Tower of Power Songs - What Is Hip? Lyrics

Tower of Power - What Is Hip?

Tower of Power - What Is Hip? Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Tower of Power
Released: 1973

What Is Hip? Lyrics

So you want to jump out your trick bag
And ease on into a hip bag
But you ain't just exactly sure what's hip
So you start to let your hair grow
Spend big bucks to cop you a wardrobe
But somehow you know there's much more to the trip

[Chorus]
What Is Hip?
Tell me, tell me if you think you know
What is hip?
If you was really hip
The passing years would show
You into a hip trip
Maybe hipper than hip
But what is hip?

So you became part of the new breed
Been smokin' only the best weed
Been hangin' out on the so-called hippest set
Being seen at all the right places
Being seen with just the right faces
You should be satisfied
Still it ain't quite right

[Chorus]

Hipness, what it is!
Hipness, what it is!
Hipness, what it is!
And sometimes hipness is
What it ain't!

You done even went and found you a guru
In your effort to find you a new you
And maybe even managed
To raise your conscious level
As you striving to find the right road
There's one thing you should know
What's hip today
Might become passe

Writer/s: S. KUPKA, E. CASTILLO, D. GARIBALDI
Publisher: BOB-A-LEW SONGS
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

What Is Hip?

Tower of Power sax players Emilio Castillo and Stephen "Doc" Kupka wrote this song. In our interview with Castillo , he said: "I would give most of the credit for that concept lyrically to Doc. He said he wanted write a song about being hip and I said, 'About being hip?' He said, 'Well, what I mean is being hip is so short lived. You can be hip by wearing your hair a certain way today and then in three months that style's gone and you're as unhip as you could possibly be. I want to write a song about that.' It's saying what's hip today might become passé."

The group's drummer, David Garibaldi, helped out with the rhythms. Castillo told us, "It was his idea to get Rocco to play those sixteenth notes on the bass. There was a song out at the time called 'Going Down' by Freddie King and it had that bass line. Girabladi's idea was to hit those sixteenth notes and then rather than hitting a big one, you know one, two, three, four, one... He says, 'We're going to push it one sixteenth in front of the one every time.' So it'd be, one, two, three, four, boom, two, three, four, boom... and that sort of prevailing thing throughout the tune is what made that song drive. And then on top of that we had the classic horn arrangement and Lenny Williams singing it."

Sheila E. intended to cover this tune on her 1991 set, Sex Cymbal, but TOP's horn section was unavailable. She opted to redo Labelle's "Lady Marmalade" instead. (thanks, Faundell - Brooklyn, NJ)