"Too many rappers give the fans what they want instead of what they need. This hip-hop game needs an overhaul."

how many people are *really* looking forward to another godspeed you black emperor record? how many of you were disappointed by the new boards of canada or the new dj shadow or the new whatever-the-fuck?

as much as i'd say 'desire' versus 'sustainance' (freudian ball of wax that it is) is very subjective i don't think there's too much exciting shit in music right now because people are very much doing the 'desire' route.

Admitidely, "Stankonia" didn't live up to the hype (how could it?), but they're still the best thing around- and what's more, they're the closest my generation will ever get to an UNIVERSAL group- I mean, Rock fans, Rap fans, Alternakids, electronica fans, and yes, even the teenyboppers, all of us...we can all agree on "Ms.Jackson".

As for the Proffesor Griff comment- it's a common complaint that Hip Hop today is all about the bejamins, which is fair enough when someone like Jay-Z is considered the best on the block, but...Sugarhill Records also wanted to make a fast buck, non?

Yes, Outkast is pretty impressive. I'm still thinking about at least buying some sort of collection of their songs, and I have bought virtually no hip-hop since around 1993/4.

And why are Outkast "shuffling ministrel show shit"? Just because they're a bit eccentric? No one ever said that about Syd Barrett...

That's because the music press still prefers to cover LA hip hop rather than SF, it prefers the bling to the conscious.

It is wrong for this sentence to amuse me so much, but it does.

Typo Of The Week.

French House? Did they ever even attempt that? Drum N Bass yes, but House?

Ben: "The Whole World" is to me Sly Stoneish because it manages to be a deeply painful, angsty song without forsaking danceability or top40 success. It reminded me alot of "If You Want Me To Stay" and "Que Sera Sera"; it's also made me a bit wary of where Outkast are going, knowing what's happened to Sly...

Adam: You can't limit socially concious to U2, RATM and rrriot grrl. What about Bob Dylan, The Specials ("Free Nelson Mandela"- still danceable now that it's irrelevant), The Who, John Lennon, The International Noise Conspiracy, Minor Threat, The Clash, The Strokes ("New York City Cops" = their best, perhaps their only true CLASSIC), The Dead Kennedys...and that's without even speaking of Soul, a genre which is almost socially concious by definition (nearly every great Soul singer has at least one political song in their ouevre- Aretha, Sam Cooke, Prince, Otis, James Brown, CURTIS MAYFIELD...)

And let me put it this way- if an artist doesn't make me feel that whatever he or she is saying is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD EVER (doesn't matter if the subject is politics, love or shaking ya booty), they're not worthy of my attention.

I'm also a touch leery of your statement for my own view, in that I think it allows no room for doing something just for the hell of it rather than it being This Passionate Thing 100% All the Time, see. ;-)

I might not, but Mark S might have something to say about that. ;-)

Custos: and the Zapatistas will liberate the American ghetto? People have been trying to "raise consciousness" in the abstract since Booker T. As a program of education and uplift it amounts to equal fantasy except it pretends to be more.

Subtlety is such a LOST art (actually I'm not really sure if it was ever NOT lost, but nobody seems to have it these days). So says a guy who is as subtle as a brick.

Any Little Richard fans out there?

And "New York City Cops" the worst song on there? What about the perky pop-isms of "Sometimes"? The yawnerrific "Soma"? The forced "Hard To Explain" and "Take It Or Leave It"?

"New York City Cops" is also the only tune on the album that even remotley justifies The Strokes' reputation as a "good ol' loud Rock & Roll band" (not that that's a good thing).

And I don't want your revolution if I can't pick a soundtrack I can dance to. (Granted, the roots aren't crap in that department). [expectation monkeywrench: The Roots backed Jay-Z on his unplugged appearance. oops.]

viz ppl made "socially conscious" rap => ppl listened to "socially conscious" rap => ppl started making bling bling rap => ppl started listening to bling bling rap: if SC was all that then BB wd not have arrived to wipe it away

*all* rap is a rebuttal to blair and bush, even pro-farrakhan (= pro-capitalist) rap...

All music rebuts the status quo which announces: "things are not right things are not complete i am not right i am not complete"

No it doesn't. Some music supports the status quo. The creation of art does not in itself constitute an act of transgression. (I am not arguing that "bling bling" hiphop supports the status quo--in fact I think some of it is as subversive as any of "hyper-political" hip hop of 15 or so years ago, i.e. not really very subversive.)

(btw i'm going after the weakness of the "rebuttal" concept here)

geeta NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL SUBVERSIVE MUSIC pt54

(geeta i was agreeing with you: i am not anti-politics as content in music, i am anti fear-of-music becuz it is bad politics)

meanwhile: ETHAN AND JESS TO THREAD!

I was listening to Deceit the other day and it struck me that songs like Cenotaph represented a direction (musically, at least) in which the Police could have gone had they any real adventure (and, of course, not had the Director of the CIA on drums).

I don't know why this hasn't been picked up on yet... It just seems an overtly white middle class male statement. When it gets down to it, all we're discussing on this forum is art. And when push comes to shove, I'd rather have freedom than art. If a musician is making a political point you are totally allowed to dismiss the artist based on their musical output. But you can't dismiss their politics based on their music. The politics are usually more important than the music, or even the success, for these people. You can't dance- that's your fucking problem. They can't feed their children. I'd say they're worse off.

Except note that even the Manics are more nuanced here -- they take issue not with the beastie boys as such but with what they do in organizing the Free Tibet hoohah. Ironies of History pt. 353245: The proletkulties would have chosen Mystikal over Mos Def in a hot second, except maybe for Mos Def's "rock" track.

All rap is subversive like all classical music is subversive -- i.e. it really is.

Also, mark: dogs eat fascists and hi-hats eat guitars. Speaking of which, black "gun culture" makes possible Robert F. Williams makes possible afro-cuban internationalism jointly make possible panthers. Cleaver vs. Seale, fite!

I think you've misunderstood me. Of course, when it comes down to it, the music is the most important thing: they're musicians, not politicians, but to dismiss the politics because of the music, or the music because of the politics, is dumb, surely? If Karl Marx had've put "Das Kapital" over a trip-hop backing, would that have made his points any less valid?

This talk by Professor Griff is stupid. Artists don't make successful music for the people, people make music successful. A 3 year old could get that concept. And obviously "what they need" is so subject to opinion that it's not even worth discussing.

As for the Nick Drake stuff, I'm sure he eh "means it" but then since you obviously like him it's not really here nor there. What does an artist who means it actually sound like in comparison to one who doesn't mean it? How do you "mean" a house track?

What is the average rainfall in my front garden?

dom if marx had written capital in klingon wd that be a style-gesture or a substance-gesture

(Crowd of huddling starving women in rags and grimey men and children fresh from the dye factory go nuts. Karl strides out, smoking a phatty cigar.)KM: What's My Flow of Accumulation? M! C! M! What's My Flow of Accumulation? M! C! M! / Yoyo boys and girls, we tha workers of the world / revisionists they try ta bite me / but they don' wanna fite me / or i'll primitive accumulate / with my down-ass thirty-eight / you want excitement / get this shit started / welcome to the Paaar-ty!

(Small child cries out from the back of the audience)

kid: yo karl, you're flow is weak.

(Audience begins to jeer, and holler)

KM: I'm the type of k*k* / built to rock tha mic... oh fuckit (slinks offstage)

(Liebknecht runs out to try to quiet the crowd, but fails)

Audience: We want Bernstien! We want Bernstien! We want Bernstien!

(not quite historically accurate, but you get the idea)

Warning: I'm completely on Custos's side here...

I think that words are quite powerful and it is freaking important to listen to what people say. As I wrote in my thread on homophobia in dancehall, the fact that Buju's "Boom Bye Bye" is catchy doesn't take away the hideous violence in the words.

Turn on CNN, MSNBC, etc. If you aren't afraid, well, you're a very different person than I.

I think that all art should be more aware--it's my opinion, and I'm sure lots of folks will agree. Point is, there's tons of kids listening to music and singing along to it every day. The amount of potential to SAY SOMETHING that will be heard and the POWER of the medium of music is unbelievable.

Why is there so much stigma associated with tunes that aint heavy on the bling bling? Call me a conspiracy theorist, but 'the man' doesn't like and has never liked the folks who speak out...

It's because, as K-os says: "If you free them, they will start revolution and babylon cannot defeat them."

limp bizkit's songs AREN'T meaningless (saying they are is also a kind of social and political unawareness): the position lord custos takes on the phil collins thread completely undercuts any POLITICAL position he claims to take here (taste position is another thing obv)

ps le tigre r00l d00d but then they think a HEAP into the abt the ethics of delivery and flow so that's why i like em lots

Also, I'm advocating consciousness here...not style--though I do have some sweet anti-Mike Harris buttons kicking around.

There's a seperate point here which is that the politics of some of the SC performers are as much style-flourishes as deeply held, considered, and meant (not all, but certainly some). Did you know that Lil' Kim has a song about revolution? Stack it next to a dead prez track and see if you can spot the difference.

*how can I make people hear what THEY THEMSELVES have to say?*
*how can I make people THINK what THEY THEMSELVES have to THINK?*
*how can I make people make ME think all that *I* can think?*
etc etc

haha i mean yes, but PMMs are especially not allowed to skimp on them

THIS JUST IN:
From: "AllHipHop.com"
Date: Mon Jun 17, 2002 08:45:33 PM Etc/GMT
To: "alerts"
Subject: alerts
Reply-To:

Durham N.C. based Rev. Paul Scott has called for a boycott of "Gangsta Rap" music. Scott is urging fans to demand rap and hip-hop that promotes positive images of and for African-American men and women. Yesterday (June 16th), he called for radio stations to play more socially meaningful music. "Leave the Jay-Z and the rest of them rotting on the bargain table," he said.

I just think that intensity and subtelty aren't mutually exclusive in music, even though according to logic they should be.

My point is that lyrics are only as important as you make them.

The thing is, I doubt it ANYONE here likes music due to things that can be proven (i.e. the technical side of things). All preferences concerning music are a matter of opinion; that's no reason to stop discussing them however.

You'll get "hard leftist" artists when they have a "hard leftist" audience.

But I don't want to get back into that argument again.

TWO QUESTIONS:
1: what was rock culture's role in dissolving the cold-war (50s-70s) status quo?
2: did the (uk) left have more to learn from (uk) punk in 1979 than vice versa, and DID IT IN FACT LEARN IT?

taking sides: the long-realised vs the not-yet formed

"cold war status quo" = ideology in which eg vietnamese cd only be pro-soviet puppets OR pro-US puppets => what defeats US in southeast asia = Tet + counterculture (former essential but w/o latter, no *threat* of mass secession from American way-of-life mainstream, no pressure for US not to proceed as did elsewhere in early 60s, or later, early 80s etc)

blimey i just turned into jacques attali i think...

so on a practical level, i think the answer is yes, there was a pretty big link: was there a link soundwise? no: the banshees demolished eddie and the hot rods and HURRAH FOR THAT!

part two upthread wd be a small micro-subset of part one, not a separate successor (a snapshot of the exchange — or non-exchange — at a certain moment) (frank k wd argue — well sorta kinda — that rock is a subset of punk anyway hurrah)

haha do you know this quote: "Nonsense is of course always nonsense, but the study of nonsense is science!!"