rjd2 should sign with rocafella!!

Are your Can Ox names "Vast Ca$h" and "Cristal Megalarge"?

also aesop rock would be dropped from the label switch and would be forced to be switched back to his government name, so his is whatever that would be

Oh wait. Shit. Never mind.

(Oh come on, one of them has Eminem on it! Yes it's that High and Mighty CD but still! Eminem!)

And come on: dropped? He could be A-ROCK.

"rick martin"

There's not much hip-hop about RJD2 in the first place, though, is there? I mean, his beats sound pretty interesting up against MCs, but I don't know if that'd work for more than three or four tracks at a time; his instrumentalist stuff, on the other hand, has something to do with hip-hop but doesn't even seem to be entirely doing hip-hop.

I think that anticon, eastern conference allstars, ryhmesayers, and def jux largely do make music with white people in mind. their shit, for the most part, is all angst-ridden or "progressive" (which seems to be another way of saying white). living in the bay area, i've never seen as large a congregation of white people as i did at the last atmosphere show. i thought that i was in new england or something.

I don't think they make music with any colour people in mind.

Pitchfork roolz.

Cause beyond that the complaint really does come down to a sandbox thing. It says: "Here's our sandbox, and here's how we play in it, and we like it that way. Now here come all you kids who don't know anything about the sandbox or its history, and you want to play in it a totally different way, and you're irritating us and messing everything up." Which, don't get me wrong, is probably a legitimate complaint if you really want to make it.

What about Dungeon Family?

Ha just kidding. Actually I talked about this with my brother recently -- he's been listening to hip-hop for something like 15 years plus and one thing he said he noticed is that ten years ago it wasn't that unusual for someone to be feeling say NWA, A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy and Schooly D all at the same time. It was just a matter of it all being considered 'hip-hop' and the only real rifts were between individual MCs, crews or localities -- not scenes and subgenres. Then it became gangsta vs. conscious and East vs. West and eventually what I guess we have now in chart rap vs. underground. One of the things that's been bothering me isn't the presence of materialism in rap (it was there in 197fucking9 -- just listen to Big Bank Hank's verse on "Rapper's Delight" ferchrissakes) but the fact that it's almost entirely what constitutes mainstream rap as far as subject matter and personality nowadays. There seems to be either less room or less demand for stuff outside that particular area; if Three Feet High and Rising came out today people would probably call it "soft" or "backpacker rap" or some other bullshit, and they wouldn't be around ten years from now to record with whoever 2012's answer to Redman is.

So yeah, RJD2 SHOULD produce some Roc-A-Fella artists. And I wanna see Vast Aire guest on a Ghostface track (or Ghostface on a Can Ox record!) and Slug get "Passin' Me By" type success. I'm kind of a dork that way.

But I was just listening to that track with Prefuse 73 and Mos Def and that struck me as a tiny bit of a tug (if only because it means you can now get from Prefuse to Busta Rhymes in only one step).

heh, good one

Oh, and you're misquoting me: I said "hating indie," not "hating indie kids." YOU hate indie kids, not me.

And how does me being a girl enter into this AT ALL? When was anybody's gender ever mentioned?

OK fine. But I meant this in a gender-neutral sense.

Yeah, I know. I was just quoting that Alex Cox article.

The fucking "wigger" thing needs to go away, though. I mean, Jesus, if hating indie is the equivalent of hating black people then telling people how to behave based on race must put Pol Pot to shame.

(As opposed to regular white indie kids who don't really think about what color they are and don't spend every day of their lives fearing that their car will break down in the South Bronx and some "blinged-out" "pimp" will ambush them and pop-quiz them on BDP or whatever.)

funny how i just assume ethan's white.

Okay forget what I said about Greil Marcus on that other thread...

What do those records have in common? (Besides my not liking them)

Indie is inherently racist? Any rhyme or reason to back these claims up, or are they just the sounds of an argument in cognitive surrender?

What's going to win you more "crebility" though, listening to "Girls Girls Girls" in Conneticut or listening to "Gold Soundz" in the Bronx? And which one's more likely to get you the shit kicked out of?>

"Set down here on the stoop with me and listen to the music," said Simple.

"I've heard your landlady doesn't like tenants sitting on her stoop," I said.

"Pay it no mind," said Simple. "Ool-ya-koo," he sang. "Hey Ba-Ba-Re-Bop! Be-Bop! Mop!"

"All that nonsense singing reminds me of Cab Calloway back in the old scat days," I said, "around 1930 when he was chanting, 'Hi-de-hie-de-ho! Hee-de-hee-de-hee!'"

"Not at all," said Simple, "absolutely not at all."

"Re-Bop certainly sounds like scat to me," I insisted.

"No," said Simple, "Daddy-o, you are wrong. Besides, it was not Re-Bop. It is Be-bop."

"What's the difference," I asked, "between Re and Be?"

"A lot," said Simple. "Re-Bop was an imitation like most of the white boys play. Be-Bop is the real thing like the colored boys play."

"You bring race into everything," I said, "even music."

"It is in everything," said Simple.

"Anyway, Be-Bop is passe, gone, finished."

"It may be gone, but its riffs remain behind," said Simple. "Be-Bop music was certainly colored folks' music -- which is why white folks found it so hard to imitate. But there are some few white boys that latched onto it right well. And no wonder, because they sat and listened to Dizzy, Thelonius, Tad Dameron, Charlie Parker, also Mary Lou, all night long every time they got a chance, and bought their records by the dozen to copy their riffs. The ones that sing tried to make up new Be-Bop words, but them white folks don't know what they are singing about, even yet."

"It all sounds like pure nonsense syllables to me."

"Nonsense, nothing!" cried Simple. "Bop makes plenty of sense."

"What kind of sense?"

"You must not know where Bop comes from," said Simple, astonished at my ignorance.

"I do not know," I said. "Where?"

"From the police," said Simple.

"What do you mean, from the police?"

"From the police beating Negroes' heads," said Simple. "Every time a cop hits a Negro with his billy club, that old club say, 'BOP! BOP!. . .BE-BOP!. . .MOP!. . .BOP!"

"That Negro hollers, 'Ooool-ya-koo! Ou-u-o-o!'"

"Old Cop just keeps on, 'MOP! MOP!. . .BE-BOP!. . .MOP!' That's where Be-Bop came from, beaten right out of some Negro's head into them horns and saxophones and piano keys that plays it. Do you call that nonsense?"

"If it's true, I do not," I said.

"That's why so many white folks don't dig Bop," said Simple. "White folks do not get their heads beat just for being white. But me -- a cop is liable to grab me almost any time and beat my head -- just for being colored.

"In some parts of this American country as soon as the polices see me, they say, 'Boy, what are you doing in this neighborhood?'

"I say, 'Coming from work, sir.'

"The say, 'Where do you work?'

"Then I have to go into my whole pedigree because I am a black man in a white neighborhood. And if my answers do not satisfy them, BOP! MOP!. . .BE-BOP!. . .MOP! If they do not hit me, they have already hurt my soul. A dark man shall see dark days. Bop comes out of them dark days. That's why real Bop is mad, wild, frantic, crazy -- and not to be dug unless you've seen dark days, too. Folks who ain't suffered much cannot play Bop, neither appreciate it. They think Bop is nonsense -- like you. They think it's just crazy crazy. They do not know Bop is also MAD crazy, SAD crazy, FRANTIC WILD CRAZY -- beat out of somebody's head! That's what Bop is. Them young colored kids who started it, they know what Bop is."

"Your explanation depresses me," I said.

"Your nonsense depresses me," said Simple.

racial make up of average indie-rock show crowd: Well, I don't know about where you're from, but in the UK, the "non-white", as you so quaintly put it, population stands at around 6%. And, in all my gig going years, I don't think I've been to a gig (indie or otherwise, actually) where less than 1 in 17 people were, hey, "non-white". And I've never heard one piece of racial abuse from a single person at an indie gig (unlike a few rock gigs I've been to).

tone of "irony" adopted when listening to Straight Outta Compton that's absent when listening to If You're Feeling Sinister: Firstly, if this is irony (I don't think it is), is it "white on black" irony? Or is it the irony of cultural vacationing, soaking yourself in a culture that isn't yours (the "blackness" of it is irrelevant). Secondly, are you sure it's irony? There's a sense of unease I always get listening to NWA, Public Enemy et al (despite not even being white myself), that manifests itself in a sort of nervous irony, a kind of "Did I cause all this that they're railing against?" The same as a male listening to a riot grrrl album, surely?

the notion that hating indie rock is as bad as hating black people: Nobody mentioned that. The thing that was mentioned (by one person, luckily that massed generalisations are in vogue today, huh?) was that hating "indie kids" is as dumb as hating black people. And hating any massed group of people based on your irrational prejudices is dumb. That's something we can agree on, no?

Look, indie's your bogeyman, whatever, fine. But don't start attributing quite frankly offensive opinions to it.l

JBR: "Oh, and you're misquoting me: I said "hating indie," not "hating indie kids." YOU hate indie kids, not me"

Dom: "the notion that hating indie rock is as bad as hating black people: Nobody mentioned that. The thing that was mentioned (by one person, luckily that massed generalisations are in vogue today, huh?) was that hating "indie kids" is as dumb as hating black people. And hating any massed group of people based on your irrational prejudices is dumb. That's something we can agree on, no?"

Just clarifying.

What I wonder here is whether Simon is more bothered because (a) he actually feels the demands of the "indie" demographic will have a negative effect on the state of hip-hop as a whole, or (b) he just thinks it's silly-looking and embarrassing when the musical newbies suddenly start strutting around his sandbox.

James, do you think when black indie hip-hop fans listen to, I dunno, Nelly or Jay-Z they do it with guilty pleasure? This isn't a dig, I'm interested to what your answer is gonna be.

The other problem is the way we're throwing "indie" about like it's the letter e. Indie and indie rock are being used as interchangeable terms here, when they damn sure aren't. You put a Steve Albini disciple and a Belle and Sebastian fan in the same room together, and somebody's gonna lose an eye, that's all I'm saying.

Is indie hip-hop hip-hop for indie fans? Surely El-P is more indie than, say, Jurassic 5 (J5 duet with Nelly fucking Furtado, for Christ's sake, that's possibly the unindiest move ever), but which one are indie fans more likely to listen to?

And as for ripping into Def Jux, the latest Hip Hop Connection does it better than Simon ever could...

As for the Albini/B&S thing - yes but they share a community of sorts. Proof: when Albini curated ATP (which B&S started) a lot of people went who had been to all previous ATPs, i.e. were B&S fans who were at least open-minded enough about Albini to spend £100 using his taste as a backdrop to their socialising. If Jay-Z had curated it and filled the line-up with the Roc-A-Fella roster do you think the same thing would have happened?

(Okay but seriously moral of joke = these things are dictated as much but association as by the actual product: directly above, J5's having done one single with Nelly Furtado is used as evidence of how they fit within the larger scheme of affiliations.)

With that said, I think that it's pretty much blatently racist to listen to something like "Straight Outta Compton" in an ironic manner. Or really any hip hop. Do people actually do this? Who the hell are they to think that they know hip hop well enough to treat it ironically? Maybe someone like Prince Paul has earned the liberty, but certainly not someone like Boom Box. To state the obvious hip hop has a rich cultural history that extends beyond gangsta, commercial, or indie hip hop. Desconstructing hip hop from your anglo vantage point is dangerous. It's taking a lot of liberties that you're not entitled to.

It's also kind of distubing how the indie attitude dicates that ish like anticon, lex, and def jux are progressive and somehow superior, as if hip hop has finally stepped up from its mire of stupidity and violence to be worthy of your ears. WTF?

I don't really understand this. Who's "your" here? If it means "you're not allowed to discuss/judge/explore hiphop because you're come from a different background", then it's manipulative bullshit (if it doesn't mean this then apologies).

But Sobe, what if it's not as conscious as all that "up from the mire" stuff and they just like it? What if they just say "I like music that has these certain qualities, and this stuff is the first hip-hop I've been exposed to that seems to have those qualities?" Should they not buy it just because their reasons for buying it don't necessarily fit with the genre as a whole? Or if they fully admit that that's the case -- that yeah, they're not really interested in hip-hop as a whole, and just respond to the way these guys are treating it, and don't pretend to know all about rap beyond that -- is there much grounds to mock them? (Would it be worse than a mainstream hip-hop fan saying "oh, I don't know anything about indie, but I think I like the way X, Y, and Z do it?")

In other words: is the problem that people like the stuff or that they're somehow arrogant or presumptuous about liking the stuff?

Hey, you know what, I don't think I own ANY rap records from def jux or matador. But that's just 'cause I don't own many albums at all. I thought matador was an indie rock label? I must be really out of it.

The problem w/underground rap isn't that indie kids like it, it's that it all seems to sound like it was recorded in an abandoned building. And it tends to be so ham-fisted. It's like: here are my influences, here's what I think is wrong with rap these days. Fuck, like some didactic high school essay from the dumbest kid in the "gifted" class. Which is to say: the problem, typically, is not how the audience listens to it, but how it's intended to be listened to in the first place. Ha, you're right though, being all anti-undie is just as bad as being anti-chart (and for me, it would be completely nuts. Just see if you can track down the first post I made here, in which I totally humiliated myself); but shit, I mean, I don't hate it on principle, when any of those dudes make some good music, I'll listen to it and like it, you know? Lessee, I do like some buck65...

I can't really see them meeting halfway. I can easily imagine Jay-Z working within the J-5 context, but not vice versa.

mark s. - perhaps "deconstructing" was the wrong term. within the context of what i said, i was addressing boom box and groups such as them in particular. i found their cd to be disrespectful, at the very least.

matt c. - nas certainly thought it was a contradiction. he called the roots out on it.

What's the contradiction? The Roots are extremely boring on their own but when given Jay Z and his producers' material to work with, they sound great. Is the Nate Dogg/Pharoah/Mos Def song on Soundbombing 3? That song is really good too. There is simply more creativity and excitement and energy and sex and violence and emotional breadth (if not depth) in mainstream rap than in underground "hip-hop"; that's why I like it better.

the thing thats being overlooked is that its ridiculuos to assume that people listening to mainstream hip hop are doing it with either a sense of a) guilt, b) irony, or whatever. The listening public (certainly in britain) buy records by Nelly, Ja Rule, Jay Z by the bucketload. every pub in britain will play a Nelly song at some point during the night. the only people this nonsense applies to are the tiny minority of people who have ever heard any indie music, let alone backpacker hip hop! everyone else? ha!

whether ethan is worried everyone is playing in his sandpit or not is a very odd line of thinking! EVERYONE plays in that sandpit already! a few college boys mean nothing! theres just this weird implication that the music being talked about is the music of the bronx, brooklyn, philly et etc. Yes it is! but its also the music of Kansas City, Melbourne, Shanghai, Paris, Huddersfield, Bucharest, St Petersburg, Kettering

Mark S. -
That's an interesting point...although i still think that one needs to really understand the culture of hip hop to move it forward. just because hip hop is as much a culture as it is a form of music...although i don't think that it's racially exclusive, you really can't grasp it by surfing the internet...just my opinion.

Kris -
do you really think that commercial rap has more creativity and excitement and energy and sex and violence and emotional breadth? i'm not going to argue with you, i'm just wondering where? i feel the neptunes and timberland (although i question *some* of their emcees), and i also like the occasional jay z, 'clipse, and even the last nas had some good tracks. but i could counter that the "underground" has fat jon, madlib, mf doom, and j-zone on the production tip. i'll agree that the emcee's have been a bit lite as of late, but jean grae's new one is great (although she seriously needs a mixdown). and the "undeground" has freestyle fellowship, busdriver, mr. lif, and many others. i think that a big problem with underground hip hop is that there's no filter. you have more good, but you also have a lot of mediocrity.

i'm not trying to argue one over the other (although i have my preference) but i just think that by declaring your allegiance to one you are limiting yourself. and i'm not suggesting that you were declaring your allegiance, btw. but some people are, it seems.

Has anyone heard that Mack 10 song produced by Mannie Fresh with the staccato beat and the weird slide guitar? It's the kind of surprise and novelty you don't get with things that are so self-consciously "alternative".

*crosses fingers*

rjd2 would've been a much better pick.

his name is Ian Bavitz. Really.

I hope your mother contacts bowel cancer.

Love, Sophie B Hawkins.

p.s. REPLY PLEASE!!!!!!!!

this would certainly spell the end of all existence.

A nuclear holocaust, soundtracked to a remix of the "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego" theme.

Tweet ft. Missy Elliott - Turn Da Lights Off (RJD2 remix)

does sobe still post?

'dat nigga d2'

i guess this didnt really work out

rjd2 should sign with sub pop

rjd2 needs to stfu

funny how every middleground boom-bap producer now is either making gnarls barkley garbage or keyboard beats for young buck

req: one listenable track rjd2 ever produced. i gravely doubt this exists.

also aesop rock would be dropped from the label switch and would be forced to be switched back to his government name, so his is whatever that would be
loool

req: one listenable track rjd2 ever produced. i gravely doubt this exists.

-- luriqua, Friday, August 17, 2007 4:50 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Snzbo2j3pJI

word ryt re charizma :C
time warner cable milwaukee had an unlikely stash of amazing on demand charizma shot including bt not limited to a live set of red light/green light where they were dancing and stopping like elementary school exercise. rip

wtf that's the gayest shit i've written in a while. i'll keep it t' the blog

good rjd2.

http://babelfish.altavista.com/

latest RJD2 album is major dud

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Snzbo2j3pJI

-- and what, Friday, August 17, 2007 11:58 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

lol i used to work w diverse's fiance

fiancee

i have memory of horror being so wack bt http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZqCMaM3H2tk is pretty dope

^^^ blog it :C

i'll stop ruination of thread now sry

More like stop the ruination of the English language, am I right?

bt? you mean bluetooth? what the hell is that an abbreviation for... oh, you mean "but."

i'm just confused about what this face means

:C

in case anybody needs to remember why anybody ever gave a fuck about rjd2 his breezeblock is in like my top 5 dj mixes of all time

http://www.radioblogclub.com/open/147970/rjd2/Rjd2_-_Radio_1_Breezeblock_Mix_08-06-2004

rj's back 2 basics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps82DjhE_hs

this thread gets the gas face