Featuring MCs Qwazaar, Qwel, and Denizen Kane, producer DJ Natural and media assassin Kid Knish, Typical dropped a self-titled full-length album, Typical Cats, on Galapagos4 Records in 2002, and began a relentless campaign to restore a fallen hip hop world to its former promise and glory. The talent assembled was unmistakable, the sound created was formidable. Firmly planted in tradition, unorthodox in invention and possessed of a strength only earned in the furnace of experience, their sound is the future that hip hop's past would have had if its present weren't held hostage by the uninspired and unrepentant. A flurry of solo projects later, Chicago's prodigal sons return. Hip hoppers rejoice. Suckers duck and cover. Typical Cats come to conquer. Battle champs, hotline legends, poetry circuit kings. Typical cats released their second album titled Civil Service in 2004.
Typical Cats return, the last of the great true school crews—bearers of transformed tradition, innovators par excellence, and heralds of an undying devotion to the science and magic of boom bap music. The latest installment in the TC saga is 3, their third studio full-length. It plays like a message in a bottle from Hip Hop’s timeless present to the bizarre post-physical, digital, viral world in which we live. DJ Natural’s production chops have only deepened with time, and the rugged loops of the self-titled “Orange Album” and the live instrumentation of Civil Service have melded to yield a mélange of soul, jazz, funk, roots, radical politics, and a sly refusal to bend to the dictates of current fashion. Kid Knish reprises his role as hip hop’s all-time greatest unseen crew member (sorry, Jarobi), serving up samples, historical references, and vinyl oddities for Natural to slice and serve as android slabs of production genius.
TC’s trio of MCs—Qwel, Denizen Kane, and Qwazaar—rhyme like men breathing from the soles of their feet. The basis of their legend is in full effect—crackling chemistry, unnerving flow, and true stories. The album plays like a jazz-era cutting session turned confessional booth, a stylistically freewheeling effort threaded together by moments of revelation, underpinned by fiercely focused production and dominated by stories of journey, moments of transformation, and warnings against coming catastrophe. For TC, the MC is a misunderstood figure, a musical seer, a minor prophet, and reluctant hustler, using words to outwit enemies, trump circumstances, and emerge from the belly of the beast with respect and rent money.
Highlights abound—Kane returning to his spoken word roots on “Denizen Walks Away,” Qwel giving his early battle rap classics a run for their money on nickel-plated platters like “My Watch” and “Gordeon Knock,” and Qwazaar flexing uncanny musical intuition, anchoring the record with meditative efforts on “Puzzling Thing” and “Reflections from the Porch” before pummeling tracks like “Better Luck” and “On My Square.” Although the LP is studded with solo shots, crew tracks are the soul of the record. “On My Square” opens with a flurry of horns before exploding into an array of signature styles—multisyllabic combinations from Qwel, laid-back but incisive chatting from Kane, and a classic Qwa verse full of declarations, threats, and witticisms, all cemented by a Qwel chorus imbued with requisite layers of meaning. Natural’s production evolves with each verse, sliding from Meters style guitars with knocking drums to moody keys with ease.
The first single, “The Crown” is a frenetic display of jagged guitars and style-shifting that makes it a perfect complement to the Orange Album’s classic “Reinventing.” The name, however, is something of a misnomer. TC have never been interested in being kings. They’ve been griots shouting from the village limits, stoning the village idiots, interrupting thieves, and solidifying sterling reputations as rappers’ rappers, smokers’ smokers, underground Gs, tribal chiefs. There will never be another Typical Cats. They leave the set like five men exiting a burning building, leaving wrecked stages and a catalog of classics in their wake. With their exodus, we find ourselves suddenly grown, having come of age with the culture, standing, as always, at the crossroads. With the music, we move like Gayle Sayers, howl like Magic Sam, see the city like a kid on the project bench, and mark it all down in a black book that will never close. It is what it is. Forever.
QWAZAAR - A native of Chicago's gritty Low End, Qwazaar strikes from hip hop's essence. Whether the subject matter is inner city or interplanetary, the flow remains untouchable - a percussive yet fluid attack that evokes South Side rain and helicopter blades in a single breath. The content is heavy-a holdover from days when this veteran MC (No Pity/Outerlimitz) had to lyrically slay rivals to earn his sterling rep. "After the dust settles, witness the blood puddles..." Lights out, kids. The Q-W-A is here.
QWEL - You first saw his name dangling a quarter mile up on a suspension bridge from your scratch-bombed window on the Orange line. You first heard that distinctive melodic/abrasive storm of syllables on old Nacro and Scam Artist tapes with inserts printed at the Kinko's. Now the heat's been perfected and this nasty North Side revelation music rebel is out to wake the sleepers. From Ted Turner's devil ass to the so-called competition, everyone and their mama gets dealt with when the kid laces up his boots.
DENIZEN KANE - From the rum and Coke rumble of Chicago's North Side flow spots to the celluloid veneer of Def Poetry Jam's main stage, Denizen Kane rips the party with a poet's heart and an outsider's eye. Journalistic, impressionistic, real-life and drastic, young Kane's late night Red Line revelations turn into heathen hymns on tape, capturing the moody face of the metropolis in color. How long can a lost one roam until he finds his way home? Listen to your city fall apart through the muddy mouth of an immigrant.
02. Reinventing the Wheel
Typical Cats Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Coming to you from the underground
So listen up to what we say
All ya sucka emcees won't you please come out today
Come on y'all get live get down
Coming forming the underground
Cool, cool cause I don't get upset
Check it out
See at night I can't sleep, I toss and turn
Yearn, to fall into oblivion but pieces all to earn
Turning mental circles that's revolving and redundant
Place upon my phantom features that's rewarding and abundant
We're coming into self indulgence cleaned of the present
And losing in the struggle in a forty ounce of guessing
Pretending that the morning won't come tearing through the curtain
Burying my mother's effigy, cursing and burning
Yo! Back in the days when I was a teenager
Before the spiked bats and razor blades laced with hatred
You could locate Q-W-A rockin' status with Satan
My brother used to say that I was raised in a demon's matrix
With hellish thoughts, with faceless with relevant reverent talk
Evade haters, sedated with a veteran spits for loving his rocks
Typical suicidal schizophrenic cults
I don't know who to cut
And my guns are like to needles to you cause we both shoot em up
The Q-W-E who the fuck want strife
Beat you half to death twice and smack your back to life
Underground stalagmite, quick with the dick spitting a rhyme
You criminals flip lines and forget to commit crimes
synonymous with nothing, bragging how you snag me beers
Indescribable like "dog you had to be there"
Come on and hit me quick
Spit sissy fits and shitty rhymes
Practice "I will never fuck with Qwel" lines fifty times
Let us begin, what? where? why? or when?
It will all be explained by the spraying of a pen
Henpecked mugs become thugs and proceed to make me vex man
Throw hissy fits on stage on call that weak shit battling
I can't ignore hardcore, cold stares and shudders
If these head cases are hard rocks I'm a be flipping boulders
Stained by the static and the clubs are on the elevator
Fuck being smart, Denizen is aggravated
Well I heard you had the fever for the flavor of the other
Qwel, Qwazaar, Denizen Kane or is it like another
My blade cuts ya, ya face erupting before I touch ya
The Q-W-A-Z-double A-R motherfucker!
Enter the next world intense flame tames
Dreadlocks to s-curls
Thoughts bury your skull between your pectorals
While I'm fucking Adina sources leaves your body buried
Beneath the coffins deep in the forest devoid of breathing
All you wannabes, want to be, ask yo, cats know
There goes none of my team the battle type of assholes
Is that so?
I'm glad you brought your dad
Now take an autograph back to the backpack and finish the thought you had
Catch a hi-fi to your eye might as much to mush me
Calling battle cats bitches and all your dogs pussies
Look me in the third eye, heard I killed your planet
Rhyming is the key this 12 inch is nine bills around it
(You on point Den?) All the time Qwa
Sucka niggaz got me telling a million stories help me find my way
Marauding through the midnight phony rappers need to get a hold
Because at that my mind is checking rhymes what did I get for when I stutter roll
Schools feel the pressure of suburban and together
I am walking the war towards an electric bee like scourge is never
Bugging out because I took out planters my only distraction
And everything is garbage through mind power and packaged
You lack the minerals and vitamins, verbally sodomize lies
Spit lines to antichrist hybrids screaming that's it!
Paragraphs are grabbing every neck and slash the match win
Against a syllable master while you waste your hazardous tactics get back bitch
See, Q-W-A don't really give a fuck what you say
And I'll attack you with the skill and level of a green beret
Then I'll appear before you as an Elohim
Here to scorch you
The razor sharp blade I'll force you to cough up a tonsil
I'm first to live in infamy inspire sympathy when you rip notes
For those who doubt it
Typical Cats is bout it like Cliff's Notes
Quotes won't need hope to see flow potency
I'm not Qwel, this is some cat not even half as dope as me
You know we show love motherfuckers cause Venus sent me
Pussies calling us assholes for penis envy
I split crews in twos to cruise the road with a fork in it
Taking whack rappers out faster than black actors in horror flicks
You're too weak like fortnights
Toward fights with battle tracks, Typical Cats
By the time you catch us we'll be whack so laugh
Ha Ha Ha ha ha ha ha
Be the party people ha ha see you later
[Repeat: x4]
Read my lips kid, the Typical Cat is sickest
If you think not redefine what your definition of 'is' is
The lyrics of "Reinventing The Wheel" by Typical Cats are a series of complex, metaphorical expressions that contemplate the nature of self-perception, the struggle to find identity in a hostile society, and the battle for artistic expression amidst a cacophony of negativity. The song begins with a call to action, encouraging listeners to "get live" and join the movement that's emerging from the underground. The opening lines set the tone for the entire piece, emphasizing a sense of urgency and a desire to be heard in a world that often silences dissenting voices.
From there, the lyrics delve deeper into the psyche of the artist, exploring the various contradictions and complexities that make up their identity. The verses are filled with cryptic references to mental illness, drug addiction, and societal pressure, all of which contribute to the singer's sense of isolation and struggle. Despite these challenges, the singer remains committed to their art, using rhyming and wordplay to express their unique perspective on the world.
Overall, "Reinventing The Wheel" is a powerful and evocative piece of hip hop, one that challenges listeners to think deeply about the nature of creativity, identity, and the struggle for self-expression in a hostile world.
Line by Line Meaning
Come on y'all get live get down
Let's have an exciting and energetic time
Coming to you from the underground
Presenting our music from an unconventional and independent perspective
So listen up to what we say
Pay attention to our words
All ya sucka emcees won't you please come out today
Challenging inferior rappers to step up and face us
Coming forming the underground
Creating a new movement within the independent music scene
Cool, cool cause I don't get upset
Remaining calm and composed in all situations
Check it out
Listen closely and observe
Tangent to my comprehension is just too complex
My understanding goes beyond simple linear thinking
See at night I can't sleep, I toss and turn
Struggling with inner thoughts and restlessness
Yearn, to fall into oblivion but pieces all to earn
Desiring to escape reality, but recognizing the need to work for success
Turning mental circles that's revolving and redundant
Repetitive and cyclical thought patterns
Place upon my phantom features that's rewarding and abundant
Projecting false attributes that bring temporary satisfaction
We're coming into self-indulgence cleaned of the present
Indulging in personal desires while ignoring the current reality
And losing in the struggle in a forty ounce of guessing
Feeling trapped and uncertain amidst challenging circumstances
Pretending that the morning won't come tearing through the curtain
Denying the inevitable challenges and consequences of our actions
Burying my mother's effigy, cursing and burning
Expressing anger and resentment towards family and past experiences
Yo! Back in the days when I was a teenager
Reflecting on past experiences during adolescence
Before the spiked bats and razor blades laced with hatred
Before resorting to violent and hateful behavior
You could locate Q-W-A rockin' status with Satan
Finding Typical Cats associated with subversive and rebellious actions
My brother used to say that I was raised in a demon's matrix
My sibling believed I grew up in a corrupt and negative environment
With hellish thoughts, with faceless with relevant reverent talk
Having destructive and disturbing thoughts, without a clear sense of identity
Evade haters, sedated with a veteran spits for loving his rocks
Avoiding negative people and finding solace in the art of rap
Typical suicidal schizophrenic cults
Representing the dark and troubled mindset of certain individuals
I don't know who to cut
Feeling conflicted and lost in making significant decisions
And my guns are like to needles to you cause we both shoot em up
Weapons hold no power over us, as we are unafraid of violence
The Q-W-E who the fuck want strife
Challenging anyone who dares to seek conflict
Beat you half to death twice and smack your back to life
Overwhelming opponents with force and then reviving them
Underground stalagmite, quick with the dick spitting a rhyme
A powerful force within the underground music scene, delivering impactful lyrics
You criminals flip lines and forget to commit crimes
Rappers focus on their rhymes but neglect taking real action
Synonymous with nothing, bragging how you snag me beers
Claiming false achievements and trying to appear important
Indescribable like 'dog you had to be there'
Experiences that cannot be conveyed through words alone
Come on and hit me quick
Challenge me with your best shots
Spit sissy fits and shitty rhymes
Respond with weak and unimpressive lyrics
Practice 'I will never fuck with Qwel' lines fifty times
Repeating negative statements about me over and over
Let us begin, what? where? why? or when?
Starting a new phase, questioning the purpose and timing
It will all be explained by the spraying of a pen
Through our music and lyrics, we will express and clarify our thoughts
Henpecked mugs become thugs and proceed to make me vex man
Weak individuals attempt to appear tough, irritating me
Throw hissy fits on stage and call that weak shit battling
Displaying temper tantrums on stage and considering it a form of competition
I can't ignore hardcore, cold stares and shudders
The intimidating and threatening presence is impossible to overlook
If these head cases are hard rocks I'm a be flipping boulders
If these troubled individuals claim to be tough, I will challenge them even more
Stained by the static and the clubs are on the elevator
Negatively influenced by societal pressures and the music industry
Fuck being smart, Denizen is aggravated
Rejecting intellectual pursuits, Denizen is frustrated with the current situation
Well, I heard you had the fever for the flavor of the other
I heard you were interested in experimenting with different styles
Qwel, Qwazaar, Denizen Kane or is it like another
Referring to various members of Typical Cats, questioning their identities
My blade cuts ya, ya face erupting before I touch ya
My sharp words and lyrics have a powerful impact before any physical contact
The Q-W-A-Z-double A-R motherfucker!
Introducing myself with confidence and authority
Enter the next world intense flame tames
Entering a new phase with intense passion and control
Dreadlocks to s-curls
Representing different hairstyles and cultural identities
Thoughts bury your skull between your pectorals
Deep thoughts and emotions weigh heavily on your mind and heart
While I'm fucking Adina sources leaves your body buried
While I'm engaging in sexual activities, your existence becomes insignificant
Beneath the coffins deep in the forest devoid of breathing
In a secluded and lifeless place, far removed from society
All you wannabes, want to be, ask yo, cats know
Addressing those who try to imitate us, making it known that we see through their intentions
There goes none of my team the battle type of assholes
None of my team engages in petty battles or confrontations
Is that so?
Challenging the validity of a statement or claim
I'm glad you brought your dad
Sarcastically acknowledging someone's attempt to strengthen their argument
Now take an autograph back to the backpack and finish the thought you had
Dismissively suggesting that they go back to their original ideas and leave us alone
Catch a hi-fi to your eye might as much to mush me
If you try to confront me, I'll respond aggressively and overpower you
Calling battle cats bitches and all your dogs pussies
Insulting those who claim to be skilled in battles, highlighting their hypocrisy
Look me in the third eye, heard I killed your planet
Face the truth and acknowledge the impact of my powerful words
Rhyming is the key this 12 inch is nine bills around it
Emphasizing the importance of lyrical skill, as it holds great value
(You on point Den?) All the time Qwa
Denizen is always focused and ready to contribute
Sucka niggaz got me telling a million stories help me find my way
Feeling frustrated by constant distractions, seeking guidance to stay on track
Marauding through the midnight phony rappers need to get a hold
Moving aggressively through the music scene, exposing fake rappers
Because at that my mind is checking rhymes what did I get for when I stutter roll
When I stumble in delivering my lyrics, what will I gain from it
Schools feel the pressure of suburban and together
Feeling the influence and expectations of suburban surroundings
I am walking the war towards an electric bee like scourge is never
I am advancing towards a battle mentality, like a relentless swarm of bees
Bugging out because I took out planters my only distraction
Feeling anxious and restless because I eliminated obstacles and my focus is undivided
And everything is garbage through mind power and packaged
Perceiving everything as worthless and superficial, controlled by manipulation
You lack the minerals and vitamins, verbally sodomize lies
You are emotionally and mentally weak, I will expose your lies with brutal honesty
Spit lines to antichrist hybrids screaming that's it!
Delivering powerful verses to those who reject traditional beliefs, provoking them
Paragraphs are grabbing every neck and slash the match win
My words have a strong impact, dominating any competition
Against a syllable master while you waste your hazardous tactics get back bitch
Challenging an opponent who relies on dangerous tactics, urging them to retreat
See, Q-W-A don't really give a fuck what you say
Typical Cats is unbothered by criticism and opinions
And I'll attack you with the skill and level of a green beret
I will confront and overpower you with the expertise and precision of a highly trained soldier
Then I'll appear before you as an Elohim
I will present myself as a powerful and divine entity
Here to scorch you
My purpose is to defeat and destroy you
The razor sharp blade I'll force you to cough up a tonsil
Using my sharp and cutting words, I will make you suffer and struggle to speak
I'm first to live in infamy inspire sympathy when you rip notes
I am the one who will be remembered for my impactful and emotional lyrics
For those who doubt it
Proving wrong those who question my abilities
Typical Cats is bout it like Cliff's Notes
Typical Cats is fully committed, just like concise and informative Cliff's Notes
Quotes won't need hope to see flow potency
My words and quotes possess inherent power and impact
I'm not Qwel, this is some cat not even half as dope as me
Differentiating myself from Qwel, emphasizing that no one can match my greatness
You know we show love motherfuckers cause Venus sent me
Despite my aggressive demeanor, I still have love and compassion for others
Pussies calling us assholes for penis envy
Insecure individuals insult us because they are jealous of our talent and success
I split crews in twos to cruise the road with a fork in it
Breaking apart groups of people into smaller factions, creating tension and conflict
Taking whack rappers out faster than black actors in horror flicks
Eliminating untalented rappers with speed and efficiency, like black characters in horror movies
You're too weak like fortnights
You lack strength and endurance, like a short period of time
Toward fights with battle tracks, Typical Cats
Engaging in musical battles and challenges, representing Typical Cats
By the time you catch us we'll be whack so laugh
By the time you try to criticize us, we will have already moved on and evolved, so enjoy the joke
Ha Ha Ha ha ha ha ha
Expressing amusement and laughter
Be the party people ha ha see you later
We are the ones who bring the party, see you later
Read my lips kid, the Typical Cat is sickest
Pay attention and understand that Typical Cats is the most talented and impressive
If you think not redefine what your definition of 'is' is
If you disagree, reconsider and change your understanding of greatness
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA/AMCOS
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