non-rap artists who repped for rap back in the day and non-rap artists who did not.

thinking about sinead a lot obviously. and how remarkable it was back then that she was such a big rap fan! i don't know why it seemed remarkable to people. because she was a white pop-rock woman? that can't be it. that was probably it. she was young too! she needed rebel armor, duh. i'd been hearing rap in rock and pop since...1980? wait, was there a rap song on kings of the wild frontier? anyway, new romantics, new wave, dance-y bands embraced or just ripped off rap since forever. but those old grizzled rockers. they went out of their way to be horrible about rap. also since forever. my memory is that 60s and 70s freedom rockers could be the worst but maybe there was badness all around. and by badness i mean racism. punk and metal might have been worse. and country...well, now country is in the flowering of a rap renaissance so all's well that ends well. though there were of course people who embraced rap in every genre. but not a ton anywhere. wait, who were the r&b artists who HATED rap? i used to think madonna was a big rap fan. but then i heard her rap! sorry. i had to. man, the negativity felt way more pervasive here. lots of hate. i still get lots of rap hate in my store to this day. its the only really visceral distaste i witness in people who come in! isn't that crazy? some of it is the instinctive hatred for things that people think are talentless fads for suckers. like punk. but there can also just be distaste for the culture. for the people. for the voices. but fuck that darkness i'm just hoping tarfumes has a choice anecdote about neil young, mc shan, and steve swallow stuck in an elevator together after a phillip glass concert.

anyway, i just wondered if you could remember examples of times where you felt surprised by a non-rap artist being a rap fan or surprised by someone being really negative about rap in general. i feel like non-american artists just took it in stride more in the 80s and beyond. whether as a novelty or yet one more example of african-american genius that they could worship. things are different here.

you don't have to read that long thing at the top. you can just read the short thing. you won't miss much.

i also searched for a thread like this and i didn't see one. but there may be something.

i seem to remember late 80s Macca being dismissive of rap on some chat show, and showing how easy it was by saying “well my name is Paul and I am not small” or some terrible shit like that, and winked and thumbs upped and the crowd laffed and applauded at how he’d really shown them uppity rappers

maybe it wasn’t exactly like this but it was close

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nguaFTE7WYg

Paul changed his mind and did something with pre-MAGA Kanye IIRC

There are several late 70s/80s black artists that have the same arc as Prince. At first he was pretty against it. Thought sampling to be unoriginal and lazy, if not outright theft. Rappers are not musicians, I believe he called them all tone deaf. Once it became popular in a mainstream sense he started to incorporate it into his music, but basically completely abandoned it after a few years.

Did he evolve as listener or was he dabbling in a genre he hated to stay relevant?

another strike against the Dead

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

I don't see why that is at all a bad opinion. Describing rappers as essentially poets, not musicians is a totally valid stance

Fuck that, he sounds like exactly like a bigoted boomer asshole.

Dylan did a track with Kurtis Blow and writes in his memoirs how he felt over the hill when comparing his own work to that of Public Enemy, Ice-T, etc.

Paul Simon had Big Daddy Kane intro the "Me & Julio" music video.

Bo Diddley's stance from the one interview I remember seemed to be "this lacks originality but hey, as long as they pay me".

I suppose Rodney Dangerfield was an early adopter of the music

comedians definitely saw the appeal right away. which totally makes sense.

i love hearing jazz dudes from 50s 60s taking a huge dump on rocknroll, its nice to hear your favorite music just completely obliterated, kinda keeps things in perspective. yeah yeah there were a few guys from that era who sort of got it but this is very much to be expected, just learn to love the hate.

I was surprised and happy when night-music / tranq pop masters HTRK covered “Hit ‘Em Wit da Hee” on Venus in Leo. Transformative cover but grounded in respect.

Dylan did an intro to a Kurtis Blow record way back in 86!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfi7ME_Y5Vs

bbq at 2:15 13 Aug 23

I don't see why that is at all a bad opinion. Describing rappers as essentially poets, not musicians is a totally valid stance



no it's not a valid stance in any way unless you are as dumb as Garcia. rapping is a musical element within the track, drums (& space) are music......

John Entwistle: “I can't stand rap....people who can't sing do rap....you can sing rebellion as well as talk it....Hitler would have been in a rap band.”

Pete Townshend:

When asked about what he felt about rap and hip-hop’s “stranglehold” on the pop charts, Townshend answered, “Rap and hip-hop is the music of the street today. The street is where rock came from. When the white rock players and their fans stopped hanging out on the street, and started hanging out in restaurants, the reality shifted.”

Townshend added, “This is… a ‘loaded’ question. You assume I will agree with you that rock has lost its grip on the masses. Firstly, it never had a grip on the black audience, they’ve always had their own music styles and special coded language which rap has now formalized. I also reject the use of the word ‘stranglehold’ — it suggests a noble rock ‘n’ roll tree is being starved of air and nurture by the weeds of rap. I am a huge fan of rap — even Eminem has a real connection to the work I did when I was young.”

Once read an interview with Jim Dickinson where he went on about Dr Dre being a brilliant producer

Damn that's a great quote by Pete

ums very otm

I listen to Questlove's podcast a lot and there have been a succession of 70s r&b dudes who haaated rap at first, especially when they heard their music sampled and considered it theft...until the publishing gets sorted and the checks start rolling in, then they love rap. :)

ums otm seconded. For one thing, the guy who happily accompanied Pigpen’s utterly interminable babbling on 40-minute renditions of “Turn On Your Lovelight” needs to stfu about what is and isn’t “music.”

But “music” is not a qualitative term, like “weather.” When it’s raining no one says, “Pfft! This isn’t even weather!”

Thread forced me to listen to this, which I had managed to avoid hearing until ca. 5 minutes ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1Am45JrwQ4

Debbie Harry insisted on having the Funky 4+1 as secondary musical guests when she host Saturday Night Live in early '81 (and by then Blondie had recorded "Rapture").

https://vimeo.com/512205663

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were one of the openers on the Clash’s 1981 Bond’s residency, and were getting booed by the audience. Then Joe Strummer’s voice came over the PA and said, "Cut the crap and give them a chance! The Clash picked Grandmaster Flash to play for you, and if you don’t treat them with some respect, then you don’t deserve to see the Clash!"

there's that great Dylan quote about PE and Ice-t -"these guys weren't bullshitting, they were beating on drums, tearing it up, hurling horses off cliffs. They were all poets and knew what was going on"

Got curious and looked to see when was the next time SNL had a Hip Hop musical guest, and it was in early 1990! Quincy Jones hosted and was the musical guest alongside a number of the guests from his then-new Back On The Block album (Big Daddy Kane, Kool Moe Dee etc.).

Run-D.M.C. was a musical guest in 1986. Spike Lee, as Mars Blackmon, introduced them (Malcolm-Jamal Warner was the host), and talked about how the recent violence at a Run-D.M.C. show in Long Beach was instantly blamed on the music, but no one talked about the violence (cherry bombs, people thrown off balconies) at rock shows.

Oops, missed that whilst skimming an episode guide.

this actually might be a good litmus test for sorting out smart vs. dumb classic rockers

maybe i should put this on the "second thoughts" thread but i tire of threads whose point is to call other less enlightened people bigots or racists or whatever. litmus tests. canceling people.

I remember McCartney actually saying good things about rap. iirc he said he discovered some of it thanks to one of his daughters. I think he singled out Eric B & Rakim and B-Fats as two acts he liked. Then years later he talked about going to the see the Eminem movie and enjoying it.

TSF I hope Jerry Garcia can recover from my post

sorry ums i really enjoy your posts. it's just my mindset right now. it just seems that our bigot detectors are set way too high these days. when you're two weeks away from your 65th birthday and you keep being bombarded by phrases like "bigoted boomer asshole" it has a cumulative effect.

Oops, missed that whilst skimming an episode guide.

I also missed LL Cool J, who appeared as dual musical guest alongside some Rock band called The Pull on a Sean Penn-hosted SNL ep in early '87.

The Pull = Sean's brother Michael's pre-solo career outfit.

...and it was in late '87.

TSF - no worries and I've always enjoyed your posts as well. I do tire of generational thinking, it's very tiresome and tends to paper over a lot of issues with race, class, culture etc. I've tried to remove "boomer" from my vocab because it's gotten tiresome.

I should apologize to bbq the way I phrased that was harsh and not fair to you.

honestly I just personally very much dislike Jerry Garcia as a person and the cult around him (do dig the Dead to a degree), so that was why it was so harsh.

lol I said tiresome 10 times who's dumb now

I didn’t know Dylan did that Kurtis Blow feature, that’s awesome…

I was always intrigued by the Xgau review of the first RHCP album:

The Red Hot Chili Peppers [EMI America, 1984]
As minstrelsy goes, this is good-hearted stuff (and as minstrelsy, it had better be). The reason it doesn't quite come off isn't that it's good-hearted, either: the band is outrageous enough, though probably not the way it thinks it is. Perhaps there's a clue in this mysterious observation from spokesperson Flea: "Grandmaster Flash and Kurtis Blow have great raps, but not that great music with it." In a bassist, that's serious delusion.

Meanwhile, Stevie Wonder in 1982:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6f6BOKXXxg

A lot later but still by today's vantage "back in the day," plus a form of repping:

The chorus ... (is) derived from the chorus of Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A," which apparently irked Jack Thompson, the Florida lawyer who instigated the complaints about 2 Live Crew. On June 19 Thompson sent a letter to Springsteen's manager, Jon Landau, warning that 2 Live Crew might "be about to rip off his song." Thompson suggested that Springsteen "protect 'Born in the U.S.A.' from its apparent theft by a bunch of clowns who traffic toxic waste to kids. If he does not, then I'll be telling the nation about Mr. Springsteen's tacit approval of the above."

Actually, Campbell had sent a letter to Springsteen outlining the idea and lyrics for "Banned," requesting use of the song for "parody purposes." Landau says there are numerous requests to use Springsteen songs and "from time to time, you approve them, based on the merits of the specific proposal." (One such approval involved Cheech Marin's parody, "Born in East L.A."). Speaking for Springsteen, Landau said, "Bruce was comfortable with it. He's aware of Luke's situation, and to the extent that by approving this it helps in the area of free speech and showing support for freedom of expression, that is something Bruce is happy about and feels it's a good thing."

In a follow-up letter on June 26, Thompson sent a mock cover based on "Born in the U.S.A.," suggesting a title for Springsteen's next album: "Raped in the U.S.A."

"Mr. Springsteen, you're now harmful to the women and children who have bought your albums. You're also now a co-conspirator in the production of what Luther Campbell has said is an album that will be 'more obscene' than the last one and whose title cut will be 'Banned in the U.S.A.' Who's giving you legal advice? Luther's lawyers?"

Landau responds, "You can't even start paying attention to these things."

"maybe i should put this on the "second thoughts" thread but i tire of threads whose point is to call other less enlightened people bigots or racists or whatever. litmus tests. canceling people."

i totally get this and i am definitely guilty of going in hard on the woodstock set. i'm more interested in historical reactions to this explosive force that basically blew up the concept of bands and that traditional singer/songwriter model. it was a new thing (made out of old things) and what do people do when they hear a new thing? its interesting!

i have read a ton of 50s Downbeat issues and the pernicious threat of rock is kinda hilarious but also illuminating. it is seen as an invading force and rap created the same atmosphere.

one of my favorite books on earth is art taylor's Notes and Tones. interviews he did in the late 60s with various jazz artists. rock was STILL a scourge for a lot of the people he talked to at the height of civil rights tension. fuck the beatles and all that. and it also felt decadent and frivolous to those people. there was important work to do!

i don't see the rap haters as dumb. i do find their reactions to the music kinda bizarre and wild.

and like i said, i talk to people all the time at my store about what they love and hate. a lot of people i talk to who listened to rap in high school and college ONLY like the stuff they listened to in high school and college and HATE everything afterwards. and the reasons have a cliche similarity. "its all about bitches/hoes/money." "but kendrick lamar is okay i guess..."

i have had to hear bad freestyle raps about bitches/hoes/etc. from people who hate rap more than once and once was more than enough.

i should probably retire the boomer word too. but that cohort of middle to upper middle class white men hates rap with the most disdain. all these years later. i dunno. its maddening. and weird.

I talked to a cabbie a few months ago about music, he said he listened to hip-hop and grime in his youth but now realised that was "bullshit" and loved Elvis, Buddy Holly, stuff on oldies radio. "How many times can you talk about girls, cars, guns?". So I said well how many times can you talk about having a party and being in love. "Yeah but those songs are GOOD".

I thought of Neil Young right away, how he was plugged into everything at that time. I hope he wasn't dismissive, but I don't know--will try to find something contemporaneous.

the funny thing is sometimes I listen to old rap and get totally ambushed by how nasty some of that shit was wrt women and homophobia (really ruined this Nikki D album I was listening to on Spotify this morning walking the dog, which is mostly excellent) but like that type of person probably loves Slick Rick and some of the stuff he says, yikes

In 2012 Neil declared "Gonna get me a hip hop haircut," but to my ears, he sounded like he really did want to.

"drummers aren't musicians by most of the metrics used"

it hasn't been scientifically proven that drummers are even human yet! people theorize that they might just be an evolutionary dead end good for lifting amps up club stairs and getting people to buy them beer.

I was messing around with a gun and shot somebody by accident. Actually, he was like a manager of mine

i hate when that happens.

i have been listening to mobb deep! inspired by havoc set i saw a few weeks ago, where he was opening for kool & the gang in flushing meadow park. i am somehow encouraged to learn that the hardcore-ness of their lyrics was largely cosplay. that's not something i would have picked up on via just listening.

― Thus Sang Freud

was it though?

Didn't they accidentally shoot someone when they came for their first label meeting?

― hardcore technician gimmicks are also another popular choice f (President Keyes)

idk kinda bolsters the "cosplay" argument imo, nobody who's hardcore is gonna rap about shooting someone _by accident_ :)

interesting lack of commentary around on how women were treated by the London 60s rock & roll scene, both in terms of lyrics and real-life actions.

commentary from Ray Davies and others of his time/place, that is

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

ray davies, who wrote racist, anti-semitic, and transphobic songs for beloved "british invasion" band the kinks, has a problem with hip-hop culture

the guy who fucking wrote _lola_ has a problem with _how women are treated_

that's cute, ray

prodigy's ballet past was the main ammo that jay-z used against the mobb during their beef (the other main thing was that he was short, i guess)

I read Prodigy's autobiography about 10 years ago. may he rest in peace as a god forever, but it was a bad read. he seemed at times to be trying to play up how hard he was, but most of the stories were from after he became a rapper. he definitely got arrested multiple times for gun charges, but it was usually for having concealed weapons in the engine block or things like that.

he also still seemed peeved about "Takeover".

a lot of the stories proving his 'hardness' seemed embellished as well. I found the parts about having sickle cell anemia more poignant. or about rapping in general.

Marvin Gate put out a partially rapped single in 1979:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxASPCW0PwM

"Ego Trippin' Out" is such a jam.

jim croce put out a hardcore gangster rap single in 1973. sorry, i am contractually obligated to make that joke. but it was the first 45 i ever bought! and it was about a very very bad man...

i feel like a lot of rappers have guys with them that are a lot harder than they are

but it's funny image vs. reality....like Eric B and Rakim are perceived as more conscious were SUPER connected with serious dudes. like the back of Paid in Full, they are posing with the real original 50 Cent (who 50 took his name from), a dude name Killer Ben who was a stickup kid, another guy who was the brother of Supreme Magnetic who became a drug kingpin, plus Freddie Foxx was with them. Eric B. famously had a Rolls Royce really early on, when they could not have been making that much money from rap, i saw a breakdown of that back cover photo a long time ago

I also think they were down with Alpo

little known fact, "ante up" was a croce cover

And there’s the thing where everyone was legit terrified of MC Hammer

Paul Barman ran with Tookie Williams

It was Hammer's brother everyone was afraid, according to Too Short.

of

i listened to all 4 eric b. & rakim albums in a row the other day and they do to me what they have always done to me. they make me want to leap into action! or clean records faster. jesus they sound so good. most underrated songs: "Mahogany" and "Relax With Pep". also: "Teach The Children" predicted the rise of Trump.

I was afraid of his pants.

you didn't know what he had in this pants! you could fit anything in there!

prodigy's ballet past was the main ammo that jay-z used against the mobb during their beef (the other main thing was that he was short, i guess)

― ludicrously capacious bag (voodoo chili)

rolling maleness and masculinity thread to room #onethread

we don't believe you, you need more people

RIP Magoo btw

the bird is still the word

i went to an eric b and rakim concert where someone got killed. my altamont. actually i don't think i even was aware at the time that anything had happened.
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/12/nyregion/one-is-killed-and-12-are-injured-as-li-rap-concert-turns-violent.html

Prodigy seems to have hated everybody else in Queensbridge at one point, amazed there weren't more diss tracks against him.

Adapting from wikipedia:
On the DVD The Genesis Songbook, the band and producer Hugh Padgham revealed that the inspiration for Phil Collins' menacing laugh on the 1983 Genesis song "Mama" came from rap music pioneer Grandmaster Flash's song "The Message".

NORE shot someone in the Mobb Deep crew.

Geddy Lee (October 1991): "I guess that track is something that was influenced by more of the spoken word stuff that is going on, although I can't sit here and say I'm a fan of rap. I like some rap things, but a lot of I don't like. I think there's some of it that's really well done - there are some clever people out there. But it's also not a new influence. People are talking about rap music like it's something new - it's not new at all. It's been around for over a decade, if not always in one form. And there are songs, like 'Territories,' where we have used a similar kind of thing, although it was never related to rap because it wasn't the music of the moment - so we have used spoken word sections before."

Neil Peart ("Roll The Bones Radio Special"): "Yeah, that started off as a lyrical experiment for me; I was hearing some of the better rap writers, among whom I would include like LL Cool J or Public Enemy, musicality apart, just as writers, it was really interesting. And it struck me that it must be a lot of fun to do that; all those internal rhymes and all that wordplay and everything. That's meat and potatoes for a lyricist; it's stuff you love to do and can seldom get away with being so cute in a rock song. So I thought, "Well, I'll give it a try," and I submitted actually I think the song "Roll The Bones" without that section to the other guys and got them to like it, and said, "Well, I have this other thing I've been working on, and see what you think." You know, not knowing how they'd respond, but I'd had the fun of doing it and I've been rejected before; my notebook's full of things that haven't made it too, so that was the situation there. And they got excited about the idea, but then how to treat it was the other question, and we did think of trying to get a real rapper in to do it, and we even experimented with female voices, and ultimately found that that treated version of Geddy's voice was the most satisfying as creating the persona that we wanted to get across, and was also the most satisfying to listen to. And with the female voice in it, it wasn't as nice texturally going by, where Geddy's voice treated like that became a nice low frequency sound, and you could listen to it just as a musical passage without having to key in on the lyrics or anything, just let the song go by you. And it was pleasant to the ear, so I think that was probably one of the big factors in choosing that. We'd even been in contact with people like Robbie Robertson; we thought we'd like to try his voice on it and had contacted his office, and so on. John Cleese we thought of; we were going to do it as a joke version, get John Cleese in it: "Jack, relax." Get him to camp it up, but again from the musicality and longevity factors, that would have got tired quickly; that's the trouble with jokes."

ack, relax
Get busy with the facts
No zodiacs or almanacs
No maniacs in polyester slacks
Just the facts
Gonna kick some gluteus max
It's a parallax, you dig?
You move around
The small gets big, it's a rig
It's action, reaction
Random interaction
So who's afraid
Of a little abstraction?
Can't get no satisfaction
From the facts?
You better run, homeboy
A fact's a fact
From Nome to Rome, boy

What about the voice of Geddy Lee? How did it get so fly?

Bob Ezrin wanted rap, somehow, on A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Gilmour gave him a firm no.

xp Ha ha

That whole section on using his voice (vs. a "female voice") is something else

https://www.reddit.com/r/hiphopheads/comments/6lkjy4/ever_seen_the_back_cover_of_eric_b_rakims_classic/

^^ possibly the breakdown mentioned earlier

yeah that's it thanks!

I read Prodigy's autobiography about 10 years ago. may he rest in peace as a god forever, but it was a bad read. he seemed at times to be trying to play up how hard he was, but most of the stories were from after he became a rapper. he definitely got arrested multiple times for gun charges, but it was usually for having concealed weapons in the engine block or things like that.

he also still seemed peeved about "Takeover".

― earosmith (Neanderthal), Monday, August 14, 2023 12:11 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

prodigy's blog posts are amazing from the myspace era. that book is cowritten by ... lets just saying I dont blame prodigy

anyway I think its kind of weird when ppl are 'relieved' by someone's 'lack of authenticity' as I am them 'fetishizing authenticity' like does this mean if he's really had a tough life his words & stories mean less to you? its a weird angle for an artist and kind of pathologizing

also stanley crouch is a goofball, he was a reactionary even within jazz

some interesting figures who got behind rap from an older generation ... keyboardist james mason from roy ayers band, for example, produced one of my favorite early rap tracks ever, the Fat Boys debut single "Reality" from when they were called the disco 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBnHShjaJE0

Weldon Irvine, super legendary jazz musician, played keyboards on the mos def debut and blackstar albums

patrick adams, of P&P records/all those classic disco records, died last year. But in the '80s he recorded "Paid in Full" for eric b and rakim, produced salt n pepa, etc

maceo parker was mentioned earlier, he was a big one

actually nvm he wasn't mentioned earlier! dj premier mentioned him in an interview i read earlier today. his horn is all over 'buhloone mindstate'

I take back my criticism of the prodigy book cowriter I dont know her -- I thought it was someone else

and havent read the prodigy bio

That Stanley Crouch/Russell Simmons/KRS-One roundtable posted upthread is incredible.

those are pretty much the last people i would want to have dinner with. bleh. wait, that's mean. but, still, bleh.

this is sad. but informative. i am in no way comparing my experience as a child with his, but as someone who suffered sporadic crippling pain via headaches from babyhood until i was 19, i really feel for people who experienced physical pain as a child. its very isolating. and nobody know how bad it feels except for you. it sucks. and when i think of that pain moving with me throughout my WHOLE life...i don't even know how people do it. god bless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5bI6BNt0nY

The Prodigy book is probably the best rap memoir and I have read a lot of them

His death was so goddamn absurd

He should still be with us

Stanley Crouch was fucking terrible. I've been reading a lot of his writing lately — he wrote about Cecil Taylor a bunch of times — and he was seriously one of the worst high-profile critics in jazz history. He started out as a radical, then pivoted to being an arch-conservative after washing out as a drummer; anything close to a good idea he ever had was stolen from Albert Murray; he considered hyperbole a fit substitute for insight; and once he fixated on an idea he would never, ever let it go. You couldn't change his mind about anything, ever, and he'd swing on people who tried. Read Albert Murray; read Amiri Baraka; consign Crouch to history.

you're better off reading sonny bono. or yoko ono!

Bowie apparently said this onstage:

"I've been listening to the album by 2 Live Crew. It's not the best album that's ever been made, but when I heard they banned it, I went out and bought it. Freedom of thought, freedom of speech – it's one of the most important things we have."