Village Voice/DC C. Paper writer on "vocal complexity" in rap & Prefuse 73 vs. Kogan, Frere-Jones take on production

Coates says in another place 'hip-hop's threshold for content beyond boasts is appallingly low.'

A guy like Fabolous is probably a better rapper than Aesop Rock, but this Coates guy doesn't sound like he's interested in hearing someone rap about penises and trucks. (He doesn't like Nas, either.)

2. If Timbaland released a quiet, no vocals record on Warp, he'd be innovative. You know?

But, like, this Coates guy might not be listening for innovative stuff in R. Kelly productions. Or Just Blaze productions. Or Kanye West. Or.

that doesn't seem like a misplaced usage at all.

hard to see the arc of his rhetoric from just that snippet tho

i bet u all got that wrong the first time u tried! (i bet i'm getting it wrong here, too, i can never remember what syllable to ease into the second part with)

"meaningful" vocals sounds like a difft kettle of fish, and slipperier

I don't find El-P's production to be as funky as the Bomb Squad's, and the same with Prefuse 73 as compared to DJ Premier.

Thanks to Sterling for nailing the crucial issues. If by "vocal complexity" you mean "rhythmic counterbeats," I'll go along with the idea that Rakim put accents and beats where previous rappers like Spoonie Gee hadn't. If you mean emotional complexity, tonal color, and so forth, Spoonie's a master while Rakim's got the variation and skills of a used doormat. Beyond that, I've got nothing add, I don't think. Justin Timberlake has more vocal complexity than Rakim. So does Lata Mangeshkar. (But they're not MCs, I guess, so they don't count.)

Also on my praise for Prefuse--beware of boxing off critics. Obviously I like the guy's album a lot, but that doesn't mean I hate Timbaland, Just Blaze or Kanye West. This isn't a private notion either--I've written fairly glowingly of Kanye West, especially.

Ta-Nehisi

As to a larger question that I think you're alluding too, the point I was making in my Prefuse peice: why do I seem to believe that great MCing isn't essential to selling records? I think Puffy, Baby, and even Styles have made it clear that you don't have to be a superior lyricist or any sort of visionary to make a hit. It's cool if you are--as say Andre 3000 often is--but its not neccessary. And it probably never was.

But I do believe that before world turned its eye to rap, and it became a big money-moving business, that MCs did care more about thier skills. This isn't about some mythical distinction between fun and intellect. You would throw on "Eric B Is President," "I Ain't No Joke," "I Know You Got Soul," "Microphone Feind," any of that at a party, and peeps would loose thier minds. But then the next morning, you'd be getting dressed listening to those same cuts thinking, "Damn, the God came the fuck off."

The same goes for Biggie. "Hypnotize," "One More Chance," these were kick-ass party songs. And maybe you'd try to hate on them as a "underground head," but you really couldn't because the dude was stringing words together in ways that you'd never heard.

I'm aware that that's a somewhat incomplete answere--but my point is that those two were really dynamic because, for me, they worked on several levels. Forgive me for not feeling that way about, oh I don't know, Cam'Ron. But that doesn't mean that there aren't people out today working on those same--or more--sorts of levels. But I do think, that there are less artists doing it.

Also, for someone, whoever it was, saying that Fabolous is probably a better rapper than Aesop Rock, or that Prefuse is not as "funky" as Premier... Come on. Deep down in our collective wanna-be-Lester-Bangs hearts we all know that that kind of statement is completely arbitrary and depends on your aesthetic.

Sure, I herald Aesop Rock, but that's because Fab, Jay, Styles whoever, all seem to be piecing together rhymes from a recognized set of ideas, styles, imagery, topics -- things that have apparently proven to sell, but that no longer interest me because I've heard them a million times. Dude, I liked Ice Cube's gangsta rap when if first came out. Shit, I even liked Mase, but to quote Cedric, 'I'm a grown-ass man, dog.' I'm looking to be challenged, confronted with new information and ideas. Aesop and El-P and Mr. Lif and Grand Agent and especially MF Doom (note: not Dilated Peoples or Jurassic 5) still manage to surprise me. And, fuck yeah, I think the music is funky. (Oh, and listen, anybody who listens to Premier knows that he has hit a limit creatively. The sad part is that I think that limit is self-imposed for the sake of "rawness." I "praise" Prefuse because he had the sense to take the sparse, headnod sound we fell in love with as teenagers -- he and I are about the same age -- and fill in the gaps with melody and add dynamics and changes. His music retains that kinetic feel, while still evincing detail and development. That may not be your idea of "funky," but it certainly is mine... and James Brown's, and Bernie Worrell's, and David Byrne's. My problem with the Neptunes and much less so Timbaland, is that, yes, they create catchy riffs, if sometimes by accident, but then they just seem to repeat them for four minutes. I guess that's how the rappers like it.)

More importantly, based on the way my ears first perked up when I first heard "Plug Tunin'" or "Iron Galaxy" for that matter, I know that there are people who feel the same way that I do and are looking for something new, or maybe just something different. Rap doesn't have to be for 14 year old boys. Ever heard "Commonwealth" by Bahamadia? If ever there was a song about middle class black women that should have been on the radio... So when I get a public forum, I tout the stuff that brightens my day. No respect to Jay-Z or Timbaland, but they don't need the publicity.

nas, mos def, and jay z are on or near that classic level of lyricism and are both very commercially viable. and i don't agree with you that nas has lost his descriptive powers. Maybe it's slightly diminished, but technically and thematically he's still very much on point, and he's being allowed to show maturity (which is something that many of the other "greats" you mentioned never did). A lot of people seem to think Fitty is on that level too (I don't)... But still, the fact that the three most popular MC's in the nation are looked to for their lyrical prowess, shows that lyricism is still very priviledged. Yeah, you could point to puffy, baby and a lot of other MC's as proof that it isn't essential to selling an album, but it never has been and never will be.

and jay dumbs down his lyrics? i do agree that mf doom is godlike on the mic.

Forgive me for quoting at length, but my point is that at his height Nas was the master of the perverse detail. He knew exactly what shot to get that would communicate the insanity of hood-life. Today's Nas fashions himself a teacher--but he isn't a very good one. He is patently more misogynistic, and nationalistic. A lot of people refer to "I Can" as an example of his maturity. But from a lyrics perspective, it's a terrible song. Didactic, hypocritical and fueled by a quasi-afrocentric view of history, "I Can" may seem "positive," but it isn't a very good song.

Sorry, doing one for the kids isn't an excuse. I have 3 year old boy, and I would play him Illamtic in full, before I would ever play "I Know." That's because at the end of the day, I will take an artist who gives you something to think about, over one who tells you what to think. I'll take "immature" Kane, Biggie, Kool G Rap over "mature" Nas any day.

i'm not saying that he's topped illmatic (what lyricist has?), but he's still a master, imo.

I don't see a dichotomy between Generation 3 and Generation MCs. The rulebook has changed so many times since "Paid In Full" that any 1987 vs. 2003 comparisons will probably just rephrase preferences. (It would be a bit like comparing 1955 Berlin and 1938 Berlin.) Andre 9000 raps with years of financial and commercial validation egging him upwards. The R rhymed in a world that was predominantly inhospitable to hip-hop and very much still wedded to the barline.

I don't hear much Premier in Prefuse, though I imagine Herren likes him. (Who doesn't?) Premier is (or was) loyal to a clear, thumping kick and snare pattern with a hierarchical relationship to the drop-ins and scratches. His approach is still very sampler-based, tied to the physical act of punching buttons to make sounds, and creating a foundation with bits on top: hierarchy. (sorry for the repetition, just trying to be clear.) Herren is very much a hard drive artist, making tracks on a computer that stress, formally, the kind of headachey effect of very fast index point selection. His tracks switch from idea to quote to idea so quickly that even when I like them, I can't magine dancing to them. Premier also makes tracks, by definition, *for* rappers, and Herren does that as a submotif to his instrumental stuff, at least in Prefuse. His music is generally designed to hold attention without MCs, which is one reason it jumps around, I guess. But I also think he likes that leaping, fast-forward feel.

As for Nas, I see your point--about the Lost Tapes especially. The trouble with that though is that we don't when he actually made most of that. I heard "Fetus" and "Papa Was A Playa" circa-99, I think. I don't think that it's a matter of Nas lacking ability, when he wants to be, I think he's special. But I will always believe that that year at the Source Awards, where Biggie trounced him, really took something out of him. I've read where he (and ?estlove who was sitting a few rows back) referred to that as a changing point for him.

And, I will hang around. I'm always willing to debate, and at least attempt to defend something I've written. I may not be that successful at it, but I can give it a go. Besides, sometimes you need to get called out. Can't be right all the time. At the end of the day it only makes me better.

I can see the parallel with Premier on the chopping angle (a good way to not pay for samples, as Premier confirmed in person), for sure, but do you think has Herren "advanced" this strategy by making his tracks busier?

As for the advancement angle, hmmm, good follow-up. I guess I see it as an advance because there's more to listen to, and I think the strategy has a lot of potential. I love Premier to death, but I so often feel like if I heard the first 20 seconds of one of his beats--I heard the whole song :/ Whereas, Prefuse reworks the loops a few times. Maybe I'm not listening closely enough to Premier's beats, or not taking certain factors into account. I'd love to hear you guys opinion. Does rap's reliance on loops ever bore you guys?

As for Nas, here is the version I know. This isn't gospel, and maybe some of the astute cats posting here can clear it up some. Either way, apparently in 94, Biggie and Nas were nominated for all the same catagories at the Source Awards. At that point, I don't Illmatic had gone gold, but Ready To Die was doing well off the strength of "Juicy," "One More Chance," remix etc. I don't think Nas had a single that even matched "Juicy" hit-wise.

Anyway the story goes, from Nas perspective, that he was pretty much broke and was forced to sport Guess to the Awards Show (Oh the humanity!). According to ?love, and I will search for that link, he was hanging with Wu-Tang that night, and they all were assuring him that he was gonna clean up. Biggie one every single catagory, including Lyricists of the Year--which Nas thought was his.

Nas, says that incident convinced him to hook up with Steve Stoute and the Trackmasters and leave Faith something-or-other (I can't remember her last name) who was his manager and apparently, in part, responsible for how Illmatic was put together. I read this in a Vibe with Nas, Eve and Sisqo on the cover. It came out around the Nastradamus hit--arguably the worst Nas outing ever. Anyway, they interviewed this Faith woman, and Pete Rock about him. Both were massively dissappointed in the direction his career took. But the story filled in a lot of gaps for me--it always boggled my mind that he went from a dream team (Tip, Primo, Pete Rock, Large Pro) to the guys who ruined Chubb Rock's career (OK, maybe that's not fair).

At any rate, the bling-factor in his lyrics shot up after that, as far as I could tell. It isn't like Illmatic is some sort of moralistic, positive record. But post-Illmatic he seemed way more infatuated with the glamour of street-life.

That peice by ?uestlove was posted at Okayplayer. I'll dig around and find a link. It's slightly self-absorbed, but it's an illuminating bit of history

i dunno, i can imagine dancing to prefuse about as much as i can to the busiest jungle (although herren's got more in common with the busier metalheadz stuff for me than the rowdiest ragga stuff.) in most prefuse tracks (the first record is sitting on top of the stereo right now, havent heard the second, so i'm working from memory here), there's usually a jungle-like "half-step", although not necessarily a beat, which gives you something to latch onto in the slurry.

i can't see how herren is "moving on" premier's style (or even harddrive editing in general) though for the life of me. there's no way he's recorded anything as effortless and avant garde as "come clean" or "work" or...

The loops bit, extending Matos' post, brings to mind the Cage maxim: "Repetition is a form of change" and yadda yadda. Depends what's repeating, basically, which isn't an interesting conclusion but feels pretty true.

Some loops are crazy super duper boring and a few years ago it was driving me nuts. Happens less often in Dirty South stuff, or in a way that annoys me less than all the sub-Havoc nonsense in backapcker rap, or whatever we call what Sandbox sells now.

(I don't think Parliament maps onto the Neptunes so easily, as there is so much change on top of their repeition. James/Neptunes feels close, tho.)

And Sasha, I don't know if Prefuse is wholly a hard drive artist. When I interviewed him, he said his weapon of choice was the SP 1200 -- not as hands on as an MPC, but it's not a keyboard and a monitor either, and notable for it's snappy drum feel. I suggest he's a disciple of Premier in that he samples but strives to control smaller and smaller pieces of sound, thereby exercising more control over the track as a whole. That's how sampling gets closer and closer to playing instruments, no?

Finally, isn't anyone willing to challenge this notion of what you can or cannot dance to? I mean, shit, I used to dance to "Case Of The PTA" and "Don't Believe the Hype" and countless other ditties that would produce utter stagnancy and blank stares on a dancefloor these days. But isn't that just a result of changing times and trends in music and movement (i.e. the harlem shake or the bankhead bounce versus the wop or the flavor-flav)? Is anyone willing to argue that the Neptunes and Timbaland are not merely musicians, but scientists who have refined methods of producing involuntary movement in human subjects to their most effective in the history of mankind? I doubt it. In five years, motherfuckers could be doing some variation of the running man and the beats will be different yet again.

But I can't ditch this notion that he might be a bit more interesting if he was willing to shake you up a bit, and throw in another chop. "Ya Playin Yaself" is brilliant to me because it isn't just a critique of commercial rap, it's a reinterpretation of a commercial rap track. It's like two people looking at an orange, but somehow Premier sees more than an orange when he looks. I guess I'd like to hear him flesh out different perspectives of the same sample, on the same track sometimes.

When I get home I'll cue up the Prefuse album and give you specifics where I think he does that. It maybe too much to say he's somehow better than Premier. But I do think he's advanced that paticular element of his technique.

What argument about loops' durability would be anything *other* than an exercise in taste? One answer is "Well, test the thing out on the dancefloor," but that's flawed, too, because when people come to dance, they're gonna dance, even to stuff they wouldn't listen to once in the cold light of day. So maybe the question is what gets you moving from a cold start, up and out of your chair? But I doubt we'll do anything more than list our favorite loops.

As for hard drive vs. SP 1200 (to be clear--like the MPC series, the SP is a drum machine with big fat keypads on the front that presents more like a musical instrument than a keyboard and monitor), there's no way to make a track like "Radio Attack" on an SP, simply because of the resident sampling time (not much) on an SP. I am guessing what he means is he uses it to create samples. (We're doing the same thing on a project now.) The SP creates samples that sound great, partially because the lower bit rate (12 bit) compresses the fuck out the sound, but also because there is some basic weird voodoo in that machine that works. You feed those sounds into whatever audio editing platform you're using on a computer--Logic, Pro Tools, live, etc--and go nuts. His tracks are too dense and edit-y to be executed on a drum machine. I'll bet at least $2 on that.

Who would be crazy enough to *not* dance to "Case of the PTA"?

To Jess: is "sampling getting closer and closer to playing [real] instruments" all that important though?

I would argue yes. It's all about control. The more elements you can manipulate, the more control you have over the overall composition. I know I'm going to spark a fury of purist responses right now, but I honestly believe that if you could magically endow Madlib, Premier, Timbaland et al with an orchestra of instruments and the ability to play them in addition to their existing skills, they would certainly generate even "better," more engaging music then they do now. I mean, you may miss the fuzz-crunch-pop of sampled sounds but you can easily duplicate or reintegrate that sort of thing in studio (See Bjork, Radiohead, "Distortion to Static"). What I'm saying is fairly obvious and almost silly, but I think a lot of producers especially in hip-hop are so closeminded in their devotion to their own particular box with buttons.

Sampling/drum programming is just a different kind of musical language. Saying it would be better if it was more like a "real instrument" is like saying an apple would taste better as an orange.

(And hey, don't the Neptunes play instruments? They're about the best live/electronic fusion around right now, surely. So you should love them ;)

What I'm wondering I guess is yesyes form is sedemented content etc. but is there anything notable to prefuse besides confounding expectations?

this discussion is going to force me to listen to the new prefuse again when i get home.

And to Ben: That whole "there's no way [Prefuse] can rock a beat like Premier" thing is just a matter of taste. Different sound, different mood, different place. We're acting like the end all be all judgement of whether a "beat" is "good" depends on whether or not you can dance to it. If that was the case, fuck everything else, we should all be listening to Dancehall (or disco?)

I'd love to see lots of "underground rappers" if they were able and willing hooked up with mainstream producers and see what would happen.

And part of what i was trying to get at early is that what made Rakim and Biggie who they were was a combination of their vocals and their underlying music (not just their vocal skills however that is defined); and while maybe I'm not listening hard enough--I don't hear that same combination in Mr Lif or El-P.

re: digital editor/sp 1200 debate -- well, he's clearly using both, recording live improvs wild into pro tools, then fine tuning the results. you've got amazing editing power with pro tools or logic but it all depends on what you capture to start with, it's essential to have an actual physical instrument for an interface to kick things off.

I sadly missed his recent SF show but a gearhound friend reported that he mixes live from his pro tools sessions and then solos with the sp1200 on top.

Hence my points about 50 carrying a melody etc. which were particularly directed at ND, since he seemed to accept my "this is just hip-hop with melody" point and then respond "which is what I've wanted from hip-hop all along!"

I mean if prefuse were actually doing with hip-hop beats what MRI (or etc.) does with house beats, I don't know how I'd respond, but it certainly would be new at least. I can't listen to the album again for a few days, but in the meantime maybe somebody could point me towards a track which would help me hear how he really keeps switching the beats up throughout?

Meanwhile this "real instruments" stuff bores me to tears mainly because I honestly don't see how the level of textural control etc. could get more involved or whatever than it already is.

The thread on Film that Kogan revived actually had a really nice back&forth on issues of technology etc:

Film Criticism vs Music Criticism

Explain Nas' Illmatic To Me

What I'm still looking for, I guess, is the critic who can really pin down the rhythmic mechanics of a rappers flow and explain how they work with the subject matter, etc. Where that thread fell short for me is a bit further down the line than how this one falls short re: "vocal complexity" &c. Like in literature not only do I know a good stylist when I read one, but I could go through and show where a poor stylist failed, sentence by sentence, and I've read plenty of other good authors explaining this w/r/t that small-scale structure. Even if ppl. can tell what they like in a rapper, they seem to have a much harder time explaining it. I suppose this is because we have centuries of litcrit establishment, and barely for better and worse (maybe mainly better) have a rockcrit much less rapcrit "establishment" in the same sense at all.

That's actually part of the reason why, among other things, I'm talking to you guys--in the hopes of acquiring those skills. I can argue why Nas, as painter of a world, is more simple than he once was. But even on that level, I am somtimes surprised by the stuff I miss--someone quoted that line from "Made You Look," and it wasn't till I read it that I had to say, damn, that's a fucking amazing line.

But I don't think that failure is mine alone--I have yet to have anyone explain the appeal of 50 Cent as an MC to me. I know what I think makes him work--but that actually is only tangentially related to MCing.

Ta-Nehisi

P.S. I love talking to you guys--very informative.

This is what still interests me. I've been wondering about it since I first started to listen hard to (and read) Enter the Wu-Tang. Is it over once you de-encrypt, as might be suggested here? Maybe my finally starting to recognize the ways in which the record isn't a masterpiece suggests that there's something to this.

Is the fact that we're raising the question about vocal complexity but not answering it a suggestion that there isn't that much to the issue - it's just rhythm, but in word form, or they're just lyrics, but they rhyme more clevely though maybe that doesn't make up for what they say (yes, i think there's more content in hiphop than anything else right now, but i'm speaking across the board)? Or that the question is too broad? Too hard?

I'll try (for myself, at least) with a tiny example. One thing that just came to mind thinking about this stuff is the following line from RZA's Samurai Showdown on the Ghost Dog sdtrk...

Who even thought that
he could go against the truth and the Gods and fall back?

I like the second line purely on the level of the sound (aided by RZA's flow/accent/whatever, which I love) of the words - all those different vowel sounds in series, several of them led by the same consonant. I'm not sure I've ever noticed different vowel sounds other than for their role in making the rhyme work. Does it happen a lot? But I don't like this line solely for the vocal stuff - the track drops out a bit here and thus the words are emphasized by the absence of the music (which is music, right). Don't the two 7th Chamber tracks reveal how such lyrics operate differently, at least on a rhythmic level, with different music?

It's no secret that Jay-Z -- a brilliant guy and savvy salesman -- dumbs down his lyrics to move units

I don't do much reading about hiphop, so this is new to me though maybe I should have guessed. Up to now, I've thought of Jay-Z as subtly clever in his lyrics, but not necessarily more. I'd like to know more about it and hear speculation about what Jay would say if he did not dumb down his lyrics. What does "dumb down" mean exactly? If he did not dumb down, who would he sound more like? Nas? Eminem? No one else? Is it thought that anyone else does this? Eminem? Is there value or even art in dumbing-down? (or, to be more direct, thus far I've assumed that the great white rapper is smarter than he pretends and one of the great black rappers a good writer but not as smart as he claims. interesting. but am i wrong?)

The same kind of sketched-out quality manifests itself in these "melodies," generally the site of a generation split. Many younger listeners don't mind hearing a 4 or 5 note motif that never develops or hugs a line, even if the track mutzes along for 6 or 7 minutes. In contrast, most people over 30 feel teased by that shit, and can't adapt to the non-teleological, no-payoff nature of lil' pineapple chunks floating in the Jello. I prefer the old-fashioned train-tracks-melody going somewhere (if only in circles) but when my hardwiring isn't firing, the new style seems perfectly fine (and of course it is, as is any aesthetic that does what it sets out to do).

The boringness of hip-hop tracks probably has material and economic roots. It's become easy in the last few years to get decent string and horn sample modules for cheap, and sequencing has become dead easy. Add massive hard drive space and trackism replaces songism! We go from Mantronix laboriously piecing together multi-track compositions with low memory samplers and razor blades (not necessarily a "better" or more "authentic" method but it certainly forces you to think your track through in the 35 hours it takes to do the fucking thing) to Mannie Fresh loading his sounds and executing tracks in 30 minutes.

Add the economic extension pullcord--the producer takes the tracks to market and they sell, big. So why change your presets?Why waste two loops on a song, when you could make two tracks and be that closer to finishing an 18.99 price point album? If people rejected the output and went for something different (which will happen eventually because of fashion cycles and novelty needs), the repetition would change, but even that would demand some huge minimum number sea change. "B.O.B." didn't exactly start a stampede of gospel electro funk rock tracks. But the capitalist would say it wasn't nearly a big enough hit to scare Beats By The Pound into changing their floppy disks. Complicating all this is that many assembly-line producers have enough incredible moments to keep their egos together. (They know which tracks suck, too.)

50 brings to mind that World Famous Supreme Team sample on the McLaren Duck Rock album: "I like the way you talk." 50 is like Method Man: this sexy drawl deforms the words, and the lyrics tend to compact, light-hearted descriptions. "I love you like a fat kid loves cake," or Method's "we at odds till we even." 50 never gets emo or aggro; everything is no big deal, and that wears well on the ears. Most hip-hop hall monitors hate on Get Rich, but it gets deeper and catchier every time I hear it.

Further topic twisting: Premier's best track in ages was "Doobie Ashtray" on Devin the Dude's album from last year and it didn't sound much like him because it was a) too slow and had this b) live guitar and c) kinda IDM keyboard pad. It's probably the kind of repetition-as-change-as-repetition most people here are wanting. But so is Parliament.

Your intellectualism is too much for my feeble 12-year-old brain!

Like Eno's quote, "There's no Africa in computers" (or something along those lines), I interpret Prefuse's aesthetics as attempting to overcome this deficiency. Perhaps looking at the electronic music end, Autechre (another major Warp figure) has also started to imbue a sense of an emotive loop environment with hip hop influence (see v-proc on draft 7.30). The fusion of hip-hop and electronic music seems almost bound to happen, with the loop being the obvious essential element in both. However, I find the fusion more interesting as the two groups represent earlier forms of technological based music - with hip-hop being derived from the musique concrete to current electronic music's "pure electonic sounds."

What makes Prefuse powerful, then, is his ability to bridge both the passive "pure electronic" eno-esque synths and the interlocking engaging breakbeats. I find this balance in many elements of the Prefuse canon, and for example, the use of voice. Although the music has elements of voice, they are often heavily manipulated, carrying both the technology and humanist underpinnings. Even with Herren's live setup, he uses a sampler and sp1200 with a synth.

I think trying to compare the Prefuse alias with Premiere's work is very flattering to Herren and perhaps has shown his immediate influence on re-evaluating hip-hop aesthetic. However, I find the two artist's work rather different, as many legend hip-hop producers have pushed into IDM territory lately with less than compelling results - DJ Shadow "Monosyllabic" anyone?

Hopefully this has provided a little more to chew on...

ultimately - among the more open-minded ones - quality seems to boil down to "what works" with a certain beat, in terms of the rhythmic interplay between voice and rhythm. 50's drawl is tailor-made for "In Da Club" whereas, say, Aceyalone would ruin it because hiw flow's like a rubber band to 50's deadset motor. i heard Mad Skillz (note the name) rapping over the "Ugly" beat and it was just embarrassing. on the other hand, listen to any of Aesop Rock's albums and he sounds utterly in his element, untouchable. against the right beats, the flow has a way of making up and reinforcing its own rhythmic context, if that makes an ounce of sense!

just to randomly bring in jungle, it seems to have started at a Timbo level of complexity but now (ignoring the great emergent breakbeat renaissance) it's very Premier-esque in its boom-clack, and obviously not as good. i suspect it's that rigid, rock-solid simplicity that makes converts out of backpacker types like DJ Craze.

Isn't this just a myth though? A looped breakbeat that ever-so-coincidentally happens to have kicks and snares matching a 2-step beat is not really a breakbeat renaissance, at least not in my book.

also, Bizzy B is making tunes again.

(sorry for the digression)

Reynolds referred to the above on his blog and it snared my attention if only b/c it was something that got under my skin last year when I was writing about Eminem but which eventually got cut: There was something about the quality of what Em said that got under my skin more than what he said, and it wasn’t until I sat down to review “The Eminem Show” that something about his proverbial “flow” jumped out at me. Em's lyrics stick to my ears not so much because of what he say but the sounds he uses to say them. He likes using velars (e.g. the hard [k] sounds) and alveolars (like t’s and d’s) that he intersperses into the usual long vowel rhymes that create another rhythmic element to musical beat of a song (on which the long vowels often hit).

From “Square Dance”
Nothin moves me more than a groove that soothes me
Nothin soothes me more than a groove that boosts me
Nothin boosts me more, or suits me beautifully
There's nothin you can do to me, stab me shoot me
Psychotic hypnotic product, I got it the antibiotic
Ain't nobody hotter and so on and yada yada
God I talk a lotta hum-de-lay-de-la-la
Oochie walla-walla, um-di-da-dah da-dah but you gotta gotta

The word-ending [k] in “psychotic,” “hypnotic,” “product” and the next line’s “hotter” and “yada yada” become other rhythmic elements in the song, the verse’s meter accenting song’s meter.

Admittedly, it was something that, since it got cut, I never spent much more time upon---or applying it that much to other MCs---but it is something I now start noticing in hip-hop, what linguistic sounds MCs favor.

more of these threads plz ILM

don't hold your breath bernard

r.i.p. nick sylvester

I think Ta-Nehisi Coates writes for Time Magazine now (but never about rap). Neil Drumming is writing for Entertainment Weekly.

And semi-related in today's Washington Post freelancer Dan Charnas says that Pharoahe Monch is "a 15-year denizen of "backpack rap," hip-hop's ghetto for the esoteric and eclectic. That's a shame. "Desire" is a full, robust statement from an artist in an era when most rappers can't complete a single original thought"

Hmmmmm.

Reviews elsewhere not quite as enthusiastic

All of City Paper's archives are online now so if you can find it the original article is in there somewhere.

T. Coates -May 16, 2003 Washington City Paper article now online

For years, critics have held that the most important element of hiphop is the MC. Dr. Dre is acknowledged as the master of hits and charts, but Tupac gets college courses dedicated to deciphering his lyrics. Primarily because the music of rap is based around repetitive loops and little melody, it's always been hard to make a case that, say, a DJ Premier is the artistic equal of Duke Ellington or Isaac Hayes. The likes of Rakim and Biggie, who manipulate rhythm with all the facility of the greatest of jazz drummers, are much easier to place into the black musical continuum.

But once record companies figured out that such vocal complexity has virtually nothing to do with moving units, MCing, by and large, died as commercial product. The underground has fared only slightly

better—though the MCing there has been generally more adept than in the mainstream, very few rappers have been able to move past the parameters of battle-rapping. Underground production, on the other hand, has pushed forward with ever-increasing speed. El-P's Fantastic Damage raised the bar for MCing, but it also raised the bar for production, reinterpreting the Bomb Squad's noise-mongering for the '00s. RJD2's dark Deadringer and Prefuse 73's own debut long-player, Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, took a more extreme approach by largely eliminating the MC from the equation.

But in the procession away from the MC, One Word Extinguisher proves to be the grand marshal. The album harks back to the glory days of Premier the way Fantastic Damage recalls the best work of the Bomb Squad, and it updates his approach with mind-boggling results.

Premier became famous for his use of jazz samples in Gang Starr. But as the '90s progressed and the law began to crack down on sampling, he started to create his own loops by chopping up and rearranging his source material. The pinnacle of this technique is Jeru the Damaja's 1996 "Ya Playin' Yaself," a cut that deconstructed Junior M.A.F.I.A.'s infamous "Player's Anthem" both lyrically and musically. As Jeru tore down "Anthem"'s glorification of gangsta-ism, Premier restructured the song's bass line and bell tones into an entirely different track. But Premier's weakness was always hiphop's weakness: His production lived and died by the loop. If you heard the first 20 seconds of "Yaself," then you'd heard the song's entire musical content.

The Miami-born, Barcelona-based Prefuse (né Scott Herren) has internalized Premier's technique—almost every song on Extinguisher is built from atomized samples. But instead of one loop per song, Prefuse offers a blizzard of rearrangements, never allowing the listener to get too comfortable with any single sound. "Storm Returns," for example, begins with a funky guitar riff of the sort that would constitute the bulk of a conventional rap track. But every few bars, Prefuse chops and rechops the riff into smaller pieces. Then he reworks the drums a few times, before finally bringing the loop back in as it originally played. "Why I Love You," uses the same method, except that Prefuse makes the minimal addition of female vocals.

Prefuse's technique works because it plays to the strengths of hiphop: rhythm, repetition, and low-end rumble. But like other great hiphop producers, Prefuse doesn't honor genre boundaries when it comes to sample material. "Plastic" is constructed from electronic blips and bleeps, along with dissected keys and strings. "Busy Signal" uses a beatbox for its building blocks, whereas "Detchibe" is powered by pummeling drums. When MCs are brought to bear on Extinguisher, their appearances are brief and economic. The apocalyptic Mr. Lif chimes in on "Huevos With Jeff and Roni," but just enough to give the cut some vocal framing: "You build a city on feeble lies/Then cry when the ground opens up wide and swallows your high rise.../Release everything that you held dear/Like your car, jewelry, your cash, and your career/Don't forget all of that time that you couldn't spare/To sit down and lend your three children an ear."

Extinguisher is an ambitious study of noise that at its best plays like a blueprint of music-making. Each cut starts out offering you a particular view, then offers you another, and still another; by the end, the track is audio 3-D. The lack of MCing is disappointing, though—not because it hurts the album, but because there are so few cases of rap's lyrical dynamism being matched musically.

Don't expect such a marriage in Prefuse's future: If there's one message to be gleaned from Extinguisher, it's that the world of rap music is no longer ruled by rappers.

If there's one message to be gleaned from Extinguisher, it's that the world of rap music is no longer ruled by rappers.

http://www.peoplesrepublicofdis.co.uk/albums/album16/tumbleweed.sized.jpeg

"but because there are so few cases of rap's lyrical dynamism being matched musically"

hahahahaha, um, okay.