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An Observation Regarding Rap

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#21
i know that i will probably get in trouble for this, but here it goes. i rap, all of it. i cant tell what is good and what is bad. it all sucks to me. i have worked in music retail for the last 10 years. it is the most stolen genre of music and the message that MOST of it preaches encourages this. when i get applications in my store that look like the spelling has come off of a rap album cover, into the trash can they go. 'dis, 'dat and all sorts of fun spellings like 'dat. i actually had one that said "i only listen to rap and nothing else. rap music is my , my alchohol, my pu**y. " this was on a job application folks. several years ago, i believe it was at johns hopkins, there was a study done on how various forms of music affect your brain. classical and jazz caused increased brain wave activity while techno and rap almost flatlined the brainwaves. so i guess that rap makes you stupid?!?!? now dont get me wrong, i dont believe in banning it or anything. it just isnt for me. the lifestyle it promotes is not one i care for. just look at the idiotic fashion trends in the rap/hip hop community. look at the individual artists. yeah, 50 cent is who i want my kids [no i dont have any] looking up to. most parents are clueless as to the content of rap music and what it promotes. for any doubt on what i'm saying. go find a copy of the eminem cd "encore", the limited edition. it comes with a series of postcards that show him an audience that came to see him. very graphic and violent pictures. i've seen enough in my life. i dont need this crap coming in my house. this is just my opinion and nothing more.
 
#22
syciprider said:
Rap is today's punk(back when it was a culture thing).
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I so completely disagree with this statement it is hard to know where to begin. As a middle-aged 45 year old, I can look back on my early 20's and remember being a part of the punk/hardcore scene, and I see absolutely no parallels between the drive behind that scene and what drives the rap scene.

Punk is about DIY! (that's...."doing it yourself") Its about taking control of one's own environment with independence and irreverence to tradition, or what "the other guy" is doing. Its about living within one's means and understanding that respect is a two-way street. For anyone who needs a review of what it is to be punk, check out Mike Watt's hootpage and learn the friggin' meaning of "we jam econo", because it is absolutely about everything that rap isn't, and will never be.

Rap (or most of it) seems to be about "livin' large, bling-bling, bitches and ho's, pimpin', glamorizing what is lovingly called "thug life",.....all about the "Benjamins" etc. etc. etc. (yawn). It glorifies getting the big record contract, getting the money and living in grotesque excess, and bragging about it, and ridiculing others that don't measure up to that standard. Punk is about prodding the status quo in order to provoke critical thinking and affect social change. Rap is about prodding the status quo in order to be petulant, and little else.

I suppose that anyone could say rap is today's punk if the only test is whether or not these art forms, "subvert the dominant paradigm", stir up controversy, prompt the listener to consider a different point of view than they are accustomed to. But punk is all about prompting one to think about ideas that are bigger and more important than the songs themselves, and taking responsibility for one's own actions. From what I see and hear, rap isn't about ideas bigger than what is contained within it right there.....pimpin', playin', gettin' those bitches, and if you don't like it, puttin' a cap in your sorry ass. I see no part of "taking responsibility" for anything or any action whatsoever (other than capping the ass of the Motha ***ka who "dissed" you), in the world of rap.

I certainly realize that there are probably characters from both of these genres of music that lie way outside of what I am describing. I don't think that anyone would consider Sid Vicious to be a guy who took responsibility for his own actions. The Ramones never really did provoke critical thinking and affect social change by singing (although their image and their attitude did)......about being a Pinhead or having undergone a Teenage Lobotomy . And I doubt anyone could seriously claim that a guy like Wyclef Jean doesn't rap and sing about ideas "bigger and more important than the songs themselves". But these examples are exceptions.

I don't hate the rap. I was listening to Dre and Snoop just last night and enjoying it (but more for the comedy than the music). I think DeLaSoul, A Tribe Called Quest and The Roots (a real band with a bass player) are some of the best musical groups ever. But rap is not the new punk. No way, no day.
 
#23
One essential element of good popular music is to refresh itself on a regular basis - that the musicians and songwriters are bringing something new to it.

For my 2c, the early Rap material, such as Coolio (IIRC) on the Dangerous Minds soundtrack, were working in that direction.

Then, I kind of felt like two things happened. The first was that the MTV business demons got hold of it and started manufacturing artists; which never works, and contributes nothing. The second was that a lot of the hard core community went off the rebellion edge, and decided to completely detach from all previous sense of music.

The first issue was a problem but not a killer.

I personally felt like the 2nd issue was the killer. It's certainly important that rebellion be a part of bringing something new to the art. It always has been, that's nothing new. However, there is a yin-yang to do that while maintaining balance with the previous material; at least for successful integration. My sense is that a bunch of folks decided to break all ties. That's too bad. Injecting elements of Bird, Willie Dixon, Motown etc. would have only added to the flavor. To try to go it alone was bold, but will ultimately lead to demise. Whatever remains will need to integrate.

My other sense is that the role of the bass somehow got messed up. Those Frat Boizz somehow decided to listen to bass in pounding subwoofers, which loses all sense of groove IMO. Putting the lyrics to a percolating bass groove somehow fell off the plate. The genre would have done much better to put MM style lines to the vocals. Who knows, maybe it's still an unrealized oppurtunity.

Oh yeah, one other thing: I agree that the lyrics have gotten messed up. Early on they were really edgey social commentary, which was the hippest thing Rap brought to the game. More recently, that has degenerated into the standard pop trap of Baby I Love You.

Sorry for the long post. Rap has some interesting possibilities, but the commercial implementation has been disappointing.
 
#24
davetakis said:
i know that i will probably get in trouble for this, but here it goes. i rap, all of it. i cant tell what is good and what is bad. it all sucks to me. i have worked in music retail for the last 10 years. it is the most stolen genre of music and the message that MOST of it preaches encourages this. when i get applications in my store that look like the spelling has come off of a rap album cover, into the trash can they go. 'dis, 'dat and all sorts of fun spellings like 'dat. i actually had one that said "i only listen to rap and nothing else. rap music is my , my alchohol, my pu**y. " this was on a job application folks. several years ago, i believe it was at johns hopkins, there was a study done on how various forms of music affect your brain. classical and jazz caused increased brain wave activity while techno and rap almost flatlined the brainwaves. so i guess that rap makes you stupid?!?!? now dont get me wrong, i dont believe in banning it or anything. it just isnt for me. the lifestyle it promotes is not one i care for. just look at the idiotic fashion trends in the rap/hip hop community. look at the individual artists. yeah, 50 cent is who i want my kids [no i dont have any] looking up to. most parents are clueless as to the content of rap music and what it promotes. for any doubt on what i'm saying. go find a copy of the eminem cd "encore", the limited edition. it comes with a series of postcards that show him an audience that came to see him. very graphic and violent pictures. i've seen enough in my life. i dont need this crap coming in my house. this is just my opinion and nothing more.
Click to expand...

I would make sure that your own spelling and grammar were impecable before you tried to critique the spelling and grammar of other people. Your point really loses it's impact if your compositional skills aren't better than those of the "rap gneration."

I don't profess to enjoy the entire genre, but artists like Dalek, Atmosphere, and Del the Funky Homaspien have the talent and originality to keep me interested. Like someone mentioned earlier, though a band that is disliked might be popular currently it doesn't mean that they represent the entire genre. The rap genre doesn't start and finish with 50 cent and Eminem.
 
#25
I'm really dissapointed to see so many closed minds on this subject. A year ago if you would have asked me about rap I would have basically said what most of you are saying. Rap sucks and has no musical content what so ever. Rap is an easy target I guess. The genre that everyone loves to hate. As many others have said, most of you have just been turned off by "gangsta rap" that you hear on the radio and TV. Just like any other genre it does have it's highlights. My favorites so far include Kanye West, Jay-Z, Common, Eminem, and Outkast.
 
#28
rap was my favorite genre from back in the day. i lost interest, though, once it had been years since anything really original came out... i guess this was around when cash money followed on no limit's coattails.

*yawn*


older rap, though, is a treasure trove. especially eric b and rakim stuff. :cool:
 
#29
abark000 said:
I would make sure that your own spelling and grammar were impecable before you tried to critique the spelling and grammar of other people. Your point really loses it's impact if your compositional skills aren't better than those of the "rap gneration."

a typo isnt the same. nice try though.
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#30
davetakis said:
abark000 said:
I would make sure that your own spelling and grammar were impecable before you tried to critique the spelling and grammar of other people. Your point really loses it's impact if your compositional skills aren't better than those of the "rap gneration."

a typo isnt the same. nice try though.
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Your capitalization, punctuation and use of apostrophes was also very poor. As to your point. You have to recognize that the development of slang language is as important to language as the development of language. Language is always in flux and what's working today will likely be different a year from now. Trends come and go, words come and go out of fashion, even grammar can have its changes. So, I pride myself on paying attention to language and grammar, I know I'm not perfect with it, but I try. I love rap though, and I think that the 'bastardization' of language actually improves upon it in an idiosyncratic way.

The thing is though. There *is* a lot of stupid rap out there, just like there is a lot of stupid *any music* out there. Rap is pop right now, so you're more likely to say fake ass products than earnest musicians. It is your choice to say that the parts represent the whole, I wouldn't.
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#31
I was going to stay out of this one because I really don't like it and just avoid it. One of the main reasons I don't like it is they took musicians out of the loop and used samples.That gave me an attitude.
There are bands now that incorperate it into their music such as POD adn Linkin Park,and I find them entertaining.
The Junior High Locker Room lyrics used by some of them really put me off also.
They sure are making a lot of money so a lot of people disagree w/ me.
 
#33
As it's been stated several times in this thread the rap you hear and see on mtv,bet ect,is not really close to what the cutting edge is in the music.If we think about it from a different perspective,HIPHOP is a culture that stems from a particular group of people at a particular time in recent history(last 25-30 yrs)RAP is a element of that culture.once you start picking out pieces of any culture you run the risk of generalizing the whole culture,and in rap music's case,IMO,the darkest sides are the most interesting to people who are removed from the source culture.as a producer and bassist i have worked with rappers for years and had many,many discussions about content and the fact that for many people the only thing they know about the culture of hiphop is the musical/visual expression.some of the guy's and girls i have worked with understand this but feel that they will not be heard if they come off as conscious or political.this happens in all genre's of music but rap is particulary affected by this fact because the marketing is so heavy in one direction,that people like mos def,talib kweli,spearhead ect are known by few yet 50 cent,cash money are known by many.
 
#34
I think it's silly to discount an entire genre of music because of the message. That would be like me refusing to listen to any country whatsoever because I didn't like prosperous white folk with upper middle class upbringings singing about their doublewide, or not listening to jazz because I think Germans are swell people and I don't like the message of '40s era pro-US jazz.

Rap as a vocal style is definitely music. It may not have a multi-note melody but you can chart it out on a staff. It's no less valid as music than other purely percussive styles such as marching drumline cadences or taiko drumming or African percussion. There are exceptions, of course.. 50 Cent for instance seems to have a tough time with the whole rhythm thing.

I agree with the rap-as-punk-analog thing, although rap is so mainstream nowadays that I'd say that original rap is like original punk or today's rap is like today's punk. Saying that today's rap is like original punk is not all that accurate. Rap has been around for a long time though, and it had similar social roots. The main difference (other than color) being that punks spent a little money on instruments and rappers took their parents' cast off record players and vinyl. A lot of the early rap centers around doing the right thing, increasing one's knowledge level, staying away from drugs, etc. What rap started out as is miles away from where it is now commercially. The stuff that tends to be really thoughtful and positive lyrically with good backing musicians and tasteful production is the stuff that tends to stay in the basements and clubs rather than being mainstream.

I'd add Ozomatli to the excellent list of groups noted earlier in the thread.
 
#35
marcusalan said:
+1

Usually I'm not down with the generalizations people spout off about any particular form of music, but if it's one thing I cannot stand about most popular rap and so forth, is that it usually is a single section repeated throughout. No variation... just... it keeps going. Lyrical content aside, its very empty to me.
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While I really enjoy chord changes in rap and realzie it's rare (Blackalicious is one of the few that come to mind), we should remember that the idea of melody being a must in music is a primarily European and Western frame of mind; much of the rest of the world does not put nearly (or any) as much emphasis on melody or harmony. Much of it is rhythmic, or the way a note itself is played.

Think of the didgeridoo, the instrument you think of when you think of native Australian music. It only produces one note, and is played in a droning fashion. There are many Asian musics where the slight bending of notes is as melodic as it gets. African drumming often is purely rhythmic.

A lot of people mistake "musical" for "containing melody."

I enjoy rap because of it's rhythmic nature- the way good rappers put their phrases and emphasis' together can be very percussive and musical, not to mention how it's so bass-heavy. There's a part in the Blackalicious song "First in Flight" at about 1:42 where Gift of Gab raises his voice and raps a lot quicker that never ceases to put a chill up my spine.
 
#38
Matt Till said:
Wow, this got a little out of hand. I just started this thread by making the point of: One reason I use to not like any rap at all is because I associated it with loud thump thump coming through my walls/blasting out of cars while I'm trying to sleep/study/relax.
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Sorry, back on topic.

Yes, one reason Matt Till used to not like any rap at all is because he associated it with loud thump thump coming through my walls/blasting out of cars while he was trying to sleep/study/relax. He was hating the game

:D

Seriously, you started a thread about rap on TB and expected it to not head down this road :p
 
#39
I know I know...

Just making a point...

Also (getting back into the fight), Jetset... you are missing the whole point. Punk music's current representation is Good Charlotte and Green Day... they are not at all the punk you grew up around. It's pretty much bling bling with these cats too.

That said, if you want to find "punk" rap... you can't turn on MTV and find it. There is still a political DIY punk scene going on, just as much as there is a political DIY punk rap scene going on. Rap is very punk, in fact it's punker than most punk going on today. Underground Rap is about politics, culture, real life... that's pretty damn punk to me.
 
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