thanks little girl, you just saved hip-hop! please sign this form indicating you did not actually save hip-hop.

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who will save hiphop? and how? and i want none of this timbaland nonsense (or on the other end of the spectrum, jurassic goddamned five, who are actually not really the other side of the spectrum when you think about it). it seems like everything cutting-edge and simon reynoldsesque seems to have been stagnating since '99 or so, the same clicky beats and neoclassical bits and dub influence, whatever. does rap still have have a major stylistic shift left, or have all possibilities been explored and now is just a matter of whether you stumble upon a choice sample or not? is it glitch-hop? or automator mixing it up with indiepop to finally get rap to it's last untapped audience? would you like it to deal with real-life problems, like the kind you see every day, or do exactly the opposite, getting into far-our situations involving robots and magic powers?

― ethan, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The best thing for hip-hop is the best thing for all music -- let it happen and don't predict. You'll always be surprised that way. :-)

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That's a pretty cheap answer Raggett.

More human beatboxing. Return of the Fat Boys (yes, even the dead one. In fact, hiphop needs more partially decomposed zombies.) More than ten weeks without a single in the Top 10 and we cut off a finger. Jay-Z Unplugged.

― jess, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That's a pretty cheap answer Raggett.

Cheap my ass. Unless you're actively involved in creating music yourself -- some here are, some aren't -- then the only thing *to* do is kick back and see what happens. If you're going to wish out loud for what you want, then out you go to do it. :-)

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I am totally psyched for Jay-Z unplugged.

― Ally, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yeah, but I don't really know if anyone would want to see us rappin and snappin fo' some reason. ;)

― jess, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

THEN YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN. ;-)

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Why save hip-hop? Let's just let it die.

― alex in nyc, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Um, but I wasn't. ;)

More Nate Dogg. Seriously. You try telling me just a *conversation* isn't improved by pitching your voice down and octave and going "Smoke weeeed everdaaaaay."

― jess, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Considering I've never told anyone to smoke weed in my life, people would look at me funny and then avoid me (not that they don't already, yeah yeah...).

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Bonus points: when your best friend gets your mom to say said Nate Dogg-ism. (And she did too. Then again she also did The Robot to "Planet Rock" on her birthday while I flashed the hall light on and off.)

― jess, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ned Dogg, you could also substitue "Yooooou better lay looow." ;)

― jess, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Gorillaz and Prefuse 73 foreshadowing major stylistic shifts? Hmmm... So will hip hop be Noel Gallagher deciding he needs to keep it realer than Chemical Brothers and Goldie collaborations? Or will warp records reveal its true agenda all along was to save hip hop? Will Kid606 fuck up the entire NWA backcatalogue, or for that matter the entire hip hop backcatalogue, for our pleasure? Will Justin Timberlake take it further than beatboxing?

Anyways... I seem to making questions and not answers. I've heard people argue that labels such as Anticon and Def Jux are saving hip hop and certainly a good deal of my attention is fixated there (Aesop Rock's Labor Days is the next album I plan to purchase). How about every rapper reinvents them self in a full Madlib-to- Quasimoto persona/voice transformation and we sit around guessing who's who. I don't know about saving, but it'll keep us busy with the damn thing for a while.

― Honda, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That Nate Dogg bit is one of those instances David wrote of where the radio edit is an improvement on the actual track. I was way disappointed to download that and not hear, "Smoke * pregnant pause* everyday." Sheesh, we know what he's smoking. You gotta listen to the Nate Dogg isn't playing.

― scott p., Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Also, most DMX tracks. Can I be the only person who enjoys hearing all those bizarre little "whoo!"s and "ughhn!"s they dub in?

― jess, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

* should read "...the notes Nate Dogg..."

― scott p., Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hip-Hop needs saving?? From what? And for who? Stagantion's not what I'm hearing - more like plateau.

― Tom, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Def Jux is making great records

eg Cannibal Ox

what about Company Flow? what about Mos Def? The media focus has shifted on to Timbaland when a few years ago it was all Snoop Doggy Dog. The media focus is almost always wrong

Man I hated J5 all that old skool bullshit neatly packaged up todays kidz

― tom, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I guess what I was sleepily saying there is that I've enjoyed more hip-hop albums this year than albums in any other genre, and that these records have been splayed over pretty much every aspect of hip- hop: ultra-commercial, undie, glitch-hop, UK hip-hop. The whole thing has been absolutely firing in 2001: I've no idea what Ethan's on about.

― Tom, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

hip-hop doesn't have an untapped audience -- in the states, it sells to everyone.

that said, aceyalone and the freestyle fellowship/haiku d'etat crew do more to make me enjoy hip-hop than anyone else i can think of.

― bucky wunderlick, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I've recently been thinking of Timbaland as not so much representing a radical break in r&b/hip hop as a publicly acknowledged manifestation of what was a continually evolving "avant" element in the music. When I listen to g-funk-->early Puffy hip hop the music is so impeccable and sonically sumptuous that it just seemed inevitable that it would go "weird". This tradition does not start with Timbaland and nor does it end with Timbaland. Jay-Z's new album sounds fuck-all like most modern commercial hip hop, but I'm enjoying it for much the same reasons - it's both daring and lovely-sounding. Meanwhile it's those same elements constantly manifest themselves in undie hip hop (Cannibal Ox, Anticon) and Brit hip hop (Skitz, Roots Manuva). These movements are antithetical to each other only up to a certain point.

― Tim, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That said, I strongly believe that all these DJ Clue-style shouted intros (eg. NEW JADAKISS!!! NEPTUNES PRODUCTION!!! NEW TRACK!!! 2001!!!) have the potential to destroy hip hop.

― Tim, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Most annoying one is definitely "REEEEEEEMIIIIIIXXXX!" It's like, no, really? We couldn't tell that this was a different version of the song than the one featured on the radio yesterday. Please, tell us more, oh wise one.

― Ally, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

so you want a realistic, down-to-earth hiphop that's completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots?

― ethan, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

what about hiphop from somewhere else?

some of the french stuff is pretty cool

as for the russians.......

― ambrose, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Now you're getting the idea, ethan...

― Tim, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Quite. Magic robots = goodness and happiness.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

and there's actually good german stuff, too: die fantastichen vier, who somehow take a gutteral language and make it flow.

― bucky wunderlick, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

People, you've got to hear Extince. He is must be the Dutch Jay-Z. I'm serious. He raps in Dutch and it's so funny and clever and impeccable. I'm really curious as to what what someone who doesn't understand the language makes of it. See if you can download "Grootheidswaan", which was the first single from his latest album "Vitamine E".

I hardly speak any French and I love TTC and Disiz La Peste. So why not? Why no music videos with subtitles?

― JoB, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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