Do you remember the peculiar psychic resonance that floated through the rapmosphere when Fatlip reappeared, seemingly out of nowhere, five years since the last Pharcyde album, with the single and video What's Up Fatlip?
Admit it. That song, and the video, it hit you. It made you think. It made you kind of sad.
It had been almost a decade since Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde. The Puffy/Mase/Foxy Brown coup de tat was well established, "real hip-hop" fans felt kinda like sore losers.
Watching Fatlip in that video, listening to the song, was kinda like seeing a homeless Aboriginal war veteran drinking away his sorrows on the streets of Winnipeg - a mix of intense respect and pity.
It resonated with all us "veterans" of hip-hop's better days, whether artists or just fans. Unintentionally I'm sure, Fatlip took on a martyr like status. He seemed to be the collective psychic personification of all our feelings of loss, failure, confusion, disillusionment. This song got love in a special way; an intense, personal way, a way that the typical "dope" track doesn't. You saw the video and felt like you were willing to march with this man to the end of the earth in some last final suicidal revolt against the modern world. I think it was In Search of Divine Styler magazine that started calling Fatlip the best rapper of all time or something.
The same way that video made you feel was intensified and stretched out into a documentary of the same name, also directed by Spike Jonez. I think this has been out for a minute, but I only become aware of it recently.
Watching it was fascinating. And entertaining. And hilarious. And sad.
Respect to Fatlip.
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