CosmicDancer said:

But they always have good ears to hear beats. Never mind that music is also about chords & scales.

lastdecember said:

You mean O-Town, NOT Oaktown 357.

Don't think that Hip-Hop is the only genre struggling to stay alive.

Rock & Roll is pretty much dead as well!!!

There's no more killer guitar solos
Great drum beats
Memorable choruses
Great singers with big voices
The great riff is non existant

Now you have these whiny British bands, and these shitty American Jam Bands!!!

hip hop aint going nowhere its not dead or dying.

ah, this discussion again.Rap will never die, it's either in the underground, and the real stuff isn't playing. Do you know the Roots, Stones Throw REcords, and MF Doom? THese are the type of rap stars you need,

People should more worry about Rock'n' Roll, now this is dying!!

IMO hip-hop mixed with r'n'b and yeah, unfortunately the beats are soooo slow. I'll never get why American kids like to dance to those granny-like beats. Really. it turns me off. You can't dance to that. Especially "Touch My Body" by Mariah Carey had a beat every 10 seconds...

Graycap23 said:

couse they all sound the same...bitches and holles i cant stand it,give me real musicians and real lyrics,they just dont have it.

I think the "_____ _____ Bitch" "_____ _____ Bitch" type of rapping is dying...or at least I hope so. There are so many other important things to rap about.

I don't think it's dying per se, I think it's changing and being incorporated into other styles of music other than Hip Hop.

MC Solaar & Ursula Rucker are two fine examples of rapping done right, I think. Ursula even raps about the shi**y lyrics that exist in todays hip hop and rap lyrical content.

I also think there is a big clue to all of this when you look at Outkasts Love Below/Speakerboxx album.

CosmicDancer said:

Not to mention someone would piss someone else off and get shot in the process.

I hear it's just not safe to even go to hip hop concerts anymore. I'll bet that's part of it.

namepeace said:

Like Missy Elliot...I think she brings something to the table besides Bling and Ho's.

Paris9748430 said:

Oh rock and roll is not dead. Trust me there are PLENTY of folks who are keeping it alive (John Mayer to name one). ANd I await for the next re-emergence like grunge did in the 90's (to combat the non R&R in the late 80's). Same thing is going to happen on the turn of the decade. There will be a rebellion against all this plastic BS that's out there.

I think that Contry has taken a big lead in the type of music people are gravitating to. Could be because R&R and Country have similar roots. But I am just guessing on that.

Y'all know SO MUCH about rap. I find this thread and its replies very valuable.

The thing is a good part of its dieing off, and like anything ELSE if you dont preserve whats good you will have nothing at the end but the shell, and rap along with a few other Genres, like Rock, like Country, like Jazz, like Dance are clearly there and of course pop and RB too. The thing is that the bottom has to drop the fuck out, when it gets to a point where NO ONE can make a penny doing music you will have no more shit that you all mention, as long as its bought in abundance than you are gonna get Soulja Boy and GREAT FUCKING RB groups like pretty Ricky, god arent they great??? Make you forget groups like EarthWind and Fire. The main problem with this whole train of thought, is that you are getting 95% artists that will NEVER have a catalog, and sorry to say folks the only thing keeping the industry from going under, is the fact that there is CATALOG from people that sells, this generation thinks that you can preserve it by just turning out a catchy flava of the week or month in abundance, well it aint working for ANY GENRE of Music at this point.

So for every Lupe Fiasco you get 50-100 Soulja Boys or Weebie's, for every Rashaan Patterson you get 50-100 Omarion's for every good jazz artist, you get 50-100 SMOOTH FUCKING JAZZ ARTISTS like John Tesh, for every Ryan Adams you get 50-100 Gavin Degraws. And AS I HAVE said a million times, when the likes of Lupe and Rashaan and Ryan Adams or whomever your fave TALENTED artist is gets played half the amount of times that Chris fucking Brown does, you will have nothing but flava of the month all over and music will just die off like everything else.

Graycap23 said:

For the same reason Funk music died 20 years ago...

My personal idea?

Because in the end the rap / hip-hop type of music is offering limitated opportunities to evolve itself any further in a musical way, maybe?

Weither you take really commericial hip-hop (what is popular today?) or more progressive hip-hop (like The Wu Tang Clan or Public Enemy) in the end the basis structure of all of those songs, is a rapped verse and a (more or less) sung or chanted chorus.
The sounds and beats around it might differ (smooth and commercial, or more confrontional: harder beats, scratches, guitars), but the basis structure remains the same.

I admit, i am not a hip-hop lover at all, the song-structures are getting way too boring for me quickly.
But I also think the limitations within those song-structures might get boring for the more 'die hard' hip-hop lovers at some moment.

I don't see the majority of rap / hip-hop artists, going for more harmonic complexity and surprises, like what is more 'common' among not only (current day) rockartists, but also among the great Funksters of the seventies (Sly, Parliament / Funkadelic): artists who were stretching their creative horizons, feeling free to experiment.

Its almost if rap (or hip-hop, whatever you call it) has become stale and conservative.
While pop- and rock bands are taking their freedom to explore the possibilities of their 'sound' (incorporating a string-section, using brushes instead of drums, shortening their songs to 2 minutes full of adrenaline, or stretching their compositions to 'suite' like proportions), most rap-artists seem to stay within in the narrow boundaries of a prominent 'beat' and a predictable verse-chorus structure.

Rap-music might be 'fitting' to bob your head on, and feel 'cool', but most of the artists don't get beyond the verse - chorus thing, and i think that most of them aren't even musically capable to reach beyond that point. Being a good rapper doesn't automatically make you a good songwriter.

That's not the reason because I haven't heard a peep out of Shitney Houston in years. If she could do the same thing to shit hop, that she did to funk, I think I would welcome her with open arms.....Let me stop lying because I still wouldn't be able to stand her.
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[Edited 6/25/08 14:38pm]

I agree with your points also, to a certain level.

Especially the 'hyped' american rockbands nowadays, are annoyingly bad.

Bands like Fall out Boy and 30 seconds to Mars are just 'teenybopper' bands in a 'so called' alternative rock jacket.
Bad songwriting, empty poses, albums remixed and mastered so loud and precise that make some people think those bands can 'really' kick ass live, when they dont reach above the level of an average schoolband.
These are just the 'hair bands' from the eighties in a new disguise: follow the hype and fashion.

But... on the other hand, does that differ so much from the past? In the seventies Abba, Slade and the (godawfull) Kool and the Gang were scoring in the charts, in the eighties you had the poodles of Warrant and Stryper being popular, in the nineties Mariah Carey and Boys 2 Men did slime their way up to the charts...

Personally i mostly try to focus on what i call the B-category: artists who aren't big commercially (yet), but who have gained quite some respect from serious musical journalists, family or close friends.
Often those artists are far more interesting in a musical and lyrical sense then the ones 'really' being hyped by the mainstream media. It are mostly artists that go their own way, follow their own muse, and aren't spoiled (yet) by the idea to score and be 'massive'.

Thanks to that i have had the opportunity to enjoy and cherish the qualities of artists like: Nick Drake, Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, Sly Stone (yes, even he is underrated compared to James Brown), Fishbone, Living Colour, Urban Dance Squad, Teenage Fanclub, The Posies, Matthew Sweet, King's X, Lyle Lovett, Susan McKeown, Kate Rusby, The Jayhawks and The Endrick Brothers.

I'll put it to you this way Gray. After that BET Awards show yesterday, I have never seen more minstrel BS rap crap in one night...and there it is.

I still want to know...where are the "real artists/musicians????"

2elijah said:

[exactly]

2elijah said:

I don't even watch BET anymore because it touts neo-minstrelsy at its finest. I'm about done with VH1 as well.

2elijah said:

So are we talking about a genre of music or BET's programming. I'm getting lost here.

Cinnie said:

Why the hostility? From what i've been reading on this topic most agree that
hip hop has gotten away from the basics of the passionate lyricists like
KRS1, Q tip, Grand Puba, etc. to this bling bling, and sipping on champagne
mentality of p.diddy, jermaine dupri. I was bored to tears last night watching
Nelly(the worst rapper in the game imo)make another dull ass rap about tennis shoes. I know you can probably find a few gems like lupe fiasco but please
tell me where most of the orgers here are lying about rap.

phunkdaddy said:

see Reply #51

I was listening to an old mix tape my cousin made for me back in my High School years, 1993-1997, and I feel that lyrically is where the genre has changed most. Back then you had to have skills to even get air play in my city, Philly, and I'm sure in alot others as well. Know it just seems that any cat can get heard now, some of these cats don't sound like they got pass the 9th grade with these garbage lyrics they spit.

I will take responsibility if it's me that's changed over time, but somewhere along the way, it seems that rap music just stopped being fun. I seem to remember that rap music used to be about clapping your hands, or throwing them in the air like you didn't care, or otherwise partying and having a good time. Now it seems to me to be about violence, disrespecting women, arrogance, being better than, hate, and despair.

I wanna go back to where you went to your friends house to eat and the chicken tasted like wood, lol. But I suppose that as the world turns, nothing stays the same. As in; I guess the kids today will grow up to see the day that THEY'll miss when music was based on a one-note sample, or when lyrics were about popping a cap in someones ass, or chicks rapping about they ain't got no panties on.

because it's rap

Graycap23 said:

Rap isn't dying my friend. Rap has died. With a few exceptions there isn't really anything worth listening to in this genre.

dseann said:

I can't argue that.....but I'd bet Cinnie would.

You know what, y'all can listen to what you want. But when you have stopped listening, how can you be qualified to comment today? Based on what you saw on BET last night? Aw hell naw!

I even did a thread that was called "what was the last rap song you truly enjoyed" or something along those lines.