classic Wu-Tang solo run poll

everything that came after was just an extension of those concepts/approaches

nuh uh

do tell

"everything that came after was just an extension of those concepts/approaches"

Couldn't you make that absurdly reductionist claim about basically anything? I mean why listen to any metal post-Sabbath it's "just an extension of those concepts/approaches", etc.

I didn't think that was direct commentary on the worth of what came after, but rather an opinion on what constitutes something being "seminal" with the added indirect rider that he finds seminal works more interesting/exciting than things that expand upon the original toolkit.

So, it's not that that stuff was worthless or anything, it just wasn't as exciting as disco. Which, you know, is kind of silly, but then that's why opinions are so fun to argue over.

well I did say 90s techno was "more annoying" so in some ways it was a value judgment albeit a flippant one. you could say it about a lot of genres (I don't think metal is a good example tho, cuz metal REALLY broadened as it grew older). but yeah pretty much every genre takes shape around a few basic tenets that are then explored and refined in subsequent years, it's just the way it is I don't think it's inherently negative. My point with dance music was that the seminal/shaping of the genre occurred way earlier than the 90s. If there was some massive formal shift in dance music in the 90s I have no idea what it was, feel free to elaborate.

and yeah M@tt's whole post was about the excitement of witnessing a genre take shape - which IS exciting - so that's what I was referring to.

I think the wholesale appropriation of sampling in the late 80s took dance music in a bunch of different, divergent directions, culminating in the explosion of sub-genres that marked dance music in the early 90s.

i wasn't leaving out techno/dance on purpose, my post was more personal, what hip hop meant to me back then. i didn't even know techno existed back then, and i still don't really know enough about it to say how significant it was or which era was important.

though that said, i don't think it would have felt the same to me because hip hop wasn't just watching a music take shape, it was really an exposure to people, or the lives of people in america that i couldn't imagine and had no knowledge of...like i would see the videos and think about the bronx or compton and it was so far away to me. even just the street names and the neighborhoods or references to local businesses (like sir mix-a-lot talking about dick's hamburgers) clothing or shoes, just all the little details of lives i couldn't fathom.

techno doesn't have those things.

it's weird to think about that time when everything wasn't available to you all the time, how amazing it was when you found something.

well no, techno in its purest form is all about gay robots giving you dance drugs

First result in google for gay robots dance drugs:

http://www.houseofdiabolique.com/links.htm

Face it. You have little reason to visit any other websites after seeing mine.
But here are some that interest me.

microhouse is weak like clock radio speakers.

i mean those kinds of similies are basically like, your literature/language arts teacher explaining rap music kind of goofy. its just ... dated juice crew type ish. rappers inhabit personas more fully now

― j. sargent & lil k3v (deej), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 10:23 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

"clever and/or unexpected wordplay is so dated" goes a very long way towards why I don't feel a lot of current hip-hop

― GLEERILLAZ! (HI DERE), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 12:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

metal (discussed upthread) is a good comparison genre, though. i love metal, and have to admit that i don't want my orc-puverizing fantasies interrupted by goofy, artist-humanizing asides. i want nonstop blood and thunder. maybe this is because i genuinely enjoy certain aspects of metal's fantasy universe: weed, monsters, insanity, barbarian carnage, horror flicks, etc. and maybe it's because the fundamental unreality of that universe prevents me from ever taking the artistic POV too seriously. i dunno. point is, i'm not so in love with the corollary aspects of contemporary rap's fantasy universe: dealing, wealth, gangsters, strippers, clubs, etc. and rap's not always so clear about the placement of the line that separates entertaining fantasy from ugly reality. which goes some way towards explaining why i like it when the personas involved aren't quite so fully inhabited.

and maybe it's because the fundamental unreality of that universe prevents me from ever taking the artistic POV too seriously.

yeah this is a key difference, I alluded to it upthread

I think the wholesale appropriation of sampling in the late 80s took dance music in a bunch of different, divergent directions, culminating in the explosion of sub-genres that marked dance music in the early 90s.

yeah I can see this. although I've never really thought of sampling as being some kind of breakthrough technique for dance music, even though once people started doing it obviously things started to SOUND different because sampling is just such a different sound than chilly synths or live instrumentation or whatever. In some ways using a sampler doesn't seem that much different to me from using a sequencer or a drum machine or synth patches, it's just another electronic tool well-suited to a genre that was already explicitly all about electronic tools.

I dunno, I'll defer to people more well-versed in this stuff, I had only a passing interest in it, informed largely by friends who were WAY more into going raving than I was.

yeah this is a key difference, I alluded to it upthread

― i was like a person at a table at a place (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, October 14, 2010 2:30 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

tried to read through everything before posting, but people have been busy ITT.

anyway, a lot of contemporary rap is stuck in a weird position wr2 authenticity and the creation of artistic personas. fans seem to like the idea that the music responds to/reflects/emerges from a "harsh reality", but they also insist that rappers be 100% in character at all times. these demands seem contradictory on a very basic level. most rappers resolve the conflict by inhabiting the personal of people who are themselves in character all the time: dealers, thugs and pimps who can't afford to break character. this works, but gets old fast.

guys who or what are we talking about now

hatcats

Guys can we please stop with the rap authenticity jackoff sesh and talk about Wu-Tang albums again?

fuck you

it's really just me. one guy. and it is currently a gay dance robot jackoff sesh.

to the extent that it isn't rap authenticity, and i'm not sure which is worse

I will oblige: Ironman gettin short shrift imho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPKJZJITZHw
^^^this fuckin song

oh shit I completely forgot about that song

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

that final run of songs on Ironman is soooooo o_0

harbinger of things to come

ilxor's opinions and viewpoints are not necessarily endorsed by San Te

I really wish I knew what I did with my copy of Cuban Linx ...guess it's d/ling time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOXHK5WDdGg

really glad contenderizer is disagreeing with me -- more evidence for the defense basically imo

this thread is still super-frustrating to me. i dont know if im just not writing as clearly as i think i am or what but like, j0hn & croupier, do you guys think im just like a moron?? because i cant understand why else yall are so unwilling to at least take me at my word that ive thought this out & just maybe i might have a point ??

i think thats the most offensive shit to me in this thread isnt at all that u dudes disagree, but that you seem to think im not thinking any of this through. its like ... wtf?? thats the entirety of my critical approach, when it comes to rap, is thinking through persona/vision/aesthetics & how they all interact. thinking about the history of rap in broad sweeping terms & how certain artists inhabit rap in different ways. & instead i get nothing but condescension

Fuckin' frame Matt's post somewhere and be done with it, because that says it all.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, October 14, 2010 12:50 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i love m@tt but if "you had to be there" says it all then i guess ill never be a part of this conversation

lol @ alex in sf turning up for the first time in like 4 years in a rap thread to talk shit about me while adding nothing to the conversation, though

thats the entirety of my critical approach, when it comes to rap, is thinking through persona/vision/aesthetics & how they all interact. thinking about the history of rap in broad sweeping terms & how certain artists inhabit rap in different ways.

I dunno what to tell you... write more in-depth posts and fewer punchline zings maybe

deej dude take a break

i dunno im not really comfortable w/ all these ppl thinking that i think young jeezy is the cnn of the streets or whatever twisted version of my perspective j0hn d has

...& instead i get nothing but condescension

― j. sargent & lil k3v (deej), Thursday, October 14, 2010 4:48 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

dunno how to tell you this, deej, but uh...

i think a basic misunderstanding here:

1. i think, objectively, in a general sense, rapping has shifted towards more nuanced & personality-driven personas than it was in the run dmc era, or the juice crew era that gza came out of.

2. i think SUBJECTIVELY, that as a result i tend to prefer artists who at some level anticipated these changes & had fully developed personas -- by 'fully developed,' i mean that everything-- flow, lyrics, personality, vocal tone, style of delivery, conceptual approach to songs & albums, etc -- fit with who they 'were'. m@tt knows what im getting at here, even if his bias is more towards growing up when this stuff was brand new & therefor repping for it harder than i would.

i dont think i in any way deviated from these main points or shifted my argument at all while making them.

similarly vs. john d., my interpretation of conversation:

john: 'coke rap is old & passe'
me; 'some 'coke rap' still has something to add conceptually imo if you're defining coke rap as 'rap about drug dealing' -- that said, i think 'coke rap' is subject matter not a genre. further, coke will always be a big subject in rap as long as it exists in overrepresented proportions w/in populations that largely produce rap. certain narratives about it might get tired, and often are overrepresented, but 'coke rap' in some form is unfortunately likely to last as long as the drug war.'

this has been my opinion from before this dumb thread ever started, and has remained throughout. there is no contradiction, backpedaling, or shift in my perspective on this issue. ive been thinking about this shit for like 5 years!! since the jeezy stuff first really started exploding, i participated in conversations about this back then.

if by coke rap john d. meant specifically scarface fantasies and kingpin rap, then i agree -- im one of the few ppl on this board who thinks rick ross' entire persona is pretty tired! that unless theres some fresh aesthetic approach its kinda boring.

deej for what it's worth, I personally am much less certain about what exactly 'your perspective' is now than I was a few hundred posts ago, and I don't mean that in a condescending way; I'm sure a certain number of lazy zings will be born of this thread but I don't think it's been entirely unproductive, and I don't think anybody's gonna write you off entirely because you said some shit they thought was dumb (clearly, because otherwise there wouldn't be all these people still trying to talk to you and pick yr brain)

(written before that last big post)

here is one of my favorite articles that suggests that there are new & fresh approaches being taken w/r/t 'drug dealing rap' & imo much more significant/generationally-relevant than clipse:

http://www.sfbg.com/2010/02/09/80s-babies
But unlike other miners of '80s terrain — say, the Casio rock trend of last decade — the new sound of the Town has an organic lyrical connection through tales of crack and the devastation the drug has wreaked in the ghetto. "Slangin' rocks" is hardly a novel topic in rap, yet there's been a shift in presentation. This, I think, is a directly connected to age: unlike their elders, these new rappers are the first generation born during the crack epidemic. Born in West Oakland's Cypress Village in 1983, Stalin himself is literally a crack baby.

In lyrical terms, the '80s baby generation primarily identifies with classic Bay Area mob music, bypassing more recent hyphy. But there seems to be a difference in presentation. The '90s mob rapper tended to rap from an adult perspective, portraying himself in hyperbolic exploits as a kind of Scarface-inspired action figure. To be sure, the '80s babies haven't abandoned such tales of million-dollar deals, speedboats, and private planes. But alongside this, the story of the d-boy has emerged, reflecting the trauma of the generation's upbringing. In contrast to the mobster's comic-book glory, d-boy stories are frequently anti-glamour in tone, from the mundane, heartbreaking experiences of neglect — wearing the same clothes for a week or more being a common detail — to the painful tragedies of losing parents and siblings to drugs or murder. These stories generally unfold against a middle-school or high-school backdrop and are narrated from a present-tense, first-person perspective.

balls otm

I think this thread - w/r/t "coke rap" and versus, say, death-metal - a lot of the time operates on some overly rigid separation between fantasy and reality. Like "is this literally true or not?"

I think everyone here is probably smarter than that and it's just a function of where the argument has gone that things get shafted that way.

When I did my tv show one of the co-presenters was number 1 obsessive over death metal and etc. and I was surprised (but then retrospectively not-surprised) to discover how much her operating relationship with the music was to accept the artists' self-presentation as, let's say, "provisionally true to life". By which I mean if you said to her point blank "do you think this person actually sacrifices babies and, if so, should we call the police" she would have said "well of course not", BUT, for the purpose of her actual appreciation of the music it's not at all "OMG I love this because it's so cartoonish." If stuff wasn't at least provisionally convincing she wouldn't be into it as much.

Seems to me that there are multiple levels in terms of the relationship between "the world of drugs" and rap:

1) the reality of drugs (largely inaccessible to art)
2) the real fantasy of drugs (that is: the ideologies which are propogated in reality)
3) the fantasy "real" of drugs in music (rap deliberately trying to portray a realistic-seeming image of the drug world)
4) the fantasy fantasy of drugs in music (openly and obviously fantastical portrayals in rap)

Someone like Jeezy moves between (3) and (4) pretty fluidly, and I'd say that that fluidity is a very modern quality (don't mean "modern" as a compliment or put-down), because the experience of life itself is more of a tissue of layers of reality and fantasy than it is straight reality, such that thoroughgoing attempts to seem true-to-life at all times feel less believable in form even if they are more believable in content.

I think that the fan of Jeezy or equiv. instinctively gets this, they're not blind or gullible w/r/t to the varying levels of verisimillitude to life at work, instead they understand that the reality and fantasy aren't mutually exclusive in this context, and that a certain interpenetration of these layers is necessary to achieve narrative plenitude.

"lol @ alex in sf turning up for the first time in like 4 years in a rap thread to talk shit about me while adding nothing to the conversation, though"

Such an interesting conversation it was too.

Fuckin' frame Matt's post somewhere and be done with it, because that says it all.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, October 14, 2010 12:50 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i love m@tt but if "you had to be there" says it all then i guess ill never be a part of this conversation

― j. sargent & lil k3v (deej), Thursday, October 14, 2010 6:49 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

deej i basically think you are right on in terms of how things have evolved in terms of MC as MC to actual personas...

and i'm plenty nostalgic for sure!

but that said i don't think it's just a matter of "you had to be there" (though that always helps, but i think that's true of almost any music ever)

i do think that you (at least seem like) you undervalue some of the older hip hop stuff, and the punchline approach in general...

i understand that things needed to evolve and obv that evolution is what makes possible albums like "the diary" or "illmatic" or "ready to die" or any other ones you could list...

but what i was trying to get across (esp with my references to chuck berry or buddy holly) is that there is something i guess "pure" (which i know is maybe treading suspect ground rhetorically -- things aren't ever pure and hip hop never was) but pure and simple in vision and execution...

i.e. i think the limitations they had (whether that was simple drum machines or simple recording technique or simple sampler tech) made that era's stuff really wonderful and timeless to me...

i also love great punchline rappers...i like the being clever for clever's sake of it all, the humor, and the fun of it...(the fun being one thing that sometimes has gotten lost for me in later stuff -- even say like OB4CL which I LOVE to death but it's not really "fun")...the sparring with wordplay is really infectious to me, like just hearing something like "rock the bells" it seems perfect, how could it be any better, just some drums and a kid that's a fucking STAR, so talented and so confident....

you could take that up to even big-l (who is totally a punchline guy) or jay-z (who's essentially a punchline guy that adopted a persona)

i agree that current day punchline dudes pretty much suck, but hell there's been a lot of great punchlines already used up so i guess it must get harder....the reason i like royce is that he exudes the confidence and is genuinely fun and funny -- he seems to have the right attitude towards it = like watch me pull off some rad lyrical wheelies...

hell i even watch damn youtube dvd battles and shit just cuz i like the feeling when a guy pulls out a killer line you can tell he's been saving up, it's just awesome to me.

i think that it sounds like i came out opposed to punchlines which isnt quite what i meant ... i mean i love big l. talk about a dude whose punchlines almost always reinforced his persona though~!!

eazy
cube
bushwick
scarface
g rap
ice t
cold 187um
biz
schooly d
edward ellington humphrey III - just kinda getting warmed up w/these, too

I really think the argt that somehow the og's were somehow less fluid or developed or complex in the matter of wearing personae than the mc's of today is a weird one that requires a very efficient set of blinders

is this thread worth reading?