classic Wu-Tang solo run poll

is cuban linx the boring pick? that's what i'm voting for anyway

cuban linx easily my least fave of all these, tbthaqf

Meth > ODB > GZA > Ghost > Rae

i would say

rae > meth > odb > gza > ghost

it is pretty wild that the ghost is prolly gonna be the weakest link in this, but is still like monumentally dope

People really like Tical that much? Okay I guess.

Oh man I call myself a Wu Tang fan, love all of Ghostface's other albums, but have never heard Ironman. Also never heard Tical in its entirety IIRC and only recently got into the ODB thanks to a dude at work :/

^the first ODB solo joint that is

rae for sure

rae is the best rapper also imho

like all the recs but how is it anything but linx -- ghost is better on it than on ironman, and i feel like rae's flow has aged the best out of all the wu mcs. rza's pinnacle of production etc etc. but it's all about rae for me, never get tired of his voice or slang

i feel like linx is something i'll never appeciate as much as everyone else

i think rae built off the clipse's template as well as anyone could've hoped

Would rank them as follows:

Ol' Dirty Bastard - Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version
Ghostface Killah - Ironman
GZA - Liquid Swords
Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...

I've still never heard Tical

i feel like linx is something i'll never appeciate as much as everyone else

― interk3llar overdrive (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 1:38 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

same here

also despite some initial deliberation this is liquid swords & it's not like thaat close even, despite the others being great. just the best shit out there

GZA>Rae>>>Meth=Ghost>>>>>>ODB

fuck outta here with that >>>>>>ODB shit

I like Liquid Swords and Return to the 36 Chambers about equally, for entirely different reasons.

Liquid Swords is lean and ruthless; Return is a sprawling mess that is alternately horrifying and the most fun thing possible.

this is liquid swords

Choose the sword, and you will join me. Choose the ball, and you join your mother... in death. You don't understand my words, but you must choose...

GZA>Raekwon>Ghost>ODB>Meth

ODB album has the weakest beats and I just don't care for ODB's schtick

GZA > Rae > ODB > Ghost > Meth

liquid swords has some corny-ass proto-grocery bag similes

"lyrics is weak ... CLOCK RADIO SPEAKERS"

rae & ghost were totally w/in character the whole time, way more visceral record, and tical never has meth saying "scriptures hit the body like sawed of shottys / like my hair knotty and my nosepiece snotty"

"lyrics is weak ... CLOCK RADIO SPEAKERS"

he says "like" in between there, come on son

pretty sure it says lyrics are weak LIKE clock radio speakers lol xpost

agreed that rae and ghost def have the best rapping, but meth and odb got the better beats imo

yeah obv -- thats why i said 'proto-'
its a simile that doesnt really add anything to the street vibe hes trying to convey

i dont think theres a better beat on any record than 'incarcertaed scarfaces' or that one that samples black ivory

tical the one i jam the most now. kinda feel like liquid swords has aged the worst outta these

is cuban linx the boring pick? that's what i'm voting for anyway

pretty sure liquid swords is the boring pick

not that i don't still like it, but the more i get into rap the worse it sounds in comparison to everything else

i dont think theres a better beat on any record than 'incarcertaed scarfaces' or that one that samples black ivory

on these records alone, i would posit "Bring The Pain," "Daytona 500," "Brooklyn Zoo," "Liquid Swords," "Duel Of The Iron Mic"...

i guess sub-question would be what;s yr fave song on any of these records...

Mine would be like a five-way tie between "Bring The Pain," "Daytona 500," "Liquid Swords," "Shimmy Shimmy Ya" and the one where ODB fucks the teacher of his oral sex class

yeah obv -- thats why i said 'proto-'
its a simile that doesnt really add anything to the street vibe hes trying to convey

Since when was Liquid Swords about "the street vibe"? "Liquid Swords" (the song) especially is all about imaginative metaphors and similies, and IMO "lyrics is weak like clock radio speakers" is a fine example of that.

i think deej's point is that it's more awkward than imaginative, but i always liked GZA's outre lyrical curveballs--"feminine like sandals," etc

I don't see how it's awkward... Instead of using some stereotypical example of weakness he comes up with a totally unexpected yet instantly understandable simile. To me that's pretty imaginative.

i get where deej is coming from... just like grocery bag stuff, it doesnt really add anything. it's just a random example of 'weak'

Aren't all similes random, when you think about it? And why should they "add" something? What is it that they're supposed to add?

Meth's album is weakest to me. The beats don't cut it.

i think GZA is really saying rapping is where he's a viking

Raekwon > GZA > ODB > Ghostface Killah > Meth

Aren't all similes random, when you think about it? And why should they "add" something? What is it that they're supposed to add?

― Tuomas, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 8:01 AM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

rappers are inhabiting a persona, and while GZA is one second rapping about "life of a drug dealer!!" apparently hes a drug dealer who spent his crack rock cash on a shitty clock radio.

i mean, i still like the album. like whiney said a lot of that stuff, esp 'feminine like sandals!!!' is still charming in its way. but yeah GZA's style is super dated sounding relative to the rest (which makes sense, hes the oldest dude in the clan right?)

slow down there, souljah boy

no h in soulja boy fyi

Aren't all similes random, when you think about it?

No; when you think about similes, you come to the inescapable conclusion that a well-formed simile is not random.

lol

Tical > Return > Liquid > Linx > Ironman

Linx is overlong and has the second least imaginative production.

also I agree w/deej that "lyrics is weak like clock radio speakers" is a lame simile but from a sonics-only reading -- poetry being 1/2 meaning and 1/2 sound & GZA being a guy who is pretty into the sounds of words -- "lyrics is weak like clock radio speakers" is pretty gorgeous

yeah that's one of the best-sounding verses on the album imo despite all goofy similes

love when a3r0smith deconstructs lyrics, he is always otm

last twothree posts otm. can't believe the depths this thread has sunk to in its 8 hours of life -- criticizing GZA's flow on Liquid Swords is like criticizing icing on cake.

nice simile!

co-sign w/whiney, nice work bernard!

funnily enough I almost went with "frosting" but decided I liked the way the long string of i's looked on the page

saying any of these five records are less then classic is just fighting words to me

yeah but that's no fun, so instead we gotta nitpick about shit like "damn those diva vocals on Cuban Linx can be annoying when I have a headache" or "what the hell is GZA talking about, it would be AWESOME to have a zodiac sign on my sweatshirt!"

rappers are inhabiting a persona, and while GZA is one second rapping about "life of a drug dealer!!" apparently hes a drug dealer who spent his crack rock cash on a shitty clock radio.

Nowhere on "Liquid Swords" (the song) does GZA claim to be a drug dealer. Can't rappers inhabit different personas on different songs? This particular tune is full of pretty wild metaphors and similies, so I don't see how "clock radio speakers" doesn't fit there. And what does the simile have to what the character in the song owns?

No; when you think about similes, you come to the inescapable conclusion that a well-formed simile is not random.

What I meant by random is that, in a simile that starts "weak like...", you can pretty much pick anything you think is weak. Of course, in order for a simile to be good the thing you choose has to be:

1) recognizable as weak (so you can't, for example, say "weak like cayenne pepper", because that makes no sense), and

2) imaginative (you can say "weak as a 90 pound weakling", but you aren't gonna impress anyone with your lyrical skills if you do that).

At least to me, "weak like clock radio speakers" fits both of these criteria.

can i just say ... UNOFFICIAL WET TISSUE

let's just be positive. where one finds linx overlong i find it epic -- especially when you get to 'heaven and hell' at the end. and on what aesthetic grounds can the production be classified as unimaginative? it's broken, fucked up, lurching and banging at the same time. the criminology>incarcerated>rainy dayz run shows off three different, equally awesome styles. on the first one alone you go from the rush of the horns to that creepy jangling sound, which is a really powerful sonic transition to these ears. and the record is filled with those moments! scarfaces has one of the all time great open hihat sounds. etc etc etc

I've always kind of underappreciated Linx but lately I've warmed up to it in a major way and I don't know what changed. just gotta stop resisting and ride the gonzo cinematic crime-opera wave, I guess.

i'm with tuomas. i like that line. and it doesn't come out of nowhere, he is talking about LYRICS which are part of MUSIC which comes out of SPEAKERS. i mean, it's hardly totally random.

yeah and it's an evocative choice of words because EVERYBODY has had a clock radio with shitty little speakers, does anyone seriously go "that really took me out of the song, because I didn't imagine GZA as the kind of guy who's had a clock radio!"

he is talking about LYRICS which are part of MUSIC which comes out of SPEAKERS. i mean, it's hardly totally random.

I could reach into my hip hop collection at random and stand a good chance of picking out an album with at least one simile much worse than this. Such a weird line to have issues with. GZA is a terrific lyricist.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090721151701AAFpzde

http://grab.by/grabs/88560dd7321eafc7b3ec6e224513b674.png

I think the Ghost one is pretty damn good. I'm surprised people here don't like it. It's even more surprising that so many like Tical. That shit sounds so half-assed and rushed, I can barely listen to it.

lmao @ "talib fiasco"

i'd rank em rae>ghost>gza>meth>odb

Iron Maiden is one of my all-time favourite opening tracks - the movie sample, the siren, the Willie Mitchell horns, the way everything but the beat cuts out for Ghost's entrance.

i'm with tuomas. i like that line. and it doesn't come out of nowhere, he is talking about LYRICS which are part of MUSIC which comes out of SPEAKERS. i mean, it's hardly totally random.

s1ocki OTM (w/ a side of lolz)

I listen to the GZA one the least but it's not because of the lyrics, it's more because the beats are sort of all over the place.

All these albums are fantastic in their own right, depends what mood I'm in.

pablo kweli

saying any of these five records are less then classic is just fighting words to me

― interk3llar overdrive (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 9:55 AM

^^

odb, gza, and rae are pretty equal in my book...ironman only SLIGHTLY off that pace...tical is great but not in the same league (still better than shitloads of rap albums tho that's how great wu was in their prime)

i think i'm voting ODB cuz granny was talking bad about it and i love ODB for all time.

i'm going to listen to liquid swords today to see if it has aged awkwardly or not but idk, that album is like perfect combination of evil cool smart shit. & a lot of the things deej is saying about clumsy similes are things i would agree with wrt gza's later stuff, he kind of atrophies after ls and loses a lot of the pungency, meanness -- all fully intact on this album though

i still think legend of the liquid swords is way underrated

ya its pretty good

i think i'm voting ODB cuz granny was talking bad about it and i love ODB for all time.

― da poupier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 11:52 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark

you have a weird family

nana always challopses about how the sunz of man album is better than nigga please

rae>gza=odb>ghost>meth i think. all close though. had LS on in the car a lot lately. sometimes rza on 4th chamber is my favorite verse

i like the clock radio lyrics -- im just saying theyve aged in a way rae's havent & sound very of their era. and yeah tuomas i think having different personas in different songs at least w/in rap music is weird & dated & unusual. 'unofficial wet tissue' is classic.

lyrics on 'gold' aged well. "waitin for the train to make noise... "

i think ppl are more forgiving of some of the more awkward lyrical turns bcuz they get buried under RZA's erm 'soundscapes' so it sounds more menacing than they would on later GZA records. doesnt change the fact that 'feminine like sandals' is a goofy thing for a dude rapping about the drug trade to say

i mean those kinds of similies are basically like, your literature/language arts teacher explaining rap music kind of goofy. its just ... dated juice crew type ish. rappers inhabit personas more fully now

would you prefer "feminine like scented candles"

seriously don't get holding "dated" sounds/styles against a musician

what kind of travesty is that fucking tattoo.

rappers inhabit personas more fully now

I feel quite the opposite; rappers now seem to me to be lame caricatures compared to the stuff on early Wu albums.

rappers inhabit personas more fully now

yeah I dunno if I would count this as a net positive. it's certainly made rap music more monotonous.

rmde x10000

I will take that as an otm directed at me :)

and to pay it forward:

sometimes rza on 4th chamber is my favorite verse

― another al3x, Wednesday, 13 October 2010 16:45 (51 minutes ago)

rmde x10000

yeah yeah we've had this argument

I think we exist in a weird transitional period where the visibility of extra-musical gossip-blog/twitter/etc stuff in relation the the music itself has increased, and the artists are aware of it and try to work it sometimes, but people aren't quite willing to extend artistic license to 'real life' shit. which I guess means that lady gaga is our only hope.

(if it wasn't clear, this is my attempt to explain the current state of rap personas)

Tical > Return > Liquid > Linx > Ironman

i mean those kinds of similies are basically like, your literature/language arts teacher explaining rap music kind of goofy. its just ... dated juice crew type ish. rappers inhabit personas more fully now

good to know rappers don't use similes anymore

"clever and/or unexpected wordplay is so dated" goes a very long way towards why I don't feel a lot of current hip-hop

shit's outdated like milk in liquor store fridges

If rappers inhabit their personas more fully now, and having different personas in different songs is "dated", you'd think that'd be a bad thing for rap music and not a good thing, as that means rap is less versatile now. Isn't there room for both approaches?

sandals are pretty fucken feminine whether you're a drug dealer or a CEO

not if you are CEO of Sandals

its just ... dated juice crew type ish.

;_;

that ish could be your life.

Not wildly enthusiastic about Meth or ODB albums. Enjoy the Ghostface okay but feels like a straight fight between Gza and Rae. Oh, who am I kidding? Liquid Swords all the way, influenced mainly by the fact that it was the only tape I had in my car for a 5-7 month period back in the day and I love Meth on this way more than anything on Tical.

i think tical 2000 judgement day is kinda underrated too

Tical was the first one released, right? presumably because Meth was viewed as the one with the most pop potential? which is funny considering how NON-pop the album ended up being. it's so sludgy and murky, even moreso than 36 Chambers

imo meth didn't really find his voice until Forever

it's so sludgy and murky, even moreso than 36 Chambers

it got waterlogged or something

1. Cuban Linx
2. Liquid Swords
3. Tical
4. Ironman
5. Return

All great, 3 & 4 could easily switch around on any given day but I've got Tical on right now, loving the sludge and murk.

yeah method man was the chosen one, the first single from 36 chambers was "method man", that says something right there. funny how his career never lived up to the early rep. if you had told ppl in '93 that ghostface's discog would slay method man's, nobody, me included, would've believed it.

I remember tical being widely dismissed on release, indie kids seemed to be the only folks who dug it.

honestly I think Method Man was singled out as the breakout star because he is the most conventionally good-looking

like, "oh this is the one the girls might conceivably like"

which is funny cuz afaict the big breakout pop star was actually ODB lol

tough call on the 1&2 spots, but my ranking would be

GZA - Liquid Swords
Ol' Dirty Bastard - Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version
Method Man - Tical
Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...
Ghostface Killah - Ironman

even though liquid swords is played out like NES controllers

u mad shakey

method man had a distinctive voice, great flow, a way with a hook, memorable rhymes & images

it was his to lose

xp

i got fat bags of skunk
i got white owl blunts
and I'm about to go get lifted

never 4get

I like the idea of Liquid Swords, and "Shadowboxing" has my favorite Meth moment ever, but it's boring and stodgy most of the time.

I'd rank them:

Ironman
Cuban Linx
ODB
Liquid Swords
Tical

i mean meth doesn't have the raw charisma of a masta killa but he does have a certain something

I'm not knockin Meth, he's great. Just noting that in retrospect tagging him as the breakout star was a little odd

I like what aero aid upthread about GZA loving the sound of words; he may contemplate them too much imo.

*said

who has the most hits of all the Wu solo guys? I would think that "Got Your Money" and ODB being on "Fantasy" trump everyone else's...? (Meth's biggest hit must have been the original Mary J. Blige version of "All I Need" right?)

xp

Meth, by far.

Meth 'n' Mary scored a #2 single. ODB has his bit on "Fantasy."

i really love tical...and obv blackout is a classic too, plus meth is one of those ppl that's always welcome on any track IMO, great guest verse dude on tons of wu-tang and others songs

shakey you are acting like he's a shit sandwich not a ticallion stallion!

the sound of words; he may contemplate them too much imo.

barring u from all future ashbery discussions/conferences/anthologies my friend!!

wow apparently I thought Got Your Money was a way bigger hit than it actually was. weird

The tenor of Meth's rhymes and often goofy presence don't really align well with the Wu sound in my opinion

I only love three Ashbery collections so fine with me.

xpost

I love all five of these albums, but am voting Liquid Swords.

there was a good piece on Wu Tang in Mojo of all places a couple of years ago...GZA came off as really...different...

he was riding around with the writer in his car and said "I don't listen to music, I only like to open the windows and listen to the sound of the wind"

he says he never listens to anything, which kinda makes sense if you listen to him, his whole style and aesthetic is so personal quirky and out of step with everything, even the wu

yeah method man was the chosen one, the first single from 36 chambers was "method man", that says something right there. funny how his career never lived up to the early rep. if you had told ppl in '93 that ghostface's discog would slay method man's, nobody, me included, would've believed it.

I'm pretty sure Meth's records have sold more than Ghostface's, even if Ghost has gotten more critical acclaim. And I assume Meth is generally the best known of the Wu rappers too, due to his movie roles. So it's not like they made a wrong decision choosing him as the breakout star.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_Man_discography

So yeah, Meth has three platinum albums whereas Ghost has only one (Ironman).

ODB's got one platinum and one gold - I kinda can't even believe the first one outsold the second.

I don't -- the first one was at the height of the Wu's permeation of pop culture. "Shimmy Shimmy Ya" was a far bigger presence than its chart peak would suggest.

same with "Incarcerated Scarfaces" and "Shadowboxing"

I'm not really concerned about who sells what to whom really

speaking of old wu-tang, house of flying daggers of OB4CL II is sooo old school wu and everyone goes so hard :)

(posting cuz i love the meth verse, but everyone is fantastic)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR7kVnh3PlI

you sold platinum round the world I sold wood in the hood

method is mvp when it comes to guest spots

Well, you did say Meth's career hasn't lived up to his early rep, but it seems he's had the most succesful career of all Wu members.

(x-post to Edward)

I'm not really concerned about who sells what to whom really

After all those sophomore albums flopped in '98 and '99, had I been in the Wu I would have.

Well, you did say Meth's career hasn't lived up to his early rep, but it seems he's had the most succesful career of all Wu members.

maybe in terms of sales but I'll take Ghost's catalog over Meth's (and over most rappers in general, tbh) any day of the week.

How do folks rate the Redman/Method Man albums?

The first one is great.

^^^

i think blackout is classic (as i said upthread)

Not heard the How High soundtrack or the sequel (Blackout 2, how imaginative.)

the first blackout is obviously fantastic. the sequel's not nearly as essential, but i recall it as being a decently fun listen nonetheless.

very distinctly remember the first time I saw this, when it went into 4th chamber it was like entering another dimension

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7h_pwp2E6Q

Well, you did say Meth's career hasn't lived up to his early rep, but it seems he's had the most succesful career of all Wu members.

maybe career was the wrong word to use, I'm not using records sales as any yardstick of merit here

otherwise we might as well rank this poll in records sold and be done with it

"clever and/or unexpected wordplay is so dated" goes a very long way towards why I don't feel a lot of current hip-hop

― GLEERILLAZ! (HI DERE), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 2:21 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

its more 'exceedingly corny wordplay is so dated' that is at issue here. or 'wordplay that breaks character'

you guys have it exactly backwards -- by becoming consistent characters rather than rappers 'performing' characters it freed MCs to play roles & inhabit them more fully & convincingly instead of being these detached 'performers' of various characters or w/e

since NWA the more grimey shit has always trumped the less grimey ish. thats why wu tang was a big deal in the 1st place -- they were coming off grimier than what was before them (which included that juice crew influenced obvious metaphor shit)

"Ima tell it to you straight / i dont need a metaphor" - t.i.

its more 'exceedingly corny wordplay is so dated' that is at issue here.

Wait, in an era where we have songs like "Bedrock" you're calling out Wu emcees for being exceedingly corny????

lol i think that song is more than corny its just awful

lyrically

the "in character" portion of your argument makes more sense to me; my big problem is that I am really not interested in most of the characters these guys are portraying

who are 'these guys'

most prominent punchline rappers nowadays really suck, which is why there's been like three famous new rappers from the northeast in the past 10 years

yeah imo punchline rappers now being shitty is more an argument against gza aging well than for him

man you dudes aren't up on IRON SOLOMON huh?

who are 'these guys'

like.. 90% of the people who are currently selling records

basically the only emcees out that I am even halfway interested in are all past-their-prime fossils

the best punchline rapper of the past three years has been... raekwon

the "in character" portion of your argument makes more sense to me; my big problem is that I am really not interested in most of the characters these guys are portraying

^^^OTM

unfortunately cliche critique of hip hop as being all just about thugs (everybody's a drug dealer, a pimp, a murderer, etc.) has sadly become MORE prescient over the years, not less

it's like jesus don't you ever get tired of this schtick, it is now almost 30 years old

"Ima tell it to you straight / i dont need a metaphor" - t.i.

= you are about to bore me

(and I say this as a guy who likes some TI)

swimsuit mammal handle

if you want a deathless onslaught of 'clever' rappers there are tons & tons of underground rappers boring the shit out of anyone who listens on a daily basis

seriously dudes just go download royce tapes & stop whinging

deej playing the backpacker card

(i love royce)

backpacker is such a weird pejorative

if you want a deathless onslaught of 'clever' rappers there are tons & tons of underground rappers boring the shit out of anyone who listens on a daily basis

I think Edan was the last backpacker I really liked and that was more for the beats than anything else cuz he wasn't all THAT clever

Liquid Swords is my favourite rap album ever but they are all great, Tical is probably the weakest.

don't know which i dislike more: current 'these guys' '90% of rappers selling today' or the posturing/condescension inherent in how rap is discussed nowadays

i'd like to know what backpack rappers a deej likes

actually maybe it's just the posturing/condescension inherent in how deej discusses rap

i like royce & crooked i. although not together and not with joe budden or especially ortiz.

backpack has nothing to do w/ it?? lots of backpack rappers dont spit this way

maybe my condescension is directly related to your boring, 1.5 decade old argument of received wisdom. can we take on HIP HOP ALBUM SKITS next??

u know what i hate?? when rappers 'go pop'!!

serious question deej: how do you approach/interpret/deal with the subject matter of the majority of mainstream rap? I'm assuming you aren't in denial about the prevalance of drug dealing/mysogny/violence/nihilism/materialism, and given that the "thug" persona rules mainstream rap in general, I just wonder what you find so interesting about infinite sub-permutations of it. Like, I'm assuming you aren't really cool with dealing coke or shooting people or fucking strippers or whatever, do you just look past all this stuff? Cuz to me, after awhile, the nihilism of it all becomes crushing. I'm not saying this kind of subject matter is unacceptable or without merit - I like plenty of music with grim subject matter, rap included (and metal and rock etc etc) - but it just seems SO dominant in mainstream rap, and so explicit and bare... I dunno how people look past it, really.

xp

fwiw this is not condescension directed at ppl like m@tt and dan who are content to listen to old dudes doing new stuff or whatever

i mean, an example of a rapper who never dealt w/ clock-radio-speakers type raps is SCARfACe who has cross-generational appeal. lots of rappers now, particularly the ones on the charts, follow the pattern of moving rap more towards the realm of persona/character instead of constructions of dense wordplay. imo, this was largely a good thing, considering how boring so many rappers 'in it for the wordplay' turn out to be

of course 99% of rappers are garbage but i dont really take every dude with a rapping myspace into account

fully aware you probably won't answer this and will just go for the zings but hey

xp

SCARfACe

I mean I'm old enough to remember when these criticisms were lodged at rap the first time around back in the 80s, but back then you could really point to a LOT of other mainstream stuff that wasn't gangsta or whatever, there really did seem to be a wider range of approaches that were explicitly NOT "underground", backpackers didn't even exist then

HOW COULD ANYONE WACTH THE SPORANOS>!??!

deej is this "moving to the realm of persona/character" a thing you can hear in the music or are you talking about branding/twitter or something? Cuz I don't recall rappers from previous decades being particularly short on persona or character

serious question deej: how do you approach/interpret/deal with the subject matter of the majority of mainstream rap? I'm assuming you aren't in denial about the prevalance of drug dealing/mysogny/violence/nihilism/materialism, and given that the "thug" persona rules mainstream rap in general, I just wonder what you find so interesting about infinite sub-permutations of it. Like, I'm assuming you aren't really cool with dealing coke or shooting people or fucking strippers or whatever, do you just look past all this stuff? Cuz to me, after awhile, the nihilism of it all becomes crushing. I'm not saying this kind of subject matter is unacceptable or without merit - I like plenty of music with grim subject matter, rap included (and metal and rock etc etc) - but it just seems SO dominant in mainstream rap, and so explicit and bare... I dunno how people look past it, really.

xp

― i was like a person at a table at a place (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 6:34 PM (47 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i easily get tired of lots of rappers working in this vein btw -- its what i found kind of crushing about freddie gibbs. the answer is that variation in style & substance can make up for a lot of 'depressing topics,' and also that just because topics are depressing doesnt mean that i dont think we shouldnt face them? i dunno i mean ppl still post to the politics thread daily & imo thats a much more oppressive & nihilistic exercise on some level.

i enjoy the musicality of it, and it seems to me that a lot of times when ppl get excited about 'wordplay' rappers its part escapism & partly just ... not whats fun about music. i like rappers who have musical approaches, and unique approaches. im not really excited by guys who are doing rote styles either! i mean isnt the fundamental thing here that i find say gucci or waka to be unusual, interesting stylists, while you find them to be typical/generic? i mean swag cru and old heads (& ppl who make up both groups like m@tt) often find common ground in old-head rap debates but i kinda like how this raekwon / gza argument shows that its aesthetics at stake here, not 'subject matter' -- so im not really sure how your question relates to the issue at hand.

i like rappers who are convincing / consistent. the less frequently im taken out of the world they're creating the more likely i seem to be to want to hear their tracks again & again. After a few years GZA's stuff just makes me feel like im listening to a dude who was rapping really well for his time, but wasnt really ready for the changes that were coming in rap style. where ghost in the immediate future & rae in a kind of timeless roughneck way were on the cutting edge of stylistic developments

deej is this "moving to the realm of persona/character" a thing you can hear in the music or are you talking about branding/twitter or something? Cuz I don't recall rappers from previous decades being particularly short on persona or character

― da croupier, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 6:40 PM (30 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nothing about twitter -- im talking about the way their aesthetic choices become more ... consistent? all-encompassing? there are lots of older rappers who i would argue 'aged well' because their rapping stayed consistent, in character etc. -- thinking Too $hort, rakim, even schoolly d. and there are others where stuff just doesnt age as well. this doesnt make it less important, it just means im less likely to listen to it -- a lot of Run DMC stuff today sounds a lil silly. this is the nature of the context of the present -- thinking 'call me sire'-type Run DMC lyrics. or LL saying he'll take a musclebound man and put his face in the sand.

Don't see what Run-DMC's datedness has to do with a lack of persona/character/consistency

btw my favorite recent 'playing with context' bit of rap writing i posted on fruity swag thread the other day -- j0rdan pointed it out to me --
http://realniggatumblr.tumblr.com/post/1293579216/lost-boyz-feat-canibus-dogg-pound-music-makes

The deaths of BIG & Pac gave birth too many random (and sometimes unnecessary) collaborations between East Coast & West Coast artist. There’s a bunch of big titty bitches at a pool party mean while Canibus is talking about murdering people and burying their bodies on another planet

geographical context can have stuff seeming 'more' or 'less' corny, or in this case LOL, as well

I don't understand when/why "the entertaining guy with the funky-fresh flow" stopped being a compelling 'persona'

Don't see what Run-DMC's datedness has to do with a lack of persona/character/consistency

― da croupier, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 6:45 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dunno, that rappers saying you should 'call them sire' isnt really a 'character'? it breaks the consistency of a person playing a role other than 'rapper'? it totally takes me out of the song & sounds kinda 'silly'?

thumbs up to any discussion that forces a multi-graf, interesting, non-knee-jerk think-through from deej instead of "oh no your argument is old & therefore invalid" -- as if something that sucks for longer than a year magically stops sucking because we failed to stop it early

fwiw i dont mean artistic consistency, i mean holding together a consistent persona that is fleshed out more than 'really good rapper'

did they do "call me sire" more than once & anywhere else than in the context of a song called, bolded for emphasis here, king of rap

I could be wrong but I think the sire bit is like maybe a reference to the king part

just thinkin out loud here

I think I get what you prefer in rappers - a kind of earthbound straightforwardness that doesn't risk embarrassment through flights of fancy - I just don't think it has anything to with having more "persona". I love workmanlike singer-songwriters like JJ Cale but I wouldn't say he has more "persona/character" than Neil Young.

the failure of which doesnt necessarily make for bad music or anything -- obv run dmc are totally classic & awesome & i do listen to them, same with gza, its just this kind of ability to withstand current trends that puts cuban linx or schoolly d slightly ahead in my playlist

I think I get what you prefer in rappers - a kind of earthbound straightforwardness that doesn't risk embarrassment through flights of fancy - I just don't think it has anything to with having more "persona". I love workmanlike singer-songwriters like JJ Cale but I wouldn't say he has more "persona/character" than Neil Young.

― da croupier, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 6:51 PM (13 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nah thats not it -- if they have 'flights of fancy' i just want those flights to be consistent to the character making them.
husalah does this all the time ...

A yo the Husalah shines on the steet
But at night the bright lights will have it bright enough
Picture this a million stones, I got brand new kicks
The world is ours you understand it huh? Sometimes I get too deep

A yo the Husalah shines on the steet
But at night the bright lights will have it bright enough
Picture this a million stones, I got brand new kicks
The world is ours you understand it huh? Sometimes I get too deep

what the fuck does all this really mean? i dunno its pretty 'out there' -- but it fits into his character, which is supposed to be pretty 'out there'

the answer is that variation in style & substance can make up for a lot of 'depressing topics,' and also that just because topics are depressing doesnt mean that i dont think we shouldnt face them?

this is kinda what I expected you to say, more or less. I guess my problem with so much of it is that the variations I hear don't make up ENOUGH for me, they seem kinda minor a lot of the time. as for facing depressing topics, I guess I've been facing coke-dealing thug topics in music for 30 years and I can't say I, or society in general, is any better for it. If anything things are even WORSE now than they were in the 80s. I guess I know more about coke dealing than I would have otherwise, and it sounds like the life of a coke dealer sucks pretty bad. the subject matter has just become background noise for society in general, it's just taken for granted, it's like that's just what you can EXPECT rap to be about, it's "just the way it is" *shrug*

many xposts

I don't understand when/why "the entertaining guy with the funky-fresh flow" stopped being a compelling 'persona'

― rmde and dangerous (bernard snowy), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 11:47 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

what the fuck does all this really mean? i dunno its pretty 'out there' -- but it fits into his character, which is supposed to be pretty 'out there'

and LL and Run-DMC's grandiosity does fit into their characters?

or like canibus talking about burying bodies on other planets -- when the video isnt canibus wearing shades at a pool party, im into that. when ll cool j is rapping in 'love u better' im into that. when mf doom is being goofy on doomsday. when cam'ron is being weird on purple haze. when royce is rapping about a dude getting his dick cut off like it was a twilight zone episode. these are all weird & goofy

of course i can appreciate raps where the rappers break character too -- im not setting up rules or something about what kind of rap i like -- but im just saying that there are certain tendencies rap has gravitated towards over the years, and as a result some artists material ages better than others

doesn't, I mean xpost

the novelty wears off

but somewhere, forever, there's always a group of people insisting that the novelty will never ever wear off, which is basically where we're at with coke rap these days imo

if u don't believe me may I invite you to some Richie Blackmore forums

and LL and Run-DMC's grandiosity does fit into their characters?

― da croupier, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 6:56 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

imo it keeps them from creating a realistic character -- im not sure whats complicated about this. it works the same way in literature -- sometimes a character can be TotALly WACKY but is well-drawn, and sometimes a character can be very serious but poorly drawn, and vice versa. im talking about how the characters are drawn, not the nature of the character itself

mandatory disclosure, at least 40% of my listening is instrumental guitar-solo rock these days :(

but somewhere, forever, there's always a group of people insisting that the novelty will never ever wear off, which is basically where we're at with coke rap these days imo

― drawl the whine (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 6:57 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

and so you have dudes who seem like an extreme reaction to this i.e. drake

or like ... curren$y is one of my favorite rappers~! & his whole thing is not at all rapping about coke/drugs/guns but just being a chill stoner dude. there are entire scenes of non-coke rap out there fwiw

& i mean what do you tell a rapper like j stalin, actual crack baby who sold drugs when he was young & turned to rap -- 'sorry your life story is passe!'

certain tendencies rap has gravitated towards over the years

& imo his stuff proves that there's still room for new narratives within the extremely broad fake-concept 'coke rap' -- hes about as many miles from the clipse as he is from del the funkee homosapien

what does this even mean??? because if you're talking mainstream success, you basically have to bracket out Lil Wayne's weirdness, Soulja Boy's playfulness, Drake's retarded LL Cool J suaveness, etc.
― rmde and dangerous (bernard snowy), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:01 PM (19 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

why are you guy still conflating 'weirdness' with 'well drawn characters'??

you're treating "realism" and "rap" as though they were linked on some basic conceptual level, as though it didn't take YEARS to get from raps about how well you rap to raps about WHAT IT'S LIKE ON THE STREETS

ok saying that trends in rap have made some older rappers sound more dated than others - got that, kinda obvious - but your examples of rappers breaking "character" sound pretty arbitrary. I mean LL's all about saying he's a cartoonish macho man, Run-DMC were royalty from the word go. it really feel like you're conflating a dislike of datedness with a desire for "realness" with fondess for consistency as if all the reasons you like the stuff you like follow one clear thru-line.

and as for the idea that rappers are more "well drawn characters" now...yeah, I'm not seeing it.

yeah but thats the thing croupier of course it doesnt work like that! like any musical debate its about whether it works for me subjectively when u get down to it -- its not like im coming up w/ some set rockist standards for 'sounds dated' 'sounds timeless,' its just how i hear the music & then describe my reactions

why are you guy still conflating 'weirdness' with 'well drawn characters'??

― j. sargent & lil k3v (deej), Thursday, October 14, 2010 12:02 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

I mean LL's all about saying he's a cartoonish macho man, Run-DMC were royalty from the word go.

i may have been misleading here. im talking about them not thinking about being characters, just being regular dudes who were good rappers. they were just 'them.' the im not a rapper im a trapper thing comes later (or im not a rapper im an arty weirdo, im not a rapper im a prophet, im not a rapper im FLOCkA!)

fwiw I never get tired of dudes rapping about how stoned they are, to me that's just fun. it's just...like...I smoked a fair amount of crack in my wild days. you know what exactly ZERO crack slingers I knew were? cool. or successful. or rich. or well-liked. they were pretty much all scumbags. the crack dealer big-player persona who doesn't sell in his own neighborhood and holds to an ethical code which he would sooner die than violate , afaik, is fiction. it's decent fiction, sometimes, but it's been done to death at this point, and it can't be defended on the "that's reality" point in my opinion. I'll always listen to Ghost telling dope stories, because his storytelling is fucking incredible. biggie's before-you-knew-me stuff is obviously all-time. but for the most part, to tell an interesting crack dealer story at this point, that's how good a writer you'd have to be: ghostface level. biggie level. not a lot of cats will even be on that level for five minutes in their lives imo so maybe scoping out new territory wouldn't go amiss

its not like im coming up w/ some set rockist standards for 'sounds dated' 'sounds timeless,' its just how i hear the music & then describe my reactions

and when you use broad generalizations about how people are moving from hyperbolic wordplay to more consistent "personas" (as if those were inherently opposed), people are gonna try to unpack them and probably criticize them

and as for the idea that rappers are more "well drawn characters" now...yeah, I'm not seeing it.

― da croupier, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:05 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im saying theyre more constructed now. & that as time goes on, those constructs require becoming more & more well crafted -- its like an arms race thing

of course they're broad generalizations! youre talking about an art form w/ thousands of performers

think of it like this -- there are dudes doing wordplay
those guys become more marginal as time goes on
because of that marginalization, older artists that may have inspired them may seem less significant to the overall arc of history
artists who may have unintentionally anticipated these broader changes seem more prescient, their reputations more intact

my observation is that folks who recognized that rap was turning towards more constructed personas, that the 'artfulness' of rap was no longer all about wordplay, that it was about developing into consistent characters & fleshing those out & making those artfully realistic, were the ones who have aged better

deej I would be willing to buy the argument that within the (sub-)genre of coke rap (or whatever-rap), as defined by its broad generic constraints, there are dudes today who are as innovative and awesome and crucial as anyone ever, and that they have probably gotten to that point by developing stories and characters and shedding 'foreign elements' that had roots in the pre-coke-rap era like goofy similes or whatever -- but I absolutely categorically refuse to admit that this says something about "rap" as a whole, especially when it has developed parallel to the mainstream rap scene that recently gave us GROCERY BAG

imo, shouty 'you can call me sire!' rap doesnt anticipate the kind of turn rap would take the way rakim's persona & personality would on 'paid in full'

COKE RAP IS NOT A SUBGENRE OR GENRE

IT IS A CONSTRUCT Of A HANDFUL OF RAP WRITERS WHO REALLY likED THE CLIPSE & oVERRATED THE NEPTUNES

rakim had a different flow, but i'm pretty sure he thought you could call him sire

think of it like this -- there are dudes doing wordplay
those guys become more marginal as time goes on

finding it a little ironic you think I'm reductive about rap when you're on this "wordplay is out, real is in!" tip

deej I would be willing to buy the argument that within the (sub-)genre of coke rap (or whatever-rap), as defined by its broad generic constraints, there are dudes today who are as innovative and awesome and crucial as anyone ever, and that they have probably gotten to that point by developing stories and characters and shedding 'foreign elements' that had roots in the pre-coke-rap era like goofy similes or whatever -- but I absolutely categorically refuse to admit that this says something about "rap" as a whole, especially when it has developed parallel to the mainstream rap scene that recently gave us GROCERY BAG

― rmde and dangerous (bernard snowy), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:13 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

but on the rest of your point, yeah there's been a recent shift in this direction -- my hypothesis would be that this is a temporary shift towards corny similies (& drake's recent "i dont rap like that any more its played out" thing suggests i might be right) that was a result of lil wayne's huge popularity. obv it could shift punchline rappers back into fashion -- but you're still talking about dudes w/in the vein of lil wayne which is (gasp) "coke rap" (which doesnt really exist but i assume you mean the stuff that came out of cash money would qualify in your imaginary genre)

finding it a little ironic you think I'm reductive about rap when you're on this "wordplay is out, real is in!" tip

― da croupier, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:17 PM (36 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you think GZA style wordplay is really hot right now?

Waka isnt one of the most popular rappers out right now?

rakim had a different flow, but i'm pretty sure he thought you could call him sire

― da croupier, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:16 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

... and yet he would never say it in a corny way like that

"The word 'precursor' is indispensable to the vocabulary of criticism, but one must try to purify it from any connotation of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that each writer creates his precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future."

croupier i know this theory doesnt fit into your bias towards music that is un-selfaware and silly (when not performed by the electric 6) but i dont think im really saying anything radical here

"The word 'precursor' is indispensable to the vocabulary of criticism, but one must try to purify it from any connotation of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that each writer creates his precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future."

― rmde and dangerous (bernard snowy), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:19 PM (10 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hey im totally flexible here!! who knows what could happen. im just HYPOTHESIZING

i remember when metal dudes used to get all mad and tell you "speed metal" wasn't a genre

you guys, dont you realize sean f & nick sylvester basically created 'coke rap' in a pfork staffboard lab back in '06

... and yet he would never say it in a corny way like that

i know you're on this "hey it's all subjective" thing, but to act like there's a demonstrative difference between Run-DMC saying "sucker MCs should call me sire" and Rakim's "I melted microphones instead of cones of ice cream" is pretty absurd

how else are we supposed to evaluate art? i hear a pretty qualitative difference between those two quotes. if you dont think one sounds cornier than the other then, ok, you dont. but i think its pretty self-evident, even if subjective

anyway im going to dinner yall have fun play nice

are you saying rakim is just less corny? cuz you previously said shouty 'you can call me sire!' rap doesnt anticipate the kind of turn rap would take the way rakim's persona & personality would on 'paid in full' and well, both were braggarts!

you guys, dont you realize sean f & nick sylvester basically created 'coke rap' in a pfork staffboard lab back in '06

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/10/12/arts/13sann.1.184.jpg

are you saying rakim is just less corny? cuz you previously said shouty 'you can call me sire!' rap doesnt anticipate the kind of turn rap would take the way rakim's persona & personality would on 'paid in full' and well, both were braggarts!

― da croupier, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:26 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what does bragging have to do w/ this?

couldnt resist a refresh

i hear a pretty qualitative difference between those two quotes.

the thing is this: if you can't state what that qualitative difference is in formal terms, then you oughtn't assert a difference; you should just say that you prefer one to the other. imo.

what does bragging have to do w/ this?

so by "persona & personality" i guess you mean flow and not persona & personality

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/10/12/arts/13sann.1.184.jpg

― drawl the whine (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:27 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

thats a t shirt not a genre

RIP the Luniz Condom genre of Sex Rap

so by "persona & personality" i guess you mean flow and not persona & personality

― da croupier, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:29 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

flow is a part of personality -- this is so obvious that i swear you are trolling

aesthetics are a part of personality

you're right deej

hardly anybody rapping about dealing coke

it's more a blown out of proportion by the media thing

i give up

i remember reading a like four-page story on coke-rap in XXL

i love the idea that the notion of "coke rap" was started by sylvester & sean f on the pfork staff board -- it's very tea party

xp @ deep YOU WERE THE GUY USING ONE DUDE'S FORMER-CRACK-BABY STATUS FOR POINTS ON A THREAD a few minutes ago, btw

seriously, if you can't see how the rapper who rapped smooth and fast about how great he was and the rappers who rapped slow and loud about how great they were share similar "personas & personality"...fine.

i hope shakey can appreciate a conspiracy theory of this level

xp @ deep

very unfortunate typo

dude I'm pretty sure you know what I mean by "coke rap". but maybe you don't? so I dunno, lemme try to spell out what bugs me about this whole conversation:

- You think GZA's style sounds played-out; other people don't. So far, no problem.
- You attribute this to his use of certain forms of 'wordplay' which have since fallen out of fashion.
- You attribute this falling-out-of-fashion to an increased emphasis on 'persona/character'.
- You posit that rappers who never succumbed to the temptations of wordplay were objectively better ("timeless") thanks to their uncanny foresight into the future evolution of rap, or what-the-fuck-ever.
- Numerous people protest that both wordplay and persona have been part of rap from the start; that it's pretty silly to talk about an overall "direction" of something which continues to evolve and change; that you're using a narrow criterion of 'persona' that tautologically asserts the superiority of -- surprise! -- the very same stylistic devices that rappers with those personas tend to have used to construct them, while consigning everything else to some realm of naive outdated 'character-breaking' shit; and probably some other arguments, because JESUS MAN

(many xposts, obv)

and I might be talkin' to a dude who's not even here anymore

oh don't worry, he'll be back

should i put out the gucci call?

if the "paper planes" argument taught us anything, it's that a little dinner is not gonna come in between a depressingly long argument b/w deej & miccio

haha i said i'm done! should have learned from that that trying to unpack his terminology just gets you a lot of "hey it's all subjective man" jive. Apologies to everybody that just wanted to rank the wu debuts

"there's no such thing as a crime novel - crime is an element in many novels, but to then group all which adhere to some fairly strict constraints of tone & style & theme under the term 'crime novels' is just insane"

I have had to come back and refresh this thread three times before getting a chance to say but

So yeah, Meth has three platinum albums whereas Ghost has only one (Ironman).

Four if you count Blackout! That discography is also really interesting to note how generous Meth has been about appearing on almost any other Clan solo album that wants him, which has an additional effect of increasing his “brand awareness,” as a business-minded coke dealer might say

i never even thought GZA was especially cokey. dude always talked about mind elevation and dickhead record labels are iirc

i hope shakey can appreciate a conspiracy theory of this level

reminds me of the '86 secret meeting in Vienna where Geir invented power pop

he did bring out the girls for a mud fight that one time

xp

this is some bullshit

the everybody vs deej pileon i mean

- You posit that rappers who never succumbed to the temptations of wordplay were objectively better ("timeless") thanks to their uncanny foresight into the future evolution of rap, or what-the-fuck-ever.

bullshit

learn to read?

i remember reading a like four-page story on coke-rap in XXL

― rusko p. coltrane (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes a cynical piece in xxl written in the wake of critics obsession with the clipse

hardly anybody rapping about dealing coke

it's more a blown out of proportion by the media thing

― drawl the whine (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i never said 'no one was rapping about coke' i said it wasnt a genre, its just an aspect of life that happens to be covered by rappers a lot because of where it happens to have a huge fucking impact. its not an aesthetic of musical creation

seriously, if you can't see how the rapper who rapped smooth and fast about how great he was and the rappers who rapped slow and loud about how great they were share similar "personas & personality"...fine.

― da croupier, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:31 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

this is like offensively stupid

- Numerous people protest that both wordplay and persona have been part of rap from the start; that it's pretty silly to talk about an overall "direction" of something which continues to evolve and change; that you're using a narrow criterion of 'persona' that tautologically asserts the superiority of -- surprise! -- the very same stylistic devices that rappers with those personas tend to have used to construct them, while consigning everything else to some realm of naive outdated 'character-breaking' shit; and probably some other arguments, because JESUS MAN

― rmde and dangerous (bernard snowy), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think you can talk about broad trends & tendencies w/out throwing up your hands & saying "who knows whats actually happening! its all so complicated!!"

yes a cynical piece in xxl written in the wake of critics obsession with the clipse

― j. sargent & lil k3v (deej), Thursday, October 14, 2010 8:57 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

written btw by kris ex who was v much interacting w this world

hahaha oh my

i hear xxl did their "Shyne: The last real rapper alive" cover in response to Joe Tangari's Cloud Nothing's review

i didn't wanna pile on but it's not like your ideas are developed or clear here, and you getting angry when ppl are dickish doesn't make u get clearer.

deej in 10... 9... 8...

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/scanners.gif

i hear xxl did their "Shyne: The last real rapper alive" cover in response to Joe Tangari's Cloud Nothing's review

― gr80 antebellum (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, October 14, 2010 9:01 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i heard whiney is a moron & actually yeah the rap blogosphere was a lot smaller back then ... kris ex would post comments on dk from ilx's blog! he was absolutely responding to the 'coke rap' stuff being written about exclusively (at that time) by pfork

& 'coke rap' is meaningless. its not a genre. or subgenre. its just common subject matter for music that comes from the inner city SHOCKER

i pile on for my city, on on for my city...
i pile oooooon

i never even thought GZA was especially cokey. dude always talked about mind elevation and dickhead record labels are iirc

― rusko p. coltrane (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 8:09 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

maybe listen to his album

the difference between me and you is that my statements are like "well i never really thought of it this way" and yours are like "the way you think of it is wrong"

its just common subject matter for music that comes from the inner city major label record execs SHOCKER

deej, i'm gonna go work now, go argue with the other 500 people itt calling you an idiot

pulled Tical off the shelf today and holy shit, I'd sort of forgotten how much I like this

haha i said i'm done! should have learned from that that trying to unpack his terminology just gets you a lot of "hey it's all subjective man" jive. Apologies to everybody that just wanted to rank the wu debuts

― da croupier, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

wow youre so reasonable!!

for some stupid reason I only have Tical and Ironman; this thread is making me want to change that immediately

xp @ deep YOU WERE THE GUY USING ONE DUDE'S FORMER-CRACK-BABY STATUS FOR POINTS ON A THREAD a few minutes ago, btw

― drawl the whine (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i wasnt using it for 'points' u goof i was pointing out how you treating REAL LIFE SHIT like its some kind of tasteless 'trend' is offensive

you're treating "realism" and "rap" as though they were linked on some basic conceptual level, as though it didn't take YEARS to get from raps about how well you rap to raps about WHAT IT'S LIKE ON THE STREETS

wait, waht

I mean, I was going to stay out of this but how the hell can this be considered anything but crazy talk given that "The Message" is routinely considered to be one of the greatest hip-hop tracks of all time?

(I kind of want to go into early party-record hip-hop as a modern iteration of plantation music sung by a downtrodden people to uplift themselves as well, making it a direct reaction to the real-life situations many of the early emcees dealt with but I'd be regurgitating other people's words and not really making my own arguments, plus you probably know that argument already.)

for some stupid reason I only have Tical and Ironman; this thread is making me want to change that immediately

oh man return to the 36 chambers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrv3SSpncPM

xpost HIDERE OTM

even by recorded hip-hop's second year, "The Breaks" was pretty much a take on real-life economic woes and systemic racism, albeit a comical one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-HQR2-s1J4

just in case y'all haven't been to the mesopotamia of gangsta rap:

1983!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkXMlPKAo7I

I'd like to remind deej that the rappin' duke carried a gun

hi dere was addressing bernard snowy tho

& 'coke rap' is meaningless. its not a genre. or subgenre. its just common subject matter for music that comes from the inner city SHOCKER

http://hoodhype.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/jeezy_1000_grams.jpg

I don't know anything about how you came up deej but I will tell you that afaik there are many realities to life in poor neighborhoods and importing multiple kilos of coke doesn't actually constitute such a massive % of it that you're cheating "reality" to not make it the centerpiece of your entire career. or to make it such a key (lol) aspect of yr schtick that magazines that like you & are trying to keep your profile up, not just dumbshit herbs like me call your genre "coke rap."

I mean really dude

"sure there are some songs about coke, coke's a reality in the inner city" is really soft-soaping the disproportionate representation of the coke dealer in rap - if there was actually that much coke around I would be high right now instead of arguing with a fellow liberal arts grad about what life is like in the "inner city." do goregrind freaks complain about the term "goregrind"? no man. it's grind with gore-focused lyrics. it is fair to call it "goregrind."

but gore happens in the inner city!

Call it Coke-Hop and I'm sold.

aerosmith otm again

i've never exactly been to the inner city think the solid decade and a half where gangsta rappers talked about being broke, being harassed by racist cops, the looming threat of random violence and the broken judicial system are probably more accurate realities than the mid-00s winter wonderland where everyone was a big-balling coke dealer

*been to the inner city BUT I think

it's funny to me that coke rap is playing into this discussion in 2010--well i guess fantasy coke rap is still a thing but i'd love to hear more gritty shit and it seems like a lot of the most popular rappers are just worlds away from that.

j0hn yr arguing w something i never said / i was talking about J STALIN not YOUNG JEEZY -- v diff perfomers here

& i mean what do you tell a rapper like j stalin, actual crack baby who sold drugs when he was young & turned to rap -- 'sorry your life story is passe!'

― j. sargent & lil k3v (deej), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wait, waht

I mean, I was going to stay out of this but how the hell can this be considered anything but crazy talk given that "The Message" is routinely considered to be one of the greatest hip-hop tracks of all time?

(I kind of want to go into early party-record hip-hop as a modern iteration of plantation music sung by a downtrodden people to uplift themselves as well, making it a direct reaction to the real-life situations many of the early emcees dealt with but I'd be regurgitating other people's words and not really making my own arguments, plus you probably know that argument already.)

― GLEERILLAZ! (HI DERE), Thursday, October 14, 2010 2:32 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark

speaking of coke-rap, when's that new BERNARD SNOWY mixtape coming out?

like this may be a hopelessly retarded question but how did we get from "gza was on some proto-grocery bag ish" to "gza failed to predict trends in rap"--or are we just excluding that subset of popular rappers from the conversation?

OK I forget how good this was:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dumqStn1oQY

deej you 1) argued that the term "coke rap" is offensive & inaccurate and 2) said this: & 'coke rap' is meaningless. its not a genre. or subgenre. its just common subject matter for music that comes from the inner city SHOCKER

that is the line I am taking issue with

you said it

I quoted you

I am not "arguing with something you never said"

I am arguing with your acceptance of a caricature of inner city life that sells out all the struggling people who live there in favor of scarface fantasy bullshit, which caricature is what's offensive, not grouping a bunch of guys who romanticize poisoning their neighborhoods together under one term like "coke rap"

I am not "arguing with something you never said"

I am arguing with your acceptance of a caricature of inner city life that sells out all the struggling people who live there in favor of scarface fantasy bullshit, which caricature is what's offensive, not grouping a bunch of guys who romanticize poisoning their neighborhoods together under one term like "coke rap"

― drawl the whine (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Thursday, October 14, 2010 10:18 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

im arguing that the scarface fantasy is popular in the inner city, not that its ACCURATE

I am not "arguing with something you never said"

yes, you are

im arguing that the scarface fantasy is popular in the inner city, not that its ACCURATE

this is a breathtaking mid-stream horse change & I salute you for it

Good to see nothing about deej has changed in all these years.

aerosmith basically saying what I'm thinking here

jsut like to add that there's a weird disconnect between asserting that the prevalence of coke-dealing themes in modern hip hop is a reflection of "reality" while at the same time arguing that rappers these days are more well-defined aesthetic creations/personas than they were in the past - like, which one is it, fiction or non-fiction. is all this coke-themed stuff acceptable because it's REAL-LIFE REPORTING or because it's just a harmless cartoon? personally I think both positions are still basically suspect...

xp

im arguing that the scarface fantasy is popular in the inner city

where the hell did this come from...? I assume you're aware that "scarface fantasies" are even MORE popular outside of the inner city and maybe that's why so many rappers go to it - cuz that's where the money/major overlapping audience $$$ is...?

btw I apologize for this thread derail to anyone who was hoping for yet another nuanced discussion of the Wu-era

im arguing that the scarface fantasy is popular in the inner city, not that its ACCURATE

this is a breathtaking mid-stream horse change & I salute you for it

― drawl the whine (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Thursday, October 14, 2010 10:23 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

how so??? all i said was as quoted by you "coke rap' is meaningless. its not a genre. or subgenre. its just common subject matter for music that comes from the inner city SHOCKER"

i never said anything abt 'real life reporting'

you jumped to conclusions

http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t314/onlygirl_1/backpeddling.gif

I'm going to keep osting clips:

Hey, look, ODB taught me about Jim Croce

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzHC6dxhVOc

& i mean what do you tell a rapper like j stalin, actual crack baby who sold drugs when he was young & turned to rap -- 'sorry your life story is passe!'

― j. sargent & lil k3v (deej), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

he does

http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t314/onlygirl_1/backpeddling.gif

― gr80 antebellum (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, October 14, 2010 10:36 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

quote me saying otherwise you dishonest arguing dork

i never said anything abt 'real life reporting'

vs.

i mean what do you tell a rapper like j stalin, actual crack baby who sold drugs when he was young & turned to rap -- 'sorry your life story is passe!'

I mean come on dude this is just... waht

listening to dude now and I am really enjoying him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4MoHtk1UUw

possibly because... this sounds like it could have come out in '94

he does

― j. sargent & lil k3v (deej), Thursday, October 14, 2010 3:40 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

unusual details in wikipedia articles

RZA has stated Ennio Morricone, Mark E. Smith, Syl Johnson, Marley Marl, Augustus Pablo and Danny Elfman as musicians he is fond of and has taken influence from.

why is that unusual...?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAonsDOKD84&feature=related

xp Mark E Smith is pretty unexpected I gotta say.

btw, I've never listened to this dude but probably I would say something along the lines of: "can't you rap about anything else?"

― rmde and dangerous (bernard snowy), Thursday, October 14, 2010 3:37 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

he does

― j. sargent & lil k3v (deej), Thursday, October 14, 2010 3:40 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol I say this as a guy who loves oakland/bay area rap a lot & repsects stalin's flow but "he does" here means he also addresses human sexuality, e.g. 'When you see the dick, don't act retarded'

And also apparently not true according to google.

? http://www.dapslyrics.com/j-stalin/last-night-lyrics/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxz0fOUj0Hk

1:21

I may be an asshole Alex but I wouldn't misquote somebody to win an argument w/deej when he'll have changed positions in a few more posts anyway

that's pretty rich coming from someone who said "coke rap" was a genre with "fairly strict" definition up thread and is now all like, these sex raps don't uplift the ghetto.

xp sorry I was talking about RZA being a Mark E Smith fan.

i never said anything abt 'real life reporting'

vs.

i mean what do you tell a rapper like j stalin, actual crack baby who sold drugs when he was young & turned to rap -- 'sorry your life story is passe!'

I mean come on dude this is just... waht

― i was like a person at a table at a place (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, October 14, 2010 10:41 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this isnt contradictory at all. Cocaine in inner cities is real. it inspires both realism- based rap & grandiose scarface fantasies. its not a genre, its a fact of life that difft ppl deal with differently. its not something that CAN be 'passe' -- certain APPROACHES can be passe.

and my argument here is relentlessly consistent

http://weeklydaily.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/BillClintonSadFace.jpg

cocaine in inner cities is kinda fake actually

in ny maybe

although 'inner cities' is more & more inaccurate

it's inconsistent to simply say "call me sire" is out of character in a way "don corleone hold the throne, that you know in your heart" isn't. it's inconsistent to dog gibbs or odd future for misogyny that you forgive in YG. it's inconsistent to co-opt rakim for a move away from rapping abt rapping and wordplay. it's inconsistent for a rap fan to be even dogging on wordplay. from a dude who can connect "lemonade" to "more colors". these just seem arbitrary distinctions based on ineffable likes and dislikes rather than "charisma" or "character" being all-important.

hey whiney have you actually pointed out one example of backpedalling or self-contradiction yet? no? stfu

gee what a surprise deej arguing with 3 or more people in a thread

and my argument here is relentlessly consistent

it's just the pile-on mentality that has everbody pointing out supposed inconsistencies right

like you know what else is a reality, a much more prevalent one, than the drug dealer? the drug addict. res ipsa loquitur, to have a drug dealer you're going to need a customer base. but the reality of the addict & his suffering family and community - can you point me to a realism that addresses this for more than a verse or two? maybe one album from that standpoint? or to album sleeves with guys who've got hepatitis from dirty needles, hitting up their families for money, or losers doing three-year bids having no fun at all because prison actually kinda sucks? (nb if you don't think those stories are every bit as compelling as stories of dealers then man I have issues w/yr priorities straight up.) Cocaine in "inner cities" is real. The rap that it inspires is almost entirely focused on how it's either awesome to deal, or a burden to have to deal in order to make money, and it's deeply cynical. imo. and I think the audience for it is as much white guys who wouldn't know a kilo if it landed on their doorstep as it is people in poor neighborhoods who have to live next door to scumbag dealers. I still like the stuff when it's stories well told, who'm I kidding, I listen to goregrind, that shit is foul. but I don't make the argument (made by some gore freaks) that because serial killers exist, it's 'realistic' to have body counts in the thousands album after album. it's kinda bullshit, really, on both counts.

consistency is the etc etc oh whatever

"it's inconsistent to dog gibbs or odd future for misogyny that you forgive in YG. "

its not about that -- in gibbs case, its that crimes can be forgiven by aesthetics. but when u are an aesthetic retread its hard for me to think anything but 'whats the point of this'

in odd future, the misogyny isnt the casual "i like one night stands -- ok now leave my house" its "I RAPED HER"

if you cant see a diff in tone then i dont know
& of COURSE we're talking about taste not objective rules abt what is 'good music' -- i never make those presumptions & no one ever does. we're always debating taste on here. should go w/out saying

ke you know what else is a reality, a much more prevalent one, than the drug dealer? the drug addict. res ipsa loquitur, to have a drug dealer you're going to need a customer base. but the reality of the addict & his suffering family and community - can you point me to a realism that addresses this for more than a verse or two? maybe one album from that standpoint? or to album sleeves with guys who've got hepatitis from dirty needles, hitting up their families for money, or losers doing three-year bids having no fun at all because prison actually kinda sucks? (nb if you don't think those stories are every bit as compelling as stories of dealers then man I have issues w/yr priorities straight up.) Cocaine in "inner cities" is real. The rap that it inspires is almost entirely focused on how it's either awesome to deal, or a burden to have to deal in order to make money, and it's deeply cynical. imo. and I think the audience for it is as much white guys who wouldn't know a kilo if it landed on their doorstep as it is people in poor neighborhoods who have to live next door to scumbag dealers. I still like the stuff when it's stories well told, who'm I kidding, I listen to goregrind, that shit is foul. but I don't make the argument (made by some gore freaks) that because serial killers exist, it's 'realistic' to have body counts in the thousands album after album. it's kinda bullshit, really, on both counts.

― drawl the whine (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Thursday, October 14, 2010 11:19 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

fwiw i agree with all this?? you arent arguing w/ what i am actually saying & havent been

"arbitrary distinctions based on ineffable likes and dislikes"

aka music discussion/writing/crit

"it's inconsistent for a rap fan to be even dogging on wordplay. "

the issue is the centrality of wordplay, not its existence -- pretty much every form of rap has 'wordplay'

it's inconsistent to simply say "call me sire" is out of character in a way "don corleone hold the throne, that you know in your heart" isn't.

one suggests more nuance & character than the other, no?

anyone else want to go back to talking about solo Wu albums

it's inconsistent to co-opt rakim for a move away from rapping abt rapping and wordplay.

no. rakim's character as reflected by his aesthetic approach offered more dimension, more character, than simple wordplay. wordplay was there but it was superseded by character suggested by aesthetic

YES, DAN, EVERYONE

metal is a funny analog to rap in a lot of ways in terms of ugly/dark subject matter - I think that where it differs is that (with some exceptions) most metal is so plainly a huge cartoon. Realism/authenticity is not really a huge part of it (Varg Vikernes etc excepted yeah yeah). There's not a lot of metal dudes who are like, "no really, I am a serial killer and my music is like this cuz I'm keepin it REAL", it doesn't usually have the same relationship with authenticity (or perceived/claimed authenticity anyway) that rap does. which kinda makes it easier for me to enjoy, the jokiness/theatricality/fantasy of it is more up front.

xp

xxxpost I would HI DERE but that would violate the spirit of ILX rap threads

imo we need to wait another 200 off-topic posts before we start talking about Tical again

anyone else want to go back to talking about solo Wu albums

I thought deej did that when he quoted this classic ODB boast:

my argument here is relentlessly consistent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_L7GRx-CiE

ODB could really bring the love jamz

I was bumping "Release Yo Delf" in the car on the way into work today and I know everyone around me was wondering what medical emergency the approaching-middle-aged black dude in the Rav4 was having but GODDAMN that song makes me move.

I won't call Tical 'underappreciated' cuz it's received a lot of love, but I think Method gets taken less seriously, yet this album has always been a favorite of mine.

^^^ODB also a guy who could do great raps about being an addict/alcoholic/total fuckup (altho no he didn't make a whole album out of it. ODB contained multitudes!)

xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrkrTprs0DY

^^^fave Tical track

I think that where it differs is that (with some exceptions) most metal is so plainly a huge cartoon.

I think most people living in the neighborhoods where cocaine barons are allegedly becoming wealthy in every other building would argue that a lot of "rap about cocaine, of which there is rather a lot" is also plainly a huge cartoon

I was bumping "Release Yo Delf" in the car on the way into work today and I know everyone around me was wondering what medical emergency the approaching-middle-aged black dude in the Rav4 was having but GODDAMN that song makes me move.

the prodigy remix? because that thing makes me act like an insane person

curious if deej thinks "like a fax machine you get the message" is "corny"

the prodigy remix? because that thing makes me act like an insane person

The original, although the Prodigy remix is FUCKING BONKERS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uivw43LOwKo

A THOUSAND TIMES YES

I think we can all agree that that is a fucking all-time jam and anybody who doesn't like it is nuts

Ever notice how so many threads on ILM devolve into a bullshit-y melange of pointless bickering in which half-thought explanations/post-hoc rationalizations for personal preferences by one guy are countered by equally half-thought arguments by another guy about why the first guy's half-thought arguments are inconsistent with many of his other half-thought arguments? Ugh.

yes, I have

xp hey that's not fair, I put a lot of thought into showing why the first guy's half-thought arguments contradicted each other!

no one's posted a picture of food in this thread yet so it really doesn't meet the standard

ppl aren't really gonna be bringing thought-out and researched stuff to a msg board too often but saving grace is i don't think it's pointless, really tbh even tho it might be tiresome

no one's posted a picture of food in this thread yet so it really doesn't meet the standard

Pizza is waiting in the wings to challenge the winner of this poll.

http://images1.memegenerator.net/Insanity-Wolf/ImageMacro/3086285/make-wu-tang-poll-argue-about-j-stalinor-something.jpg

whats with all the enthusiasm for talking about wu tang for the 9000th time exactly

yikes!

man i need to start a chilled out peace god how to make a black nation rise positive de la orgee thread where we only spread love and talk about jungle bros.

i can't even begin to digest this.

biz markie had a really consistent identity and he wasn't really a punchline dude....i think he bears mentioning since he predates scarface.

also tho a part of the juice crew and he did do some of that...kool g rap seems like the person that really pushed NYC in that direction, without him there is no nas, no biggie etc

http://rudeboys.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/wu-tang-pizza.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJOJ-K8m3P4

im gonna grow like a rash on ya nasty ass
in a whip with no brakes and im hittin the gas

whats with all the enthusiasm for talking about wu tang for the 9000th time exactly

it's a fucking wu-tang thread. or do you show up at a mexican joint and ask where the thai food is, too?

i just go to cheesecake factory so i don't have to choose

okay I am in fucking hysterics now

"it's a fucking wu-tang thread. or do you show up at a mexican joint and ask where the thai food is, too?"

I think it's pretty obvious that he does.

I thought deej did that when he quoted this classic ODB boast:

my argument here is relentlessly consistent

Someone please PLEASE rap this (are there any rappers on ILM? Dominique can't do everything).

I just keep seeing deej running into Taco Bell and screaming "WHERE THE PAD THAI AT, NIGGA? POW POW WAKA WAKA GUCCI MANE"

omg

deej has to run inside because he's been banned from the drive thru

"sir I want to serve you the finest in cheap mexican food but i'm not interested in debating 'coke-rap' with you over the loudspeaker"

http://rapradar.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/purpletapecake.jpg

I got banned from my local taco bell drive-thru for saying "microphone check" every time I pulled up :(

haters imo

what is this, do people actually test out new raps at drive thru loudspeakers?

i am eating some good-ass pad thai right now. in all serious i suggest pad thai today for those who have yet to eat lunch.

ilx has a very complicated relationship with on-topic/off-topic

off-topic is fine when it's funny or offering lunch tips.

I just keep seeing deej running into Taco Bell and screaming "WHERE THE PAD THAI AT, NIGGA? POW POW WAKA WAKA GUCCI MANE"

― GLEERILLAZ! (HI DERE), Thursday, October 14, 2010 1:06 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

still LOLing at this....

seriously though have you guys seen a menu at cheesecake factory? shit's like the manual to Protools

where we only spread love and talk about jungle bros.

dude those jungle bros threads are usually just you and me lol

upper: yea, and it has advertisements in it. I think i've had approximately 8% of the stuff on the menu. also some of the items have enough calories to be like an entire day's worth of eating.

now i want an xxl chalupa

man 8% is probably what like 20 dishes?

yea. I took my ex there A LOT last year, plus there's one right close to me.

you guys really shouldn't eat at cheesecake factory. for your health, if no other reason.

now off to have my 11th cigarette of the last five hours.

lol.

no joke tho after I read about the calorie counts at that place it was like o_O

the thread that keeps on giving

i am eating some good-ass pad thai right now. in all serious i suggest pad thai today for those who have yet to eat lunch.

ok fuck yes I am now going to make for lunch my world-famous Pad Thai Del Unemployment Line

peanut butter soy sauce and linguine noodles & don't fucking knock it til you try it

aerosmith livin on the edge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0BlXy3Roj4

also still dope btw

When I go to the Cheesecake factory, I order the Pad Thai off the "exotic sensations" page.

I chugged a broccoli cheese soup purchased at Einstein Bros :(

what the blood clot indeed

hey guys: fuck you

take it to the cee-lo thread

hey deej in seriousness would like to hear what you think about biz and kool g rap as i mentioned up thread

cuz to me Biz is exactly what yr talking about but sometimes ppl don't see personas etc unless they are really serious ones like scarface

i thought that was a really good pt & im glad someone is actually paying attention to what im saying. biz strikes me as a dude whose personality translated very fully thru his raps early on

i mean thats the thing, theres a detachment to gza that ghost doesnt have

hey guys: fuck you

so mad

biz strikes me as a dude whose personality translated very fully thru his raps early on

even tho Big Daddy Kane wrote a bunch of them lol

I don't buy the thing about personas at all really

so mad

― am0n, Thursday, October 14, 2010 12:40 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes im rather aggy

even tho Big Daddy Kane wrote a bunch of them lol

― i was like a person at a table at a place (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, October 14, 2010 12:43 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

maybe he was a good writer?

i do understand yr point, but i would like to throw in that i feel like you kinda of underrate the old school punchlining stuff...

to me that era will always just sound fresh, it's the only time in my life where i got to hear something *really* happening, like a new genre coming into maturity....that stuff seems like chuck berry records or james brown records or the stooges or whatever, like very dated to its time but also timeless...

like i heard a buddy holly song on a commercial and i was like damn that is dope...just feels perfect....that era of rap is like that to me...

maybe the punchlines are dated and i understand that it def hold you at a certain distance to the artist, like who IS big daddy kane, you don't have a feel for him outside of a loverman/microphone technician (as opposed to Schooly D or Slick Rick or Biz who are more fully formed characters)....but that makes it no less great to me.

but honestly i'll be stuck on that stuff to a certain point my whole life...the same way that 60s dudes are stuck on dylan and the beatles and hendrix and etc, because honestly we can all talk about oh man school of seven bells rules or the new waka flocka record is dope but it's SOOOOO rare to hear something really being born, then grow up in front of you....nirvana/alternative/indie (which i guess would be the other thing considered a "revolution" in the canon that I lived through) isn't the same...like it was only because it got popular, everyone in the know (like dudes older/cooler than me) just saw it as a surfacing of 80s underground U.S. rock in pop culture.

but to turn on the TV and see "Microphone Fiend" for the first time? To hear Rakim's voice for the first time...man I will never forget that.

(xposts)

Fuckin' frame Matt's post somewhere and be done with it, because that says it all.

to me that era will always just sound fresh, it's the only time in my life where i got to hear something *really* happening, like a new genre coming into maturity....that stuff seems like chuck berry records or james brown records or the stooges or whatever, like very dated to its time but also timeless...

yeah this is totally how I feel about it too. maybe it's just personal "you had to be there" shit

just to derail further: wasn't dance music / techno really happening, in a much more decisive ground-breaking way, than underground rock?

i lived on a farm in southern mn, so like had zero idea until the chemical bros. and moby and prodigy and shit like that, but yeah i guess in uk and other places it was

dance music's big revolution seems like it happened in the late 70s/early 80s to me. by the time rave kicked in in the 90s it was just ooh louder/faster/bigger/more annoying

xp

but yeah the 90s stuff was a MUCH bigger deal in the UK/europe than it was here

dance music's big revolution seems like it happened in the late 70s/early 80s to me.

btw what I'm referring to here is stuff like disco edits, the wholesale adoption of synths/drum machines/computers, the DJ as artist, etc.

everything that came after was just an extension of those concepts/approaches

nuh uh

do tell

"everything that came after was just an extension of those concepts/approaches"

Couldn't you make that absurdly reductionist claim about basically anything? I mean why listen to any metal post-Sabbath it's "just an extension of those concepts/approaches", etc.

I didn't think that was direct commentary on the worth of what came after, but rather an opinion on what constitutes something being "seminal" with the added indirect rider that he finds seminal works more interesting/exciting than things that expand upon the original toolkit.

So, it's not that that stuff was worthless or anything, it just wasn't as exciting as disco. Which, you know, is kind of silly, but then that's why opinions are so fun to argue over.

well I did say 90s techno was "more annoying" so in some ways it was a value judgment albeit a flippant one. you could say it about a lot of genres (I don't think metal is a good example tho, cuz metal REALLY broadened as it grew older). but yeah pretty much every genre takes shape around a few basic tenets that are then explored and refined in subsequent years, it's just the way it is I don't think it's inherently negative. My point with dance music was that the seminal/shaping of the genre occurred way earlier than the 90s. If there was some massive formal shift in dance music in the 90s I have no idea what it was, feel free to elaborate.

and yeah M@tt's whole post was about the excitement of witnessing a genre take shape - which IS exciting - so that's what I was referring to.

I think the wholesale appropriation of sampling in the late 80s took dance music in a bunch of different, divergent directions, culminating in the explosion of sub-genres that marked dance music in the early 90s.

i wasn't leaving out techno/dance on purpose, my post was more personal, what hip hop meant to me back then. i didn't even know techno existed back then, and i still don't really know enough about it to say how significant it was or which era was important.

though that said, i don't think it would have felt the same to me because hip hop wasn't just watching a music take shape, it was really an exposure to people, or the lives of people in america that i couldn't imagine and had no knowledge of...like i would see the videos and think about the bronx or compton and it was so far away to me. even just the street names and the neighborhoods or references to local businesses (like sir mix-a-lot talking about dick's hamburgers) clothing or shoes, just all the little details of lives i couldn't fathom.

techno doesn't have those things.

it's weird to think about that time when everything wasn't available to you all the time, how amazing it was when you found something.

well no, techno in its purest form is all about gay robots giving you dance drugs

First result in google for gay robots dance drugs:

http://www.houseofdiabolique.com/links.htm

Face it. You have little reason to visit any other websites after seeing mine.
But here are some that interest me.

microhouse is weak like clock radio speakers.

i mean those kinds of similies are basically like, your literature/language arts teacher explaining rap music kind of goofy. its just ... dated juice crew type ish. rappers inhabit personas more fully now

― j. sargent & lil k3v (deej), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 10:23 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

"clever and/or unexpected wordplay is so dated" goes a very long way towards why I don't feel a lot of current hip-hop

― GLEERILLAZ! (HI DERE), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 12:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

metal (discussed upthread) is a good comparison genre, though. i love metal, and have to admit that i don't want my orc-puverizing fantasies interrupted by goofy, artist-humanizing asides. i want nonstop blood and thunder. maybe this is because i genuinely enjoy certain aspects of metal's fantasy universe: weed, monsters, insanity, barbarian carnage, horror flicks, etc. and maybe it's because the fundamental unreality of that universe prevents me from ever taking the artistic POV too seriously. i dunno. point is, i'm not so in love with the corollary aspects of contemporary rap's fantasy universe: dealing, wealth, gangsters, strippers, clubs, etc. and rap's not always so clear about the placement of the line that separates entertaining fantasy from ugly reality. which goes some way towards explaining why i like it when the personas involved aren't quite so fully inhabited.

and maybe it's because the fundamental unreality of that universe prevents me from ever taking the artistic POV too seriously.

yeah this is a key difference, I alluded to it upthread

I think the wholesale appropriation of sampling in the late 80s took dance music in a bunch of different, divergent directions, culminating in the explosion of sub-genres that marked dance music in the early 90s.

yeah I can see this. although I've never really thought of sampling as being some kind of breakthrough technique for dance music, even though once people started doing it obviously things started to SOUND different because sampling is just such a different sound than chilly synths or live instrumentation or whatever. In some ways using a sampler doesn't seem that much different to me from using a sequencer or a drum machine or synth patches, it's just another electronic tool well-suited to a genre that was already explicitly all about electronic tools.

I dunno, I'll defer to people more well-versed in this stuff, I had only a passing interest in it, informed largely by friends who were WAY more into going raving than I was.

yeah this is a key difference, I alluded to it upthread

― i was like a person at a table at a place (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, October 14, 2010 2:30 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

tried to read through everything before posting, but people have been busy ITT.

anyway, a lot of contemporary rap is stuck in a weird position wr2 authenticity and the creation of artistic personas. fans seem to like the idea that the music responds to/reflects/emerges from a "harsh reality", but they also insist that rappers be 100% in character at all times. these demands seem contradictory on a very basic level. most rappers resolve the conflict by inhabiting the personal of people who are themselves in character all the time: dealers, thugs and pimps who can't afford to break character. this works, but gets old fast.

guys who or what are we talking about now

hatcats

Guys can we please stop with the rap authenticity jackoff sesh and talk about Wu-Tang albums again?

fuck you

it's really just me. one guy. and it is currently a gay dance robot jackoff sesh.

to the extent that it isn't rap authenticity, and i'm not sure which is worse

I will oblige: Ironman gettin short shrift imho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPKJZJITZHw
^^^this fuckin song

oh shit I completely forgot about that song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhTBKzfvKUg

that final run of songs on Ironman is soooooo o_0

harbinger of things to come

ilxor's opinions and viewpoints are not necessarily endorsed by San Te

I really wish I knew what I did with my copy of Cuban Linx ...guess it's d/ling time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOXHK5WDdGg

really glad contenderizer is disagreeing with me -- more evidence for the defense basically imo

this thread is still super-frustrating to me. i dont know if im just not writing as clearly as i think i am or what but like, j0hn & croupier, do you guys think im just like a moron?? because i cant understand why else yall are so unwilling to at least take me at my word that ive thought this out & just maybe i might have a point ??

i think thats the most offensive shit to me in this thread isnt at all that u dudes disagree, but that you seem to think im not thinking any of this through. its like ... wtf?? thats the entirety of my critical approach, when it comes to rap, is thinking through persona/vision/aesthetics & how they all interact. thinking about the history of rap in broad sweeping terms & how certain artists inhabit rap in different ways. & instead i get nothing but condescension

Fuckin' frame Matt's post somewhere and be done with it, because that says it all.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, October 14, 2010 12:50 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i love m@tt but if "you had to be there" says it all then i guess ill never be a part of this conversation

lol @ alex in sf turning up for the first time in like 4 years in a rap thread to talk shit about me while adding nothing to the conversation, though

thats the entirety of my critical approach, when it comes to rap, is thinking through persona/vision/aesthetics & how they all interact. thinking about the history of rap in broad sweeping terms & how certain artists inhabit rap in different ways.

I dunno what to tell you... write more in-depth posts and fewer punchline zings maybe

deej dude take a break

i dunno im not really comfortable w/ all these ppl thinking that i think young jeezy is the cnn of the streets or whatever twisted version of my perspective j0hn d has

...& instead i get nothing but condescension

― j. sargent & lil k3v (deej), Thursday, October 14, 2010 4:48 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

dunno how to tell you this, deej, but uh...

i think a basic misunderstanding here:

1. i think, objectively, in a general sense, rapping has shifted towards more nuanced & personality-driven personas than it was in the run dmc era, or the juice crew era that gza came out of.

2. i think SUBJECTIVELY, that as a result i tend to prefer artists who at some level anticipated these changes & had fully developed personas -- by 'fully developed,' i mean that everything-- flow, lyrics, personality, vocal tone, style of delivery, conceptual approach to songs & albums, etc -- fit with who they 'were'. m@tt knows what im getting at here, even if his bias is more towards growing up when this stuff was brand new & therefor repping for it harder than i would.

i dont think i in any way deviated from these main points or shifted my argument at all while making them.

similarly vs. john d., my interpretation of conversation:

john: 'coke rap is old & passe'
me; 'some 'coke rap' still has something to add conceptually imo if you're defining coke rap as 'rap about drug dealing' -- that said, i think 'coke rap' is subject matter not a genre. further, coke will always be a big subject in rap as long as it exists in overrepresented proportions w/in populations that largely produce rap. certain narratives about it might get tired, and often are overrepresented, but 'coke rap' in some form is unfortunately likely to last as long as the drug war.'

this has been my opinion from before this dumb thread ever started, and has remained throughout. there is no contradiction, backpedaling, or shift in my perspective on this issue. ive been thinking about this shit for like 5 years!! since the jeezy stuff first really started exploding, i participated in conversations about this back then.

if by coke rap john d. meant specifically scarface fantasies and kingpin rap, then i agree -- im one of the few ppl on this board who thinks rick ross' entire persona is pretty tired! that unless theres some fresh aesthetic approach its kinda boring.

deej for what it's worth, I personally am much less certain about what exactly 'your perspective' is now than I was a few hundred posts ago, and I don't mean that in a condescending way; I'm sure a certain number of lazy zings will be born of this thread but I don't think it's been entirely unproductive, and I don't think anybody's gonna write you off entirely because you said some shit they thought was dumb (clearly, because otherwise there wouldn't be all these people still trying to talk to you and pick yr brain)

(written before that last big post)

here is one of my favorite articles that suggests that there are new & fresh approaches being taken w/r/t 'drug dealing rap' & imo much more significant/generationally-relevant than clipse:

http://www.sfbg.com/2010/02/09/80s-babies
But unlike other miners of '80s terrain — say, the Casio rock trend of last decade — the new sound of the Town has an organic lyrical connection through tales of crack and the devastation the drug has wreaked in the ghetto. "Slangin' rocks" is hardly a novel topic in rap, yet there's been a shift in presentation. This, I think, is a directly connected to age: unlike their elders, these new rappers are the first generation born during the crack epidemic. Born in West Oakland's Cypress Village in 1983, Stalin himself is literally a crack baby.

In lyrical terms, the '80s baby generation primarily identifies with classic Bay Area mob music, bypassing more recent hyphy. But there seems to be a difference in presentation. The '90s mob rapper tended to rap from an adult perspective, portraying himself in hyperbolic exploits as a kind of Scarface-inspired action figure. To be sure, the '80s babies haven't abandoned such tales of million-dollar deals, speedboats, and private planes. But alongside this, the story of the d-boy has emerged, reflecting the trauma of the generation's upbringing. In contrast to the mobster's comic-book glory, d-boy stories are frequently anti-glamour in tone, from the mundane, heartbreaking experiences of neglect — wearing the same clothes for a week or more being a common detail — to the painful tragedies of losing parents and siblings to drugs or murder. These stories generally unfold against a middle-school or high-school backdrop and are narrated from a present-tense, first-person perspective.

balls otm

I think this thread - w/r/t "coke rap" and versus, say, death-metal - a lot of the time operates on some overly rigid separation between fantasy and reality. Like "is this literally true or not?"

I think everyone here is probably smarter than that and it's just a function of where the argument has gone that things get shafted that way.

When I did my tv show one of the co-presenters was number 1 obsessive over death metal and etc. and I was surprised (but then retrospectively not-surprised) to discover how much her operating relationship with the music was to accept the artists' self-presentation as, let's say, "provisionally true to life". By which I mean if you said to her point blank "do you think this person actually sacrifices babies and, if so, should we call the police" she would have said "well of course not", BUT, for the purpose of her actual appreciation of the music it's not at all "OMG I love this because it's so cartoonish." If stuff wasn't at least provisionally convincing she wouldn't be into it as much.

Seems to me that there are multiple levels in terms of the relationship between "the world of drugs" and rap:

1) the reality of drugs (largely inaccessible to art)
2) the real fantasy of drugs (that is: the ideologies which are propogated in reality)
3) the fantasy "real" of drugs in music (rap deliberately trying to portray a realistic-seeming image of the drug world)
4) the fantasy fantasy of drugs in music (openly and obviously fantastical portrayals in rap)

Someone like Jeezy moves between (3) and (4) pretty fluidly, and I'd say that that fluidity is a very modern quality (don't mean "modern" as a compliment or put-down), because the experience of life itself is more of a tissue of layers of reality and fantasy than it is straight reality, such that thoroughgoing attempts to seem true-to-life at all times feel less believable in form even if they are more believable in content.

I think that the fan of Jeezy or equiv. instinctively gets this, they're not blind or gullible w/r/t to the varying levels of verisimillitude to life at work, instead they understand that the reality and fantasy aren't mutually exclusive in this context, and that a certain interpenetration of these layers is necessary to achieve narrative plenitude.

"lol @ alex in sf turning up for the first time in like 4 years in a rap thread to talk shit about me while adding nothing to the conversation, though"

Such an interesting conversation it was too.

Fuckin' frame Matt's post somewhere and be done with it, because that says it all.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, October 14, 2010 12:50 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i love m@tt but if "you had to be there" says it all then i guess ill never be a part of this conversation

― j. sargent & lil k3v (deej), Thursday, October 14, 2010 6:49 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

deej i basically think you are right on in terms of how things have evolved in terms of MC as MC to actual personas...

and i'm plenty nostalgic for sure!

but that said i don't think it's just a matter of "you had to be there" (though that always helps, but i think that's true of almost any music ever)

i do think that you (at least seem like) you undervalue some of the older hip hop stuff, and the punchline approach in general...

i understand that things needed to evolve and obv that evolution is what makes possible albums like "the diary" or "illmatic" or "ready to die" or any other ones you could list...

but what i was trying to get across (esp with my references to chuck berry or buddy holly) is that there is something i guess "pure" (which i know is maybe treading suspect ground rhetorically -- things aren't ever pure and hip hop never was) but pure and simple in vision and execution...

i.e. i think the limitations they had (whether that was simple drum machines or simple recording technique or simple sampler tech) made that era's stuff really wonderful and timeless to me...

i also love great punchline rappers...i like the being clever for clever's sake of it all, the humor, and the fun of it...(the fun being one thing that sometimes has gotten lost for me in later stuff -- even say like OB4CL which I LOVE to death but it's not really "fun")...the sparring with wordplay is really infectious to me, like just hearing something like "rock the bells" it seems perfect, how could it be any better, just some drums and a kid that's a fucking STAR, so talented and so confident....

you could take that up to even big-l (who is totally a punchline guy) or jay-z (who's essentially a punchline guy that adopted a persona)

i agree that current day punchline dudes pretty much suck, but hell there's been a lot of great punchlines already used up so i guess it must get harder....the reason i like royce is that he exudes the confidence and is genuinely fun and funny -- he seems to have the right attitude towards it = like watch me pull off some rad lyrical wheelies...

hell i even watch damn youtube dvd battles and shit just cuz i like the feeling when a guy pulls out a killer line you can tell he's been saving up, it's just awesome to me.

i think that it sounds like i came out opposed to punchlines which isnt quite what i meant ... i mean i love big l. talk about a dude whose punchlines almost always reinforced his persona though~!!

eazy
cube
bushwick
scarface
g rap
ice t
cold 187um
biz
schooly d
edward ellington humphrey III - just kinda getting warmed up w/these, too

I really think the argt that somehow the og's were somehow less fluid or developed or complex in the matter of wearing personae than the mc's of today is a weird one that requires a very efficient set of blinders

is this thread worth reading?

yeah

j0hn those are largely examples of rappers who i think HAVE aged well -- likewise id put rae & ghost in there before id put gza

I really think the argt that somehow the og's were somehow less fluid or developed or complex in the matter of wearing personae than the mc's of today is a weird one that requires a very efficient set of blinders

I assume this is mainly directed at deej, but when I talk about "fluidity" this is not some special skill that young jeezy has which 80s rappers didn't, but insofar it's about movement within a discourse, how it operates will depend on how the culture as a whole operates. Rapping about drugs exists in a more intertextualised context now than it did twenty five years ago - this is an inevitability and is neither a good thing nor a bad thing...in fact in some ways this is the source of complaint for a lot of people. It encourages a responsive practice which takes that intertextuality for granted (again, a lot of people don't like this: presumably the call for rap to be either more real or more cartoonish is at base the call for it not to take intertextuality for granted, but to either minimise or foreground it consciously).

This isn't something that can be used to establish the superiority of one era over another because there's no common playing field: the OG rappers were not in a position to be fluid within a context that didn't (fully) exist yet, but that doesn't stop them from having been fluid within the contexts they were in - eg. the standard line on the classic status of "The Message" is in effect that it's a snapshot of rap in transition from one type of discourse to another, and that it functions effectively in both.

This is an entirely separate issue to how developed/complex personae are.

I suppose my super played-out position would be that narrative focus/restriction as a stylistic discipline works in a manner similar to sonic focus/restriction in a dance sub-genre: the less room for obvious variation (and let's leave aside the actual variation which pretty obviously exists in modern rap for a moment) the more loaded-seeming are the micro-variations within a template, because the commmunity of artist and audience are all trained to focus in on those variations while hearing past the intentional limitations.

Now if you play a track from a relatively diverse sub-genre of 10 years ago and then a similar current track from a sub-genre which has honed in on similar qualities, track for track there may not be any actual difference in the level of complexity/subtlety at work.

The difference is at the level of the compact between the creator and the listener: the nuance/complexity/subtlety in the old track may effectively be treated as a "free lunch", whereas in the new track it's treated as a litmus test.

actually, in the last half day or so, one of the very best recent ILM threads (largely thanks to posts like Tim's)

which makes my head hurt a little, but maybe that's just the wine

KRS is probably the anti-scarface in that sense -- the qualities that made him singular then, his energy, his uh philosphy ... not agin so well

but like, scarface's verse's on 'hand of the dead body' sound as relevent today as ever (of course performatively, considering he sounds to my ears like a significant influence on tupac & then obviously down the line, he has aged exceptionally well)

well, KRS has aged poorly for a number of reasons. but "sound of the police" still sounds great.

i like tim's point about intertextuality, and it applies to the past/present questions, too, as the development of new contexts shapes our understanding of what came before. like you pull scarface, deej, because he still functions in a contemporary context, but dismiss others who don't. but i'm not sure that sounding contemporary is an absolute virtue, and i'm certain that it's not ultimate.

is this thread worth reading?

― ENBBQ (The Reverend), Friday, October 15, 2010 12:08 AM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark

FUCK no

democracy in action

Rapping about drugs exists in a more intertextualised context now than it did twenty five years ago - this is an inevitability and is neither a good thing nor a bad thing...in fact in some ways this is the source of complaint for a lot of people. It encourages a responsive practice which takes that intertextuality for granted (again, a lot of people don't like this: presumably the call for rap to be either more real or more cartoonish is at base the call for it not to take intertextuality for granted, but to either minimise or foreground it consciously).

― Tim F, Thursday, October 14, 2010 10:36 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

i can see as how this relates to something i said earlier, and i don't disagree, but it's possible to be uncomfortable about or just plain bored with 2nd-rate coke/kingpin fantasies without demanding that rap abandon its intertextual ambiguity. i liked those clipse records that everybody Rs their DE at because to me, the skill and wit redeem the subject matter. like i don't care about the reality/fantasy divide at that point, because the shit is blazing. would say the same about E-40. but it takes a lot to get me to that point, which is a personal complaint. the scarface shit just doesn't resonate with me. i don't like gangster movies, either.

I like what Matt says about the sheer joy - the purity - of the OG punchline guys. I love that sense you get with certain rappers that they're thrilled and delighted by their own virtuosity. There's so much playfulness and pleasure in there that I just can't see that style as a poor relation to having a developed persona. I mean, I love the dense masterpieces like Illmatic and Ready to Die and Hell on Earth but sometimes I just want to hear people goofing around and savouring the sound of their own voices.

Where does stuff like Let's Get Ready or Back For The First Time fit into this dichotomy.

i like tim's point about intertextuality, and it applies to the past/present questions, too, as the development of new contexts shapes our understanding of what came before. like you pull scarface, deej, because he still functions in a contemporary context, but dismiss others who don't. but i'm not sure that sounding contemporary is an absolute virtue, and i'm certain that it's not ultimate.

― contenderizer, Friday, October 15, 2010 12:53 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah obv but i was arguing that it was an UNDERRATED virtue around here! it was what gave the edge to rae & ghost to me over gza

^^^^

I think especially when one is listening to, say, 60% new music 40% old music, the old stuff which prefigures the new often just appeals on grounds of fitting in with what you're listening to.

Again the comparison for me is old dance music which gets revived on account of inadvertently chiming in with whatever the hot current stuff is.

I don't think saying that amounts to some harsh dismissal of whatever sounds more of its time.

deej dude take a break

^^

more than ever convinced deej is a sock

I think especially when one is listening to, say, 60% new music 40% old music, the old stuff which prefigures the new often just appeals on grounds of fitting in with what you're listening to.

Again the comparison for me is old dance music which gets revived on account of inadvertently chiming in with whatever the hot current stuff is.

I don't think saying that amounts to some harsh dismissal of whatever sounds more of its time.

No, but statements like this are:

liquid swords has some corny-ass proto-grocery bag similes

"lyrics is weak ... CLOCK RADIO SPEAKERS"

rae & ghost were totally w/in character the whole time, way more visceral record, and tical never has meth saying "scriptures hit the body like sawed of shottys / like my hair knotty and my nosepiece snotty"

This was where everyone went off on deej, and with good reason IMO because by rolling his damn eyes and calling that a grocery bag metaphor he (dis)missed like three layers of intertextual density in that line as if making multiple allusions in a sentence is now anathema to making "good" hip-hop.

ilxor being real fucking helpful in this discussion

maybe ilxor needs a break too

i used to think the King album by TI was kinda wack but now i think it's sup[er classic. i'd just like to come clean in here.

King has a great diversity to it and maybe isn't my favorite of his lyrically (tho it's not far off), but the overall package=maybe my favorite in his entire collection.

do you think he said to the jumper:

yous a scary dude, believed by very few, just keep it very cool, or we will bury you

He probably said something like

"Hey man, get down from there! I know you're prayin' for help, but let me tell you somethin. Why you wanna end it all man? If you jump you're just gonna live in the sky. Get it? A friend of mine killed himself and I coulda helped him and I still ain't forgave myself. Hey, listen...I'm talkin to you! Listen, I'm a stand up guy, so I'm willing to talk this out with you. Why don't you come ride wit me? We'll put the top back, we'll cruise by Bankhead, and clear the air a little. Feel better? Told ya so. No need to thank me, I'm just doin' my job".

its a bit weird seeing all these classic dudes being referred to as "punchline rappers", a term i always thought existed w/ a dismissive connotation to refer to guys like...i dunno, vakill or jedi mind tricks whose raps are actually like 90% punchlines and not just wordplay

it's not a term with a neg connotation, just a ref to an aspect of style born of east coast battling tradition -- there's even a rapper called punchline from when this style was in ascendancy -- but i mean i guess it's just referencing an aspect of a style wrt some classic dudes rather than something that's meant to sum them up.

i really want to listen to lord finesse right now.

actually i just downloaded a punchline free online EP from a couple years ago...him and a dude called fokis...it's actually pretty good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDFgnwJWX68

basically you know it's some some gully old east coast punchline shit when a series of lines ends in words or phrases that rhyme in "catastrophe" :)

Guys can we please stop with the rap authenticity jackoff sesh and talk about Wu-Tang albums again?

― more than ever convinced ilxor is a sock (ilxor), Thursday, October 14, 2010 5:01 PM (Yesterday)

then fucking do it dude

do it Rockapella!

I'm not sure I grasp what is being meant by "intertextualized context" in this thread

ilxor, this isn't a buzzband thread, u don't need to keep worthlessly posting to it.

afaict it refers to how coke-dealing has become so ingrained in the genre that it's taken for granted, it basically serves as an accepted backdrop that informs the genre as a whole and is approached as such by modern rappers...?

It encourages a responsive practice which takes that intertextuality for granted (again, a lot of people don't like this: presumably the call for rap to be either more real or more cartoonish is at base the call for it not to take intertextuality for granted, but to either minimise or foreground it consciously).

cuz yeah, basically, this is my reaction

xp

xxxp yeah i love that stuff too, i kinda got into rap thru wu-tang -> undie punchline stuff, and it took me a while to understand why all the real rap heads here aren't really interested in it. liquid swords was my fav of these back then too! but now cuban linx and ironman just sound way more impressive to me, even in terms of 'wordplay'

also i found that it's tricky to get into mainstream rap when that's your starting point, since you end up looking for a type of cleverness that doesn't really exist, or when it does it's way more subtle

punch & words are/were dope. "in rap battles you'll dial 9, just to get a line out"

t took me a while to understand why all the real rap heads here aren't really interested in it.

p sure everyone idolizes finesse, big l etc. but ny fell off hard and this aspect went with it

percee p is the other kinda lost great of that axis

gr8 footage of percee p battling finesse on the block circa 1988 on youtube

haha man i've been kinda kicking around the idea of starting a rap battles youtube thread cuz i figured i'd annoy the fuck out of the swag thread if i started posting them there, maybe i should

yeah do, stop me being all memory lane itt.

This was where everyone went off on deej, and with good reason IMO because by rolling his damn eyes and calling that a grocery bag metaphor he (dis)missed like three layers of intertextual density in that line as if making multiple allusions in a sentence is now anathema to making "good" hip-hop.

― GLEERILLAZ! (HI DERE), Friday, October 15, 2010 8:55 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

'three layers of intertextual density,' what?? its a simple straightforward punchline
& btw do you ever go off on moonship when he does similar shit in dance threads? or croupier himself for that matter? since when is speaking in absolutes & making the 'imo' silent while dissing received wisdom such a bfd to ilx??

i mean other than hi dere seeming to have it out for me the past couple mo's

http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG

fwiw im not 'anti punchline' -- its a certain style of punchline that hasnt aged well imo. obviously GZA >>>>>> young money, but thats like Nirvana >>>> puddle of mudd. sorta like how the pfork list had nirvana outside the top ten could be read as making a statement of how the artists it influenced may have reflected badly (if unfairly) on them in retrospect, im taking a similar stance w/ gza & what remains of 'punchline rapping' today

i mean i still like jada & fabolous as far as punchline rappers go, although fab i pretty much only like on R&B/ryan leslie type shit any more ... kinda interesting that i think the punchline style really works well on those cuts for some reason -- i guess because hes just trying to be slick & clever flirting w/ the singers instead of acting hard? and if a rapper's main goal is variations on the aesthetic of sounding hard/street then it can undercut that if you're trying too hard to be 'clever' --

in fact what i liked a lot abt gucci worked in that way, his clever-ness was sorta disguised instead of being all obvious & GROCERY BAG!!!

I thought "grocery bag" meant a complete nonsequitur rather than a corny simile. Has Urban Dictionary lied to me yet again?

as far as i know, "grocery bag" on ILX means the construction (young money style)

like instead of saying

I keep hoes running back and forth like a soccer team

you say

I keep hoes running a back and forth.....SOCCER TEAM!

but ... GZA clearly says "LIKE" in the line quoted

how did like 100 terrible definitions for "grocery bag" get accepted but my perfectly correct definition of "lightweight jammin" was rejected?

It's conspiracy.

i don't recall the case of the state vs. whiney g's definition of "lightweight jammin'", what's the deal?

"three layers" is rhetorical overstatement but I'm just going to post a direct link to s1ocki pointing out that there's more than one level going on with that line:

classic Wu-Tang solo run poll

"interpretation" is not quite the right word here, maybe "evocation"...? IOW it's a metaphor that, when you look closer at what he's talking about, is tied pretty intricately to what he's discussing and is used to move into another metaphorical lyrical space that transitions to yet another one in the subsequent couplet: Don't even stop in my station and attack/while your plan failed, hit the rail, like Amtrak

xpost, omn urbandictionary

wow I wish I hadn't looked up the definition of "grocery bag" on there

Ick.

grocery bag

when a poor man cant afford any condoms so he re-uses his old one.

"bitch settle down, im gettin this grocery bag all up in your shit"

Pretty no one a) does this and b) refers to it as "grocery bag".

why does he want her to settle down

did we ever figure out how to parse the original grocery bag line or is it just one of those unsolvable riddles of time and space

I guess she's running away from used condom covered junk.

Another classic bit of naturalistic dialogue from Urban Dictionary.

but ... GZA clearly says "LIKE" in the line quoted

― i was like a person at a table at a place (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, October 15, 2010 12:40 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah obv -- thats why i said 'proto-'
its a simile that doesnt really add anything to the street vibe hes trying to convey

― j. sargent & lil k3v (deej), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:18 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^ which sl0cki already proved was a stupid thing to say and everyone agreed

what should we call a "proto-grocery bag"? a "burlap sack" maybe?

N.O.R.E.

to clarify so this doesnt turn into another 200 posts, the thing that bothers us about GROCERY BAG punchlines is that they take u out of everything & make you focus on the grocery bag construction gimmick -- it doesnt feel like a naturalized part of an individual's rapping, it feels like yr fitting into some grocery-bag-rapper-formula.

suggesting that gza line was proto-grocery bag was a way of suggesting that he was on the tail end of a style where you were just trying to pack as many similes into each verse as you could, and that this was about as 'mainstream' as that style would be for awhile -- that his persona got kinda overshadowed by laundry lists of similes/metaphors

^ which sl0cki already proved was a stupid thing to say and everyone agreed

― gr80 antebellum (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, October 15, 2010 12:52 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

he 'proved it'??

i dont see how what slocki said has anything to do w/ my point

This thread =

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3TNmNytvi8

is he really trying to convey a street vibe on that particular song though? just sounds like battle rap to me, its not like the line is in 'cold world'

xxxp with science.

alex why are you here? isnt there a reggae thread u can post on?

is he really trying to convey a street vibe on that particular song though? just sounds like battle rap to me, its not like the line is in 'cold world'

― only built 4 cuban linux... (ciderpress), Friday, October 15, 2010 12:55 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^discovered wu tang from a dude playing acoustic guitar in a blacklit college dorm room in 2003

that his persona got kinda overshadowed by laundry lists of similes/metaphors

maybe this happened to him later (I don't know) but I wouldn't say this is the case on Liquid Swords at all, where it's more just straight-up storytelling with a few exceptions (Labels, B.I.B.L.E.)

xp

how did you know...

deej what is it with you and the pointless ad hominem attacks. I assume you copped it from ethan but dude, nagl

xxxxp Apparently not. You should revive one. It's got to be better for you than continuing to post on this one.

"blown out the frame like pan am flight 103" "feminine like sandals" "flow like the blood on a murder scene" "that attack the mic-phones like cyclones or typhoons"

etc etc
fwiw i think these lyrics are all awesome -- because this needs to be reiterated that i do love liquid swords & its a rap classic forever -- dont confused 'dated' w/ 'qualitative judgements' except for as ive said the small degrees to which i prefer rae & ghost's rapping

deej what is it with you and the pointless ad hominem attacks. I assume you copped it from ethan but dude, nagl

― i was like a person at a table at a place (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, October 15, 2010 12:59 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

its really not an attack. it was a joke pointing out that i disagree. if he takes it personally thats kinda ridic

You are seriously the most tone-deaf poster on ILX.

Not an attack. Just a joke. Don't take personal.

xxxxp Apparently not. You should revive one. It's got to be better for you than continuing to post on this one.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Friday, October 15, 2010 12:59 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no seriously why are you here and what are you adding to this conversation. im really serious. why are you even wasting your time if you dont like whats going on in this thread? there are hundreds of other wu tang threads you can go reiterate the same points you made a decade ago

um deej do you know what an ad hominem attack is cuz that was like the dictionary definition of one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

xp

i dunno i think its pretty tone-deaf just to show up to talk shit? im actually participating in a conversation while you're just being a dick?

this board has been saying "ad hominem" like every five minutes these days. did y'all just finally look up what it meant or something?

the ad hominem was incidental to the point which was, "yes i think gza is trying to sound street"

(i mean, i think he largely does)

deej, apparently you want to make this about something personal between me and you because anything is better than you continuing to look like a jackass on a 600 post thread. Good luck with that.

you guys have been fairly proactive regarding the use of "ad hominem" on ilx recently

rather than bitching about me making a joke about dude hearing wu tang in a dorm room why are you directing your "omg clusterfuck!!!" energies at worthless posters who arent actually engaging in the discussion & instead are just lobbing bullshit from the sidelines like whiney & alex in sf?

Proactive

A word dumb poeple use to sound smart.

"Whats your opinion on the matter, Bob?"
"Oh, well I'm proactive."

deej, apparently you want to make this about something personal between me and you because anything is better than you continuing to look like a jackass on a 600 post thread. Good luck with that.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Friday, October 15, 2010 1:04 PM (52 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is only 'personal' to the extent that youre being a huge dick, right now, in this thread. im not holding a grudge about something or w/e else you imagine to be going on.

anyway... what's that line GZA has about lyrics being poured out like concrete to pave streets...? is that on Liquid Swords? blanking on where that verse is from

many x-posts

"this is only 'personal' to the extent that youre being a huge dick, right now, in this thread. im not holding a grudge about something or w/e else you imagine to be going on."

Really don't care. Just content to amuse myself on a lazy Friday.

this board has been saying "ad hominem" like every five minutes these days. did y'all just finally look up what it meant or something?

I have no idea what you're referring to. don't think I've thrown this term around recently

i dont see how what slocki said has anything to do w/ my point

Then, seriously, you need to communicate better, because you cannot get across what you are trying to say in hyper-compressed, non-expository sentences and what s1ocki wrote seems to be a clear refutation of the idea that that is a random simile that pulls you out of the persona of the song when the entire song seems to be as much about metaphorical density and the transitions between them as it is telling a story or being a brag record.

deej for the record, this is wall-to-wall punchlines+similes I (and many others obviously) don't really see how the clock radio speakers line is all that different from any of the other lines in the song, and, as Dan points out, it's tied together thematically with the lines that come before and after it. How it "pulls you out" of the song is something nobody but YOU seems to understand.

Fake niggaz get flipped
In mic fights I swing swords and cut clown
Shit is too swift to bite you record and write it down
I flow like the blood on a murder scene, like a syringe
on some wild out shit, to insert a fiend
But it was yo out the shop stolen art
Catch a swollen heart from not rollin smart
I put mad pressure, on phony wack rhymes that get hurt
Shit's played, like zodiac signs on sweatshirt
That's minimum, and feminine like sandals
My minimum table stacks a verse on a gamble
Energy is felt once the cards are dealt
With the impact of roundhouse kicks from black belts
that attack, the mic-fones like cyclones or typhoon
I represent from midnight to high noon
I don't waste ink, nigga I think
I drop megaton BOMBS more faster than you blink
Cause rhyme thoughts travel at a tremendous speed
Clouds of smoke, of natural blends of weed
Only under one circumstance is if I'm blunted
Turn that shit up, my "Clan in Da Front" want it

I'm on a Mission, that niggaz say is Impossible
But when I swing my swords they all choppable
I be the body dropper, the heartbeat stopper
Child educator, plus head amputator
Cause niggaz styles are old like Mark 5 sneakers
Lyrics are weak, like clock radio speakers
Don't even stop in my station and attack
while your plan failed, hit the rail, like Amtrak
What the fuck for? Down by low, I make law
I be justice, I sentence that ass two to four
round the clock, that state pen time check it
With the pens I be stickin but you can't stick to crime
Came through with the Wu, slid off on the DL
I'm low-key like seashells, I rock these bells
(when the MC's..) Now come aboard, it's Medina bound
Enter the chamber, and it's a whole different sound
It's a wide entrance, small exit like a funnel
So deep it's picked up on radios in tunnels
Niggaz are fascinated how the shit begin
Get vaccinated, my logo is branded in your skin

tbf, deej I think that you are def corect and very insightful re: GZA's simile-packed flow being a relic coming out of the Juice Crew days.

But you are dead wrong about this making anything sound "dated." Since GZA's flow a unique blending of the old AND the forward-thinking that's what makes GZA such a unique personality. He's a lateral-minded thinker that's also reverant to the classics. Complaining about it is like revisiting Trout Mask Replica and saying that the blues inflections make Captain Beefheart sound dated. It's just as misguided as when Breihan saying that Run-DMC lyrics don't hold up in the post-Jeezy era or whatever.

It's just as misguided as when Breihan saying that Run-DMC lyrics don't hold up in the post-Jeezy era or whatever.

o_0

like it's not like he's telling a story from a specific POV and then makes a quick non-sequitur aside about clock radio speakers, he's talking about things that are old/outdated/weak goes from sneakers to speakers, then there's the ref to stations and radios later in the song...

Since GZA's flow a unique blending of the old AND the forward-thinking that's what makes GZA such a unique personality. He's a lateral-minded thinker that's also reverant to the classics.

this is OTM, and also i think one of the big problems with this debate -- and i have an do see deej's point -- is that we are centering it around GZA, an extremely unique MC who is very hard to pigeonhole into one specific style or timeperiod...he really stands apart and that's part of what's making this hard to argue about

it would be like having an argument about rock pre- and post-nirvana and using U.S.Maple as an example

or actually scratch u.s. maple from that line and insert NOMEANSNO

it would be like having an argument about rock pre- and post-nirvana and using U.S.Maple as an example

nominate for ILM board description

Yeah, I mean basically my point is that GZA is really excellent at being GZA, a unique, stand-alone personality in the field of rap. It's really besides the point to even think of him in terms of how he relates to The Carter III.

gza even feels a bit out of step with the rest of wu-tang to me....like yeah he def straddles the line between the future and the past at the time the wu came out....

which is pretty much i think what deej was saying anyway, though maybe it came off as him saying it was a negative

last 10 min in the thread like the sun breaking through the clouds

no hominem

last 10 min in the thread like the sun breaking through the clouds

― contenderizer, Friday, October 15, 2010 2:26 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah well wait for

http://www.hurricanecity.com/images/davidsat1.jpg

to get back

it ain't worth the mic stands used by backup singers in atlantic city bands

http://www.grudge-match.com/Images/taz.gif

\oO/ i agree w what was just said

But you are dead wrong about this making anything sound "dated."

except for this. i just dont think theres something 'wrong' w that ...