wash over you.
“All the Places” by Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth
“All the Places” is not a travel song. I thought it was right until I listened to it again for this article and read the lyrics. But yes, technically, I’m cheating.
To be fair, you can see why I’d think it’s a travel song, what with the Donald Byrd sample for the chorus, “All the places and spaces I’ve been.” Combine that with the vibe of beat, and I’d argue that you have a pretty affective travel song whether you intended it to be one or not.
However, the lyrics don’t concern travel. At least not in a literal sense. The first verse starts, “Welcome to the zone where the strong only survive/The places I drive, all the gangsters can’t stay alive”, and throughout the rest of the verse, he raps of danger, of the uncompromising situation of where he’s describing, and despite all this, he’s going to shake it off and keep striving.
To me, it’s a little unclear whether he’s talking about where he came from or where he currently finds himself. C.L.’s prose has always been a bit more poetic than a lot of his peers, and I’d be willing to bet that this is by design. Are we talking about a dangerous neighborhood or the rap game? “Child abuse, women loose, robbery and triple homicide,” despite the sexist implications of that second part, is unfortunately just as likely in both worlds. However, the point isn’t where he is or where he’s from. The point is that he’s brought us to a different world that runs by different rules. Some can relate. Others can’t.
In the second verse, he’s arrived. He raps, I think, about the life he lives now that he’s made it out of those dire circumstances. Or at the very least, he’s learned how to thrive in them. But he’s still in touch with his roots. “I’m patting down with the sound of a general/Fully supplied by my ghettofied residential.” He may be playing pool in a members only environment, but the world he operated in is still a part of who he is.
In the third verse, he’s still rising, but he’s still firmly who he is, and he and Pete Rock are going to keep moving forward and reaching new stratospheres of success.
So why pair this with a chorus that goes, “All the places and spaces I’ve been?” Why write about it in this article?
I answer your question with another question: Why do we like travel? Sure, it’s an escape from our routine and it’s an opportunity to see those we love who we don’t get to see face to face on a regular basis. But mostly, I think, it’s the experience. The wisdom. To see something you’ve never seen before, and be changed by it. “Travel broadens the mind,” so the cliché goes. But it’s true.
You’re from a place, you experience things, and you change, hopefully for the better. Ultimately, that’s what “All the Places” is about. Only this time, he isn’t taking us to Montego Bay or Paris or Tokyo. He’s taking us to where he’s from, where he’s been, and where he’s going. In the end, he takes us home. All travel ends, but you learn to value it when you return to normalcy.
One can read about said wisdom all they want, but to actually gain the kind of experience C.L. raps about, you have to do it yourself. There aren’t as many stamps in my passport as I’d like there to be. But I have a few, and I feel like I’m a more experienced person because of them. And again, C.L. isn’t talking about travel. But he is bringing us on a journey.
Put it another way: “Montego Bae” is a song about wanting to go and “Paris, Tokyo” is a song about actually going. “All the Places” is about having been.
