N.W.A. – "Straight Outta Compton" (1988)

You are now about to witness

The strength of street knowledge!

In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine released a list entitled “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time,” which was based on  the votes of selected musicians, critics, and other industry members.  The Crystals’ 1963 hit, “Da Doo Ron Ron,” was #114 on that list.

Rolling Stone revised their rankings in 2010, adding 26 new songs and dropping 26 others.  “Da Doo Ron Ron” was one of those dropped.

Last week, the magazine issued another revised “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list.  “Da Doo Run Run” was added back to that list, coming in at #366.

I don’t care whether you love “Da Doo Ron Ron” or hate it.  But ranking it as the 113th best song of all time in 2004, deciding it doesn’t belong in the top 500 in 2010, and then restoring it to 366th place in 2021 makes you wonder whether Rolling Stone has a clue.

Yours truly has taken a close look at the updated rankings, and I can tell you that Rolling Stone mos’ definitely does NOT have a clue.

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Before we get into the 2021 rankings, let’s first take a look at the original 2004 “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” (which really should be the “500 Greatest Records of All Time”).  

Here are the top ten records from the 2004 list:

1.  Bob Dylan – “Like a Rolling Stone”

2.  Rolling Stones – “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

3.  John Lennon – “Imagine”

4.  Marvin Gaye – “What’s Going On”

5.  Aretha Franklin – “Respect” 

6.  Beach Boys – “Good Vibrations”

7.  Chuck Berry – “Johnny B. Goode”

8.  Beatles – “Hey Jude”

9.  Nirvana – “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

10.  Ray Charles – “What I’d Say”

If you ask me, that’s a pretty good top ten, despite the fact that it leaves out the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun,” which Rolling Stone ranks at . . . (gasp) . . . #122???  (ARE YOU ON DRUGS, ROLLING STONE?)

One thing I respect about that top ten is that every record on it is by a Hall of Fame-quality artist.  The body of work of each of these artists is quite impressive – there are no one-hit wonders here.

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 The biggest omission from the top ten is probably Led Zeppelin – “Dazed and Confused” would be my pick – but I’ll gladly sacrifice Led Zeppelin in exchange for Rolling Stone’s leaving Elvis Presley, the Grateful Dead, and Bruce Springsteen out of the top ten.  (Standing ovation for Rolling Stone!)

Some people won’t agree with the decision to put “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in the top ten, but it’s the only record on the list that was recorded after 1971.  While I love the “golden decade” of pop music (1964-1973) as much as the next guy, you need to throw at least one bone to generation X, or generation Y, or whoever it was who were teenagers in the nineties.  

If you wanted to accomplish that by replacing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” with a rap record, I’m all for that – that would not only address the sixties-centric nature of the list but also acknowledge the significance of the hiphop genre (which was much greater than that of grunge).  

My replacement for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” would be “Straight Outta Compton,” by N.W.A.  (The four members of N.W.A. all became platinum-selling solo artists after the group broke up – it was a supergroup in reverse.)

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The one record that I would eliminate from the 2004 top ten in a New York minute is John Lennon’s “Imagine.”  

I have never understood why everyone thinks “Imagine” is so great.  The music is terrible, but most people don’t care about the music – it’s the song’s lyrics that make so many people worship “Imagine.”   

If you ask me, the lyrics suck.  The author of the aptly-titled blog, Essays on Sucking, agrees:

“Imagine” is [Lennon’s] most famous song, a song I hear in grocery stores and laundromats, a song whose legacy has lived on thanks to Yoko Ono, who acts like Gandhi wrote the lyrics and has constructed a monument of bullsh*t and light to it [in Iceland]. . . .

Imagine Peace Tower 
(Reykjavik, Iceland)

“Imagine” could be the anthem of the ineffectual hippie movement, the people who “broke down barriers” by taking acid, listening to trippy music, and being promiscuous. The song fetishizes thoughts and fantasies and ignores direct action. 

The song doesn’t advocate any action, it doesn’t detail any specific problems or solutions.  It just sort of drifts along and says, “Hey, wouldn't it be great if things were great?” 

Most of Rolling Stone’s readership consists of aging hippies, of course, so we may need to include a record that appeals to them.  How about “Bridge Over Troubled Water” instead of “Imagine”?  Can all you aging hippies live with “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”?  (It’s an infinitely better song than “Imagine.”)

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As noted above, Rolling Stone first revised their “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” in 2010, adding about two dozen songs from the oughts to the list.  But they didn’t make a single change to the top 25 in 2010.

By contrast, the magazine essentially tore the 2004 list up and started the ranking process over from scratch in 2021.    Half of the records in the 2021 top ten – including #2 and #3 – didn’t make the 2004 top ten.  “Like a Rolling Stone” fell from #1 to #4, and the Rolling Stones and Beach Boys dropped out of the top ten altogether. 

Instead of tearing Rolling Stone a new one over their latest updating in this post, I’m going to wait a few days and let my bile levels build up first.  But fear not: the new “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” will feel the wrath of 2 or 3 lines very soon.  (You’ll want to make sure the children have left the room before opening and reading that post.)

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“Straight Outta Compton” was the first track on N.W.A.’s debut album of the same name, which was released in 1988.  It became the first “gangsta rap” to go platinum despite receiving almost no radio play.  (Check out the lyrics to the album’s tracks and you’ll understand why that was.)

Click here to watch the official music video for “Straight Outta Compton” – which was banned by MTV.

Click on the link below to buy the record from Amazon:

Kid Rock -- "Cowboy" (1998)

I'm not straight outta Compton

I'm straight outta the trailer

Kid Rock (who was born Robert James Ritchie in a Detroit suburb in 1971) became a rap music fan at a very tender age.  When he was a teenager, he spent many nights attending hip-hop shows in Detroit.  Often he was the only white kid in the audience.

Detroit has not only generated many great popular musicians (several of whom are featured in this month's "29 Songs in 28 Days"), but also has generated popular musicians who remain loyal to Detroit -- despite the fact that Detroit is probably the most unattractive and uninviting major city in the United States.

White residents began to desert Detroit for the suburbs more than four decades ago, and many black middle-class residents have followed them.  Today, Detroit has more than 30,000 abandoned houses, but doesn't have the money to tear them down.  

Nor does the city have the resources to hire enough police to effectively patrol the worst neighborhoods.  One policeman told a local TV station that when he joined the Detroit police department 13 years ago, he was responsible for patrolling a 3.6-square-mile area, and bumped into another officer every 20 minutes. Now he covers 22 square miles and crosses paths with other officers about every two hours.

Body found frozen in ice in
abandoned Detroit warehouse

As a result, the abandoned and neglected neighborhoods in Detroit have become dumping grounds for dead bodies. Criminals don't need to drive miles out into the country to dispose of murdered bodies -- there are plenty of deserted blocks in central Detroit where it's safe to dump corpses.

Click here to read a Detroit News story about the dead body in the above photo.

Kid Rock can afford to live anywhere he wants.  But he maintains two residences in the Detroit area -- one in an outer suburb and one near downtown.  He is hugely popular in Detroit.  (He also has a house in Malibu and a house on the east coast of Florida.)

Kid Rock's first three albums were only mildly successful.  But his 1998 album, Devil Without a Cause, was a huge success.

Devil Without a Cause is often described as "rap rock" or "rap metal" music.  Perhaps the original rap rock/rap metal record was the 1986 remake of "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith and Run-D.M.C.  Other bands that are often classified as rap rock/rap metal artists include Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, P.O.D., Cypress Hill, and Insane Clown Posse.

I remember when the first track from Devil Without a Cause -- "Bawitdaba" -- was released as a single.  It was a real attention-getter.  I had never heard anything like it, and neither had you.  

The chorus absolutely demanded that you sing along -- assuming you could figure out what the hell he was saying:

Bawitdaba

Da bang da bang 

Diggy diggy diggy 

Said the boogie

Said up jump the boogie

"Cowboy," the next single from Devil Without a Cause, was a slightly more traditional-sounding song.  The protagonist of "Cowboy" declares his intention to move to Los Angeles and become a successful pimp, which will provide him with plenty of money and sufficient free time to pursue his hobbies -- especially drinking and checking out women.

"Cowboy" gives a shout-out to Heidi Fleiss, the infamous "Hollywood Madam," who claims she made a million bucks in her first four months as a 24-year-old madam to the stars.  Fleiss's pandering conviction was overturned on appeal due to jury misconduct, but she served 20 months in a federal prison for tax evasion.

Heidi Fleiss and friend

Fleiss later moved to Pahrump, Nevada, where she once planned to open a legal brothel but settled for owning a laundromat (the aptly-named "Dirty Laundry").  She kept as many as 25 parrots in her Pahrump house.  

Fleiss was one of the substance abusers filmed for Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.  Based on brain scans, Dr. Drew Pinsky concluded that Fleiss had significant frontal lobe dysfunction that explained her affinity for birds instead of people.

The lyrics quoted at the beginning of this post reference the groundbreaking N.W.A. album, Straight Outta Compton, which was the first true gangsta rap album.  Of course, Kid Rock -- a white guy from Detroit -- doesn't come straight outta Compton, a city in southern Los Angeles County that has more than its share of gang violence.  Kid Rock comes straight outta the trailer park.

According to a story about him in the November 19, 2012 New Yorker, Kid Rock "recently invested in a luxury trailer in southern Alabama."  I guess you can take the boy outta the trailer park, but you can't take the trailer park outta the boy.

Mr. and Mrs. (briefly) Kid Rock

You may not be a fan of his music, and you may not approve of his behavior (which includes drinking to excess, a brief marriage to Pamela Anderson, an appearance in a sex tape, and several arrests for assault and battery  -- one of those arrests followed a 2007 brawl at a Waffle House, which is sooooo perfect).  

But you have to admit that Kid Rock was listening when Polonius said "to thine own self be true."  He is perhaps the least affected of all rock stars.  From what I've read, he doesn't have a phony bone in his body -- and you can't say that about too many other recording artists who have been as successful as he has. 

Here's the music video for "Cowboy," which features cameos by the late Gary Coleman (star of Diff'rent Strokes) and porn star Ron Jeremy:

Click here to buy Devil Without a Cause from Amazon: