Recommendations for hip-hop without braggadocio (or these other tropes)?

I am not from the USA … it is not clear why my preferences should reflect the specific societal tensions in some other country.

Could you address this, roxymuzak?

sure: police brutality and white supremacy are not limited to the usa, so get your head out of your ass

though the earlier suggestion for Japanese hiphop was based on not understanding Japanese, and op apparently does, it's not the worst idea. I think they imported pretty much everything but the lyrical themes. Here's a primer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDPVPc1thKE

i think the rap you want is

My name's Fred Flintstone and I'm hear to say
I love Fruity Pebbles in a major way

By the same token, should I scold American posters here for not enjoying the musical genre in my country which is associated with an ethnic minority that faces discrimination (and which isn't hip-hop)?

It is one thing to say that our political positions should be based on recognition of injustice everywhere, but I don't think people are under any obligation to choose the music they listen to for pleasure on the basis of societal problems.

He’s clearly bragging.

xp

Anyone who doesn’t listen to manele is a white supremacist imho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXb6bjCCtuY

Anyone who doesn’t listen to manele is a white supremacist imho

you're probably right pom but i want to listen to manele that has no connection to Romania and deals with lyrics about urban planning in 1960s Yorkshire

I was being facetious, obviously, but in a Romanian context this is both true and not: some people explicitly hate manele because they view it as a stand-in for the Roma. But most people listen to it all the time and are racist pieces of shit anyway, so the equation 'I listen to music that expressly deals with the struggles of minorities in my country = I support these minorities' is too simplistic to hold any water.

sure, and thanks to the magic of global commerce and communication billions of people listen to music that originates from cultural, historical, sociopolitical situations that are not their own, and the back and forth of culture and the ways it gets refracted and adapted, adopted or rejected is fascinating and productive of beautiful new cultural forms and marketable cultural products, and it creates material change as it flows ceaselessly thru the channels of commerce and communication

on the other hand, wanting to consume an idea of a genre that is very specifically deracinated from its cultural birthplace but imagining that it is in some inexplicable way "part of" that genre is, at best reading, a fool's errand, and on most readings more than a little o_O

i guess we have to ILX crowdsource the song OP wants

^^^ I really want this to happen.

NV, for sure, which is why my 'beef' with Melomane isn't so much the initial request, which I think is intriguing in its own right, as the implication that other forms of hip-hop (i.e. for all intents and purposes, hip-hop itself) are somehow inferior to this counter-referential subgenre that has yet to see the light of day (and even when it does, as in Aesop Rock's case, it doesn't quite meet OP's standards either). Still, I am most amused by this thread.

For real, though, where's deej when you need him?

even the backpackiest of backpackers - which isn't exactly AR imo - is grounded, perhaps inevitably - in the history and context of what rap is and where it comes from. and now i've allowed Sunday distraction to make me engage way more than i wanted to, roxy otm.

Where did I make any claims of superiority or inferiority? This is purely about what I personally want to listen to. Other people should listen to whatever music that makes them happy, and if it is typical hip-hop, then I'm happy that they are happy.

I too am mainly interested in the musicality of the language which is why I check the lyrics to songs before listening to them to protect myself from accidentally hearing something about the black experience. It’s actually very normal

Also, they are called cLOUDDEAD, fill your boots ffs

I find the braggadocio tiresome: for a performer to rap about how he is a great rapper just seems so lame. I also have no interest in mentions of weed or how life on the streets is tough.

QFT

Sure, you can frame it as a purely subjective preference, but things are never quite so simple, are they? If I meditate on why I dislike certain types of music, the answer is usually more extensive than 'it just doesn't do it for me', at least if I'm being honest with myself.

Oh yeah, cLOUDDEAD is a good one. I'd completely forgotten about those guys.

New Kingdom is another one i'd compare to cLOUDDEAD, but still fuck the whole premise of this awful thread.

Don't push me because I'm close to the edge
Of the building I'm standing on, so if you push me, I'm dead
But that's not what I'm here to talk about today
The weather is beautiful and it looks like later there will be a parade

You know what else rhymes with parade?
Glade
Made
Jade
Sade
WAit no that's "Zha day"
But who am I to say
That doesn't rhyme
parsley page rosemary and thyme

Bitch

Wins suggests that the "black experience" necessarily has to be reduced to a handful of issues which have become hip-hop tropes, which I think does the African diaspora a great disservice. Ethnic minorities are just as capable of writing lyrics which are not overtly related to struggles they face, and for any ethnic minority you can find a poet who has chosen that approach, so why couldn't a hip-hop artist do the same?

Also, if a performer is not himself black (because hip-hop has now been taken up by people of every race around the world), then it is unclear why that performer should be conveying the "black experience". Indeed, when performers who are not black (and perhaps not even an ethnic minority in their region at all) draw on themes and metaphors which derive from the African American experience, can that not be criticized as a form of appropriation? That seems to me a good reason for certain performers to come with a different lyrical approach entirely.

rakim talking about how dope he is at rapping is one of the greatest things that ever happened to the english language

I can take a phrase that's barely heard
Flip it
The success of what I did is up to you to decide and I'm no better than you

Here you go Melomane

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBwAxmrE194

rejecting anything that mentions weed offhand even if fits the other dubious requirements here is just ridiculous. listen to something else

rolling down the street
without indo
smoking weed makes me puke

Complaining about rappers rapping about rapping is like complaining about rockers singing about rocking.

As far as dealing with a negative self-image goes, Root Manuva's track "Crying" is a much better example of what I’m looking for, inasmuch as that track's lyrics are abstracted from the musical genre in which they are performed.

― Melomane, Saturday, May 30, 2020 7:36 PM (yesterday)

I'd never heard this song before. Now that I have, I'm pretty confused about what you're looking for, or rather what you're finding wanting in the rap you have heard. How are these lyrics "abstracted from" rap? They're like a quarter-step from "don't push me, 'cause I'm close to the edge."

I was going to suggest Shabazz Palaces, but I'm sure that fails the remorseless precision of the keyword test too. Maybe you should just listen to beat tapes

For Those About to Rap…

I was going to mention Shabazz Palaces as well, but Black Up is just such an off-putting title, you know?

maybe OP just wants emo-rap, with a side-order of kosmische

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVhIA-YH-7w

^^^full disclosure: my third-favourite song of the 00's, as proven by ILM poll science

wanting to consume an idea of a genre that is very specifically deracinated from its cultural birthplace but imagining that it is in some inexplicable way "part of" that genre is, at best reading, a fool's errand, and on most readings more than a little o_O

This times a hundred. Spit it, NV!

chill lofi beats to study to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEHc4u-1QIk

Counter-trolling aside, we've given you a lot of straight answers, Melomane, so it is only meet and right that you should personally respond to each one of them.

is this Raccoon Tanuki's emo cousin

My question in the OP was completely sincere and I am on the outlook for new music, so rest assured that I am following up on every recommendation even to me here (except the obviously facetious ones like Jay-Z and Wu-Tang Clan). I don't think it necessary to mention every case where a given recommendation does not match what I'm looking for. As we can see from this thread, people are likely to take that lack of interest on my part as a value judgement, and be offended that certain art which connects with them does not connect with me.

Noodle Vague, seeking out music that is in some way culturally deracinated from its origins would not, as I have said, be controversial in many other genres. People ask for prog rock and Nordic jazz recommendations all the time. If my question about hip-hop offends so many here, that must be due to contemporary social concerns and the way people tie hip-hop as a genre to them.

For anyone who grew up under socialism (pomenitul would probably understand if he came of age aesthetically before 1989), the position taken by others here is disquieting. I thought that we were finally finished with the insistence that art must deal with the problems of struggling people, and if you seek art that is abstract, then that must mean that you are prejudiced against workers etc. and cruelly ignore their problems. But there will always be people whose tastes in art run to abstraction, and that does not mean approval of oppression.

yes, it is in fact you who are being oppressed, a disquieting scene here for sure

"i want to listen to rap that isn't rap"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsqXHg9vmjs

pomenitul would probably understand if he came of age aesthetically before 1989

I actually agree with you for the most part and my own aesthetic preferences tend towards l'art pour l'art (I think I've made that fairly obvious over the years), in no small part because I am well aware of the ravages of so-called 'socialist realism'. But 'tends' implies some amount of tension, so to speak, which I think raises a set of difficult questions that deserve our attention, starting with one you've yet to answer: what does it mean to paint a value judgement about art as a merely 'subjective' preference? I don't believe works of art exist to 'deal with the problems of struggling people' at all, but I do question why you would leave the type of art that does to others because it doesn't suit your 'tastes'? Is aesthetic taste an unquestionable datum, something that ought to remain unexamined, ohne Warum or 'just because'?

Not sure what the problem is with braggadocio anyway tbh. Anyway, lyrics? In one ear and out the other.

It's uncivilized.

I want to listen to heavy metal music that is only about parking meters

true abstraction is when you just pay no attention to the words