Rock Me Amadeus!

If you're not familair with pandora.com, you should be, because it is awesome. The idea is based on something called the Music Genome Project. You set up channels on the website, based on songs or bands that you like. The channels then play songs that are musically similar. Here's an example: right now I'm listening to the Los Amigos Invisibles channel, and a song was recently chosen "because it features male lead vocals, major key tonality, simple harmonic progressions, romantic lyrics and mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation." Some of the songs the software chooses are a bit of a stretch. But it's a great idea; you know you'll like most of the new music you hear because it's similar to something you already like.

One of the channels I have programmed plays music that's similar to Xzibit. So if it only played West Coast hip-hop, I'd probably like most of it. I was listening to the Xzibit channel recently and they played a song by an MC out of Kansas Citay named Tech N9ne. I was not familiar with his ouevre and in fact he is the first and only rapper I have heard of who represents K.C. Here is his description of the significance of the name Tech N9ne:

"My name means Technique Number Nine. Nine is the number of completion. Nine months completes a pregnancy. A cat has nine lives. Three plus six is nine. Three hundred and sixty degrees is a complete circle. Technique number nine – I am a complete technique of rhyme."

The song was entitled "I'm a Playa." This is not the most original title one can come up with for a rap song. The song, however, was really good. They sampled "Rock Me Amadeus" by Falco, and of course the chorus goes:

"I'm a playa, I'm a playa
I'm a playa, I'm a playa, I'm a playa
I'm a playa, I'm a playa, I'm a playa
oh oh, well I'm a playa
I'm a playa playa,"

That's pretty creative.