if anyone has good taste in music. they would not like the lollipop song by lil wayne or this rap crap thats out.

what mature adult wants to listen to that. and what parent would let their kids/elementary and highschool listen to that crap. So really it should be very few people listening and buying this hip hop.

I also don't like the young kids who are apart of the hip hop culture cause they are very disrespectful just like the music and they are a careless reck.

Its summer time and when i go out i see some of those kids up to no good.

laurarichardson said:

I also don't like the young kids who are apart of the hip hop culture cause they are very disrespectful just like the music and they are a careless reck.

DakutiusMaximus said:

TotalAlisa said:

Joke account or true ignorance?

Ethel Merman made a disco record?

Man, I wanna hear that just for the novelty of it. For real?

Meloh, obviously you have a deep grasp of the idiom that surpasses most people and I can see how there is great talent involved in being able to mix and scratch and choose compatable samples to blend, etc. etc. and I agree with you that it's a valid art form.

I don't agree with vainandy that anything below his preferred BPM level is shit.

I happen to think that some of the head noddin' stuff by artists like Madlib and Guru is the shiznit... but then I'm 60 years old. Good music is good music whatever speed it is.

The problem as I see it is the use of skill and talent in the service of ildignified values. While the technical components of a production may shine with genius the attitude and lyrical content can easily sour the overall effect.

In the words of George Harrison, "Isn't it a pity; isn't it a shame..."
As an exercise I could attempt to figuratively hold my hand over one ear and disregard the lyrics while listening to the musical production with the other ear but that would not amount to a pleasurable listening experience.



This is quite an astute observation and if you offer it to illustrate a chief feature of good rap music then it opens up the territory quite a bit.

Check this out. Using the above criteria a case could be made that Frank Zappa presaged the appearance of rap by about 12 years.


[Edited 8/6/08 10:29am]

TotalAlisa said:

Joke account or true ignorance?

TotalAlisa said:

I love to throw that around as an insult. I have absolutely nothing against classical, opera, or symphony music. Even though those types of music bore me, they are extremely talented singers and musicians, probably moreso than any funk or rock act around. However, when I was growing up, someone who listened to those types of music were considered the biggest nerd or dork of the school and if someone was accused of listening to it, they were ready to fight.

If you ignore the stupid thug image and lyrics in shit hop and just pay attention to the music alone, you will definately see that it is of the same tempo as those classical types of music and never gets faster. I love to throw that comparison out as an insult to shit hop. There are some people my age (who never fully grew up and worship shit hop just like these kids do). The ones my age do get pissed because they grew up in the same era that I did when only nerds and dorks listened to classical music or slow music only. However, I don't think the younger folks understand the comparison so it doesn't piss them off. Hell, they've been raised on nothing but slow music their entire lives so they don't know to be insulted. I guess we just have a new generation full of closet nerds and dorks who wear a thug outfit as a disguise.

In order to kill shit hop, we have to find something that makes shit hop look "uncool" to these kids. That's the only way to kill it. Talking about negative images and lyrics won't do it because those things are considered "cool" and that helps the genre to grow even larger. Disco died when it started being considered "uncool" because of folks like Ethel Mermon making a disco record. It's just a matter of figuring out what this new generation considers uncool and then applying it to shit hop. One way or another, it needs to die.

IdentityCrisis said:

NOPE and check my account again cause i added a special suprise.

and YES those hip-hop kids are up to no good. Why is it that almost every black boy wants to be a rapper. Look at myspace and you will see the kids on their.

I know its not all. But its just too many

I don't have any strong opinions about hip-hop one way or the other but I do listen to Digable Planets and Q-Tip/Tribe Called Quest on a regular basis

These last couple posts bring a new twist to the conversation- the fact that music and rebellion go hand in hand.

And rebellion against what?

Authority in all its manifestations whether it be mom and dad, the government, miss manners, schools and teachers, the police, etc.

It's part of growing up, moving from adolescence to individuation.

Kids gotta find a way to distinguish themselves as not their parents.

Generally this takes the form of "trying to shock." In order to shock you have to violate the authority's values. If you can shock you can be confident that you've been successful in defining yourself as "not one of them."

I was there for the mods and the rockers and the teddy boys and their American counterparts, the juvenile delinquents. Leather jackets, motor scooters, pointy toe'd shoes, cutting school, hair slicked back and a pack of cigs folded up in the tee shirt sleeves.

James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. West Side Story and later, Grease. Motorcycles and souped up cars.

Then long hair, free love, peace signs, draft resistance, be-ins and psychedelic drugs.

All of this was enough to sufficiently shock back in the day.

But the problem is that as these rebels age they become the establishment and bear children who are now faced with the challenge of having to ratchet up the rebellious behavior in order to insure their individuation.

Because of who the parents were in their youth it takes more to shock them.

So now you get the punks and the goths and the emos and the thugs and everything escalates.

Pot and mushrooms won't shock the parents so it's crack and crank and horse.

Bell bottoms, boot and going braless are no big deal anymore so its on to piercings and tatts, body mods and spiked up purple hair.

Switchblades, brass knuckles and chains won't do the trick so now its uzis, glocks and tek 9's.

This is just a very wide view to contextualize how "shit hop" could come upon us like it has.

The music industry has always exploited this "need to individuate" phenomena and supplied the sound track for each successive generation to make its move by.

Cha ching. Let's sell the kids confirmation of who they're trying to be. It's a cinch. Cha ching.

And so you get your Fiddys and your Snoops and your Tupacs and your Biggies and your Akons and your Lil Waynes and your Bustas.

(I know I'm probably stepping on some toes here. I don't deny these guys have charisma and talent and have maybe even made some significant social commentary in some of their songs but the bulk of it is just posturing about getting paid and fuck the law [which is their right to express but knowing they are the role models for so many young people borders on being criminal IMHO]).

(And I also know that as a 60 year old white man I will never be able to fully relate to or understand what it must be like to be a young black man in America trying to make a living).

So I guess it boils down to a mattter of conscience... and if there is any left in the music industry and the hip hop artist community.

Lyrics celebrate values. Adolescents are impressionable and need to look up to anti-authoritarizan role models. This is how they acquire the values they will live by. And their choices will become part and parcel of the greater social fabric.

Personally I believe the music industry should accept and exercise more responsibility for what gets out there to shape young lives but I have little hope that it will ever happen. The money is too good and the morals have degraded too far.

More and more you have the Juggalo and Thug Life mentalities taking root.

News stories about kids being murdered for their Air Jordans or their sports jackets have become ho hum everyday events, the popularity of fight videos on Youtube, people being shot for holding their fingers in a certain position, women being seen as bitches and hos is now the norm. Gotta get that rope chain so I can look cool and aint no J-O-B gonna get me that kinda cash. You know what I gotta do and I don't give a shit who gets burned or whose life gets ruined in the process. It's all about the Benjamins.

So at this moment I'm thinking that our values have degraded because of the need to shock and over the passage of time it has become more and more escalated.

Shit hop is just the soundtrack of this natural evolution and I doubt if there's any putting the genie back in the bottle.

And as far as the future is concerned... how are the gang banger's kids going to out-do their parents?

Now there's a scarey thought.
[Edited 8/7/08 10:24am]