The State of Hip-Hop

Fortunately, I've always been more into the sonics of all music over the lyrics, so it doesn't bother me that much.

so yeah, can we try and have this conversation without resorting to such obnoxious shorthand?

And good god - if I was going to taken down for hating bling, it wouldn't be here.

But I listen to hip hop for the sonics not the lyrics, so no matter.

Can we not use any classifications here because they are shorthands and too convenient?

In that case, it's going to be a very, very, very, very long thread.

Well, Al, you're wrong. I've loved hip-hop since 1985. And I think hip-hop that spends lots of time talking about brand-name clothes and money is boring.

The Evil Dictator Bling will no longer terrorize the citizens of Bootyteria! Power to the people!

But I do find the assertion that mainstream America is trying to kill hip-hop is beyond ludicrous - it's absorbing it, but it doesn't want to kill it. It wants to transform it into something more easily manageable and marketable.

I can't say bling, clothes, or the rapper's name is inherently boring because plenty of rappers have made me care about their bling, clothes and name. Just like "the love song" or "disco, baby, disco" it's just that so many are generic and tired.

Gender issues are wayyy fucked up these days too in rap, but the rest of the pop world ain't much better in that regard either.

*ducks*

(nb: slighty altered crib from sfjones)

Read that out loud for us.

ok, I'm wrong. so did you start tuning out in '86 when "My Adidas" came out?

Oh, wait, that type of shit didn't happen

so, um, anyway...my question is: do you think they're sincere? that is to say, my problem with a lot of undie hip hop is that they're so certain about what they don't want to rap about (money, violence, etc.), but don't seem to know what they *do* want to rap about, and end up with fairly boring or abstract subject matter. at the very very least, at the bare minimum, you have to give most thug/player rappers this: they probably do care about their riches and their guns as much as they claim to in their rhymes (whether exact figures about their bank accounts and/or kill counts is grossly inflated therein is another matter entirely).

i can see al's point and i kind of agree with it: there's a certain, uh, visceralness missing from a lot of undie hip-hop which comes, at least partly, from the content. unless you get off the skills on display (which i do, sometimes, but too much and its steve vai, y'know) there's not much to glom onto...one of my favorite indie hiphop songs in the last few years was dead prez's "cop shot raptivism" and its precisely because its as much of a visceral, monodimensional cartoon as most bling-hop, just with a more, uh, "socially conscious" ( ha ha ) message...i've never gone to pop music to be reinforced on the joys of family and togetherness...i have the same problems with blackalicious as i do with "new morning" era dylan

(the rise and fall of basketball's popularity = the rise and fall of black music's popularity since the mid-70s?)

baketball's always been a pretty good (if undernoticed) bellweather for what's on the minds/ears of hip young black kids, i think

i was mostly thinking that basically pro atheletes and rappers and the ultimate "cake and eat it too" types: they want their public profile, their endorsements, their beaucoup bucks, their franchises and multimedia (blah) deals, but they DONT want to be role models, to "preach", to basically own up to anything that a public persona seems to imply (to use, say, the model [and i do mean MODEL] of a politician, which is obv problematic to begin with)...and they're both loved/resented for these very things, often by the same demographic

I think my sarcasm detector just blew up.

Of course mainstream America's already absorbed hip-hop, it's been it's major cultural engine for quite awhile now. But this is different than killing it, wouldn't you say...?

(anyway nancy just hit me over the head with a frying pan so she could use the computer...keep the thread warm while i'm gone)

This is a virtue how? Why would any moron who prizes such things so highly have anything even remotely interesting to say? I'm not saying that they aren't proper subject matter - they clearly can be used in interesting ways - but to idolize their riches and guns and champagne bottles and fetishize them w/this empty "he who dies with the most crap wins" bullshit = blech.

when, O Lord, will my prayer for "Black Hip-Hop," hip-hop's answer to Black Metal, be answered, so we can have acts like the Cold Satanic Krew and the 187 On A Christian Posse?

When?

hip hop on a local level is generally very constructive and healthy for the community, and while it isn't the young communist club, it isn't abject materialism either, which is what it seems as though it's being distilled into when it hits the mtv level, which more a problem with western culture than hip hop culture. i think for a long time, bling (as exemplified by p. diddy) did almost represent hip hop on the airwaves, and it wasn't that interesting. i think that there's a bit more parity now. you have more sonic inventiveness and you have a greater plurality of messages. at least it seems that way. ...just my observations...

does anyone remember when "underground" didn't mean backpacker positivity? i used to apply the term to people like big l and bumpy knulkes. what happened?

kinda related topic: did anyone hear that fox is reprising mr. ed with a hip hop slant?!?

fake edit: there were a lot of post that were up in the time it took me to write this. sorry if it's obsolete.

"She gets Carrie fever, but as soon as it's over she's right back to being my soldier" --> This is exactly like my relationship, only with Buffy instead of Sex & The City

I think what we're seeing is simple capitalist culture-control in action. The more dangerous ideas - like the Malcolm X/Black Panther Party allusions, or the bleak chronicling of urban poverty and despair - get pushed and packaged into marginalized (undie) or more palatable ("new soul") categories and thus are robbed of some of their power, while the more palatable, pro-capitalist strains (bling bling!) in hip-hop get spotlighted and pushed to the top of the market. So we end up with the weird fractured scene that we have now - backpackers over here, pop folks over there, etc. I guess hip-hop has been more dismembered than murdered. My problem with all the "mainstream America is killing hip-hop" rhetoric is that it sounds like alarmist/conspiracy-theorist bullshit - like the gov't is gonna use assassins to take out Ludacris or something. The reasons hip-hop is in this predicament are a bit more complicated I think...

whats happening at the end of that JahRule/Ahanti grease video? what is that video about anyway?

However, then there's also the similar indie-rock-then-and-indie-hip-hop-now intentional anti-establishmentism (which leads to artists being termed "sell-outs" by their fanbase should they break into the mainstream). But with the indie stuff, then-and-now, there's generally a wider variety of sounds than will be found in the mainstream, whether Kool Keith vs. Quasimodo or Husker Du vs. They Might Be Giants.

Personally, I'm just as frustrated by the indie-side's need to be anti-establishment as the mainstream's self-encouraged one-dimensionality, I just listens to what me likes, whether it's TLC's "Waterfalls" or Non-Phixion's "The Future Is Now".

I didn't always align myself with the former until the early Puff Daddy era came along, at which point I just felt like everything sounded great but just kind of stayed running in place. (I was teaching at a public junior high in NYC in the early 90s, and a lot of my students felt the same way--they were trying to get their heads around De La and the JBs because they were bored with the charts. They all knew Puffy as a promoter/hustler who lived in their neighborhood.) But I didn't see a lot else going on, and I didn't get Wu at all. (I thought "CREAM" was a crap single. So sue me.)

So I've been pingponging back and forth for a while--loved Common's Resurrection and Bone Thug's "Crossroads", hated Buh-Loone Mindstate and Ma$e--before plighting my troth for all the "conscious" dudes because I just HATED Tupac's whole thing so much. "California Love" pushed me over the top: great funk groove, so good, but the rest got in the way. (Probably having kids and emotional problems made me want to not listen to harsh shit...also, I was working with kids who had violence and drug issues in their lives and with their families, and wanted to console myself at the end of the day.) Creative sampling became just toasting over pre-existing records, but poorly.

And there I stayed in Undieville, until reviewing records and ILM forced me to open my eyes. Now I'm still not all that hip on chart rap qua chart rap, but I no longer hate on it. But I think Blackalicious can be appreciated even if you don't want to be uplifted, and Electric Circus has a standing-on-the-corner-sellin' song, and it's all good and it's all crap and I love it but overall I'm bored now by the Bad Boy / No Limit / Death Row paradigm so for me: it's okay to want rap to be "positive," but it's also okay to break your freakin' neck if a chart song kicks ass.

Thus (by not hating and being intolerant) I refute Jess.

Remind me to actually think about this good thread before it fizzles completely.

1) An interview with an anonymous member of the NYPD who says that the cops have databases of files on every rapper, who his/her friends are, what car they drive, their cell/pager numbers, etc. He claims that the NYPD has operatives in the hip-hop scene who are being paid to take down big rappers. He claims that if you go to a hip-hop show in NYC, the NYPD has a file on you and is probably tapping your phone. In short, ridiculous assertions that are in no way backed up with any facts, and I have my doubts that the person delivering these quotes is real, much less someone in the NYPD. VERDICT: BULLSHIT

2) A brief attack article on Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. Main attack angle: O'Reilly's rich so he doesn't understand common black folks. He wants to take them down for his own pleasure. He's a hypocrite. He's jealous of black people. VERDICT: BULLSHIT (and this one really pissed me off, because there are many valid ways to attack O'Reilly, but the Source ignores EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM)

3) An even briefer profile on the mayor of Detroit and how hip-hop now has bonafide political leaders. But since there were no quotes from the mayor, I'm doubting that he really wants to be identified as such. VERDICT: LAME

4) This is the meat of the piece, some select quotes from the last state of emergency hip-hop summit in January. Damon Dash, Baby, Eve, Benzino, Chuck D, Talib Kweli etc., were all there. It's basically split into two camps, view-wise. Chuck D, Damon Dash & Talib Kweli all say that hip-hop is largely at fault for its problems. That there's no sense of community or responsibility (Eve said at one point that if she had kids she wouldn't let them listen to hip-hop) and that they should lead by example. That the world of hip-hop is a ray of hope in inner cities, but rappers are just squandering that. The rest of the panel basically says that the only reason hip-hop's having any problems is racism -- that white people are scared and are trying to take them down. They say that the biggest problem for rappers is that they're not getting paid well enough. Hogwash, all of it. (Benzino's comments put him in a camp of his own because all he talked about was how much Eminem sucks and how someone should take him down)(There's a sidebar of quotes from Puffy preaching financial responsibility to rappers, pointing out that rock bands travel by commercial airline or bus and stay in Holiday Inns but rappers charter planes, etc., etc., and that's just stupid. I actually liked what he had to say)

5) The Source's editorial board discusses hip-hop's problems. A few conspiracy theorists talk about the NYPD anti-hip-hop task force thing, telling hip-hop fans not to talk about sensitive stuff on the phone because the feds are listening. Others say hip-hop only has itself to blame, and that they, as writers, have a role in changing hip-hop's image, which they plan to do.

So in short, much of it is complete bullshit, but there were a few people who I thought got it.

(there's also yet another feature on Benzino and another attack article against Eminem. Ugh.)

Unsurprisingly, the most OTM post for me...

Ok, so rap = tragedy? (ie Sophocles et al) but the stage is OUR COUNTRY AND OUR LIVES, so there's no border, no "catharsis", no end, hence 30 yrs of unfinished arguments, media paranoia etc etc

(probably too too simple but it's the only q there is I think)

Speaking of which, DAVE Q TO THREAD!

[U.K. version:] Clive Barker and Bram Stoker and William Shakespeare to thread!

[Greek version:] Sophocles and Euripides to thread! (translation: Brekekekek koax koax)

Actually, that would be a really great chorus in a Clipse song: "Brekekekek! Koax! Koax!" So Pharrell to thread as well.

Everybody in the world to thread.

(and Neudonym: one of my roommates is a 7th grade teacher in bed-stuy, and he talks a lot about how his kids seem to be sick of most hip-hop, so maybe your class' malaise is coming back?)

I blame George W. Bush.

True, as hip-hop's roots are generally considered the late-70s NYC scene of DJs, graffiti artists, breakdancers, and MCs...and the MCs generally were as "Masters of Ceremonies" who pretty much conducted the party, told everyone who was on the cuts, and, mostly, were very entertaining. Some groups want to attribute it's roots to the poetry-movements of the same time-period of folks like Gil Scott Heron and Last Poets in particular, but it's usually considered the "hip-hop" culture began from these B-boy roots, rather than the activism usually attributed to it (which, honestly, seems to trace back to the Public Enemy as one of the first hip-hop-as-activism practitioners, which came a few years after the first traces of hip-hop culture).

On a somewhat related note, does it really piss anybody else off whenever they see "Murder, Inc." as the name of a record label? Professional wrestling tag-team, now THAT might be appropriate, but everytime I see this it comes off as extremely juvenile as well as encouraging-of-an-aspect-of-hip-hop-culture-that's-totally-destroying-it.

*ahem* THE MESSAGE - GRANDMASTER FLASH AND THE FURIOUS FIVE *cough* BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY - BDP *cough cough*

I think nick is mostly right tho about people making too much of the Last Poets/Gil Scot-Heron as a "rap precedent". The connection is mostly academic, and their politics were actually a lot more confrontational and angry than the simpler messages of urban survival that most early MCs dished out.

In 1,000,000% total agreeance.

In fact, my big beef with the majority of the rap/rock movement is that 99.9% of these groups completely ignored the historical bridge between rap and rock music, which is FUNK. Limp Bizkit, where's the funk? Linkin Park, where's the funk? POD, where's the funk? It just seems like most of these groups ignore the most important catalyst for this particularly genre-fusion, and this seems to further implicate their musical hybridizations as something forced-for-the-wrong-reasons and not-fully-developed.

Okay, that seemed a little strange. Forget I said anything.

(Oh, from my MIND'S eye...silly me)

"Original, pure untampered and down sister
Boy I tell ya, I miss her "

But now:

"I did her, not just to say that I did it
But I'm committed, but so many niggaz hit it
That she's just not the same lettin all these groupies do her
I see niggaz slammin her, and takin her to the sewer "

Hello goddamn virgin/whore complex! Some girl throws him over, goes out in the world and doesn't remain "faithful" to him and now she's a slut! So what's he gonna do?

"But I'ma take her back hopin that the shit stop
Cause who I'm talkin bout y'all is hip-hop"

He's gonna *take* her! Who said she was his to begin with -- just coz a guy dips his wick in some woman he thinks he owns her. What a pig.

Seriously, though, I think the funk movement is criminally overlooked as a turning point in American music and culture. There were so many aspects of it: the emphasis on rhythm and simplicity (very similar to the punk movement, that), the range-in-subject matter (from booty to the Bermuda Triangle to futurist musings to cultural togetherness to the political to the spiritual to the mental to the sensual ad nauseum to infinity), the emphasis on crowd-interaction (which became a definite part of the hip-hop culture to follow), the dramatic shift in acceptable fashion, and even more, it seemed to mark a new-found confidence in black American culture, as evidenced by lyrics like "Say it loud: I'm black and I'm proud!". It was like the white-American imposed veil of shame and fear had finally been lifted from black consciousness, and suddenly we got to hear everything they had to say.

Does that sound like total hogwash?

uhm, no. King Heroin, I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothin (Open Up the Door I'll Get it Myself), Funky President, the entire "Payback" lp, so many more...

If you don't like Common's work, okay. And yeah, he's "a fucking joke" on these boards these days. But I think that kind of dismissal is shortsighted and wrong and just a little too fashionable.

I'm not sure. Musically, rock n roll always had hints of what-would-become-funk (as rock began as a very rhythmic oriented style anyway, Beatles be damned!).

Why the change all of the sudden?

I'm not so sure it was all of the sudden. It just seems to me that, prior to the civil rights movement, many black artists weren't so confrontational and defiant-of-the-status-quo...as though, with that social movement, the flood-gates became free'd up to say a bunch of things no one was willing to say before. (Sly Stone to this paragraph! :D)

Did it influence these cultural changes or was it influenced by them?

Um, yes and yes. :D

It just seems to me like there was a very powerful (especially lyrically) black-social-confidence-focus to a great deal of music of that era: Sly Stone singing "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey", Jimi Hendrix' "Power of Soul", Curtis' "Hell Below", Funkadelic's "Can You Get to That", and so on. As though that part of American culture repressed for so long finally said "FUCK IT WE GOTTA SAY THIS SHIT!" and it was very powerful and pleasureful. It was funk.

Then white dudes like myself came along and ripped it off, as is par for our society it seems. :D

No no no, that is not my point. I have long since reconciled myself to musicians peddling crapola. That's their decision and it's their work, so they do whatever they want with it. But in these particular cases you have artists taking songs that *weren't even theirs to begin with* and robbing them of their original, deeply embedded political messages just to make a little money. That shit is just WRONG. It's a disservice to the songs themselves, it's a disservice to the original artists, and it's a disservice to the (largely ignorant) public who will now never get the full impact of what those songs were trying to impart. Common and KRS-1 basically willfully participated in the castration of some very potent political messages from the black community - how can they possibly reconcile that with all their bullshit rhetoric about "edutainment" and uplifting hip-hop yadda yadda yadda.

nickalicious: funk is inextricably tied to the black power movement, but I think the history of funk is pretty much a whole-other-thread worthy topic, it's too big...

"Real, real, real, let's make it really real..." *nods head*

How did our soft drinks get under their sand!!?

uhm, because Coca-cola would obviously prefer that you don't think about war at all... just drink their shit and shut-up like a good little consumer. Ignore those bombs, they won't hit you! You're "keeping it real!"

(My non-flip answer is that you don't appear to have considered the possibility that using an anti-war song in a popular soft drink commercial might have been intentional, subversive move intended to bring the original's sentiments into the minds of the people familiar with it.)

Not really. It’s like saying that the first two lines of “Big Pimpin’” are the embodiment of hip hop’s attitude towards women. That's just a perspective, and only embodies common's perspective. The anti-chart sentiment has been there for a long time and has been expressed by those who feel that industry access is limited to those who portray the right image or know the right people. The sentiment was also used to further personal political agendas, i.e. the dead prez. And the term “underground” was banded by middle-class college students who didn't have the courage to admit that they liked "real" hip hop, so they basically said, "i like underground hip hop, not that other stuff with 'cars, guns, rims, hoes, pimping, hustling.'" Kinda like republicans who say they like colin powell.

When I first really became fanatical about hip hop back in the early- to mid-90's (and started listening to nothing but), "underground" (when it was used) was more synonymous with Gang Starr, Big L, DITC, Bumpy Knuckles, etc...cats who were a little too grimy for the mainstream. I remember bumping Jay’s Dead Presidents when it first came out, and before "Ain't no Nigga" really caught on, and *I* considered that underground. Then term underground kinda morphed into being associated with the Rawkus crowd, most of whom are now firmly “commercial” (i.e., Black Star, Common, and Roots), or the Project Blowed/ Likwit set. Now the term underground seems to be associated with Anticon, Def Jux and the like. And, as the cost of producing a record has dropped, we're bombarded with mediocre MC's who attach themselves to the term underground because there's a built in audience for it. Essentially, it means nothing and has no bearing on what the music actually sounds like or what particular culture or ideology it represents. Whatever power the terminology once had has been lost, in my eyes. It isn't a term that I will continue to use. Sorry for the tangent.

To answer the question the thread addressed: Hip hop is split into a thousand different ways, I think that the idea of a unified culture is still viable on a local level, but nationally…I’m not so sure anymore. And the Source sucks! It has for a long time.

fucking hell, how many times do I have to point out the numerous examples of music-as-tool-of-social reform on this goddamn board? I'm getting really tired of dropping the same names (*cough* Victor Jara *cough*)

"My non-flip answer is that you don't appear to have considered the possibility that using an anti-war song in a popular soft drink commercial might have been intentional, subversive move intended to bring the original's sentiments into the minds of the people familiar with it"

Oh Dan, how can you be so impossibly naive? There's nothing subversive about advertising, and there never will be - it goes against the nature of the medium. Advertising serves one purpose and one purpose only (and this purpose *overrides* and actively undermines all other ostensible motives and messages w/in a commercial) and that is PRODUCT PLACEMENT. Remember the product. Imprint the product on the consumer's consciousness. That's it. End of story. Ads serve no other purpose. Any subtle "anti-war" message (and I highly HIGHLY doubt there is one) is ultimately sublimated by the larger message: COCA-COLA.

My wife worked in HR for an advertising agency and I have several friends who work for advertising agencies. So, unless my wife's former coworkers and my friends have lied to me about things they've tried to do...

song alters public opinion-->public opinion alters course of gov't policy-->gov't alters war policy.

"My wife worked in HR for an advertising agency and I have several friends who work for advertising agencies. So, unless my wife's former coworkers and my friends have lied to me about things they've tried to do..."

I'm not saying people don't try to fit those messages in, I'm saying that *it doesn't matter* because those messages are only being stuck in as a way to further make the product/advertisement more memorable. Thus even when they do appear, they're diluted and useless - their only purpose is to reinforce the larger message of the ad ("remember the product/brand"). I also think it's interesting that you note these people only *tried* to do these kinds of things, as opposed to actually doing them... I would venture that as soon as a message overtook the overall importance of the PRODUCT, that message was dropped.

I don't see how this invalidates the contributions of his music to the social struggles of his day.

you're an idealistic little fellow, aren't ya. Please point out a single instance of this happening.

2. '60s funk: Dyke and the Blazers, Junior Walker and the All Stars, Lee Dorsey, Pigmeat Markham, etc. "Here Comes the Judge" by Pigmeat Markham, one of the first rap songs ever to hit the top 40 (1968!), had lines about Ho Chi Minh running for president. '60s and '70s proto-rappers like Jimmy Castor, Bob Dylan, and Tapper Zukie mixed up comment and comedy as a matter of course. So did proto-rapper Bo Diddley in the '50s, and proto-rapper Woody Guthrie in the '30s (the latter of whom even did a rap song about the old tractor taking his homeboys. Except "rap music" was called "talking blues" back then.)

3. If Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park had attempted to acknowledge funk, they probably would've wound up sounding like the Chili Peppers or Primus (i.e.: bassplayers milking a cow), which really isn't any better. (Before disco, though, lots of hard rock bands were actually PLAYING funk: Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aerosmith, Grand Funk Railroad, Rick Derringer. It helped that their drummers knew what 16th notes were. Funkiest rock album of the past 20 years: *Appetite for Destruction,* no fucking contest. But as soon as Stephen Adler left, forget it.)

4. Pre-"Message" rap songs making explicit political statements: "How We Gonna Make the Black Nation Rise" by Brother D With Collective Effort, "The Big Throwdown" by South Bronx, both 1981. (And "The Message" took its best words from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's 1979 "Superrappin," anyway. Melle Mel's ghetto-to-jailhouse-to-noose horror story was just stuck in there, a total surprise amid all the party stuff about Mercedes and young lay-dees. Pretending that brand names and yearnnig for riches {as in Funky Four Plus One: "Get funky, make money"} haven't been part of rap music from the beginning is as willful and ill-informed as pretending early rap music had no connection to disco, or that mixing raps with r&b -- a la Teena Marie's "Square Biz," Lakeside's "Fantastic Voyage," Chaka Khan's and Melle Mel's "I Feel For You," Jody Watley's and Rakim's "Friends" -- is somehow a betrayal of what hip-hop was back in the day.)

5. Ray Charles, the Four Tops, and Jefferson Airplane all did soft-drink commercials in the '60s. (And Robert Christgau told me that Common's latest album reminded him of Airplane's *After Bathing at Baxter's! Which was not a compliment.)

6. Run-DMC's song about how Calvin Klein's no friend of mine, don't want nobody's name on their behind is better than their Adidas song. Or maybe it's not; I forget. But everybody always forgets the former.

7. Anybody who thinks hip-hop is "dead" is just lazy and stupid, and should go out right now and buy *From the Roota to the Toota by Field Mob (number 30 on Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Album Chart this week).

Vietnam. The war would not have ended w/out the massive public opposition to it. There were a lot of other reasons, but this was definitely one of them.

I'm done.

But besides this point, you still haven't proved how any songs actually caused this public opposition (and I don't want you to do it here)

Obviously this is idiocy, since it assumes that people only use advertising for it INTENDED use. It assumes people don't have brains. It also assumes they'll REMEMBER what the brand is. Which I never do.

I should also point out that there is a lot more explicit protest in pop and rock music now than there was in the late '60s/early '70s, but that's obvious too, right? So I won't.

That's the sticking point with termonology and power -- it doesn't get it from your eyes or anyone else's in particular, but from the eyes and attitudes towards it in society.

Just like "chart-hop has changed" != "hip hop is dead", "use of the term underground has changed" != "use of the term underground is meaningless"

Well of course not. Crosby is a moron.

"don't you think the body bags had more to do with the public opposition than any pop song?"

Hey, I said one reason among many. And a lot of those songs articulated the frustrations of those people who saw their family members coming home in body-bags, the two are intertwined.

"Obviously this is idiocy, since it assumes that people only use advertising for it INTENDED use. It assumes people don't have brains.

Au contraire - people try to use ads for all sorts of things, it's just they invariably fail and are eaten by its overriding purpose. Think about this: the more any given element of an ad serves to make an ad more memorable, the more effective the vehicle the product has for embedding itself in the consumer's mind. This is simple memetics. So anything that serves to make the ad more memorable for a given consumer - an anti-war slogan, a pop song, a celebrity - the more likely the consumer is to remember that product *in addition* to the celebrity, anti-war slogan, pop song, etc. The product attaches itself (much like a parasite) to whatever meme is most likely to be replicated and stored by the consumer. This is *why* there are commercials, this is their function, to overtake and use everything they come into contact with as a reference point for the product.

"It also assumes they'll REMEMBER what the brand is. Which I never do."

So you don't remember what Mya and Common were advertising? Whose the idiot here?

This is indeed a great great great song. If I may say.

An example of ad subtexting: the Volkswagen ad with the intentionally-ambiguously gay duo who pick up the abandoned sofa created a huge buzz among the gay community as something that showed a realistic view of what a moment in the life of a gay couple is really like. The ad fulfilled two purposes; selling a car (primary, natch) and demystifying homosexuality (secondary but still important).

Tying into an antiwar song into a major ad campaign on the eve of a war is not an accident. I would bet money on this.

which assumes that the easing of that idea (homosexuality) into public consciousness is worth it being "sold". (which i think it is.)

Those damn kids today! *cough*

I asserted that music can alter/shape/amplify public opinion, and that in turn that public opinion can be translated into political force, and that that political force can be used for changes in policy. I don't see anyone proving me wrong here. Where does this formula break down?

"but picked as his example a cock-up of massive proportions that had innumerous reasons for ending"

Hmm, maybe you should re-read some of those posts upthread. I said there were numerous reasons for the war ending. And I said that *public opinion* (***NOT THE SONGS THEMSELVES***) were one of those reasons. This is irrefutable, I think, that it was one reason among many.

Except it's actually a pretty good discussion overall.

"Daddy you ignoring me"
"Sorry, I was typing"
"What were you typing?"
"You know that song for Coke, that goes 'make it real compared to what'"
"Yeah, I like it"
"Do you like the singer?"
"Yeah, and the guy who does the fast talking"

(this is a true story)

Hip hop per se is clearly not dead, or even hurting, at least in commercial terms or in terms of its place in the culture. So obviously the concern is about hip hop the idea or ideal. But absent a coherent definition of that idea(l), which I guess is what a lot of this discussion has been trying to nail down, it's hard to make any real assessment of the State of Hip Hop. I sure don't listen to near enough of it to have any such comprehensive insight. But I do listen to enough stuff I like to thing that pronunciations of its death or ailment are wholly premature. (Holy premature pronunciations!) Even the 50 Cent album is growing on me -- at least tracks 1-5.

Stanley Clarke, Bootsy Collins, Larry Graham playing that way = funk.

Flea, Les Claypool, Robert Trujillo playing that way = "milking a cow"?

Okay, wait, I'm erasing the "...(bass players milking a cow), which really isn't any better" from that sentence in my mind's eye, and I am once again at peace with this thread.

why does this material appeal to so many

As stated by me, correctly or incorrectly over the last few years... The popular thing for white middle-class kids to do, ever since the end of slavery, is to align themselves with black culture. Jazz, Blues, Rock R&B, Funk and now Rap, all have their roots in black thought/culture and, to put it mildly, the rich white kid always wants to be percieved as harder than their cream-puff asses really are. Black music is the other.

when, O Lord, will my prayer for "Black Hip-Hop," hip-hop's answer to Black Metal, be answered, so we can have acts like the Cold Satanic Krew and the 187 On A Christian Posse?

We did. It was called Gangsta.

"say it loud" was like the only political thing james brown ever did.

Living In America? I mean, it's the 'I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing' of soul, but...

The Roots to thread!

Of course, I could be wrong....

This is a vast oversimplification and pretty insulting to both "rich white kids" and "black culture." For one, it totally ignores the music itself. Are you saying that jazz/blues/rock/rap/etc. has no inherent appeal as music, only as a mode of rebellion? It also, at least the you phrased it, implies a purposefulness/consciousness in the "rich white kids" motives which I doubt is there. Plenty of poor white kids and other non-black minorities, who have a theoritically "hard" identity of their own (what does "hard" mean?) like hip-hop.

As much as I dislike Em's material, I think he's closer to this than just about any other (living) MC. He gets respect from undies, charters, and even mufuggin Chris Rock. Of course, Tupac was also a great unifying factor in hip-hop; you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who claimed some connection to "hip-hop" that didn't respect 'Pac. Wu Tang also seem to have that kinda appeal, I can't think of many undie/indie hip-hoppers who don't respect those guys; except for maybe Kool Keith, who supposedly isn't very down with what he believes to be their stealing his ideas. Otherwise, they're generally loved by both the undie and the chart side of this "split".

I'm excited for their new double-solo-album to arrive. I think something like that is a great idea; the kind of thing that might have kept the Beatles from breaking up, y'know?

I think if Nas would self-edit a little more and only put out the more focused parts of his repertoire, he would be, as so many other rappers put it, "on some other shit".

BTW, there's an older song of his where he's working this amazing metaphor of his mouth being a gun and his words being bullets...anybody know the name of that track? It dropped my jaw when I heard it, literally I couldn't say shit until it had been over for five minutes, and then all I could say was "DAMN!".

Practical texts, because they argue for specific solutions, are inherently more activist. While, in the early 80s, it might have been politically empowering to lay out a theoretical argument, which, in current parlance, is "keeping it real", I tend to wonder whether the power that hip-hop has at this juncture, combined with the fact that many records are still about "keeping it real", ensures only a reinforcing of current values, instead of a critique or a rejection of them, thus making the texts less political. In some instances however, "keeping it real" means going back to old-skool hiphop, because the "real" exists somewhere in the past. then, the text becomes practical but also reactionary, which is probably not what some "undie/conscious" hiphoppers had in mind (one could argue that the biggest political change over the last decade, though, is the fact that the right/republicans are now the locus of all the futurism/vision (utpian to them, distopian to others), while the left is now on the reactionary side).

(jess: we should write a book diagramming the popularity of the NBA with the popularity of hip-hop and other black forms of music. there's definitely something there. also, lebron james in the nba next year = 2004 best year for hip-hop evah!)

on another note: i don't listen to what bush says i just admire the skill of his handlers.

(i give up) did rasheed wallace release a hiphop record? how was it?

I know that many other rappers play basketball, but Master P's the only one I know of who actually tried out for a team (the Charlotte Hornets, if I'm not mistaken, who he then tried to buy).

Absolutely. Nothing gets done that way, but nothing's supposed to. The point is to "raise awareness," which we know means jackshit. It's a way for an artist to attach him/herself to something larger and to seem more relevant than he/she really is.

That was a really cynical thing to say, and I won't fully stand by that, but I think in many cases that's the truth.

As Billy Bass Nelson once told me, the problem w/Flea, Claypool, Trujillo et al is that they *play it too fast and flashy*. If you want to make it really raw and funky it has to be slow and dirty, you gotta let the riffs breathe.

2. Who cares about basketball? Nelly's the best BASEBALLING rapper, no contest. (And Avril Lavigne plays hockey better than any of 'em.)

3. How about WORST basketball-playing rapper? I pick Skee-Lo.

4. Best basketball-playing teen-popper? Britney. (Played high school ball back in Lousiana, if I remember right. Though maybe I don't.)

* --Okay, reducing Bootsy to a cartoon is kinda redundant. Whatever.

She should have used a stick at the Grammys.

I don't find it insulting at all. It's a statement re: consumerisim and why people buy things. "black culture" makes this thing called "hip hop." Rich white kids want it because it is the other.

For one, it totally ignores the music itself. Are you saying that jazz/blues/rock/rap/etc. has no inherent appeal as music, only as a mode of rebellion?

I said nothing of the sort, just that it was a way of ghettoizing (uh-ohh...) ones self. The one thing I learned after having gone to art school is that there's nothing inherently different between "high" and "low" art (as in: 3000 years+ of Western Fine Art v. 50 years of recorded musical history/advertisements/graphic design. All that stuff done for the Church was just came about from commercialisim and sale of talent anyway, regardless of belief). To make a claim as to goodness or badness of jazz/rock/hip-hop etc. is wholly subjective and not the point I was trying to make.

It also, at least the you phrased it, implies a purposefulness/consciousness in the "rich white kids" motives which I doubt is there.

Agreed. But concious or otherwise, don't you see it as happening? The Rock/Rap fusion (which dignifies the style more than I'd like) as produced by Linkin Park, Korn, Limp Bizkit et al is a perfect example of the middle classtaking something that was traditionially created by minorities as a means of expression and using it to imply danger and edge and in so doing create the ever-popular street cred that those bands need to survive in the hearts and minds of teenagers. Creativity happens at a concious and unconcious level; regardless of intent, it seems to be a fair enough projection and interpretation of what happened.

Plenty of poor white kids and other non-black minorities, who have a theoritically "hard" identity of their own (what does "hard" mean?) like hip-hop.

Agreed. But I wasn't talking about them.

I wrote a paper when I was still in school about how the OG rock-n-roll & jazz movements were mirrors of African & European musical roots intertwining in American culture...like, that rock-n-roll came from white culture's picking up the rhythmic aspects of African-descended musical styles and incorporated it into their already existing primarily-melodic music, and that jazz came from black culture's picking up the melodic aspects of European-descended musical styles and integrating it into their already existing primarily-rhythmic music. I kinda jumbled everything up and made it sound like a big ball of bullshit, though. It all started Rahsaan Roland Kirk's referring to jazz as "black classical music", and once I heard that, my rambly thoughtless-processes kicked into high-gear downhill.

That should say "It all started with Rahsaan Ro..."

Carry on.

Of course the flip(mode)side is that gangsta rap is equally popular within inner-cities themselves, so in that case it's the fans' desire to see their own day-to-day lives (which, while more dangerous and violent, are no less mundane than everyone else's) depicted in an exciting way.

(nb: I'm not really sure that I believe this, just trying to get some sort of conversation rolling...)

20 -25 years sound about right? Jazz (as I'm narrowly defining it and with a great number of omissions) was very, very, very popular, yet still pretty underground as an art from at a space between 1910-1935. One of the big musical trends during the war was swing, which is a part of jazz -- a popularizing of an underground art from.

After that came blues which got melded and subdivided by into rock and r&b (which was also influenced by gospel and stuff) in the 50's. There's always been something new around the corner, and the underground of the previous generation becomes the mainstream act of the next.

To broaden the scope out of the Hip Hop discussion and back to rock, Punk (as we currently have problems defining on the Avril threads) started around the time that prog was blooming (1sr generation), and broke through with the hair bands (Nirvana).

Of course, by that logic something grand should be coming around any day now...

All this is generalizing obviously. My logic makes sense in my head, but what do I know. The original intent of that post back there was to address one of the reasons that this material appeal to so many. This is one of them.

To post the thing I wanted to post before this thread became something else entirely: I think the only thing really "wrong" with hip-hop that wasn't all that "wrong" before, say, 1998 or so is the (widely media-dictated) stratification between mainstream and underground ("Fuck undies! I'm straight up free ballin'!") which wasn't as widespread as it was ten years ago when listening to (or having your magazine write feature articles on) both Dr. Dre and De La Soul wasn't all that out of the question despite the huge gulf in record sales between the two. Somehow the recent definitions of mainstream/underground have somehow placed popular yet non-"pop"-sounding acts in the "undie" category and therefore have done a lot to screw things up -- Jurassic 5 and Common are on MTV and get played in carbonated soft drink beverage commercials and probably sold more records than Benzino but a lot of people here and in other music enthusiast circles consider them "undie" without thinking.

As far as the violence thing, hip-hop has associated with violence for ages, at least since the Long Beach gang fight during the "Raising Hell" tour if not longer. Like most Reaganites, O'Reilly's just regurgitating bullshit from the '80s.

well said.

Probably a better idea would be "conscious" vs. "individualistic" -- rap as an end, or as a means to one. In that sense I side philisophically with the individualistic rappers, tho practically I find the conscious rappers more appealing in terms of attitude towards gender, violence, etc. However the way the conscious rappers start and leave it at attitude results in a dead end, while precisely because individualist rappers see rap as a road to something else they offer more of a posibility of its expansion. Common and J5 are pretty flowers, but dead ones.

Sterling, I love ya, but damn, that's more clever (and crit-typical) than it is true. And "oppositional"=Sean Combs? Opposed to what? You are telling me that Benzino="individualistic," whereas Common (whom some [wrongly] say have just made the After Bathing at Baxter's of hip-hop, who includes songs about trying and failing to pimp the music industry) is only just "conscious"?

Damn it, I'll say it again: you can place people in categories like this ONLY if you know what they're all about. Just because someone is aiming for chart hits, or used to deal drugs, does not mean that they are necessarily individualists, or that they have better beats.

And as for you, Anthony M., I don't think Eminem gets his sense of humor from J.B. OR P.E. (maybe Flav), nor do anyone else on the charts. I think Em's straight Beavis w/Kool G. Rap all the way...and I think his beats are flat. He dishonours the funk--but "Superman" is the greatest song to hit the radio in many a moon.

Ah, how things have changed..

Want this taken srsly yall and I'm a complete HH neophyte so play nice

but I've been listening to some hip-hop from the year 2010 and liking it a LOT

am talking shit like Kno, Panacea, Kokayi

anyway, this stuff has barely been mentioned once if at all on ILM, which seems an oversight for a board with a lot of hip-hop fans

kinda bummed I hadn't heard the latter two earlier otherwise I might have nominated their albums for the '10 poll - at least Kno got in there (certainly the best of the three, I'd say)

am wondering whether it'd be worth starting an alternative rolling 2011 hip-hop thread for the more obscure (NOT 'indie' ffs) stuff which the swag cru for all their <3ly natures and discerning tastes don't rly get around to talking about

want yr opinions plz :)

swag cru posts losts of obscure stuff. if you actually DO mean indie/undie/backpacker/art-rap shit i wouldn't mind a thread to post about that shit. But doubt you could actually pull it off without a bunch of sub-ethans running in there every day to make fun, tbh

anyway, I like Nocando

swag cru posts losts of obscure stuff

Oh, I'm sure! But I postsearched all of the above artists and Drugs A. Money mentioned Kno in a list of 25, the others nada. Only going by what I've seen. And they're not necessarily indie/undie/backpacker/art-rap (although...maybe sorta? Don't like drawing the distinction rly, it's all beats, samples, synths and flow, just done differently). Deej can do his worst, tbcfh.

Nocando, huh? Will check, sounds familiar - probably guested on something I like

listened to the panacea remix album a good bit last year, "the re-route", three good tracks & a boring mc iirc

year before last now, i guess - 2009

lj post about it in the rolling threads! this year it is 'gun sounds'. we all like different sounds and recommend things to each other and everyone would be cool with another contributor who likes another alternative sound. just don't get all tmi lj style.

cool but if folks start accusing me of not being troo kvlt or w/e then I'll be wasting my type y'know

also am not much of a mainstream rap bro, hope that's cool. the big boi album was good.

what is the kno solo?

thats totally cool. likes of helgeson aren't mainstream rap bros, get along just fine. in fact people are more likely to recommend stuff directly to those who aren't just mainstream rap bros as their tastes are more obvious.

Death Is Silent, fucking brilliant - rly high on Rateyourmusic's 2010 overall list in fact. Say what you want about those guys but lots of 'em have taste - I think it's a valuable resource (although I found out about Kno's album from my brother)

listening to "La Petite Mort" now (lol lj typecast) not my thing at all i gotta say

that ain't the best track but fair fucks

tbh i don't know any of the ppl mentioned in the op :(

err in the revive

kno was in undie stars cunninlynguists - they had 'seasons' with masta ace, a nice back in the days type jam complete with premo style hook

just post it in the swag thread & explain why u like it convincingly

i dont really know any of those artists except kno, id probably fuck w/ him ahead of anyone else in 'cunninlynguists' but i would rely on u to hook me up w/ youtubes & explanations for why that shit is worth my time

doing a separate thread tho is dumb imho

what deej said

talking of the gun sounds thread, how the hell have you got to 181 new answers already

bitching about the thread title, duh

oh god

Kokayi

He's the DC rapper who's been around for quite awhile, right?

yeah, dude's been around long enough to feature his own son on the new record

http://www.theonion.com/articles/there-are-people-in-world-who-are-concerned-about,32162/