slick rock production vs. slick hip hop production

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Inspired by this comment:

"...I was looking at it from the perspective of a DeRogatis-like rock critic, though, for whom Disturbed's "street" value is potentially undermined by the slickness of their sound (slickness, like it or not, being a critical signifier of inauthenticity). And then noting that this isn't a standard held to hip-hop, so slick mainstream stuff gets more easily praised."

In my experience, this is largely true. "Authenticity" in hip hop is not related to the production values, whereas in rock it often is. Why should this be so? One could argue that hip-hop grew up in a different environment, one in which equipment was cheaper and "slick" was more possible from the get-go. One could say that hip-hop never had a garage phase that colored the rest of its history, and besides its critics aren't as romantically in love with its glorious, filthy past as rock critics are. One could say all that, but I don't know if any of it would be true.

Why bling-bling? Wherefore "garage revival"? What odd race/class issues are at play here?

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:07 (twenty-two years ago)

hip-hop never had a garage phase?!!!

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:12 (twenty-two years ago)

again, when talking about critical conventional wisdom it should be mandatory to note just what critic's conventional wisdom you're talking about. DeRogatis derides 'slickness' in hiphop even more than he does in rock, and the critics who tend to praise mainstream hiphop also tend to be the ones willing to listen to nu-metal with an open ear (Simon Reynolds, Ethan Padgett (!)).

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:16 (twenty-two years ago)

indeed one stick critics who don't like maintstream hiphop use to beat it over the head with is it's 'slickness', be they undie types or yer old Grumpy Grampa DeRogatises.

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Yay! I inspired a thread! I'm still trying to sort all this out, though. If only Blount will let me.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:21 (twenty-two years ago)

hip-hop never had a garage phase?!!!

Like I said, all those statements' veracity is in serious doubt.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:22 (twenty-two years ago)

I also want Nabisco here fast, to map out the sociomusical landscape with many a)s and b)s.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:26 (twenty-two years ago)

that said, one thing that raised my opinion (or estimation or something) of The Chronic was Dr. Dre saying he was trying to create something that sounded as hard as Straight Outta Compton but as slick as Thriller at the same time, that he wanted to take hiphop to this next level of professionalism (I still like Doggystyle and Chronic 2k1 and maybe even the Above the Rim sndtrk better but still..). Throw Sean Combs into the mix and you don't have the birth of slick hiphop - credit Whodini or UTFO or maybe Kurtis Blow with that (maybe Oran Juice Jones even!) - but you do have it becoming the defining characteristic of mainstream hiphop.

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:27 (twenty-two years ago)

i like "slick" hip-hop productions -- like Jay-Z, the Neptunes, Timbaland, et. al. -- because i like the talent of the performers and/or producers. i'm pretty oblivious to undie, less-polished hip-hop so i don't really know whether or not i'd like it but if the talent's there then why not? and the same goes for rock ... i don't dislike nu-metal or eighties stadium rock because of its "slickness," but because i don't like the bands themselves. and obviously the same goes for some "low-fi" stuff.

why make a fetish out of this, anyway?

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, that's kinda my question.

But I also wonder if the very nature of rock and roll doesn't lend itself less to production and more to raw sound, whereas hip-hop makes better studio music than live music.

Please attack this.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:29 (twenty-two years ago)

"slick" doesn't really operate for me as a good or bad thing beyond the context of a particular song, where it can work for it or against it, depending on what's being said and the way that it goes, what the song seems like it's trying to say

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:30 (twenty-two years ago)

And to be fair, the question is phrased in an already very rockist way. Rock, of course, does not necessarily have to be the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or the White Stripes. Last I checked, Depeche Mode was still filed under "rock" in my local store. So there's a lot of blurriness to consider.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Maybe it's not that hip-hop didn't have a garage phase (although I'm wondering what exactly you have in mind, Blount) -- but that the aesthetics of that phase are not seen as the ESSENCE of hip-hop in the way that the aesthetics of garage rock are often seen as the ESSENCE of rock.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:33 (twenty-two years ago)

there are a helluva lot of god-awful live rock albums out there, you know. and even some of the "good" ones got some studio "tweeking" (here's looking at you, Frank Zappa and Kiss), not to mention the knob-twiddling of the production crew at the show (which is "production" of a sort too). not to mention that some of the alleged "authentic" rock recordings owe that sound as much to production values as anything else -- it certainly wasn't as if the Stones or Led Zeppelin walked into the studio, just turned on the mikes and the tape, starting rocking out, turned off the mikes and tape, and let the unadulterated product out onto the market!

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:34 (twenty-two years ago)

I'll agree with that - one thing rock is able to give me that nothing else does is the charge I'll get out of loud guitar . I've seen alot higher percentage of lame hiphop shows than lame rock shows also.

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:35 (twenty-two years ago)

"nature of rock n roll" = eletricity going through dainty strings and tiny bits of foam and copper and plugged through a compressor and your fuzzbox and being carefully monitored on the VU and setting up the microphones for ages. for the sound that gets captured to be raw you have to make it raw, it's not like big buzz-saw distortion is a natural part of the process. or else just be really shit at it and then i guess it sounds raw, as in you don't know really what you're doing

haha Tad jinx

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, but listening to Liz Phair's "Girlysound" tapes or PJ Harvey's 4-track demos, the rockist in me sometimes wonders if it wasn't meant to be this way.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:37 (twenty-two years ago)

tad, that's kind of tantamount to saying that the production doesn't matter as much as the SONG < / geirbot >. i doubt it's a coincidence that you don't like nu-metal or eighties stadium rock, which all has slick production (not that i'm trying to tell you what's going on inside your own head or anything).

slick rock production annoys me more because for me, rock production is as much a part of the song as in dance music for example. if something's got bad gated snare drum sounds, i'm much more likely to associate it with the sound of Phil Collins solo records. this is the reason old school hip-hop sounds kind of beat to me, the drums just sound bad. but i'm getting over it.

― Dave M. (rotten03), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:38 (twenty-two years ago)

wait wait wait does raw mean that there's less actual aforethought and skill in the production or does it just mean what it sounds like to you on the other end ("oo that sounds raw")?

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:46 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm wondering if my assumption that slick rock production was generally frowned upon comes from some indie-rock bias I developed a while ago. Because after getting into bands like Pavement, that's how I did malign mainstream radio rock: "Ugh, it's so fucking slick." And since certain rock critics liked raw indie rock, too, then surely they were on my side. But yeah, I realize that doesn't necessarily follow.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:47 (twenty-two years ago)

in a sense my argument is kind of "geirist" because for me it does come back to whether the underlying song is worth a damn. but what i've been trying to say is (a) i don't discount a song and/or genre simply because of its "slickness;" and (b) the alleged lack-of-slickness in "good" rock music (which goes to the rockist fetishization of "authenticity") is itself a production value, a deliberate choice made by the artists and/or production crew.

that said, in a sense maybe i really don't like, say, journey or limp bizkit because of their "slickness." but that's only to the extent that this slickness is part of the overall aesthetic of the band itself (the "pouring syrup on shit and calling it pancakes" syndrome). i can't imagine that i'd ever enjoy hearing either journey or limp bizkit recorded lo-fi, either. and there are certain rock and pop albums that i have enjoyed whose production was "slick" (i.e., countless Bowie and Philly soul recordings, kraftwerk).

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:49 (twenty-two years ago)

well to me - garage rock in the 60s (and ALOT of rap in the 80s) was: widespread DIY ethic, but beyond any punk/indie scene marginalism/insularity, and a complete lack of shame in ripping other acts off, incredibly short cycles, a tendency toward novelty or gimmick tracks, an astonishing number of acts who released one or two singles and were done, and an amateurishness and lack of production funds that led to a similar lack of - ta da! - 'slickness' between the two. They've even been the focus of their respective genres anti-slick undie/indie would-be counterrevolutionaries, the paradise lost to big money, etc.

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:51 (twenty-two years ago)

to be brief: it's one thing to prefer a particular sound or type of production. it's another thing altogether to fetishize that sound or type of production. the latter is, for lack of a better word, "geirist" whether the listener's fetish is for raw stuff or slick stuff.

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:51 (twenty-two years ago)

I really don't buy the argument that slick rock is any worse than rock that sounds either louder and more grating (read: "raw") or just plain crappy. Some slick shit is great. Some raw shit is great. Some crappy shit is great. In any of these categories, the shitty and soulless outweighs the good 10-1. That's not a function of the production. So where does DeRogatis come from? What exactly is he arguing? that more rock should sound this way and ot that way. regardless of quality?

It sounds to me like he's fallen into a critical pit that I want to avoid at all costs. Let's call it rockism.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:51 (twenty-two years ago)

It's easier for hip-hop to sound 'slick' in a lot of ways. You don't have to worry about being a tight band, you program the drums and it's perfectly in time. You don't have to worry about the right mic's and whatnot, you can sample something with the sound you're looking for.

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Tracer, for the purposes of this thread, I think we should stick to "how it sounds to you," because we're mostly discussing primary reactions to music.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 9 May 2003 05:54 (twenty-two years ago)

to parrot james, an awful lot of "raw" rock comes down to (a) the band not having enough money to get a slick production; (b) poor technology or technology/production that sounds awful to folks listening to the music years after it was recorded; (c) a deliberate aesthetic decision by a band that could afford slick production; or (d) any combination of the foregoing. (a) and/or (b) applies to an awful lot of sixties garage rock, seventies punk and eighties old-school rap, but look at what the acts who made it did immediately afterwards -- the ramones went into the studio with phil spector; the clash hired Blue Oyster Cult's producer; certain artists learned to twiddle the knobs themselves to get the sound they wanted (i.e., Frank Zappa, Pete Townshend, Dr. Dre). it's only well after the fact that the "sound" becomes a fetish (criteria [c] -- pavement, the elephant six folks, countless indie/undie acts) -- such a fetish can produce good music, but it's still a fetish.

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 9 May 2003 06:04 (twenty-two years ago)

even with pavement as soon as some money started to come in they started to 'slicken' up their records.

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 9 May 2003 06:08 (twenty-two years ago)

people say "oh intention, you can't worry about INTENTION" but i love wondering about that, what they wanted, what they were going for, i mean that can be part of your reaction to something. we should keep everything in bounds and included. i can understand enjoying the primary reaction-feeling that someone just dashed something off. </argues with self> i just wanted to distinguish between the two things. "Live at Action Park" sounds totally raw and totally produced at the same time, but maybe some things just the former, or some things just the latter. steve albini's got a fetish for both.

i'm not sure about the race/class issues, kenan? do they belong more on that thread you quoted?

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 9 May 2003 06:08 (twenty-two years ago)

slick hop, you don't stop
production has become the least of my worries
the voices, them is buggin' me.
don't start fires

― Bruce Urquhart (Bruce Urquhart), Friday, 9 May 2003 06:11 (twenty-two years ago)

that thread Kenan quoted

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 9 May 2003 06:22 (twenty-two years ago)

maybe because in hip hop the musicians already had a rough life, so raw sound ain't that important. heh. the bling bling/slick production shows what they strive for (easy money filled life) or have achieved.

― nathalie (nathalie), Friday, 9 May 2003 06:27 (twenty-two years ago)

I guess all I mean, Tracer, is that I want to talk about rawness and slickness as aesthetics or impressions, rather than reducing their very definitions to facts (such as relative amounts of money spent in the studio). As far as I'm concerned, though, that doesn't preclude you from talking about intentions or about facts in the context of your overall impression of the sound. (Especially, as you say, if that knowledge impacts your experience.) But I think most people are doing that, anyway, so keep at it!

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 9 May 2003 06:29 (twenty-two years ago)

(I was going to suggest something like that, Nathalie, but I was worried I'd accidentally start "Class, etc. Part 5.")

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 9 May 2003 06:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I will say though (in light of what I just said to Tracer) that I think we've sometimes been conflating "slick" with "produced" on this thread. Sure, the Ramones or Shellac may be meticulously produced, with lots of fancy equipment -- and you're all right to point the inherent artifices of rock music (amplification, etc.) -- but that doesn't give them a "slick" sound. We still hear it as "raw."

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 9 May 2003 06:39 (twenty-two years ago)

it reminds me of what job dewit said of cody c's the headphone masterpiece: that he liked it despite the hiss. wtf! if it's there it MEANS something. so yes it's probably over-intellectualisation to some, but if it's *there*, it signifies something. to some it ties in with class, to some that's irrelevant. i tend to agree with *insert name of a writer*: class is always there, even in the studio.

― nathalie (nathalie), Friday, 9 May 2003 06:49 (twenty-two years ago)

class is present in bling-bling precisely because of the slick production values. to someone like jay-z, he could probably do raw street-corner rapping without trying very hard -- there's no artistic challenge in him or any rappers like him doing stuff like that. and that's part of what makes jay-z so interesting an artist, particularly early on -- mixing the street-hustler lyrics with the high-gloss production values. contrast that with the likes of Ice Cube (who went to UCLA and at one point wanted to be a friggin' architect!) and other relatively well-off hip-hop artists who were "trying to keep it real" but such stance came down to their lyrical skills and skills in creating characters more than in necessarily relating any experience they had (and compare Ice Cube's lyrics to Eazy-E's -- the real street-punk who played up the cartoonish, the ridiculous and the shock-value).

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 9 May 2003 07:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Didn't Cube write a lot of Eazy's rhymes? That's what I remember.The joke back then was that Eazy would stand behind Ice Cube while he was writing and say,"make me sound harder!".

― scott seward, Friday, 9 May 2003 10:19 (twenty-two years ago)

cube wrote the rhymes

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 9 May 2003 14:08 (twenty-two years ago)

eazy had solo albums, then there's also niggas4life.

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 9 May 2003 14:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Production plays a very different role in hip-hop than it does in rock. In hip-hop, all you have is production and voice. The production is supposed to be obtrusive, to command your attention. In rock, it's supposed to fade into the background. The producer is supposed to be invisible, at least compared to the voice and the instruments. That's one of the reasons it's easier to pick out a Timbaland track the first time you hear it than, say, an Albini or even a Phil Spector track.

The problem with a lot of slick rock production is that it distracts without doing anything interesting; i'm thinking of the echoey thud bass drum sounds on like Journey or Vines records. When rock production is both slick and interesting (in the Timbaland/Neptunes way), some great things can happen. The Rapture/DFA stuff and the production on Nine Inch Nails records (especially The Downward Spiral) is slick and meticulous, but it's also arranged to increase the bite of the music. And so this stuff ends up being great.

I've never posted before. Someone argue with me!

― Tom Breihan, Friday, 9 May 2003 17:39 (twenty-two years ago)

It's easier to pick out a Timbaland track than Spector or Albini?!?!? I'd think all of these would be pretty equally easy (it's not as though Phil "Wall of Sound" Spector or Steve "Drum Sound" Albini don't have a) a pretty recognizeable array of sonic tricks or b) a number of copyists.)

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 9 May 2003 17:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, they both do, but neither has quite the level of input that Timbaland does. Or, in other words, Timbaland producing a Jadakiss (or whoever) track sounds more like a Timbaland track than a Jadakiss track. You definitely can't say that about Albini, and I think you can only say it about Spector to an extent.

― Tom Breihan (Tom Breihan), Friday, 9 May 2003 18:36 (twenty-two years ago)

So you regularly confuse Jadakiss and Aaliyah then?

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 9 May 2003 18:41 (twenty-two years ago)

I hope not. But when Tim is producing them either, they still feel first and foremost like Tim tracks. Even someone like Bubba Sparxxx who really, really sucks will probably have at least one memorable single if Tim is producing. Whereas Guntruck produced by Steve Albini would still sound primarily like Guntruck and still be shit.

― Tom Breihan (Tom Breihan), Friday, 9 May 2003 18:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Could that just be because you Timbaland a better producer (he actually calls himself a producer that helps I guess) than Steve Albini?

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 9 May 2003 18:51 (twenty-two years ago)

I have no doubt in my head that Timbaland is a better producer than any rock producer who ever lived. That doesn't change my idea that producers are way more important to hip-hop than they are to rock or that it's more of a producers' medium.

― Tom Breihan (Tom Breihan), Friday, 9 May 2003 18:54 (twenty-two years ago)

So why is Timbaland more important to his productions than Spector (who was more of a "pop" producer than a rock) is to his?

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 9 May 2003 18:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I probably shouldn't be talking too much shit about Spector, since I don't know that much about him. But, as far as I can tell, Spector's productions start with the songs; the songs would still exist whether they had all his strings behind them or not. If someone else had recorded them, they would be vasty different, but they'd still be out there somewhere. Tim's tracks, I imagine, start with him coming up with some amazing drum trick or hook or whatever, him polishing it, and him giving it to whatever MC or singer or songwriter he's working with, then with them coming up with lyrics/vocals to work around and compliment what Tim's already done. This could, of course, be totally wrong, but I can't see "Get Yr Freak On" or "Are you That Somebody" or "Big Head" or "Ugly" existing in any form without Tim's production. "Be My Baby" with out Spector (that's a Spector production, right?), I can imagine.

― Tom Breihan (Tom Breihan), Friday, 9 May 2003 19:04 (twenty-two years ago)

You are aware that most the artists that Timbaland do release tracks which were not produced by him, yes? Most of Spector's artists can't make that claim. (Plus Spector wrote a good many of the songs he produced, a claim Timbaland can't make.)

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 9 May 2003 19:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Tim may not have written the lyrics or whatever, but he did write the songs, or at least the parts of the songs that made them memorable. And yeah, I'm aware of the fact that artists Timbaland has produced have made non-Tim tracks. However, none of the artists he's produced except Snoop and Ludacris and (arguably) Jay-Z have made music anywhere near as good with other producers.

And who cares if nobody else produced Spector's artists? In at least one case, he was married to the group's frontwoman and keeping her prisoner? Missy Elliott rarely does anything without Tim, and he doesn't need to threaten her to keep it like that.

― Tom Breihan (Tom Breihan), Friday, 9 May 2003 19:18 (twenty-two years ago)

It's friday and I need to go home and eat hot dogs and get drunk, but it's been fun (for real). This was exactly the sort of argument I was hoping to get into.

― Tom Breihan (Tom Breihan), Friday, 9 May 2003 19:23 (twenty-two years ago)

"Be My Baby" with out Spector (that's a Spector production, right?), I can imagine.

Man, I sure can't. It would sound like an incomplete cover or something.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 9 May 2003 19:31 (twenty-two years ago)

tom - with respect to Tim's artists working elsewhere, how about JT with the Neptunes? how about Missy with Janet and Jam and Lewis on "Son of a Gun"? we all know that some of Tim's best productions are on Aaliyah songs but are those songs Aaliyah's best songs (not necessarily in my view). also on three recent occasions I have been shocked to realize Timbaland was on production duties, I had assumed that I was hearing inferior productions by the people producing the rest of the album (see the JT album).

not to hijack the thread, but with respect to rap producers i sure hope we're witnessing the beginning of the end for auteur-theory (what with that 700 post discussion of kael last month).

― vahid (vahid), Saturday, 10 May 2003 01:30 (twenty-two years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.