The State of Hip-Hop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*ducks*

(nb: slighty altered crib from sfjones)

Read that out loud for us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think my sarcasm detector just blew up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

well said.

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

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

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

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

Ah, how things have changed..

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

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

am talking shit like Kno, Panacea, Kokayi

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

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

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

want yr opinions plz :)

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

anyway, I like Nocando

swag cru posts losts of obscure stuff

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

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

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

year before last now, i guess - 2009

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

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

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

what is the kno solo?

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

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

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

that ain't the best track but fair fucks

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

err in the revive

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

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

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

doing a separate thread tho is dumb imho

what deej said

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

bitching about the thread title, duh

oh god

Kokayi

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

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

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