I get more pissed when I see someone that has talent doing shit hop than I do when I see someone that doesn't have talent at all. If you have talent, use it to change styles, don't help the same old dull shit to keep dominating the airwaves. Styles will never change that way.

Yeah, Shitney Houston can sing also and one of the reasons I can't stand her is because she actually can sing but chose to go a sellout crossover adult contemporary route. If she couldn't sing, she would have just had a one hit wonder and would never have been a threat to the music that was dominating before she hit the scene.

VoicesCarry said:

But there is still some great Hip Hop out there, and even with samples some of the early Hip Hop albums used sampling in creative ways like De La Souls 3 feet high and rising and Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique which paved the way for artist like Beck. They used a technique called layering that allowed the artist to compile samples from different sources to create something that was totally different than the original sample

Also we still have albums like BE from Common that is very musical and Outkast. Also I miss groups that used samples AND live parts like Arrested Development. And let’s not forget about The Roots. I guess if you judge any art form by what is in the mainstream you will always have a bad impression. It just so happens that Hop Hop is flooding the market now because it’s the fasted music to make.

Meloh9 said:

It doesn't matter - everything else is dead. It's like saying there are still some cockroaches alive after the world has been nuked.

I know hip hop heads like to talk about "creative sampling", but I can't buy it. All it means is that you had some people who were less lazy than normal up there putting it together...but still NOT MOTIVATED ENOUGH TO DO ANYTHING ORIGINAL!
[Edited 12/20/06 17:56pm]

vainandy said:

Wow what a harsh reaction...but then again it doesn't suprise me on this baord. Prince has perfomred and recorded songs ith the likes of Vanity, Apollonia, Cat, oh my god...Ingrid Chavez and you say the kinds of things about Beyonce who clearly has talent?

So you don't like her music then say that...why the personal attack?

I mean just listen to her here. She is humble when talking about Prince. She gushes that shes on the stage with Prince and how crazy that is. She talks about how he tried to calm her down

Your comments here and throughout this thread are so small and pissy. Yep pissy is the right word
[Edited 12/20/06 17:58pm]

Alexandernvrmind said:

Vain is talking about her music, not really Beyonce herself.

VoicesCarry said:

I just mean their is still hope you know, like who knows who those few artist may inspire, I mean music feels dead.. But I have a feeling we will get something real again one day, if not we just have to get together and make it ourselves. I'm not too old to funk you know, show these young whipper snappers a thing or two. That is why whenever I am around kids I always play old stuff and try to break down the history of it all.
[Edited 12/20/06 18:01pm]

Meloh9 said:

The industry WILL change. But only because music has gotten so bad that people refuse to buy anything anymore. The industry does what it does to survive. They have been pushing it and pushing it and pushing it and milking this trend for the past 15 years.

I have no idea what kids are doing today. I graduated high school in 2001 and the kids I went to school with had no idea about any sort of cultural history before 1990. Music and movies started with Hammer & Home Alone.

Folks like Vanity or Apollonia may have not had talent as a singer but good "music" behind them made their songs sound great. "Music" is what I like most about music, not the singing. Now, if Beyonce has talent as a singer (which I don't doubt) that's still not enough to make me like some music behind her (which is the first thing I hear) that sounds weak and shitty.

If she has talent, she needs to get together with other talented people on her albums who can put some good music behind her and run this bullshit that's dominating the airwaves out of style. Instead, she chooses to go the easy route and make shit hop to make the biggest profit she can. And for that, I have absolutely no respect for her.

VoicesCarry said:

If anything I blame R&B artists for trying to go hip-hop...Hip Hop folks were doing what they have done since '77...It was R&B that decided to jump on the bang wagon...And to me, that's what's hurting music...Again, it's hard to take some of you guys seriously when you dismiss the entire genre and fail to understand the sampling brilliance of say Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation... or De La Soul's De La Soul Is Dead....I would rather if you guys knew what you were talking about....I would never criticize something that I have no knowledge of...

vainandy said:

Well, this is where we disagree...There were some good songs on that first Beyonce album (I dug the sound and groove of songs like "Dangerously In Love" and "Me Myself & I"...And then there are some bullshit songs on her new one (This who crunked out R&B production shit is getting tired...And it shows on ther new album)...The point is, I'm able to seperate the two because I have one foot in the oldschool as a child of the '80s and the other has a hip-hop head...
[Edited 12/20/06 18:19pm]

murph said:

No, hip-hop changed. I encourage you to have an in-depth discussion with Finess if you think people were still making hip-hop they way they did back in '77...because he was there making it. It changed to gangsta rap which went mainstream and killed all positive hip-hop in the mainstream. Funk died in the mid-80's. People making R&B were still making original but watered-down R&B music. Then they started sampling on every other song, then it became EVERY song. Then every dumb kid who could get sampling rights became a producer.



Look, I have no idea why you think we don't know what we're talking about simply because we disagree with you about "sampling brilliance" (whatever the hell that may be....taking someone else's work and splicing it a *certain* way does not make it original nor does it make it anything but someone else's work). There is no brilliance in sampling. There is no worth in sampling. One of the reasons sampling sucks the big one is because it allows lazy morons with no musical talent to become record producers (not talking about De La or whatever here). You used to have to know what you were doing to produce a record. And that is why music has suffered this decline - the "anyone can do it" mentality that sampling implies. Sampling is laziness. You can be lazy in creative ways....but you're still lazy.

But at least De La made positive hip hop. But that disappeared when gangsta rap came in.
[Edited 12/20/06 18:27pm]

murph said:

I hear what the 2 of you are saying and agree with elements on both sides.

Just saw Public Enemy last week and they've progressed to using live musicians (what a concept) on stage.
Maybe if others noticed this, a change will start to occur.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

I'm from the Rakkim generation so I am all about lyrics, raw ass Pharooh Munch lyrics that show off skill. They say that The Roots have a hard time with record sales because black thought lacks personality, but I for my generation we know skill when we hear it, so ofcource I'm gonna think he is dope and he has a live band. I think Lupe Fiasco is a step in a good direction also. He has some really positive things to say and you can tell he listens to a lot of different types of music when you listen to the album.

But with all that being said I am still tired of rap being the only damn thing ruling the air waves TV and the internet, damn.. I love bands and music of all genres, I was hardcore into Hip Hop since like "86" when I was 12 years old, now I feel drained when it comes to it. I defend it but I have this love hate thing with Hip Hop.

^ The downturn in lyrics quality has nothing to do with hip-hop specifically, though. It's universal. You still can't find a writer like Smokey Robinson.

and I meant to say Pharaoh Munch, I'm getting sleepy

VoicesCarry said:

Nah...To me it's not as simplistic as positive hip-hop vs. negative hip-hop...I respect all artists that push their genre forward and bring something to the game...That's why I'm able to respect the work of hip hop artists that range from Public Enemy (It Takes A Nation; Fear of A Black Planet ect, ect...) De La Soul (Anything from 88 to 95); and A tribe Called Quest (First three albums...) to Nas (Most of his work); Outkast (ditto), Dr. Dre (Chronic and Chronic 2001; great hip hop works...); Ice Cube (early '90s work was some of the most socially conscious and gut level lyrics of all time) and Snoop Dogg (Doggystyle is still a favorite...)...My current problem with hip-hop is with some artists being one trick ponies...A rapper like Young Jeezy falls under that category; his whole bag is being a drug dealer...There's no irony or artistic muscle behind his words like say early Notorious BIG or Jay Z in his prime...he's just talking garbage...


And for the record R&B's current lack of soul can be blamed on hip-hop, but not for the reasons you think...Over the past 10 years R&B acts have basically taken the swagger and sound of hip-hop...R&B vocalist are even singing in a deliberate rap style...Again, i hear what you are saying...But when I read statments like "whatever the hell that may be....taking someone else's work and splicing it a *certain* way does not make it original..." you sound like my grandfather, and I'm creeping up on 40 (I'm 35)...There was a time when sampling used to be a artform...And that wasn't that long ago...I respect what hip-hop essentially is...Making something out of nothing...To me it sounds like you would have been one of the main folks shitting on hip-hop during its golden years...I'm gaging this from your previous post...
[Edited 12/20/06 18:45pm]

murph said:

did you hear De La Soul's last album the grind date? I loved it

Meloh9 said:

Yeah..it was cool...but to me there last great album was Stakes Is High...

murph said:

That's precisely the point I'm trying to make - it's not. However, this is the way corporate America sees it. And so they went for negative. And then that's ALL that existed in the mainstream.



Your grandfather must have been a smart man I simply do not respect sampling. You are going to hear the same from Finess, who witnessed the birth of hip-hop. If you like sampling, fine.



As I said, you can be creatively lazy...but it's still lazy. You can't change that. These folks would rather cannibalize the work of others than create something truly original. I think that's damn pathetic. It's not an artform to me.



I hate gangsta rap. I hate everything about it and all it stands for and its misogynism and how it completely disrespects an entire community.

I can tolerate most hip-hop from the 70's and 80's....things started to get REALLY bad in the early 90's.

VoicesCarry said:

Cool...I guess since you detest sampling you basically hate all of the great hip-hop albums from 88 to 94...And hey, it is what it is...

Yes it did. And for the worst.



Finess knows his stuff.



True.



VERY true. Most of the stuff from the mid to late 1980s that wasn't watered down was the rap music. A lot of the rap music of that era was more uptempo and funky than the actual funk of that era.

Also, teenagers and young people have always had a rebellious streak when it came to music. With all these R&B artists making "parent friendly" music in the late 1980s, rap filled the rebellion void that was left.

Even with rap filling the rebellion void, I think it would have eventually lived it's life and moved on to something else if white kids had never gotten into rap, especially once it slowed down and turned gangsta, and these labels and corporations saw they could make a big profit by spending very little money.




Actually, when folks like The Egyptian Lover sampled, I thought it was kind of clever. On his song, "Baddest Beat Around", he takes just a razor-fine snip of the synthesizer after the word "work" on Prince's "Let's Work". However, it's over some original music that he created and it was just enough to have people thinking...."that sounds familiar". You had to be really into Prince to recognize it. Then he would mix just small snips of the guitar on "Let's Work" over his music. The difference is, he could make music of his own and just use the razor-fine snips to give it a little kick every now and then.

Lots of folks in the late 1980s were using small snips. When it started becoming fucked up is when the snips got longer and longer and soon became the entire groove for the song with no groove for the artist to come up with. If they weren't fucking things up that way, then they were just stripping everything completely off and just rapping over a beat. Then they started using different drum machines that weren't near as strong as the earlier ones.




I don't even know if I would call them lazy these days. I don't think most of these artists these days are capable of coming up with something original.
.
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[Edited 12/20/06 19:00pm]

murph said:

No. I'm not so anal about sampling that I can't have fun with sampled music. But I usually do not listen to songs that have sampled an ENTIRE song.

vainandy said:

VoicesCarry said:

uhhmmm you are not funny. but then you really weren't trying to be funny were you?

vainandy said:

prodigalfan said:

VoicesCarry said:

Not to discount the work of PE's Bomb Squad, but to me really creative sampling would occur when unique and obscure sounds are used instead of former musical works.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

VoicesCarry said:

But that's not the type of records I'm talking about...again, there was an art to sampling during the golden era of hip-hop....I'm not talking about Vanilla Ice sampling Queen's "Under Pressure"

vainandy said:

murph said:

As I said, I can generally tolerate that type of sampling...but that doesn't mean I like it very much.