The Rundown: Doubling Up

For my last day at Montana's today, I switched a shift around with my friend Boogie and worked a double.

Instead of having to work two days this week, the laziness kicked in and I figured rocking two shifts today while Sarah was writing her Nursing Exam would be easier than working another one tomorrow night. Plus, if it was real busy, I would run the risk of missing Grey's and that just isn't going to happen.

Working a double also got me thinking about other "doubles" out there and seeing as today is Wednesday, the idea came to me to list off my favourites for you in the strangest version of The Rundown yet.

All-Time Favourite "Doubles"

5. Double Dragon
Not the crappy movie version with Charlie Salinger from Party of Five and the guy who plays "The Chairman" on Iron Chef America, but the video game that inspired it. Anyone near my age remembers this bad boy and should remember it fondly. Two brothers, trained in Martial Arts, roaming the streets kicking ass and taking names. I pumped a lot of quarters into this game over the years.

4. Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese
If you're going to do grease, you may as well do grease completely and this my friends is the mother of all grease burgers... and it's so good. Save the sliced onions for someone else and give me half a pound of Grade G McDonald's Grey Beef in a box big enough to hold my super sized fries. Yes, I am a fatty.

3. "Double Trouble" - The Roots featuring Mos Def
Long ago I told you about my love of The Roots, the baddest hip hop band on the planet and current touring partners of my boys Gym Class Heros. This track, off the Things Fall Apart album, is dynamite and contains one of my favourite repeated lines in the history of hip hop: Either stand tall or sit the fuck down. You've been told.

2. Double Rye and Ginger
Why have one shot when two is better?

1. Tim Horton's Double Double
Double cream, double sugar, double delicious. Though I've strayed away from Timmy's a bunch over the last few years - Starbucks and making good ass coffee at home generally wins - there is still nothing better than a perfectly made Timmy's Double Double. At least not when it comes to this list...

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Soundtrack of My Life

Song: Get By
Artist: Talib Kweli
Album: Quality (2002, Rawkus Records)

Whenever I hear some bullshit hip hop song polluting the airwaves and giving the music I love a bad name, I have a small collection of artists and songs that make me feel better and remind me how powerful and incredible hip hop can be. Kweli is one of those artists and this is one of those songs.

The thing I has always loved about Talib Kweli, since he first entered my eardrums alongside Mos Def as Black Star with the song "Respiration," is that it's never been about anything besides the music and real life. There are no songs about rims or e'rbody in the club gettin' tipsy or what the temperature is in a certain location. It's about the things he sees in his life and in his neighborhood and his reactions to them.

Now, with this song specifically, there is a lot to love.

I love the Nina Simone piano sample.
I love the hand-claps at the tail end of the song when Kweli breaks it down one last time.
I love the chorus that, once I hear it, is stuck in my head for hours on end.

Most of all, I love exactly what has always Kweli done best - deliver intelligent, incredible rhymes:

We go through "Epidodes II," like "Attack of the Clones"

I paint a picture with the pen like Norman Mailer

We do or die like Bed-Stuy through the red sky
with the window of the red eye
Let the lead fly, some G. Rap shit, "Livin' to Let Die"

The TV got us reachin for stars
Not the ones between Venus and Mars, the ones that be readin for parts
Some people get breast enhancements and penis enlargers
Saturday sinners Sunday morning at the feet of the Father
They need somethin to rely on, we get high on all types of drug
When, all you really need is love

Personally, I like that the airwaves are littered with one hit wonders and flashes in the pan; it lets me keep cats like Kweli as my own, not that there haven't been chances for the masses to catch on.

Jay-Z famously name checked Kweli on "Moment of Clarity" off The Black Album, dropping the lyric "If skills sold / truth be told / I'd probably be / lyrically Talib Kweli" but still not a lot of people have caught on, probably because the song wasn't one of the singles off the album and never made heavy rotation on the radio...

For anyone out there who is a fan of hip hop - the real hip hop, not the junk you hear in heavy rotation - this song and this MC are a must. Equally as incredible as this track is the remix featuring Mos, Jay-Z and Kanye. Go pick'em both up and enjoy.

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