To the uninitiated, hip-hop remains a perilous enigma.

Referred to simply as "rap" by suburban cave dwellers and other types who don't yet realize that it's already 2002, the genre lives with the classification that people like 2Pac, Ol' Dirty Bastard, and Eazy E have brought to it over the years.

Unpredictability, danger and anarchy.

Ask anyone who really knows hip-hop and they'll tell you that the three artists mentioned above are but the tip of the iceberg. Each accounts for a microscopic amount of the music that has been yet been created.

The average rock fan quivers at the thought of even having to listen to a single "rap" song.

I have acquaintances that I've played, say, Gang Starr, Pep Love, or The Swollen Members for who look physically pained just having four bars of sampled drums played in their company.

"Anyone can do that stuff! It's all just boring drum-machines and crappy poetry." someone ignorant told me last year.

A typical hip-hop DJ might look for months for a decent "break." That's the spot on old 60's and 70's records where the music drops out and the drummer continues the groove (like on "Apache" by the Incredible Bongo Band).

He'll pick through stacks of LP's at swap meets, record stores and thrift shops until he finds one that sounds and feels right for the song he has in mind.

Once he gets it he'll sample the best snippet (ten seconds at most on the sworn-by, vintage SP1200 system), then he'll loop it and possibly layer a bass thud from a drum-machine to augment the vintage kick sound.

He might then find another snippet of antique noise from an old record, and loop a mere three seconds of that section backwards to ride over the top of the whole track.

Two or three more sonic odds and ends, and the first verse of the song is finished. That sounds easy to me!

A lot easier than second-hand barre chords, speedy drums, and a 19-year-old mewling about being held down by society for three and a half minutes.

The DJ will probably do something fairly similar for the second and third verses of the track, but the chorus might have maybe three-times as many different sounds happening in it.

The song is now ready for vocals.

Here is some of the more notable "bad poetry" I've heard recently. If you think you can do better, than perhaps you should:

"Timepiece must've read early morning at least, so I lay death's cousin, woken by the sonics of the beast./ That somewhere deep beneath me a fracture had seized at my neck. Breath was it, a flag that marked the end of my peace./ Conference of the birds I heard my mother dove cry, not absurd just routine I'd learned. Just keep my fucking grill locked and hope the entropy stops me./ Stepfather's got to fight verbally when his liver's soaked, and products come in bottles stuck with drunken last nerve up too close."

(from "Last Good Sleep" by Company Flow, 1993)

My aunt and uncle have this raggedy old mutt without any teeth that defecates when it walks from place to place. It's so old it doesn't even realize what's going on.

Rock, as I've said in this column recently, is similarly over-the-hill, and likewise ready for Dr. Kevorkian.

Alternative is a joke. Brit-Pop is deceased.

The recycled "punk rock" of today is stupidly effortless to play. That's why there are so many people doing it.

I was sick to death of the stuff by 1987, and most of the young "rebels" I see now were packin' warm diapers in those days.

If you're afraid of hip hop, and the voice of an angry person (like Freddie Foxxx) worries you, then start off with something soft, like Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, or Vanilla Ice.

The only real difference between, say, Lil' Fame (of M.O.P.), and Jim Lindberg (of Pennywise) is their frame of reference.

[Pictured: M.O.P.]

Mr. Lindberg probably grew up in a nice tree-lined neighborhood with a fluffy kitty for inspiration, and Fame is from some worn-out projects in Brooklyn, NY.

When Fame rhymes about life in his world I'm wide-awake. Maybe that's because it's so dissimilar to the relatively safe place I inhabit.

When Lindberg sings about being a "Victim of Reality" I just want to make him a peanut butter sandwich.

Hip-hop is the future. Get with it people.

(C) 2002 - Jason Thornberry