Can We Please Have a Thread Devoted Entirely to the Discussion of Young Jeezy?

http://www.staticmultimedia.com/content/music/reviews/cd/review_1132087282

i feel like he is one of those rappers who you listen to for flow rather than deep lyrical revelations ... yyyeeeEEAAAAHHHHhhhh.....

Something rubs me really badly about crack-era nostalgia with zero interesting rhymes or insight to back it up... especially when it's praised by a bunch of post-collegiate white folk.

Also, I wouldn't call rhyming "John Madden" with "John Madden" flow.

But SUCCESSFULLY scaping that world through talent and tenacity, and then spending an entire CAREER bragging about how you poison the community makes you an ASSHOLE.

Yeah, I guess some people find the "AYYYs" and "THASS RIGHTS" charismatic. I find them pretty fucking annoying. They aren't like a Pete Rock "uh huh," they're more like a Diddy murmuring "Bad Boy!" under a track.

Then again, I find Mike Jones' constant name-checking totally endearing.

for me too, though, the "yeeeeeaaaaaah"s are fucking annoying, the worst part of his whole deal.

(i think i have an answer to this)

Non-granola major label hip-hop albums I loved this year (in no particular order):
1. Mannie Fresh
2. Slim Thug
3. Mike Jones
4. Paul Wall
5. Lil Kim
6. Down 4 Life
7. David Banner
8. Three 6 Mafia
9. The Game
10. Bun B (distributed by a major, at least)
11. Beanie Sigel
12. Lil Jon Chopped And Screwed

etc, etc...

Don't get on my ass because I refuse to get involved in the totally fake backpacker backlash that seems to be the groupthink of the day.

Not blaming Sir Jeez, just saying the blog thing also rubs me the wrong way, for different reasons.

ah, the tired old "fake" line. trust me, my distaste for much backpacker hip-hop is very authentic.

I'm saying that the current blogzgeist says the new Three 6 Mafia is hot and, therefore, the new Atmosphere is bullshit. They're BOTH great. The new indie-rock interest in major-label hip-hop is totally at the expense of underground hip-hop and that sucks.

underground just means "not selling enough records"

Second, I'm pretty intrigued by the idea that Jeezy presents an indictment of drug dealing. Is anyone willing to try to back this up with lyrics?

Also, Whiney, I'm pretty sure Jeezy bragging about his business acumen/ability to survive while turning a blind eye to the fact that he was "poisoning black people/the community." In fact, I think that's part of the foundation of the gangsta paradigm.

Nick, OTM. But I think you're confusing false dichotomies with the idea that two things that seem different really aren't. Those are two VERY DIFFERENT things.

I think that's actually pretty much what music is, only for instrumental stuff you can take out the part about the words - what're you advancing, that Young Jeezy's massive cultural importance somehow exempts him from the fairly elemental dictum "don't write fucking boring rhymes" and the equally entry-level "tell good stories"?

-- bugged out (bu...), December 3rd, 2005 7:28 PM. (link)

zing!

Also, Whiney, I'm pretty sure Jeezy bragging about his business acumen/ability to survive while turning a blind eye to the fact that he was "poisoning black people/the community." In fact, I think that's part of the foundation of the gangsta paradigm

NWA:
-"America's blind eye to the poor black community has made us hostile and nihilistic"
-"Attention suburbia: the police in the inner city are racist and violent. Get angry"
-"Express yourself"
-"The dopeman has a lot of power, but there are many pitfalls to this line of work"

ICE-T
"The prison system is fucked"
"Being in a gang is pointless"
"Being a drug dealer will get you killed"
"Why is sex ritual so complicated?

YOUNG JEEZY
"I sold drugs once!"
"I sold drugs once!"
"I sold drugs once!"
"I sold drugs once!"

"like animals they lock us in cages
the same nigga that's a star when you put 'em on stages"

a hell of a lot to chew on there (and no polysyllablic stuntin necessary)

lyrics are just sound too btw. no reason to privilege them over a kick sound or a synth line when you're trying to decide whether a song is evocative -----------

regulars i don't think i'm confusing anything (or at least what you think i'm confusing, or you're just kidding), but to be clear: weingarten opposed love of mainstream rap with love of alt-rap (though of course *he's* exempt from this, because he's above all that or something, a privilege he doesn't allow to anyone else in this hilariously myopic vision of what indie kids really listen to [most of them, chris, couldn't give a shit about any rap, or blogs). and beyond that he went so far as to say people (or whatever strawman he's set up for this thread) who like one, actively dislike the other. to what avail i don't know. all i'm saying is it's way off from reality, a classic case of internet-only.

banana i'm really sorry that's what all music is to you. i like to think that at its best, music's whole > sum of parts, and in the case of jeezy he's managed a troubling, utterly compelling persona: charmingly simple, happy-go-lucky rhymes that celebrate the dealer as partybringer--a person we implicitly trust, don't think could ever us any harm, looks out for his friends (and us!), not slick-talking or trying to convince of anything, just stating the obvious, and yet there's that incredibly seedy underbelly of it all. he's the closest crack rap (and maybe rap period) has to a mephistopheles character right now, and everything *else* about him-- his ad libs, his delivery, his tautological rhyme schemes (which put emphasis on the middle of the lines, how he gets to the end, etc.--no different than homeric ring structure, how there are set phrases to fit the end of a dactylic hexameter, but you know all this), his chirpy, horn-heavy instrumentals-- deserves more attention than you're giving him.

i readily admit jeezy lyrics don't look good written out. and obviously clipse made the 4th best record of the year. but the two are going for something different entirely (much more openly malicious, vindictive, take out the bottom to rise to the top), not really fair to compare clipse to jeezy (though that only comes through comparison, so whatever). jeezy didn't make anything close to the best album of the year, but the go crazy record's quite good, so is my hood and and then what-- to a large extent jeezy is MORE rap than clipse because he's more reliant on the musical, non-literary aspects of the music-- he only exists on record, and that's more fascinating than (as it seems for you) infuriating.

ok guys see you on the belle & sebastian thread

yeah right, cuz everyone here is a hack writer dreaming of sucking pfork cock. try again, mr. king of all bloggers. or just pack up your toys and go home like you always do when someone zings your pasty fat ass.

Nick is a little dude!

have i confused him w/ another maligned pitchfork guy? can't we lump them all together?

his tautological rhyme schemes
phrases to fit the end of a dactylic hexameter
obviously clipse made the 4th best record of the year
a classic case
pitchforkmedia.com

his tautological rhyme schemes
phrases to fit the end of a dactylic hexameter
obviously clipse made the 4th best record of the year
a classic case
pitchforkmedia.com

As a classics major who had the privilege of translating a little Homer back in the day, I'd say you're really gilding the lily a bit to claim "Homeric ring structure" for Jeezy's rather pedestrian rhyming skills (which don't sound good to me in the air or on paper: I'm not judging him by what I read, I'm judging by what happened while I listened to the album) but, y'know, tomato tomahto. I will admit that his regular use of perfect rhymes (the first couplet on the album rhymes "everywhere" with "everywhere," and it's not as though the words in each line that precede "everywhere" rhyme or even assonate) is charming to me, but I consider that an eccentricity of mine; most people think of perfect rhymes as "being too lame to think up an actual rhyme."

My brains pulse through my veins, man I can't understand it
Infatuation with the birds, I watch Animal Planet

I'm not saying that people who like mainstream actively dislike backpack (though with my run-ins with hardcore heads, that's usually, sadly, the case), I'm merely talking about the trend in writing/blogging/message-boarding/zineing this year that (in what seems like all of a sudden, to me) made mainstream cats hot and underground cats wack.

We're all in the same gang!

These food analogies always reek of recieved wisdom.

I can't believe everyone's willing to take the "celebrate the dealer as partybringer" one-dimensional view of what Jeezy is about. Have you guys actually listened to the album? And the fetishism of wordplay in criticism can be so very wearying, as if it is the ultimate goal of the rapper to make clever little blerns in every verse. (Don't believe this is true? see: ghostface and mf doom as every blogger's favorite rappers.)

How the fuck I'm free out here and you locked in there
Your whole family acts like I don't care
They don't know about the nights I just lay in my bed
I can't even sleep, I just lay in my bed
Eyes full of tears and a heart full of pain
Take deep breaths everytime I hear your name
You was more than family you was like my brother
So when the shit went down it's like I lost my brother
And I wish we could trade places
Swear to God dawg wish we could trade places
Livin' a life of crime, but it wasn't your life it was more like mine
I often think about the close calls we had
And I often think about the close brawls we had
And I love my nigga, what you know bout that
And I'll do anything to get back talk to 'em

I don't post the lyric to make people think "whoa he's a crazy rapper" but so people who've actually listened to it will remember how it sounds and to remember that tho he uses the supposedly limited subject of drugs -> rap to make good music and to address plenty of other shit: loyalty, loss, reminiscence.

good point though, deej.

i mean, of course. but *he* decided to make his icon the fucking snowman, not me

fair enough. i just see it as all related, all serving his main function i guess.

i forget if you said this in the lil wayne thread, but do you like thug motivation more or less than tha carter 2?

Those lyrics I quoted were, as I mentioned, I don't post the lyric to make people think "whoa he's a crazy rapper" but so people who've actually listened to it will remember how it sounds. Because reading those lyrics dry they do sound stupid, it's about the performance (as always)

The Inspiration, man...s'where it's at