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

If one understands a language, one cannot *not* pay attention to what is being said. And considering that hip-hop is reduced in terms of musical parameters compared to other genres, for the lyrics to be lacking means that the work overall is lacking. Perhaps, Nabozo, you are different, but my tastes and approach to listening are what they are and I'm still searching for something to satisfying those tastes.

Some of the best late 20th-century modernist classical music can be said to deal with matters of injustice (colonialism, the Holocaust) – I have an especial fondness for settings of Paul Celan, for example. So, one cannot claim that wanting to hear the same poetry in hip-hop form would mean approving colonialism or racism. But I personally prefer poetry that deals with historical injustices only obliquely, because it is the lack of any specific referents that allow the lyrics to exist at a level that is truly abstract and eternal.

If other people on this thread like different stuff, if they want hip-hop grounded in contemporary social concerns, then I'm happy that they have plenty of hip-hop that speaks to them. But why attack someone who wants something different?

eternal

Hmmm…

Has anyone linked “Rapture” yet?

Maybe I'm an asshole for this response, but

Hiphop was born in 1970s Bronx, New York City. One of the most textbook examples of urban decay, governmental neglect, and economic inequality in modern history. To expect it betray its origins is selfish on the part of the listener.

Maybe the question isn't if there's hiphop "without braggadocio (or those other tropes)", but if you actually like hiphop at all. And it's okay if you don't.

Is there a hiphop equivalent of a Scott Walker album? No. And thank fuck for that.

(To be clear: Scott Walker is fine. But come on.)

I only listen to delta blues by 1920s echt-modernist white dudes.

not reading any above comments but ...

you might like pink siifu

You joke, pomenitul, but plenty of people’s only exposure to the blues comes from later rock 'n' roll musicians, some of them not even American. I would imagine that many listeners might even react negatively to recordings of the original bluesmen (which do different significantly in terms of microtonal inflections or vocal technique), and say that they would prefer to find more music that sounds like those rock 'n' roll musicians instead.

Right, you've been given plenty of recommendations, let's move on.

Austin, hip-hop is now performed around the world by people who might really know nothing about 1970s New York City (or even contemporary African-African struggles, outside of some stereotypes that might even be shockingly racist). So, if those performers are no longer rooted in the same cultural context, then why must their lyrics convey the same concerns? Unless, of course, they are merely repeating received tropes.

"write a rap about onions"

https://youtu.be/oqrtoFWglMY

xp to Austin, as someone who made a sincere suggestion of B L A C K I E upthread I think “hip-hop like Scott Walker” is not only possible but imo already extant, and as a big Walker fan I’m enthusiastic about this fact + can maybe see a good reason for OP to have made this thread, but more to the point I don’t think either Climate of Hunter or IMAGINE YOUR SELF IN A FREE AND NATURAL WORLD are devoid of sociopolitical context regardless of their lyrical abstraction; “Rawhide” and “Forest of Ex-Lovers” are both songs I’ve come back to in the past few years for exactly this reason. So if what Melomane is looking for, fundamentally, is art that resists any and all attempts to ferret out a worldly human perspective in its origins then no, I don’t think I can help, I don’t think any of us can help, and I think way more than hip-hop is going to be disqualified from this search. Like, idk, try Bernard Parmegiani or something.

Thank you for your honest engagement with my question, Champiness. I am going through all recommendations in this thread and I will check out B L A C K I E too, and I hope that our shared fondness for Scott Walker means that this artist might connect with me as well.

lock thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiW7NbkhbJ0

Glad I got in under the wire here lol

Melomane Ace

If one understands a language, one cannot *not* pay attention to what is being said.

FALSE. I ignore lyrics all day every day.

I think this, though,

Hiphop was born in 1970s Bronx, New York City. One of the most textbook examples of urban decay, governmental neglect, and economic inequality in modern history. To expect it betray its origins is selfish on the part of the listener.

is an extremely reductive and lame way of thinking about art. Hip-hop is an art form. As such it is not required to be any one thing, or to honor any one thing as "its origins." Especially not after 40+ years. I think the question in the OP is phrased/conceived in a kind of dumb way, but the question itself is not invalid. I suspect there are plenty of black artists who reject ideas about what they're "supposed" to make art about — that's how you get a play like The Colored Museum, or a movie like Bamboozled — and to expect hip-hop artists not to have the same impulses is pretty reductive. The answer to the broader question of "What is fitting subject matter for a hip-hop song?" is "Anything in the universe."

To put it another way, Anthony Braxton grew up in 1940s and 1950s Chicago — an environment of extreme racial oppression. He still turned out to be Anthony Braxton. Why can't present-day Chicago produce an Anthony Braxton who does for hip-hop what the previous AB did for jazz?

imago already posted my favorite Dalek song, so I guess I'll just endorse it as well!

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

it does reference high scores and bonus balls and such but I think it's more just a description of the experience of being in the arcade rather than the emcee claiming to be exceptional at games/pinball

So I'm a bit late to click but is the thread basically "I want Robert Pollard lyrics as applied to hip hop"?

LL Cool J's "I'm Not Very Good at Galaga" also recc'ed

plenty of people’s only exposure to the blues comes from later rock 'n' roll musicians, some of them not even American. I would imagine that many listeners might even react negatively to recordings of the original bluesmen (which do different significantly in terms of microtonal inflections or vocal technique), and say that they would prefer to find more music that sounds like those rock 'n' roll musicians instead

Oh, you mean like Joe Bonamassa? Because everybody knows how perfectly he represents blues music.

I just wanted to reply again before this gets locked.

Or as the kids used to say, FREE POST

The answer to the broader question of "What is fitting subject matter for a hip-hop song?" is "Anything in the universe."

Anyone who disagrees with this is wrong, but once again, the problem as far as I'm concerned isn't so much Melomane's thought experiment, which deserves our time and attention, as their shaky grounds for dismissing the genre in its current form. Why can't we have it both ways? Why does it have to boil down to some dumb binary opposition?

what about like "hamilton"?

that's us history told through rap, does that make the cut?

Oh, I'm sure he'll find some convoluted way to discount that too, don't worry.

beyond disrespectful to create a thread like this now of all times ffs

Think it should have been clear that this thread isn't in good faith from the point the op said he'd read the lyrics of To Pimp A Butterfly on Genius but hadn't actually listened to the music.

Yeah you're all too nice, but well done for not rising to the bait.

LL Cool J's "I'm Not Very Good at Galaga" also recc'ed

― I am a free. I am not man. A number. (Neanderthal), Sunday, May 31, 2020 4:53 PM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

thread not a total loss

the anthony braxton of hip hop would presumably be someone who doesn’t call their work hip hop and isn’t regarded as such by purists either

If LL Cool J had a song called "I'm Not Very Good at Galaga," the verses would be lists of literally everything else he was good at.

like Galaxian. a true purist

Pomenitul, there is absolutely no reason why you or anyone else here can't "have both", if that is what you want. My question in the OP is meant merely to help me find more music matching my own tastes. If other people enjoy hip-hop with the typical themes, then good for them.

I listen to a lot of 12-tone serialism, a musical approach which many members of classical-music fora think should simply not exist. That it has its own community of fans is something which they either cannot manage to understand, or they simply don't care. Consequently, I myself have always tried to be tolerant of other musical genres. Even if I personally don't get a genre (and there are a number of genres, not just trope-based hip-hop), I am happy that it exists in the marketplace so that other listeners can find music they like. No one here should take my question as disparagement of the hip-hop I have encountered so far, only as a sign that I personally want to listen to something else.

I listen to a lot of 12-tone serialism

The Scott Walker fandom was bad enough, but this is where you and I part ways once and for all. Good luck in your quest. (I don't think 12-tone music shouldn't exist — if I could snap my fingers, I'd get rid of modern country first — but man, it suuuuucks.)

:(

Starting a petition to make "trope-based" classified as a slur.

As intriguing as I find hip-hop in terms of the beats or the wordsmithing, 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. Thus, while I like some tracks by e.g. Roots Manuva, those tracks can seem like exceptions among the other material on those same albums.

Is there hip-hop completely without the aforementioned tropes? Has any hip-hop artist gone for abstract lyrics that are divorced from the performer’s public persona and his immediate environment? (Is there a hip-hop equivalent of Scott Walker’s Climate of Hunter album, for example?) Or is my wish as unreasonable as someone searching for oldies rock that isn't about dancing or sweethearts, or country music that isn't about pain and drink?

So, what recommendations might ILM have for me? Hip-hop is a global phenomenon now, so recommendations in languages other than English are welcome, too.

― Melomane, Saturday, May 30, 2020 5:57 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this reads like a post that was written in 2001 but when they clicked Submit Post their computer froze and that person just unearthed that old computer in their attic and it sent

FPing everyone who responded earnestly to this thread btw

what is FPing btw?

FP'd for asking

("flag post" — and yes, i was joking about FP'ing you)

i wasn't joking

one of the most depressing ilx threads i've ever seen

ohh ok. Was sincere fwiw. If there's documentation on this board I haven't found it. Cheers

Yeah this strangely reminded me of teenage genre wars on 1.0 Internet.
Lol I googled "FP" and urban dictionary said "favorite person" and I was like cool :P

Melomane - and I say this as life advice, not just because I don't understand your worldview - just for the moment, as a mark of decency, shut the fuck up for a minute. Your "but I have a right to express my preference" stance is reading like some "all lives matter" bullshit in this climate, to the readers of this board. Doesn't matter whether you think it's fair, that's what is happening.

I think going to hiphop shows in Japan is the only thing that gave me the ability to think op might be sincere. That scene is such a strange translation/evolution it is easy to hate, you just have to take it on its own merits.

I think OP just lives in a complete bubble, like an armchair anthropologist wondering how he can make the world fit his worldview, dreams and ideals.

if he is real, I think so too. I just kind of checked out of that aspect and took it as a thought experiment. sympathetic to people finding that disgusting rn

It's a bit the infantile conscious VS gangsta debate as well.

I like rappin' without all this braggadocio
Platinum on my wrist and spitroastin' hoes