Thread: Rap Music

i don't like rap, i like metal, but i do like hip hop, the old stuff all the way up to the 90s. but the new stuff is horrible. same shit over and over again. so generic... at least in the 90s when they talked about drugs, girls, killing niggas, etc it had good tunes with it. people like lil wayne ruined hip hop

Awwww yeeeaaahh.

What happened to hip hop?

How did it go from: "Wave ya hands in da air, and wave em like ya just don't care", "PARTY PARTY" and "I go st. Johns University"

to: "I bust dat AK-47 and rip ya guts out" and "Suck dis dick BITCH don't LOOK at me". "Gettin on my nerves and making me real HOSTILE, fuck around set it off, put the pump(shotgun) to ya nostrils.

More than HALF of the mainstream rappers today aren't even real...Wayne isn't a gangster, he fuckin shot hisself in the stomach when he was a kid. Half of these rappers never sold drugs, not even touched it. Rick Ross was a Correctional Officer for fucks sake.


After Tupac got killed everything went downhill. I'll tell you what happened....drugs...drugs destroyed it all. After the crack bomb went off in black communities that was it....that Illuminati shit. Crack bomb spread like a virus.

Now-a-days everything is about my swag matching my hat and sipping large amounts of prescription cough syrup. I'm not going to front I do enjoy some percocets every now and then, but that's recreational and nowhere near as much as people are doing now. These days, drug addiction is obviously the "cool" thing.

I like bone-thugz-n-harmony they have a lot of positive messages in their songs and their all about smoking weed and just chilling, no wild stuff just sit back and get faded, keeping it 100% real, and being together in peace.

I like this song right here, in this one they actually tell people that pills like extacy are bad for you and can really fuck you up in the brain. Stick to smoking weed, it's heaven-sent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GacBP6QzzxU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWuJTcLrXDo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Wq8EQ3vYk

Seriously? One Wu Tang Clan reference in the whole topic?

Being a musician dedicated to learning and mastering my instrument, I find it hard to appreciate rap or hip hop as a musical form. I believe it is an art form, however, for lyrics and poetry. But music, it is not. It is like going to a slam poetry reading, people rap their poetry even without music.

The music in hip-hop is secondary, and mediocre electronic sampling and synthesized. It is there just to hook your mind to pay attention, just like the music in a TV or radio commercial. The message is not in the music.

I can take any lyrics, and rap them to some pre-recorded hip-hop music. I can take Bob Dylan's lyrics for "It's alright ma, I'm only Bleeding" and make a fantastic hip-hop song, but it is the lyrics that make it good, not the music.:

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you'd just be
One more person crying.

So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Do what they do to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And say God bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him.

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex they dare
To push fake morals insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares Propaganda, all is phony.

While them that defend what they cannot see
With killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say alright, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.



And then there is country-rap, or CRAP.

[quote=Dannon Oneironaut;1219597
And then there is country-rap, or CRAP.[/quote]
I am intrigued. Please give me an example of this crap.

Originally Posted by Abra

I am intrigued. Please give me an example of this crap.

Kid Rock

Originally Posted by Oneironaut

Rap music is, and has always been, a strong, political outlet. I believe that has a lot to do with why it's being slowly (and if you ask me, methodically) driven into obscurity.

The good stuff is, certainly. It is unfortunate that the genre is slowly being
deformed by those artists that use it as a means of glorifying material
possession and base pleasure. That's not to say that the same thing doesn't
happen with rock or any other genre, but the way rap is being picked for
display by the media appears to be entirely dependent on the message it's
trying to send. I don't hear the 'good stuff' anymore, and it's because of that
that newcomers to the genre give it negative associations.

My contribution to the thread will be the following piece, what I believe is a
decent representation of rap that's political in nature (2pac's "Changes" is also a
very popular example that anyone can find on youtube as well):

I don't like rap much but if you mix it with other genres it sounds pretty cool. I must admit, when you are buzzed rap sounds pretty awesome. You move with the music. When i am buzzed i am all over the place moving with the music, i just can't stop. I mostly don't like rap because now a days it's a bunch of morons thinking their cool and talking about dumb things, but that is mainly the rap on the radio.

Originally Posted by blank530

i totally agree with you. rap is NOT music. it's a pathetic attempt at music.

By what arbitrary definition is rap "not music?"

Originally Posted by blank530

i totally agree with you. rap is NOT music. it's a pathetic attempt at music. I just can't take it seriously anymore and I don't see how anyone can. it's horrible.
BTW another CRAP artist: Bubba Sparxxx

Fair enough that's your opinion, albeit a narrow unfounded and probably ignorant opinion.
What I suggest is looking up some real underground hip-hop and finding out if you still have that view. If that still strikes you as being "a pathetic attempt at music" try typing def poetry into youtube and spending an hour or so listening.

Nowhere in your previous post did you specify you were talking about the 'new shit.'

Backpedalling ftw.

Originally Posted by blank530

i don't like rap, i like metal, but i do like hip hop, the old stuff all the way up to the 90s. but the new stuff is horrible. same shit over and over again. so generic... at least in the 90s when they talked about drugs, girls, killing niggas, etc it had good tunes with it. people like lil wayne ruined hip hop

exactly...

The year rap first poked its head above the underground and really started showing up on the radar was 1984. This is one of the classics from that year.

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

The music in hip-hop is secondary, and mediocre electronic sampling and synthesized. It is there just to hook your mind to pay attention, just like the music in a TV or radio commercial. The message is not in the music.

What about instrumental hip-hop, my good man? It's about half of what I listen to.

Originally Posted by Oneironaut

People that know nothing about rap except the few BS songs they hear while flipping passed MTV or BET or talked about by their other rap-hating friends should learn not to make ignorant comments about a genre they know nothing about. Makes you look Really unintelligent.



Unfortunately that is the way the industry wants it to go. More CEOs are getting invovled with the \"Give the 'artists' more money so they won't ask so many questions about acting/behaving a certain way\" business philosophy. And unfortunately that 'certain way' is to keep them depicting rap-artists as shallow, materialistic, violence-oriented, sexist Jokes. (which most of them now are, or are becoming.)
True Hip Hop is one of the most powerful artistic tools there is. It couples deep, broad conscious poems set to beats (these beats are the very foundation of music itself. Not everything with an electric percussion and synth is concidered rap music. Nor does all rap music require electric guitar/drums and synth.) The Roots is one of the greatest hip-hop groups ever. And they are a live band.
But the music is Secondary in true rap/hip-hop. (Commercially the music is the most important thing, because as long as you're 'bobbing your' head, you don't give a damn what the person is saying, which is the tail that all the shitty modern rappers are riding on. The whole Dre/50 Cent connection proves this.) But a truely Awe Inspiring rap can be lyricized over a beat on a trashcan.
To say rap holds no power and its just \"some black guy\" spitting out meaningless words means you don't understand the power of words. Edgar Allen Poe/Shakespeare/Martin Luther King weren't just \"Some guys with pens and paper.\" You'll hear the most intelligent, well thought out Truths in Hip Hop, written by artists who use Unfathomable blends of metaphors, tonguetwisters, speed, heartfelt emotions and a number of other impressive tactics in their rap music. You simply have to have access to their music..
..the sad part is that the system doesn't Want you to have access to their music. Industry-run labels supress the artistic freedom of rappers to keep them in the same stereotypical public view. And as the masses are bombarded with this onslaught of \"Kill my enemies while sellin dope to get more cheese so the bitches all wanna ride in my G6 while sipping Krystal (sp) and bathing in burberry cologne\" they look at all the good-talented-Positive-masterfully sculpted hip hop (the ones they make nearly impossible to discover) as ....\"too Positive.\" or \"I can't even understand what he's saying.\" So they go back to bumping \"Get Dough. Get bitches. Blast Techs.\" (Which in turn makes modern rappers more popular, and the CEOs happier. What a sickening paradox.)
There is a Whole World of hip-hop out there, mostly hidden underground. And of this Entire World, you'll only get to experience the filthiest ghettos of a Single City by listening to mainstream rap.



You got good taste. 8)
The best way to find out about Real Hip Hop (the kind the material world Doesn't Want You to Hear) is to know someone that listens to it. Most people will go their entire lives without knowing what real rap is like, because they're force-fed the processed Bullshit thats made to blind you from what is still a Very Real and Powerful artistic phenomenon. (most of the best lyricists alive set most of their music to using wit to verbally DESTROY the bullshit artists you hear today. Hehe.)

Talib Kweli is probably my favorite artist right now. Also Mos Def, Common, Dilated Peoples, The Roots, Pharoah Monche, KRS-1, The Black Eyed Peas, Immortal Technique...the list goes on and on.

For all those that hate rap music...Check out those artists...and send me your letters of apology whenever you get around to it. I'm in no rush.



Oh..and about "not understanding what they are saying..." Once you find artists worth listening to, you'll play their songs over and over Making Sure you get damn near every word. That is the whole difference behind true Talent, and the Bullshit that you hear on the radio right before changing the station in disgust.

"Niggaz With Knowledge is more dangerous than Niggaz With Guns. They make the guns easy to get and try to keep niggaz dumb." ~Talib Kweli

Took the words right outta my mouth dude

Originally Posted by blank530

i don't like rap, i like metal, but i do like hip hop, the old stuff all the way up to the 90s. but the new stuff is horrible. same shit over and over again. so generic... at least in the 90s when they talked about drugs, girls, killing niggas, etc it had good tunes with it. people like lil wayne ruined hip hop

You stole what I was gonna say... My favorite hip hop song is funky cold medina http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUTqa5cjOS0 (Its really not rap)

Good post Oneironaught...most of these mainstream rappers are compulsive liars.

This is one down-to-the-bone, hip hop track I really like...by this guy named "Reks". He's pretty hot. The track is called "Suicide Note"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkJiyspHNFs

I don't listen to Dilated Peoples, but this track was also pretty hot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8wTYTwyXlo

My favorite rap is probably from Fort Minor (side project by linkin park's MC) and Flipsyde. If you havnt listened to flipsyde, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Eminem and Jurassic 5 are also high on my list, along with Jay Z. a little below them are Mos def and the roots and Flobots.

Yeah, sure Im a folk/symphonic metal guy, but there is also plenty of rap I enjoy.

edit: I didnt see how old this was lol. Anyways, the artists I listen to, as above, have a lot more to them than the superficial glam, they are in fact quite talented, and flipsyde, flobots, the roots all actually have some pretty good musical talent on top of the poetry.

Rap is music, but the music lies int he lyrics instead of the instruments or whatever.

Originally Posted by Sora

...instead of the instruments or whatever.

That depends on who you're listening to, though.

Yeah O is right. The Rapper Twister knew how to make the music flow in sync with his lyrics. Twister was one of the most under rated rappers. His skills and lyrical style would crush most rappers of that time and today.

My favorite rappers would have to be...

Nas, Pharohe Monch, Mobb Deep, BlackStar, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, A Tribe Called Quest, Jay-Z, Ice Cube, and Snoop Dogg.

Originally Posted by tkdyo

My favorite rap is probably from Fort Minor (side project by linkin park's MC) and Flipsyde. If you havnt listened to flipsyde, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Eminem and Jurassic 5 are also high on my list, along with Jay Z. a little below them are Mos def and the roots and Flobots.

Yeah, sure Im a folk/symphonic metal guy, but there is also plenty of rap I enjoy.

edit: I didnt see how old this was lol. Anyways, the artists I listen to, as above, have a lot more to them than the superficial glam, they are in fact quite talented, and flipsyde, flobots, the roots all actually have some pretty good musical talent on top of the poetry.

A lot of this sums up what I was going to say. I was quite surprised nobody had mentioned Fort Minor yet. Anyone who knows me knows I love rock and metal, however, I find room for truly good rap and hip-hop. I guess, what qualifies as "good" for me is:
1) Well thought out. The lyrics actually mean something *or* tell a story (haven't seen a lot of it in rap, but there's some)
2) Good instrumentals. I allow for some electronics, but for the most part, I don't like "magic" effects that you see in a lot of pop music. This usually includes a lot of echo, and a clean high voice.
3) A nice bass line doesn't hurt either. I love bass in any kind of music.