the state of popular rap in 2009

what is it? deej and i were trying to list off the crossover pure rap singles of this year

wasted
swag surfin
5 star bitch
ice cream paint job
i feel good
d.o.a
you're a jerk
every girl
baby by me
run this town
throw it in the bag
ricky bobby
turn my swag on
lol :-)

the hugest ones here are the most overtly r&b ("every girl", "throw it in the bag", "run this town"), and the joint hip-hop & r&b chart this year has been dominated by huge r&b songs. feels to me like if "still tippin" had dropped this june it wouldn't have the same impact as it did in 05/06. i think the biggest pure rap hit of the year is "wasted", and even that was flipped for a softbach r&b joint.

i guess at some level im curious to what degree popular rap is simply less exciting, omnivorous, & outward-facing than it was 5-10 yrs ago ... how its big names are happy just rapping for 'just-rap' audiences (thinking mostly about boosie, z-ro etc. right there ... although boosie at one point circa "independent" seemed like he could go either way)

& to what degree popular rap is exactly the same, but rock critic types in general are just disengaging with rap altogether.

i kind of think both things are happening at once -- there's definitely less popular rap on the charts now than a couple years ago. but at the same time, 'swag surfin' or 'wasted' dont really feel that distant from popular rap of half a decade ago imho

ranking pop rap:

wasted A++
swag surfin A++
5 star bitch B-, B+ for the remix
ice cream paint job B+
i feel good A-
d.o.a C-
you're a jerk A-
every girl B
baby by me B-
run this town D
throw it in the bag B+
ricky bobby C+
turn my swag on A
lol :-) B

wasted - probably the weakest of gucci mane's recent hits, but it's still good obv. I'm just pissed off that gucci mane would write a song in tribute to such a boring word as "wasted" when afaik all he ever does is sit around thinking about new ways to talk about how he's smokin weed
swag surfin - dope, everything a 2009 pop party rap song should be - love how this flows, and it's got a great melody and rhythm
5 star bitch - I approve
ice cream paint job - I approve
i feel good - I think I'd rather listen to this than most ne-yo songs but it's too easy listening to be in the list list imo
d.o.a - T-Pain is better obv
you're a jerk - fun and kinda different for modern pop radio, I like it
every girl - the beat carries this one for me
baby by me - I think this song may blow my mind too much for me to have an opinion on it
run this town - all 3 artists on this are way past their prime, and only jay-z's prime was really worth a shit. kanye must have written this chorus, right? "who's gonna run this town tonight" is such a boring-ass way
throw it in the bag - decent
ricky bobby - never heard this before. listening on youtube it's pretty nondescript but I'd rather listen to it than "run this town"
turn my swag on - I love this because it's just soulja boy braggin about shit in the most empty way possible. his remix verse is good but I'm glad he decided to push the version where he's just going "yeahhhhhh yeahhhhhhhhh" over and over again
lol :-) - guhhh

Kind of tentative about this as an idea, but maybe the lack of a rap mainstream is causing rap to fragment into regional scenes. Obviously that type of thing is always going on, bubbling under the mainstream, but it seems a bit more pronounced this year, with your ATL fruity swag and LA jerks and Dallas bump-bump bass joints.

Also, aren't you guys kind of ignoring the existence of Drake? (Maybe intentionally?) Even if you wanna dismiss "Best I Ever Had" and "Successful" as R&Bified (which seems silly when you include "Throw It in the Bag"), but I would assume that at least "Forever" (which I've successfully managed not to hear) would count, no?

Who is "Drake"?

your mom

otm that that regional thing is always there, it's just that until a little bit ago there were always one or two overriding scenes that defined the rap of the moment (even if they were at war with each other). that's what's missing, seems to me. there's no center to the action, it feels v. diffuse. you can have a hit come out of anywhere, but you don't have that we-taking-over sense from anywhere.

yeah, I think that's otm

crut "i feel good" is by Chalie Boy check it out its a banger

are we missing some rick ross?

here are some songs that i suspect are more popular than ppl realize or than is reflected by the charts:

boi i got so many problems by young problemz, mike jones & gucci mane
6 tre g - fresh
gucci & esther dean - i think i luv her
juney boomdata - pussy poppin

is that cold flamez 'miss me kiss me' song anything resembling a hit?

has nicki minaj had an actual hit yet?

i know shes def popular

i forgot drake on that list duh

"forever" is notable i guess even though it's a song for a commercial

the Chalie Boy joint is "I Look Good"

xp didn't even realize that (a la the similarly titled Chris Brown song?)

like to me, it's baffling that "wasted" isn't as big, as say, "back that azz up"

lol yes i never realized that parallel

deej: it seems the number two jerk track around here is Audio Push's "Teach me How to Jerk", sounds like the Cold Flamez track is v popular in LA tho

"Back That Azz Up" is a better and more immediate (and more dancable and more appealing to women) song than "Wasted"

I mean, I like "Wasted" but it didn't make me go "wow what the fuck is that?" the first time I heard it like "Back That Azz Up" did

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKWYddxzdCc

this song is top ten on chicago radio, possibly for obvious reasons -- chicago triptych of traxster-kells-twista

like to me, it's baffling that "wasted" isn't as big, as say, "back that azz up"

― a goon boy (J0rdan S.), Thursday, November 5, 2009 2:04 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

isnt it? i mean, its not like critics were into juvenile back then either

Chart (1999) Peak
Position
U.S. Billboard Hot 100 19
U.S. Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks 5
U.S. Billboard Hot Rap Singles 9

Chart (2009) Peak
Position
U.S. Billboard Hot 100[3] 37
U.S. Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs[4] 3
U.S. Billboard Rap Songs[5] 4

its a bigger rap song, but that gets it lower in the hot 100

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"Back That Azz Up" is a better and more immediate (and more dancable and more appealing to women) song than "Wasted"

― swagless price (The Reverend), Thursday, November 5, 2009 2:07 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

im not sure this is all totally correct

at least, 'more immediate'??

Plies has surely had a top 40 hit this year right?

Does anyone wonder if rap could possibly be less likely to download legally & are therefore underestimated by charts

steady mobbin is charting right

ugh i guess that jay sean song counts right

so many people— esp young people— rallying around drake is super weird to me. the guy makes tons of sense as a pop artist but as an MC i don't get the appeal at all. my problem with him— and i'm about to get totally nozian here— is that there seems to have been no struggle in his life that kind of changed his perspective, and that in general that he's too nice. like, if you look at kanye, he's pretty suburban middle class, and the biggest struggle as a kid growing up, like drake, was his parents getting divorced. but kanye is wired to always feel slighted. when he was in college, the teachers told him he wouldn't be shit. even when he was producing huge hits for jay-z, it's that they weren't letting him rap. when they finally let him rap, no one thought that he would do shit. then he tried to artistically ascend beyond what his/our notion of rap music is. i see where is drive is, i understand why he wants to be better & how that fuels his music. it makes him a pretty horrible person it seems like, but it makes him a pretty great and compelling artist (imo 808s is the greatest distillation of this but ymmv). with drake, i don't understand his motivation for rapping. it seems like he wants to be rich & famous, and his music is totally calculated for that. kanye wanted to be a huge pop star too, right from the jump, but he was already taking more risks than drake will in his whole career & he had already formed this identity of the shit on 'college dropout'. with drake, it's like his whole identity is of this golden child who was anointed by lil wayne to be the next great rap & pop artist.

now i would also argue that wayne has marginal struggle in his life as well. he had a fucked up parental situation but there are low income families with way worse, in fact he was also plucked into rap at a much younger age than drake even, and wayne even tries to legitimize himself by bringing up getting shot even tho the first time he shot himself & the second time he got shot thru a bus by some groupies. but right now drake doesn't have near the personality that wayne had & he's not nearly as compelling as a rapper. his rapping is way more formulaic & less inventive, less playful - it's more calculated but still says less about the artist & his listeners than wayne did when he would drop a line like "and to the kids, drugs kill, i'm acknowledging that/ but when i'm on the drugs i don't have a problem with that" in the middle of one of his drowning in lucidity freestyles.

and thus drake's appeal as a rap artist really evades me. i think his listeners have been worn down by the soulja boys & D4L's of the world and have been tricked in to believing that drake is saying more than he actually is. the guy has a pretty shallow eye for the world from what i can tell & his moralizing comes off as really elementary, even on a song whose nakedness i admire like "successful". in fact, that song kinda encapsulates everything about drake. it's cold & calculated - hi trey songz hook even tho he was probably out of drake's price range when it was recorded, hi post 808s beat, hi 'deep' lyrics that scrape at the surface of intellectualism but never really break ground. and hi chorus that spells out exactly what we need to know about drake: "i want the money, money and the cars, cars and the clothes, and the hoes i suppose/ i just wanna be, i just wanna be successful" - left at that

that red cafe is like new york regional rap popular right?

"hottest in the hood"

we're ignoring the black eyed peas but i think ill keep doing that

empire state of mind is charting

feels more like an alicia keys song tho

wtf how are michael franti & spearhead charting

Pitbull - Hotel Room Service

Ester Dean - Drop It Low (this might be R&B only?)

Snoop Dogg - Gangsta Luv

Birdman - Money to Blow

I'm looking at various west coast radio playlists and the only one I've come across so far that's picked up on "Wasted" is in Anchorage.

can anyone explain to me how in the past ten years we have gone from anyone with a half decent flow going gold to only being able to name a handful of songs that make it big on the radio with r&b verses? it can't just be recession+downloading right? Did America burn itself out by being every other rap record at the turn of the century, noticing some of them were made by Benzino and Ja Rule making them wish a whole industry pain for duping them into buying such wank records?

I mean, how many copies did something like M.O.P's Warriorz sell? I bet it was as much as say Cudi or Drake are doing now, which is incredibly fucked up.

btw i have no actual idea of numbers sold so if those aren't the right albums, i'm sure you could easily replace them names with others and still come up with the same point.

"i know you want me" is missing, right?

otm that that regional thing is always there, it's just that until a little bit ago there were always one or two overriding scenes that defined the rap of the moment (even if they were at war with each other). that's what's missing, seems to me. there's no center to the action, it feels v. diffuse. you can have a hit come out of anywhere, but you don't have that we-taking-over sense from anywhere.

seems that rap is kind of mirroring the fragmentation of pop music generally here...

i guess at some level im curious to what degree popular rap is simply less exciting, omnivorous, & outward-facing than it was 5-10 yrs ago ... how its big names are happy just rapping for 'just-rap' audiences

is it to do with

- the music they make? ie no matter how much they try, it's just not commercial enough, or doesn't fit in w/2009 trends? seems that the charts and popular audiences are more amenable to the drakes and wales of this world right now, so is making the decision to rap for "just-rap" audiences pre-empting crossover failure?
- their own motivations? how much are all these regional scene artists invested in popular mainstream success compared to say seven years ago, anyway? jordan basically characterised drake as someone with no purpose other than to be famous and successful, but that might be the key - if that's his priority. i'm not a fan but chart artists have blown up on much less. and with their momentum, you have to think that when gucci mane and nicki minaj get round to releasing albums, they'll join the list...

i agree that the illegal d/l issue must be a significant one for rap, but surely not large enough to entirely explain what jordan and deej describe. which rappers or singles do you guys think should be on jordan's crossover list but aren't?

didn't busta have a few big singles this year? "conglomerate" and "hustler's anthem"...

i think gucci & nicki minaj are def both outward-facing, mainstream-oriented wanna be pop stars who also want to be rappers. without giving up one for the other. but that feels much more like the exception now.

boosie, 2 yrs ago felt the same, & like with his bunch of singles (zoom, independent, wipe me down) he was on his way ... then something happened, cant tell what, & suddenly it feels like hes not gonna be pushing any further out, like hes stuck being a 'regional' rapper -- in the broadest possible sense, in that hes hugely popular thruout the south & midwest, just not with pop audiences in any meaningful way

yeah that one is fire, 'fast break' might be the first one i :O'd at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSBonOPVsnU

"white folks think im playin for the falcons"

"'i wish more beats sounded singular' is like, well duh"

i was talking about that a milli aesthetic (ie more mid range and bass as opposed to nothing but thin treble), rather than inferior carbon copies.

looking forward to the madlib of 808s in 2020.

midrange on a milli? how do any of the tracks we posted not have bass?

i cant be bothered to argue if you dont think modern popular rap is way more about treble than anything else. i dont hear anything esp interesting being done with bass in most modern hip hop/R&B/pop, unless you count its general merely perfunctory presence as going against traditional notions of black music=bass to be notable in itself. hence, why i like a milli, purely for that funkiness/heaviness.

the bass in modern hip-hop/R&B/pop = the sub-bass 808 kick. this doesn't lend itself to funky complex basslines but it's certainly prominent (unless you're listening on speakers that don't have good bass response)

(unless you're listening on speakers that don't have good bass response)

I would think most people aren't considering loads of people are listening to shit on their phones/ipods/computers

and yeah kick-drum sub-bass /= bass

why not? if you had big basslines in a lot of these tracks then there wouldn't be room for the way-larger-than-life kicks.

(not that there aren't some current tracks with good basslines, but this is a pretty defining characteristic of modern rap beats imo)

I may be in the minority here, but I think popular rap is about as good as it's been all decade, or at least as good as it's been since the Neptunes' sound lost its new-car scent. It's tuneful, melodically innovative, fun and inviting. There's still a lot of inane singles I can't defend, but even some of today's worst artists are capable of some genuinely inspired singles (see Soulja Boy's "Turn My Swag" on). Meanwhile, Kanye West's 808s album opened up the genre to sounds, textures and emotions that were once entirely foreign to the genre.

this is another dope, low key, melodic zaytove beat, with more unique drum programming than he usually does

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvpBpkI30Gk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvpBpkI30Gk

\(o_O)/

oh lol, i forgot that i turned images off & was puzzled as to why it was just a link showing up, sorry

zay toven more like tay zonday amirite

already made that great, underappreciated dn iirc

man this was a dope yo gotti track -- forgot about it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0uDGAUwOqs

263 posts and not one Waka Flocka mention?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLH3XLZirHU

actually he got mentioned a bit in the gucci thread, but this songs awesome either way

wacka flocka is like when you're in the elevator at work with your boss and he farts and everyone tries to pretend like they don't smell it, best to just move on.

nah wacka's pretty much solidified as OK if just for "o let's do it"....that song is fuckin dope. and maybe a handful of other verses like "real as they get"

but the version in the video is kinda unlistenable because of all the gaps

man i'd been hearing people rap on that shitty beat on mixtapes for months, didn't realize it was the track from a kinda big hit song

ha yeah waka's someone i don't mind hearing on a gucci song here or there, but can't bring myself to care enough to seek out a mixtape of his own

tbh if you're thinking about "the state of popular rap in 09" and you think waka flocka yours is a fucked up mind

his best contribution so far was inspiring one of my fav whiney login names of recent months

yeah all these people must have "fucked up mind"s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSh2sDQ51JY

fuck y'all. "O Let's Do It" is a banger

Roscoe Dash "All The Way Turnt Up"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctc6WCWGIns

last addition to "the state" of the year?

rev is otm btw

actually no one mentioned "Bedrock"

i feel like that song will be huuuge soon

or is it already

i hear it all the time now. kinda fuckin hate it tbh, and i loved "every girl."

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=jackson/100126

two gucci mentions on ESPN in a week!

hahaha scoop otm! ying yang twins!!

• DJ Khaled: All he has to do is use his Def Jam South president status and bring any of the artists that he gets on his mix tapes (Akon, Usher, Rick Ross, T-Pain, Young Jeezy, Plies, Lil Wayne, et al) and do one song: "I'm So Hood." SB halftimes will never be the same.

hahahahaha i want to everyone to know that if dj khaled does a super bowl halftime show i'll donate all money to my name to charity and jump off the top of a building because it would be the peak of my life

• Jay-Z: Has the catalog, has the cachet, has the name, has the wife, has the connects, has the swag, has the résumé. If Hov doesn't eventually get the gig, then no one ever will.

this is actually really, really otm

yeah it totally is, outkast too. old people like outkast, right? let them do it

lol @ "eventually"...by the time jay gets it Vol 8...The Glo-Fi Covers Album will be #1 or something

what is glo-fi?

do i even want to know?

hahahahaha i want to everyone to know that if dj khaled does a super bowl halftime show i'll donate all money to my name to charity and jump off the top of a building because it would be the peak of my life

― waka shame (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, January 27, 2010 2:14 PM Bookmark

you should jump off a bridge

m@tt idk what glo-fi i either really, i think it's the same thing as chillwave?

if we combined the powers of glo-fi and chillwave it would be totally micro-hypnagogic IMO

but to me it's pretty much all about purple wow in 2010

Never knew they made a video for this. It's like watching old home movies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUZx98Ei-ls

that vid is crazy

I saw "glo-fi" for the first time today on a promotional sticker for some indie band and then I saw it on this thread. it did not strike me as something I would ever want to hear, although I may be wrong.

Thread is an incredible time capsule

we had all the goats in here