100 VINYLZ: #93 - Life Is Too Short 12-inch by Too Short

(1988, Jive Records)
I just got this single this past year, out the dollar racks at Plan 9 in Carytown, showing that those eastern European looking assholes still don't know shit. This is the title track off of one of Short's best-selling albums, and easily my favorite Too Short song ever (closely seconded by "I Ain't Trippin'"). I, like anybody else, loves Short for his raunchy and simplistic perfection over top of bass fuzzy beats, with 808 kicks to match, but this song, where Short waxes philosophically about the state of the world, this was a style that he exploited every now and then later in his career as well, usually at a pace of a track or two per album.
This was from my last birthday when my wife told me to go blow some money at the record store. It's getting harder to do that, with stores closing down or moving to online sales. Some dude nearby was selling a couple thousand records out front of his house recently, because they told him at the record store he'd only get like ten cents per, and he didn't trust online because he wouldn't buy shit he couldn't see and touch, so why should he expect anyone else to? He was selling it all to move to Colorado and all he had to take was his Blazer so it all had to fit in there and a couple thousand records didn't jibe with that. People like that are few and far between. Times have changed. I was stoked to find this digging through the bins, but if I dig next year, there's not gonna be another similar find. The shit's dying out, because of the internet and also because you have 700,000 myspace producers hooking up beats now, thinking they found the best shit ever, and pilfering all the obvious records out the bins. I guess I should be thankful that shitty synthesized beats are the standard now, so dudes are more likely to invest in a Casio than a crate full of old 12-inches. Still, I miss records like a motherfucker. It makes me sad my best turntable is outside in the camper, with probably my best five hundred records, and I'm in here tapping a bullshit laptop.