Mystikal -- "Bouncin' Back (Bumpin' Me Against the Wall)" (2001)

I tell you the truth so don't lie to me

Get back Satan -- don't bother me

And that's the way it's gotta be

Go west, young "Hip Hop 101" student!  

We've been shining the 2 or 3 lines spotlight on Atlanta rappers recently, and it's time to move on to  another Southern city that has produced more than its share of good rap music.

I'm talking about New Orleans, of course -- home of one of the true giants of hip-hop, Lil Wayne.

Mystikal (who was born Michael Lawrence Tyler in 1970) is a New Orleans-based rapper who feuded with Lil Wayne and the rest of the Cash Money Records crew back in the 1990s.  But Mystikal made peace with Weezy and signed with Cash Money in 2011, and Lil Wayne made a guest appearance on Mystikal's first single for that label.

Mystikal and Lil Wayne

New Orleans is like no other place in the United States, and its music is equally unique.  "Bouncin' Back (Bumpin' Me Against the Wall)" features a horn section that's reminiscent of the brass bands who play for tips from tourists in the French Quarter -- not to mention the guys who do that a couple of nights each week just a hop, skip, and jump from my law firm's Washington, DC office.

Our building is across the street from the Verizon Center, the home of Washington's NBA and NHL teams and the site of most big-ticket concerts in the city.  (Justin Bieber visited the Verizon Center recently.)  So there's a fair amount of pedestrian traffic in the neighborhood in the evening, especially when there's a basketball or hockey game.

There's an aggregation of about half a dozen young New Orleans-style music makers who set up on the corner and blast away with trumpets, trombones, and drums a couple of evenings each week.  They're pretty good, although they only know a few songs -- which they play over and over and over.

Their dynamic range is quite limited.  They know fortissimo and fortissimo2 and not much more.  They start playing around 5 PM and continue for an hour or two, depending on how the crowds and the tips are.  

I'm seven floors up and across the street from these street musicians, but their music is very distracting and loud enough to prevent me making calls using a speakerphone.  My colleagues whose offices are near mine are just as unhappy as I am.  We've complained to our landlord, but they say they've been unable to get local officials anything done to remedy the situation.  

I find this incredible.  Our firm (which has over 500 lawyers) is very well connected with the DC government.  But all our pleas to city officials have fallen on deaf ears.  In other words, a bunch of high-powered lawyers and lobbyists has been bested by a few itinerant street musicians playing plastic trombones.  What is the world coming to?

One of the female lawyers on our floor suggested a different strategy.  Why not collect a few bucks from each person and offer it to the musicians each time they show up if they agree to go play somewhere that's far enough away so they don't disturb us?

That is just the kind of goody-two-shoes idea a woman would come up with.  That approach is so unsatisfactory -- if we did that, those guys would be laughing at us.  We want to get medieval on their asses . . . serve them with a restraining order and get the police to drag them off to the poke if they ignore it.

If we can't figure out how to deal with the guys who play on the corner, we wouldn't get very far with Mystikal.  He's a bad dude -- so he wouldn't scare easy.  The music video for "Bouncin' Back" shows Mystikal in a mental hospital, behind bars and strapped into a straight-jacket, and I'm not sure that role was much of a stretch for him.

According to "Bouncin' Back," Mystikal has had to deal with some pretty crazy stuff, and he's lived the tell the tale.  He's a survivor, boys and girls.

It's not unheard of for a rapper to have legal issues, but Mystikal has had enough problems with John Law to make up for a dozen or so rappers whose legal records are squeaky clean.

Shortly after "Bouncin' Back" and the album it appeared on (Tarantula) were nominated for 2003 Grammy Awards, Mystikal was arrested and charged with sexual battery and extortion.  (He allegedly forced his hairstylist to perform sex acts after accusing her of stealing $80,000.)  

Mystikal had initially insisted that the sex was consensual.  But a videotape of the incident was found at his home shortly after the charges were initially made.  After the videotape was discovered, Mystikal agreed to a plea bargain offered by the prosecution, so he avoided the mandatory life sentence for sexual battery provided for in Louisiana law.  

The rapper expected to receive probation.   But the judge viewed the videotape at the sentencing hearing and sentenced him to six years in the poke -- starting immediately.  (That must have been one hell of a videotape.)  Quelle surprise, Monsieur Mystikal!

Mystikal reacts to his sentencing

In 2005, Mystikal was found guilty of failing to file federal tax returns for 1998 and 1999.  Fortunately for him, he was allowed to serve the one-year federal sentence concurrently with his six-year state sentence.  He was released in early 2010.

But just two years later, Mystikal was in hot water for domestic abuse battery.  He was eventually given a three-month jail sentence for violating the terms of his probation.  Mystikal was released in August 2012.

What does the future hold for Mystikal?  Either rap -- or porn.  Here's a very recent item from TMZ:

Rapper Mystikal's porn career is off to a promising start -- TMZ has learned, Mystikal's #1 porn star crush has AGREED to have sex with him on film . . . but he better not plan to get paid for it.

XXX-star Pinky . . . tells TMZ [she will] will gladly film a sex tape with him for her website.

But Pinky says she refuses to pay him -- because Mystikal is currently an "amateur" and Pinky doesn't pay amateurs . . ."no matter how good he is in bed."

As we first reported, Mystikal says he's taking one last stab at the music biz before he gives up and seriously turns to porn.

As for his six-year prison stint for sexual battery, Pinky says it doesn't bother her one iota -- telling us, "I think he came out looking better than when he went in."

When TMZ asked Mystikal if he has "the requisite hardware" to be a porn star, Mystikal said, "I'm definitely the man, the myth, and the legend."

Yep -- looks like Mystikal has learned his lesson and has cleaned up his act . . . he's going to be sticking to the straight and narrow from here on out . . . maintain a low profile.

By the way, if you're not familiar with Pinky's porn oeuvre -- I was not -- she is what is known as a "thick" woman.  In other words, she has a booty that makes Kim Kardashian look like a boy:

(Trust me -- this picture could have been much worse.)

Here's "Bouncin' Back," which was one of the songs they used to play during warmups when my daughters played high-school basketball at the Academy of the Holy Cross.  (Those nuns were sooooo clueless.)

Here's a link you can use to buy the song from Amazon:

Led Zeppelin -- "When the Levee Breaks" (1971)

Cryin' won't help you
Prayin' won't do you no good 

When the levee breaks
Mama, you got to move

Seven years ago today, the storm surge caused by Hurricane Katrina resulted in more than 50 breaches of the drainage and navigational canal levees in the New Orleans area.  About 80% of the city was flooded, with some areas under as much as 15 feet of water.  

The American Society of Civil Engineers refers to the flooding of New Orleans as the worst engineering disaster in American history.  The official death toll was 1464 people.  The city lost 29% of its population between 2000 and 2010; most of that loss was due to the flooding and its aftereffects.

New Orleans, 2005

"When the Levee Breaks," a classic 12-bar blues, was written and recorded by husband-and-wife blues singers Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie in 1929.  The inspiration for the song was the "Great Mississippi Flood of 1927," which was the most destructive river flood in American history.

The 1927 flood had its genesis in the heavy rains that fell in the central Mississippi basin in the summer of 1926.  The river eventually broke out of its levee system in 145 different places, flooding 27,000 square miles.  Arkansas was the state that was hardest hit by the flood, with about 14% of its total square area covered by the floodwaters.

Sledge, Mississippi in 1927

On April 15, 1927, 15 inches of rain fell on New Orleans in 18 hours.  In an attempt to minimize damage to the city, a levee located southeast of city was dynamited, which caused much of St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes to be flooded.  As things turned out, several major levee breaks upriver from New Orleans drained so much water from the Mississippi that the dynamiting was unnecessary.  (Sorry about that, St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes!)

The 1927 flood had far-reaching sociological, political, and cultural effects.  Thousands of displaced African-Americans moved from devastated rural areas in the Mississippi River valley to the big cities up north (especially Chicago).  The flood set the stage for the election of Herbert Hoover to the Presidency in 1928.  (Hoover had headed up relief efforts in his role as Secretary of Commerce.)  William Faulkner wrote a short story ("Old Man") about a prison break that took place during the flood.  And, of course, we have "When the Levee Breaks." 

Led Zeppelin recorded its version of the song in 1970 in a three-story stone residence -- which was originally built in 1795 as a poorhouse -- called Headley Grange.  

Headley Grange

The band wrote and recorded a number of songs at Headley Grange.  "Black Dog" (it and "When the Levee Breaks" are both on Led Zeppelin IV) was named after a black Labrador retriever that hung around Headley Grange while Led Zeppelin was in residence there.  Robert Plant wrote most of the lyrics to "Stairway to Heaven" at Headley Grange in a single day, but Plant is much more to blame for that than the building is.

"When the Levee Breaks" was heavily processed during the recording and mixing process.  For example, the song was recorded at a faster tempo, but then slowed down.  The group rarely performed the song live -- it was too hard to recreate the sound of the recording.

Led Zeppelin IV cover

Led Zeppelin is notorious for allegedly plagiarizing the music of other recording artists.  (Your G.D. right I said "allegedly" -- the last thing I need at this point in my life is a defamation suit.  To paraphrase Jay-Z, "I got 99 problems, but a defamation suit filed on behalf of Led Zeppelin ain't one.")  

The group modified the original Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie lyrics, but stuck close enough to those lyrics that they felt compelled to credit the two old blues musicians as co-writers on their record.  The lines quoted above appear in both versions.

Click here to listen to the original 1929 recording.

Here's a cover version by Zepparella, an all-female Led Zeppelin tribute band.  These women are very competent musicians.  Thieir version is a fairly literal translation of the original -- nothing really new -- but there's no need to gild the lily here.  And the point of a tribute band is to sound like the band to which they are paying tribute, right?

I'm not sure why the Zepparella video was shot so you never see the drummer's face.  Here's a picture of the drummer, Clementine.  (Clementine also plays in an all-female AC/DC tribute band called "AC/DShe.")

Zepparella's drummer, Clementine

Here's Alison Krauss's version of the song.  It's radically different and is very interesting, but it doesn't really work for me:

Here's the Led Zeppelin version.  Led Zeppelin is really good, boys and girls.  I liked them a lot back in the seventies, but I have an even higher opinion of them now.  (Their first album is arguably the best rock album of all time.)

You can use this link to buy the song from Amazon: