rolling ringtone thread 2008

its not like we havent witnessed this shit happen so i dont get whats so hard about it to understand. why diplo? right place right time, played the media game, had ACCESS to the media game. does anyone here really think that hipsters in socal couldnt wait to hear about this guy who plays mashups at parties in philly?? well, once they heard about it in urb they did!

i guess if youre ultimately asking me how hipster rappers get to know media types, i really dont know. is that a poisonous relationship? probably, but, like i said, i don't think that this "small" group of people have that much of an influence over rap discourse so i dont think its as drastic, esp wrt the canon, as you're making it out to be

deej what do you mean by "aesthetic strains"? clothes and musical styles? i'd say someone like joell ortiz is getting ignored by mainstream media v the cool kids cuz white rock listeners are much more apt to relate to the cool kids than a dude in tims w/ real grimy raps, unless that dude comes out w/ "in da club" or something

i talked about indie kids cuz i didn't want it to be all "oooh i hate those hipsters"! hipsters vary, in my experience, and calling them out really would be a lack of self-awareness.

ok then we need to talk about what kind of values are privileged by people who get to set the critical agenda (whatever we want to call them), cuz this is really the only sense in which hipster rap is being privileged over whatever other strains of hip-hop we're talking about. i mean who gets no 1 hits, flo rida or the cool kids?

xp jordan otm - esp as hip-hop has its own internal canonising process which means that what mainstream rock crit determines is the best of the genre isn't so influential

of course my perspective is one of living in a godforsaken country where pretty much all hip-hop gets ignored except kanye

the go-go band on those fader tracks sounds kinda shitty.

sometimes you can just FEEL stuff being canonised, placed on this pedestal for the next gen to unwittingly swallow up, and so much of it is so bad

thing is, maybe I'm wrong but isn't this stuff gonna go away in about three minutes? it's hard for me to get too worked up about. I don't really foresee a big next wave of Cool Kids clones, or if there is a big next wave it will be, like, in 2009 and everyone will be bored with it

Not to get all challops but it's tourism, yall. The Cool Kids are rap that can be safely consumed (retro aka knowing embrace of ironic distance ("Irony is found in the distance between two ideas") + reviving already canonized style = mad safe) and they're fashionable, which means easy embrace by dilettante audiences. It's the kind of rap you can dally in without having to understand a fuller culture. Drought 3 era weezy is like this too: so many of his refs are larger pop cultural moments that it shouldn't be a surprise he got hipster love.

You can't really dally in Fabo or Joell Ortiz or Saigon or w/e.

As Sarge points out their geekier reference points are ready-made for the audience of The Fader.

It's like you say deej, the grimier aesthetic strains are being ignored by a dilettante "art" media. Ghostface gets to be on Paste, Bishop Lamont doesn't. A certain view of rap music gets pushed to a certain audience by a certain media catering to said audience. Why is that surprising?

its not surprising, its lame

but also a lot of times the 'watered down' narrative is just straight up wrong or there is good music that is 'watered down' versions of real shit, im arguing that this weak shit isn't weak just cuz its 'watered down' but because its getting by more on networking than on making music ppl actually like

I'll buy that for a dollar.

rap these days contains so many multitudes and subgenres and niche markets that I really can't be bothered with worrying about the popularity of the niches I dislike (and belive me, I really dislike the one being discussed right now). so I guess I'm more on the "water finds its own level" side of the discussion w/ Sarge. I might get annoyed when Gym Class Heroes or The Love Below or whatever outsells the stuff I prefer, but there's pretty much always going to be a market for the kind of rap I do like.

^~^~^this^~^~^

im not talking about sales but whatever, i dont really have the interest to continue arguing this

Yeah, I dunno...the critical/media response to this stuff is interesting and worth discussing, but I think I've just gotten to a point of ambivalence about it. I thought it was funny a few years ago when Pitchfork was writing positive reviews of these kinds of artists but also kind of dismissively referred to it as "gallery rap." For all I know, their coverage of that stuff was completely on point (quality judgements aside), whereas I know that the coverage of Dipset/Weezy type stuff was (and is) frequently batshit insane.

whining about some chump on the cover is like... who reads urb? why are you looking at urb if you dont want to hear about urbish bullshit rap?

i think its dumb when blogs are like THE COOL KIDS ARE BRINGING FUN BACK TO RAP or whatever but thats my fault for reading blogs

who reads blogs

wtf

The Teriyaki" Boyz. Or should I say Pharell? Whatever the combination is, this joint right here, "this joint right here!" is ridiculous.

This un-fruty-looped beat is needed right now. Im sick of this cookie cutter mess in hip-hop. I wish Soulja Boy would disappear. Bamma's garbage!...but I digress.

After getting put on to this joint, I did a lil bit of homework and found out the Teriyaki Boyz were discovered or introduced by Nigo of Bathing Apes. They also did one of the main songs on Tokyo Drift.

Not positive if they're signed to Star Trak, but if they are its a rap. That's the right branding move for these guys to make. They seem to be more 80-90's hip-hop style oriented as such, (without knowing Japanese) they seem to be bringing fun back to the game.

They're styling and the look of this video reminds me of the new rappers coming out who are a throwback to real hip-hop. Groups like The Cool Kids and Kidz in the Hall and the Teriyaki Boyz are the breath of fresh air needed in the game right now.

I miss substance and the lack of "My cars are shiny, my women are twerkin' and I shoot guns." That's play pimpin.

I need depth like this:
"I started out starvin/now they got me out here Brett Favrin'/ Tryna see if I still got it...I guess it's like a bike think about..." Andre 3000

Not:
"Yahhh! Yahhh! Yahhh!"

Clown.

why do rap writers say ridiculous so much it sounds gay mott

what they hell u mean by "game" in there. that's the worst usage imo

Tracy: [referring to Ridikulous] He bit Shug Knight! He made Rasheed Wallace cry!

Jack: He’s harmless, don’t be ridiculous!
Ridikulous: I am Ridikulous.

whining about some chump on the cover is like... who reads urb? why are you looking at urb if you dont want to hear about urbish bullshit rap?

-- and what, Thursday, June 12, 2008 12:57 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

if we didnt read urb we wouldnt get to clown articles like 'niggardly nas'

here is a post on the ADVERTISING AGE blog entitled URBAN IS THE NEW MAINSTREAM:

http://adage.com/bigtent/post?article_id=125437

"I'm seeing this happening in every city I hit. When I'm watching J DaVeY rock a totally mixed crowd at the Viper Room on Sunset in L.A., I get the same vibe as when I go to New York or when I go to see Janelle Monae in Atlanta. This new breed of artist has tapped into something, a geeky kind of coolness that embraces who they are, but also gives the crowd permission to be left of center and be who they are -- comfortable in an uncomfortable urban gray area. Urban is not what it used to be. It's everyone now."

hahahaha

"when I go to New York and L.A. suddenly I see all these urban people! my god it's everywhere now!"

here is a post on the ADVERTISING AGE blog entitled URBAN IS THE NEW MAINSTREAM:

http://adage.com/bigtent/post?article_id=125437

-- thomp, Thursday, June 12, 2008 3:48 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

theres something extremely naive about this

fwiw current urb cover has roots on the front and nas on the back

it's called the "conscious issue" tho x_x

i can't ever really hate on LL

http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/audio/id.5030/title.ll-cool-j-f-the-dream-baby-block-version

'Get Like Me' is gonna be huge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyVGTJpf_cs

that shits been out for like 8 months...I love banner but I'm afraid it's a bit of a dud

next

chinchillas have spoken

not the video the song...i remember wondering why yung joc would have anyhting to do with it

and then realized that it was probably made when hutlenomics came out

i was hyped for his album but is that ever gonna come out

banner's productions have been crazy lately...

i like the four wheeler atv thing with rims in that video.

I love Banner, but that song is like the second boring single in two years for that guy. I wish he would go back to Missississpi-style conflicted dude repping for both street and God and fucking up the white house.

Or at least weird sex raps over squiggles

yeah his verse on "you're everything" is so dope

neon chinchillas they sell them at american apparel

oh god, the other day at MU's summ3r welcome, i was in a small group, and our leader asked us to tell the rest of the group a) our name and b) our favorite pump up song...This one guy said his favorite music was 'nerdcore.' I have all my classes with him. ;_;

nerdcore proves god hates us.

Where is everyone talking about this?

hey if anyone cares em announced he's dropping a new album this year

em's phone call to ll cool j was pretty good.

http://www.urb.com/features/597/FillinintheBlankswithAmandaBlank.php

^^written by dude who wrote 'Niggardly Nas' feature

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Smoking Rocks With Spank Rock