"Instrumental Hip-Hop Sucks. Ban It Forever."

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2012/01/instrumental_hip-hop_sucks_ban.php

it's nice when you find the perfect person to write your online HIP HOP COLUMN.

next week's column: KING TUBBY AND LEE PERRY WERE CHUMPS!

finally someone had the courage to say it

"J Dilla -- who now presumably spends his days pestering heaven's denizens with the unreleased off-cuts from his bizarrely worshipped Donuts ruse"

ugh

Even the world's foremost hip-hop hipster tastemaker, Diplo...

yes even DIPLO cant make this music cool

holy shit, every line of this is terrible

lol "hey man can you write a quick blog entry because there's an RJD2 show this week?"

One-time Busta Rhymes cohort Roc Marciano's Marcberg was my favorite rap album of 2010

http://www.sfweekly.com/2012-02-01/music/v-nasty-kreayshawn-white-girl-mob-east-oakland-gucci-mane-rap/

-- ahem! --
-- shudder! --
--lol!--

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2012/02/should_rappers_consider_retiri.php

In Defense of the Game -- Our Last Honest Gangsta Rapper

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2011/10/in_defense_of_the_game.php

Game's reckless rap attitude carries over to his portfolio of disses.

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2011/07/j_dillas_ten_greatest_remixes.php

wish this guy posted here

It's a formula that never works. Sure, hip-hop may no longer consist of a tight idealized union between the four elements, what with breakdancing and graffiti having been ostracized by modern mainstream rap.

Hee-hee. I guess rappers aren't really into graffiti anymore are they?

it's funny how i thought this was going to be some rant about the actual critical zeitgeist around clams casino/araabmuzik/etc. and instead it's something that could've been written at any point in the last 5 years with barely any of the reference points changing

haha yeah i def thought it would be about clams casino and not... RJD2/the year 2003

30% of the dude's articles for the weekly are about kreyshawn

omg @ this article

One-time Busta Rhymes cohort Roc Marciano's Marcberg was my favorite rap album of 2010

― BJ O (Lamp), Wednesday, February 8, 2012 1:22 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*raises hand*

weird.
the writer used to be the man behind HHC
.. and i know he loved his wordsound stuff, and there was a lot of instrumental hip hop on that label ..

a self-loathing blogger?!?

Instrumental classical music SUCKS. Get back to your job of making bangin' tracks for Opera divas to sing over.

didn't read the article, but instrumental hip-hop indeed sucks balls.

Instrumental classical music SUCKS. Get back to your job of making bangin' tracks for Opera divas to sing over.

this is OTM tho

u diva

careful what you wish for

http://www.allflac.com/covers/b_21917_Bill_Laswell-Operazone__The_Redesign-2000.jpg

omg Jordan, that is on Spotify

I think I am in for a treat

;_; I was wrong ;_;

haha

lol

Phillip Mlynar
Location:
Brooklyn, NY
Member since:
August 24, 2011
Introduction

Hi, I'm Phillip, living in Brooklyn somewhere between Park Slope and Greenwood Cemetery.

What do you love the most about vinyl records?

That's they're tangible and physical and made to be played one-side at a time; there's nothing better than sitting down and listening to a record while holding the cover and reading the liner notes. Although I could do without the musty smell from a few of my thrift store finds...

How long have you been collecting records?

Too long! Although a transatlantic move and way too many apartment moves in the last couple of years has reduced my collection. I sometimes dream of paring everything down to a collection of just 100 perfectly curated albums...

What type of music do you collect on vinyl?

Mainly hip-hop, jazz, soul, funk, a little bit of indie rock, Bjork, and Christmas music (I'm kinda obsessed with it -- who couldn't love a song by a group called Honey And The Bees?!).

^^^You should, Pippo Mlynar is the best music writer in the UK currently.

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, February 6, 2008 6:59 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I was gonna say Dom has his poster on his wall iirc

ppl seem to speak well of him as an editor fwiw

questlove Questo of The Roots
i can respect a journalist's right to be indifferent on a genre, but this is what happens when ignorance teaches bit.ly/xdgITX

This could be interesting.

"(Bay Area stalwart DJ Shadow is exonerated from the crime of instrumental hip-hop by virtue of his music being more correctly in the lineage of Steinski's witty cut-and-paste experiments.)"

this just makes me want to barf

*actually barfs*

good display name in there somewhere

i like the araabmuzik album, but i think of it more as dance music than as hiphop

Quikstrumentals y'all.

BANG

To be honest, I don't think I've ever heard a good instrumental hip-hop album, if we're using a strict definition of the genre. The good ones I know of (like some of the stuff that came from the UK "blunted beats" scene) usually mix hip-hop with some other genres of electronic music. There are some great instrumental hip-hop singles ("King of the Beats", "Hear the Drummer Get Wicked", "The 900 Number", "Turn Up the Bass", etc), but even those are usually hip-house or some other hybrid form.

So what are the great instrumental hip-hop albums of our time?

first two dabrye records, all time favourites

xp That J-Rocc record from last year was good.

dave cool has some pretty uncool opinions about most instrumental hip-hop, so he's keeping them to himself in the interest of coolness. but j dilla is the best 4ever http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKsdGr8Tvv4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XilQMW68PE0&feature=related

when in the mood for darker stuff, i used to like this one a lot :

http://shop.lexrecords.com/collections/catalogue/products/dj-signify-sleep-no-more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jRMZTgXhV0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVt158qcgW4&feature=related

i'd like to give a shout-out to my friend dj cosmo baker cuz he bought the major force box-set on mowax when it came out and he was like dude you HAVE to get one and i was like really? mo wax? i'm not really into that stuff but he made me buy the only vinyl copy in philly which was at the philly record exchange and man i gotta tell you i want to be buried with it in my casket i don't want anyone else to own my copy. some sort of holy relic to me or some shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEn8Xl8Ve2U

Headz is also p awesome, lol trip hop and all that.

what drove me insane about this blog thing was that the guy has a hip hop column and he admits that he can't listen to instrumental versions of songs that he supposedly already likes. that was the thing to me. not that he doesn't like shadow/rj type stuff.

"One-time Busta Rhymes cohort Roc Marciano's Marcberg was my favorite rap album of 2010. It's also available to buy in an instrumental format -- but when you take out Marcy's semi-slurred raps, the songs lose their menace and drama, and instead come off like a collection of miserable and depressing music. Likewise, Trackademicks has been providing the Honor Roll Crew with some of the freshest Bay Area hip-hop beats in years, but without Spank Pops' smart raps or Josie Stingray's enthusiastic energy, his work would downgrade into music to drift off to."

it's an inversion of the traditional canard about instrumental hip hop fans- that they like the beats, but the rapping is too "real" (or whatever) for them...

i hate to draw lines in the sand or be punker than thou, but if you can't happily listen to instrumental versions of rap songs ALL DAY LONG with a great big smile on your face, then you shouldn't have a rap column. in a newspaper. even an online blog column for a newspaper.

AVH - sampleslaya

another one for the cheesy file, but dead entertaining, is Mixmaster Mike "Anti-Theft Device". I would also defend Dan the Automator in certain contexts- the Dr Octagon Instrumentals record is great, though not as good as the original record obv.

that article made me think about dudes like Jel and DaVinci who were doing the "dude just str8 ripping it on an MPC like Eddie Van Halen" or whatever thing years ago; and Aarabmusik's coup was somehow making that a cool thing instead of a strictly backpacker thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaiqGNa8Hh0#t=00m59s

where's my Fader story

you guys, i feel like it's 2003 in here.

what the hell

it's 2003 in here.

and bob's yer u.n.k.l.e.

speaking of Mo Wax, Turntablism by DJ Krush was a big favorite of mine for a loooong time. at the time i thought it sounded like the future but it sounds very simplistic now

dj food boxset i had in the store kinda sucked. did not age well. sold it in like 2 days though.

krush stuff too not so hot after all this time. also horrible/unmemorable rapping on his old tracks not so hot. shoulda stuck to rapstrumentals.

DJ Vadim is reliable tho, as are London Funk Allstars and The Herbaliser

xp I think Meiso still holds up, but yeah a lot of trip hop noodling. I always liked his tracks with Japanese rapping, because, y'know, Japanese rapping!

(ha I should probably footnote my previous post with "I haven't played their entire albums lately but I was cherrypicking things off of Cold Krush Cuts yesterday and they still sounded awesome")

btw Tuomas, if you haven't heard Cold Krush Cuts, you really should

yeah its true meiso had some good stuff on it.

not rap, but i've been kinda obsessed with the diseases rhythm for the last couple of weeks and have been listening to it in multiple variations as an instrumental and as a backing track for vocals and i hear it in my head now all day long and i'm pretty sure i could hear nothing but that rhythm for hours but the people in my store might not be so receptive. i'm reaching into its heart and part of me is wondering how something so simple could be so transcendent to me but mostly i just love the guitar and wanna marry it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQxT7qpDWHw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACE7lYmW10w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnfBYoL1FpA

plus, this makes me seek out more information on junjo lawes and the roots radics and also live soundsystem releases from the era that used the rhythm prominently:

http://www.ebreggae.com/reggae-images/front/Vinyl/100973/A-Live-Session-With-King-Sturgrav-Hi-Fi-Lee-Unlimited.jpg

and that makes me want to know more about U-Roy's fabled King Stur-Grav soundsystem and i do learn more and its really interesting. all because that guitar on that rhythm track was calling to me. and i don't have a reggae or dancehall blog or anything. i'll probably never write about dancehall. but your ears gotta be open. they just gotta be. even rjfriggind2 can teach you a thing or two. in 2012!

it starts at 3:33 but listen to johnny ringo destroy the crowd on this:

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

so anyway, there's been kind of an explosion in beat-based electronic music over the last few years, right? like, uh, flying lotus, shlohmo, shigeto, lapalux, jonwayne, hudson mohawke, elos, teebs, samiyam, matthewdavid, etc etc. i'm pretty sure the relative popularity of the beat scene is what the article is talking about, without actually talking about it.

Don't remove this guy's bizarre past-based perspective. I am sure he will hear about and dismiss Clams Casino sometime in 2013

Or, as I posted on facebook:

"this is all pretty bad except DJ Shadow who I give a pass. btw I'm white"

i thought a couple of the Oddisee records were pretty decent. not as good as the stuff he makes w/rapping on it tho so...

the whole idea of dudes named Oddisee and DaVinci being popular right now is v confusing to anyone who was up on backpack rap ca 2005

This is kind of like how Lex denigrates Drake's "Marvins Room" but thinks JoJo's version is amazing. I understand preferring one over the other, but when so many of the sonic details are the same, it's hard for me to understand how one's opinion can change so drastically.

Don't remove this guy's bizarre past-based perspective. I am sure he will hear about and dismiss Clams Casino sometime in 2013

oh, it's totally bizarre. i imagine him hearing about a low end theory night and just assuming everyone was playing dilated peoples instrumentals on loop or something.

bump

a friend sent me the express rising album from 2003 and I am listening to it right now, I wanted to start a thread on instrumental hip hop because I dunno, I just wanted people to post all their fave albums, should I just make another thread or keep it in here

I even liked diplos dumb fake dj shadow album from a long time ago I have a high pain threshold for this kinda shit

I Love Feeling Like I Am In A Coffeeshop

Hmm, I love hip hop. I've always felt that the instrumental hip hop guys are the ones that I can't talk to hip hop about, and who live in some insular captive world. Yeah, Endtroducing and stuff, but does anyone want to listen to more than 3 (?) instrumental hip hop albums? It's not jazz. It does get really boring. I don't think that's a terrible thing to admit.

great post

I kinda wanna listen to the new wiz album since j0rd described it as being a good instrumental album

i listen to tons of intrumental versions of songs on 12 inches. from the 80's to the 2000's. and i can do that forever. well, i've done it since the 80's anyway. but i don't actually listen to quote unquote instrumental hip hop albums. though i like some of them which i point out upthread. my favorite mix tapes to make are instrumental mixes of 90's and 2000's rap singles. i play them over and over again. the more minimal the better. i draw the line at breaks&beats comps though. drum drops. that kind of thing. i made a tape of freestyle edits and dubs the other night and it is so killer if i do say so myself.

please post it, all the mixes of yours I've listened to have been p great

otm

One of my favourite albums from this year was a (mostly) instrumental hip-hop albums by a duo of Finnish rap veterans called Koti6. You can listen to it on Spotify:

http://open.spotify.com/album/02S05pjMpTu5Vmg8ueMpSZ

There's nothing groundbreaking about it, the simply have a great ear for samples, and know how to use them.

Whoa, 497 comments!

had to check the dates to make sure the recent posts in this thread weren't from 10 years ago

as in, hey guys, we're living in a beat renaissance.

I go to like beat based shows like every week tho

there was just a certain kind of like dusty jazz over semi-interesting semi-boring breaks vibe that I am looking for idk

j0rdan is so otm abt the wiz album
that 'ridin out in my ride' song is so bad lyrically but the production omg

Ban It Forever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNo82zDnTRU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs2CvVob8Dc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t-4xd5frp4&playnext=1&list=PL3B50EA6B0F615A76&feature=results_video