Two monologue-invocations from Alias:


a Creator God aghast at His followers


a particularly sympathetic Death

As you do.

Essential exorcism of the culture.



I think I might have to actively try to avoid putting up most of Saul Williams' work ever.

Hmmmm.... I'm having a real hip-hop renaissance at the moment, so will defintely be contributing. I'd say though, that most of the hip hop I like is communicating loads of fascinating information, without drawing on occult themes and ideas as such. I'd admit that I'd find that a "turn off" as it kinda implying that hip hop has to be something other than it is, to be good or to be taking seriously (shades of "conscious hip hop") Willing to have my ears opened though, and I look forwards to checking out your links.

I guess what I'm saying is that I find loads of fascinating infromation communicated in hip hop that others would dismiss - I like full on confrontational, excessive, violent hip hop, I like the "swagger", the attitude and the way it confronts and transgresses social norms. I think the insane excesses of someone like Gucci Mane for instance, are a commentary on capitalism. When listening to him, I'm pretty sure he knows how absurd a lot of what he rhymes about is but he's still taking a delight in it. More later, with some tracks...

I'm kinda in agreement with Danny there... the longest time that hip hop should be 'about' anything is the duration one song, and sometimes it can't even stay coherent that long... a verse is about the most congruent you'll get out of some tunes.  Some of the best MCs aren't even interested in their music managing to be 'about' something for more than a couple of lines at a time.

I'm curious how rap/hip hop made it over to the U.K., and when it started gaining traction.

Personally, I got the first rumblings of rap in summer camp in the early 1980s.  A hip kid from Philly turned the rest of us on to stuff like this:

And this:

and this:

and this:

By high school we'd hit the second wave:

And then the genre reached full flower:

And that just takes us to the 80s.

I might as well mention -- about six months ago I got to see Grandmaster Flash give an amazing talk on how he invented breaking: using two turntables with the same album (and a segment of the song carefully marked) to extend an instrumental break as long as the DJ wanted.

He called it "learning how to control time."

Evan - from my perspective, it broke over here through then burgeoning black music scene. There was a pretty substanial network tuned into US soul at the time, and in the inner cities, pirate radio, and a strong reggae scene (most of the UK's black population at the time being Jamaican immigrants). I think hip hop was initially disseminated through these networks. It also had TVOD cultural carrier of breakdancing which was a craze and pulled a lot of people - it's almost as if it was a meme designed specially to appeal to teens. After the initial excitement of amazing electro tunes like Planet Rock, hip hop seemed to disappear off the cultural radar for a bit until politically conscious groups like PE (and later De La, Tribe, Jungle Brothers etc) became darlings of the UK indie press.

I think the UK had a pretty good handle on hip hop till the late 90s when the excitement began to move away from places like NY, down to Atlanta, out to the Bay Area and so on. We've never really understood say, southern rap in the same way as we get "the streets of New York" and I'd put this down to simply the lack of channels for cultural communication rather than anything inherent in the music. There's a closeness between London and NY as they are both cultural hubs that are communicating with each, and I think music fandom travelled easily through these channels, but  the regional scenes that US supports are a long way for London in all kinds of way. Or "were" perhaps with the advent of the internet.

This is my fave track TODAY. I'll post some other stuff in a bit that I think people will dig and isn't quite so homocidal: http://www.thefader.com/2011/08/25/video-webbie-f-lil-phat-whats-happenin/

 

 

By the way, there's a frankly ludicrously overpopulated and near-identical topic on the Bang the Bore forum:

DannyL said: I'll post some other stuff in a bit that I think people will dig and isn't quite so homocidal

Go for it. I'm willing to learn.

First off, for me, one of the most exicting groups out at the moment are Main Attractionz, also known sometimes as Green Ova Underground. I don't quite know how to describe this - ambient,  drifting hip hop, where the vocal almost becomes a texture but the beats are still hard, complex and multilayered, and unlike a lot of hip hop of this ilk, it's still totally street.  

You can download their new album which is their most cohesive effort so far here:

http://mishkanyc.bandcamp.com/album/main-attrakionz-808s-dark-grapes-ii

 

 

 

My other current don't-worry-its-not about-shooting-people-in-the-face tip for the top is Kendrick Lamar's "Section 80". Kendrick is a 24 year old rapper from the infamous Compton. Section 80 is a play on "Section 8" which refers to the payment of rental money to landlords in the US - thus he's talking about the projects/poor areas -  and the 80s generation of which Kendrick is a part, the generation which really grew up under the lash of Reaganomincs. If this kind of conceptual wordplay impresses you, well, you're for a treat. The whole tape is basically a concept album about the damaging and alienating effects of growing up - from relations between genders to gang politics, but done with the usual hip hop hyperactivity jumping around from subject to subject, within verse, but that's part of the richness to me.

For instance, from the first track "Fuck Your Ethnicity" blows my mind - basically, its a rant about how racial politics divides but flips between his own coming success, murder (crime scene tape), rascism and materialism:

"What the f-ck is you fighting for?/ Ain't nobody gonna win that war/ My details be retai/l Man, I got so much in store/ Racism is still alive /Yellow tape and colored lines/ F-ck that, nigga look at that line It's sold out first day /Getting off work And they wanna see Kendrick/ Everybody can't drive Benz's/... " and so on.

And moreover, the beats are absolutey fucking slamming, rich, complex, deep music that draws on black music's soul and R&B heritage. Y'all need this one. He was crowned "New King of the West Coast" by Dre and Snoop recently.. and I kinda think they're right.

You all  need this one.

Have to chip in here as I'm not 'feeling' some of the above artists (Ma$e and Puffy? C'mon now!). In my opinion here are the 'must listen to' artists decade by decade. I will inevitably leave artists out but maybe someone can fill any blanks.

1980s: Tuff Crew, Ultramagnetic MCs, Slick Rick, PE, Big Daddy Kane, Kool G Rap + Polo, MC Shan+ Marley Marl, Schooly D, UTFO, EPMD, Biz Markie, KRS, Fat Boys, Beasties, Eric B+ Rakim, 3RD Bass, 45 King as well as electro artists like Twilight 22, Man Parrish, Hashim. The Miami Bass artists like Magic Mike, Dynamix 2. The megamixes by Latin Rascals, Double Dee + Steinski, Big Apple Production.  Compilations like Street Sounds and Ultimate Breaks and Beats.

1990s: All the Wu Tang affiliated albums (from the solo albums to Killarmy, Sunz of Man), Ill Bizkits, Nas, Black Moon, Diamond D, DITC, 45 King (again), OC, AZ, Main Source, Blahzay Blahzay, Saafir, De la soul, Scientifik, Smif n Wessun, Gang Starr, Masta Ace, Beatnuts, Al Tariq, Cypress, LA the Darkman, Killah Priest, Mobb Deep, Freddie Foxxx, Ed OG, Big L, Pete Rock + CL Smooth, Da Grassroots, Kool Keith, Showbiz and AG.

Recently I have been listening to Danny Brown, J Dilla, Kankick, Madlib, Mr Muthafuckin Esquire, Doom.

You forgot:

Thanks Seth. That Doctor Who rap makes me want to tear off my own head.

And Scroobius Pip and the Beastlies don't?

Pip's a friend of a friend so I'm not touching that with a 10 foot stang.

And I actually quite like the Beastie Boys, overplayed as they are. Make me think of those big teenage house parties people threw before you realised inviting everyone ever to a free house wasn't such a great idea.

But I accept I'm part of the problem.

You know Pip?! I never thought that stage of *Operation: You Always Kill the One You Love* would be anything other than fantasy. Finding a sleeper agent who's both susceptible to suggestion and who's in the Inner Circle just felt too unlikely.

No Insane Clown Posse? 

Das Racist are by far my favourite rap group at the moment (Wu-Tang, Co Flow and Latyrx ain't doing a huge amount of new stuff in October 2011, I'm fickle).  This Spin article should explain why...

Hip hop is ace in 2011.  It's making me nostalgic...

Das Racist are quality.

Surprised no one has mentioned the greatest living practitioner of the form.

Intricate, thoughtful, achingly personal lyrics.  Incredibly quick, fluid, lyrical delivery.  Witty, intense, brilliant.  Not always very enlightened, and he has his demons, but he can't be ignored.

Is he really that good?  Yes.

Evan, I thought I was the one trolling this thread.

Maybe I'm missing something.  How is that trolling?

The notion that the *greatest living practitioner* (dude, do you secretly write for Q Magazine?) of a black music that has managed to retain it's identity as black music is a whingey mono-cadenced white dude who is largely only capable of writing about himself and his celebrity just seemed like a laser-guided precision troll. Unless you're a sacrificial lamb who's deploying to this topic under a crazy-eyed belief in some misguided Quantity Theory of Internet Flame War, and you're hoping to suck all the bile of the internet in your direction in the hope of saving some of your mates on 4Chan, in which case nice try, and blessed are the peacemakers and all that, but HE'S NOT EVEN THE BEST FUCKING WHITE RAPPER ALREADY MENTIONED IN THIS NOW HELLISH THREAD.

I'm not a big hip hop fan, but I did once work on a cable special shoot for this mayoral candidate. I learned things on that shoot. Things about myself. 

Seth said: The notion that the *greatest living practitioner* (dude, do you secretly write for Q Magazine?) of a black music that has managed to retain it's identity as black music is a whingey mono-cadenced white dude who is largely only capable of writing about himself and his celebrity just seemed like a laser-guided precision troll.

I'm not clear that in 2011 rap or hip-hop is any more or less "a black music" than, say, jazz, where I already expressed my opinion that Buddy Rich was the greatest drummer of all time. 

Without controversy, and with what seemed was your approval.

There's also the question of exactly who gets to be the arbitrator of these sorts of issues.  Or as Spike Lee once asked of (the phenomenal) Amiri Baraka, "who made him the Grand Poobah of blackness?" 

Naturally, your opinion may differ from mine.  Which is fine with me.  Is it fine with you?

Evan said: I'm not clear that in 2011 rap or hip-hop is any more or less "a black music" than, say, jazz, where I already expressed my opinion that Buddy Rich was the greatest drummer of all time. 

I think even Eminem would disagree with you on that score... he's spent enough of his career talking about it. The latest people to touch on the subject are Heems and Viktor from the above-linked DR interview. Hip hop has remained a black music in a defensive, identity-conscious manner that jazz hasn't - there's a world of difference between the two. I'd argue that's one of the things that makes hip hop valuable, although while it certainly hasn't been without appropriation and exploitation it's managed to hold race at the heart of its identity in a manner that makes it different to a lot of music (perhaps it's because hip hop has always been about more that just music).

Evan said: Without controversy, and with what seemed was your approval.

I disagree that he's the best of all time. I just think Buddy Rich is awesome.

Evan said: There's also the question of exactly who gets to be the arbitrator of these sorts of issues.

You think you do, with phrases like *greatest living proponent*. I was just posting tunes I liked.

The whole *greatest living proponent* is doubly irksome here, because hip hop has its first obvious, unambiguous roots in the 1970s. It's young. A lot of the people who had a hand in inventing it are still involved in making it. Whereas Eminem doesn't have a single innovation to his name. I'm not saying that he's not technically competent, and that you need to be an innovator to be thought of as great, I saying that he's a strong musician amongst fucking titans. Wu-Tang Clan alone have nine members, at least six of whom could equal his mic skills. When you broaden the frame to include black rappers he's got a lot of peers.

The funny thing is I first checked this topic from my phone, and therefore couldn't see your video clips and just assumed you were talking about Rakim (because that's the kind of hyperbole that always gets thrown in his direction). I nearly snorted coke all over the Mac screen when I saw it was about Slim fucking Shady.

*greatest living proponent* 

Seth said: This isn't a "my taste is better than yours" argument.

Well, yes, obviously it is.  And I suspect your taste -- and knowledge of the field -- is in fact better than mine, even though I've been (casually) following rap here in the U.S. since before it even began.

And I thought it was understood that when I say things like "greatest living practitioner" or "greatest drummer of all time" in this and many other topics (as I've done from time to time) I'm both expressing my opinion and -- obviously -- engaging in hyperbole.  Goofing around a bit to express my enthusiasm for and pleasure in music and performers I love.

Clearly, and unsurprisingly, you take music much more seriously than I do, and you are much more of an authority on music -- or at least certain types of music -- than I am.  Although I'm still not quite clear where you get your credentials as genre cop and defender of the authentic African-American experience.

We could engage in another four or five screens of back-and-forth, but what's the point?

Bravo.  I withdraw from the field.  Carry on.

But boy am I glad I didn't post Blondie's "Rapture."

Oh, what the hell.

I couldn't resist.

Note Fab 5 Freddy and Jean-Michel Basquiat.  (One is at the turntable and one is painting.  Guess which is which.)  And the guy in the top hat looks oddly familiar . . .

I thought this thread was being subtly trolled too. It was pretty entertaining. A+++. Would comment again. I'm surprised nobody's asked how fucking magnets work yet. 

On a more serious note I'm very slowly working through some of the names people have posted, so cheers.

Come on -- nobody knows how magnets work.

While I'm tempted to resist dignifying your one argument with a response - if you can call a surly muttering of 'Who died and put you in charge?' an argument - I'm not making a point from a position of authority here. Anyone could make the point I'm making, while knowing virtually nothing about hip hop. Essentially: in the context of centuries of strip mining black culture and exploiting black people, to take an overview of a form of music that has fairly effectively maintained its identity as a black music and single out one of the only white guys who isn't embarrassing themselves as the greatest living proponent of the form just seems kinda racist, and at the very least wilfully ignorant and perverse. I don't even have to mention the names of any rappers, DJs, producers, albums, labels or songs to make that point. It's not about top trumps, it's not about taste. My mum could, and probably would, make the same observation, and she doesn't even own a single Kool G Rap record, let alone know how to make Wu signs. I'm surprised this is even controversial, the only thing I'm left wondering is whether 'I was just goofing off' is a sufficiently large fig leaf to cover your bits.

Dude, there are few things sadder than two white guys in a dick-measuring contest over their respective understandings or appreciation of African-American culture.  Unless it's one white guy taking offense on behalf of African-American culture and spoiling for a fight.

So instead of an elaborate retort filled with cultural references and personal credentials and a further explanation of how personal taste is expressed through language, I'll ignore the venom and hostility that you've unleashed against me throughout this conversation -- and the fact that you just called me a racist -- and move on.

Assuming this particular part of the conversation is over, that is.

Go with God.

Sidestepping the above debacle, the new Danny Brown EP is the fucking shit. "Black and Brown" beats by Black Milk from Detroit. Danny Brown is just getting better and better. For those that haven't heard him, he's developing this kind of crazy scatological verbal assault, with some contrasting moments of seriousness tracks. You can tell which way he's gonna flip it, depending on his voice. He gets all high pitched and whiny on the less serious tracks.- wicked tape.

The last tape was amazing (there's not enough hip hop around about cunnilingus and being high on prescription drugs) and this one is banging.

Beyond that I have mostlly been listening to this screwed and chopped monster and Devin the Dude, who is basically a 90s Richard Pryor over Texas funk.

This is one of the least offensive Devin records (I don't find him offensive personally but I get that others might not want to listen to him), but gives a good idea of his sound:

 

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTKXflPq2fU

I can't make LN's formatiing work.

(unlink the URL - highlight the YouTube address, click the "broken chain" icon there on the top right, save post. It's totally counterintuitive. The software does its own embedding, but only with a text version of the plain URL.) 

OK, enough about lyrics. Somebody hit me with some beats.

Point made, yup. Happy to move on:

*reads*

*frowns*

*takes deep breath, and reaches for rolled-up newspaper*

*keeps reading*

*breathes sigh of relief*

Oh good. Carry on!

-E-

 money, guns, and misogyny

Hmm. I don't like the characterisation of "mainstream" hip hop as having these problems, 'cos it posits some sort of "alternative" hip hop that is better, more enlightened and before you know it you're listening to The Disposable Heros of Hiphopcrisy. A lot of the rap I listen to has explicit sexual content, crude sexism, violence and hype-materialism, and to some degree this is part of it's strength. There's no pretensions to be nice, uplifting, improving etc. What there is, is braggaddicio, attitude and tons of swagger.

I mentioned Devin the Dude upthread - have a listen to some of his stuff, or some Danny Brown (try "I Will"). Every other word out of Devin's mouth is "bitch", but I mentioned Richard Pryor 'cos I think it's an apt comparison. He's doing on record what comedians like Pryor, Rudy Ray Moore, Redd Foxx etc were doing in the stage serious. Do I think it's reifying the sexism that exists in society? Yeah, I do, to some degree. But do I think it's stoney face serious, or proposed as a model for living? No, not at all.

It's problematic, yeah, sure. But to clean away this stuff, all the kind of representations that we might object, is to emasculate it in my view. More on this later.

Re: drumming. The first thing that comes to mind for me is some of the early breakbeat mixes. Not many of these early session are available, but you might find this interesting:



This is the crude cutting up of early breaks and beats that led to the whole world of sampling, Coldcut, DJ Shadow, what have you. Don't know how this sort of thing plays when you're not a 15 year old kid in a Bronx high school gym. Gets more interesting when they get past the Jackson 5 break that opens the song. Part 2 is also good.

Here's another killer early breakbeat mash up. Double D & Steinski get to work on some of the early breakbeats made infamous by DJs like 'Bam and Flash:



Guess this all might sound very dated now. Blew my mind back in the '80s.

But this is still fat as fuck - ridiculous early drum programming.



Will try and add something more contemporary later.

Wonder if he had a burglar alarm in his GMC.

As for beats, there's always this one:

That Slam scene is great.  We saw him live at Dingwalls, must have been just before Amethyst Rock Star came out, and he started with the prison yard victory through language scene acapella.  Must have been one of the most electrifying moments of any show I've seen, the crowd just didn't know how to react.  Then four songs in he's covering Radiohead's Lucky... good show, a lot better than the album it was promoting.