The inconsistency of Rap albums

Whereas hip-hop records are looser and more personality-based: enjoying the "ridiculous skit" means dropping the arms-crossed "I am highly critical so please impress me with your art" stance and basically inviting the MC as a person to goof off along with you. Same goes for rock listeners detecting "bad tracks" everywhere, as we're casting about for tight blazing winners but resisting the possibility of just, you know, liking the MC's persona and being interested in what he/she has to say.

Also note that the rap "market" -- by which I mean not the actual buyers of the records but the central group that the artists perceive the records to be sort of aimed at -- consists of a whole lot of kids who are (a) quite young and (b) not wealthy. A lot of them would rather get an album + extra crap than pay the same amount of money for just the album. Rock albums do the exact same thing, except the extra tracks are "important" "revealing" demos, live versions, and unreleased intended b-sides from 1973.

(The indie difference-splitting on this one has been to include a separate disc for the extra crap, mainting the idea of the album itself as form-fitting and inviolable: environmentalists should hate this, though.)

For instance, when Paul Rutherford goes through a solo in the 'Gentle Harm of the Burgoisie' I can see through the media lies. He is like a madman shouting as I walk to Euston station every evening, he has more 'sense' than the thousands who go, sheep-like to work and back every day.

Ever watched a game of cricket Tracer? I think you might like it.

OK, so I might have publically gone on record as favouring 30 minute albums, but the filler thing on rap records doesn't really bother me. It just makes me reach for the program button that little bit earlier. I mean, there's only about 25 or so albums that I always listen to all the way through anyway.

This goes back to what I was saying about inviting the MC into your space: you are getting a different and sort of more improvisational or experimental completeness, in which the MC has to keep producing text on loads of subjects in loads of settings, has to work with loads of different collaborators to various extents, has to find interesting proteges to introduce you to, etc. ... It's the director's cut, wherein the sub-par extra footage gives you a better and more interesting and actually more thorough and coherent sense of the filmmakers than the tightened-up version -- plus you think they're cool and are happy to see what else they tried, even if it didn't work so well.

The other thing is that I don't think hip-hop fans not expecting perfect album has so much to do with their being told hip-hop isn't art or music--at this point, a lot of the time they ARE being told that, and this has been the case for years (at least if they're into music discourse, which you pretty much have to be to give this stuff any thought at all). I think the difference is that hip-hop operates, like dance music, under what you might call a mixtapist ideology; albums are mere carriers for songs that DJs define in clubs, on the radio, on tapes etc. (and by the way, Nabisco%%, did you get the email I sent you last week?)

When I listened mostly to rock and guitar pop albums, even though I liked other genres I tended to dismiss a lot of non-single tracks as filler. Nowadays I listen mostly to those other genres and lo and behold I have the EXACT SAME REACTION to almost all the guitar pop or rock records I hear, or even buy - loads of the non-singles strike me as lame, thrown-together, indulgent, hookless, etc. etc., all the criticisms levelled at "filler". This leads me to suspect that "filler" is the stuff you pass over when you're listening to stuff you're not used to (or you've forgotten how to be used to).

Hip-Hop had its switch from a singles medium to an album medium just like Rock did. I mean, albums by the likes of Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaata, The Funky Four + 1, Spoony Gee or Kurtis Blow are at times surprisingly good (much like albums by Little Richard, Buddy Holly, etc.) but we in general truly remember them for is pretty much the singles.

But that's changed- if we're talking about De La Soul, Public Enemy or The Wu Tang Clan, the first thing that springs to mind (for me at least) are albums like "Three Feet High & Rising", "It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back" and "Enter The Wu", not singles like "Me, Myself & I", "Bring The Noise" or "Method Man" (great as those are).

I think that many of today's Rap artists DO strive for albums in the coherent artistic statement, rockist definition of the term. Heck, many Rap albums from the past ten years are *concept* albums ("Only Built 4 Cuban Linx" and "A Prince Amongst Thieves" come to mind), and what's more "rockist" than that? Skits aren't detrimental to that mindset, either- remember, Styx opened the concerts for their Kilroy thang with 15 minutes of dialogue!

Of course, this doesn't apply for all rappers- Nelly is no more likely to be interested in showing a "flowing" artistic statement than, say, The Cars were. But I do think that alot of the rappers today at least strive to make albums in the traditional sense.

Which is not to say that their approach is identical to that of Rock artists- the obsession with guest stars, for instance, is a major difference (unless ya wanna compare that to early 70's "supergroups" a la CSN&Y)

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes just thinking about it makes the universe seem to radiate goodness - Tommy Shaw and Dennis DeYoung in the oppressive heat of the Texas summer before an audience who'd come mainly to see Ted Nugent - going through with the opening sketch anyhow and getting roundly booed - in robot costumes & skintight suits - "But Mr Roboto," as Shaw remembers ruefully, "What about the music?" God thanks for bringing it up, it is the single greatest thing ever in the history of music

Remember the righteous Rocker member's comments? "It used to be like, yeah, Styx, buy the t-shirt and rock on!" Or when he joined the Ted Nungent band and The Nuge smashed his guitar while he was playing (I think) the intro to "Babe", and the rest of the band found that hurtful? Or how happy they were that they got a revival, courtesy of "South Park" and "Freaks & Geeks"?? Shit, we need to start a thread...

Yes, more rappers need Sophie to come down to the studio and piss all over their tracks.