most pathetic excuse for wordplay in Young Money's "Bedrock"

two people in that list are rappers

I know rap is where you stan for whoever's famous because that's where the money is. Props for Andre 3000 for telling Drake to fuck himself

i think the problem with a lot of the beatdown drake reviews is they try to take dude down on some highfalutin artistic merit shit, when really it's like: his raps are bad and don't sound good. like, my review would just be "my sister is currently listening to thank me later: the timbre and tones of his voice are pretty unpleasant." lol u mad is the only real necessary rebuttal to anyone dumb enough to stan for this.

― them goons you rock, make em sb (samosa gibreel), Thursday, June 17, 2010 4:54 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark

I'm not stanning for the album -- I gave it 3.5 stars in my review -- but I think it's quite good. I like the timbre and tone of Drake's voice, particularly when he's singing, as his voice can sound a little whiny when he raps. But you know what? His raps sound good. Yeah the lyrics aren't the best ever, but they're hella fun to rap along with, and that counts for a lot.

the problem with Drake's voice is that it sounds a lot like Young Berg's voice.

er Yung i guess

I don't remember Yung Berg being as annoying.

If you mean a less annoying version of Yung Berg, then I'd agree to an extent.

But you know what? His raps sound good. Yeah the lyrics aren't the best ever, but they're hella fun to rap along with, and that counts for a lot.

― rennavate, Thursday, June 17, 2010 7:51 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'm not really finding much of this "fun" you speak of. and i have spend a lot of my life listening to, like, teenagers rap on jerk songs, which to me is often fun despite bad-ish lyrics.

Yeah, a huge part of my problem with Drake is not even that he writes terrible lyrics, but that (as a rapper, at least) he sucks all the air out of everything.

i'm not really finding much of this "fun" you speak of. and i have spend a lot of my life listening to, like, teenagers rap on jerk songs, which to me is often fun despite bad-ish lyrics.

― samosa gibreel, Thursday, June 17, 2010 6:07 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark

I don't necessarily mean the songs are "fun" themselves, but rather they are fun to rap along with. Not quite the same thing, although I might be splitting hairs.

I agree that Drake doesn't sound like he's having fun, and he SHOULD BE HAVING FUN right now. You're right, the New Boyz at least sound like they are having fun.

rap doesn't have to be fun, guys

it's really not a legit criticism

it's much more fun to rap along to cartoon nicki minaj raps, if i'm gonna force myself to enjoy rap on the radio that is garbage

Of course it doesn't, but I don't think we're arguing it does. It's not like I'm gonna listen to The Infamous and go, "Damn, I wish Prodigy and Havoc sounded happier!"

his voice is hella annoying

to be clear i said not good-sounding was the most important thing to me, not fun was just a response to rennavate's post

i think the problem with a lot of the beatdown drake reviews is they try to take dude down on some highfalutin artistic merit shit, when really it's like: his raps are bad and don't sound good.

this is some omar little style "lol the notion of criticism!" shit -- there's nothing wrong with treating drake as a highfalutin artist and criticizing him accordingly

well yeah to an extent it's worth discussing seriously, and i thought your old drake post was good, but he's right that there's a critical mass of anti-drake (and pro-drake) articles this week and even having picked a side both are pretty tiresome to me at the moment

well, i mean obv there's a deluge of opinions right at the moment, but it is an event album

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/jimmy-and-me/Content?oid=4277699

jordan imo i'd say your drake takedown is the most effective of those i've read, because it's the least highfalutin and mostly focuses on deconstructing what is so bad about his raps, and thus expresses what i feel is the actual main bad thing about him as an artist. many of the album reviews going around, and it's like you would have to engage with his lyrics on an unnecessarily profound level to get shit like

Seemingly significant personal events like his parents' divorce, his grandmother's move to a nursing home or his girlfriend's abortion are treated as if Drake were the only one on earth to ever experience such trauma. There's no depth or exploration of these occurrences, either; they're simply noted and then brushed to the side.

shit like this feels unnecessary to me because his most heinous offence is something much simpler, albeit more significant.

I sort of really want to write about the fact that Drake is CANADIAN, too. How the fuck is a CANADIAN the most buzzed about rapper right now? (Of course, him being most buzzed about is contentious, I know). It's a pretty big deal; Drake has already pretty much become the biggest Canadian rapper of all time... there's an interesting analysis there waiting to be done, think.

Seemingly significant personal events like his parents' divorce, his grandmother's move to a nursing home or his girlfriend's abortion are treated as if Drake were the only one on earth to ever experience such trauma. There's no depth or exploration of these occurrences, either; they're simply noted and then brushed to the side.

yeah this is an affliction of thinking that rap has to be about "something"

I dunno about that. I think the problem being highlighted there is that he is trying to say "something", but has nothing to say about the "something".

he doesn't have to be the most perceptive and substantial rapper, it could at least be witty or cool. i'm not saying critics who try and take down drake for being vacuous are wrong because 'hey it's rap music', but to me that's peeling back layers of something way uglier and more important. like, calling a dude out on having sub par jay leno monologue raps is more cutting and meaningful to me than how he doesn't have anything insightful to say about his girlfriend's abortion. it's okay to knock him for both, but i think the focus should be on the former.

The greater point is that he's not successful at either of these things.

http://www.myimgs.net/images/wsdc.jpg

yeah this is an affliction of thinking that rap has to be about "something"

― Youve Beenexposed (J0rdan S.), Thursday, June 17, 2010 8:18 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what rap that is good isnt about 'something'

mentioning Pill proves my point btw

http://drvee.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/strawman.jpg

You are quite literally the first person to mention him on this thread.

I mean, shit, you are basically trolling.

who, deej? never!

what rap that is good isnt about 'something'

loads of rap, good rap, isn't based on what is being said but on how it's said. so rakim has a few love raps and socially conscious numbers but basically sez he's dope in extraordinary ways. alley boy and young dro sit up in big rims this year. if chuck d or cormega or whoever didn't rap well it wouldn't really matter what they rapped about.

*on big rims

well if there's anyone that i would say wouldn't be as revered as a rapper without his subject matter and POV it's Chuck D, but yeah point taken. i mean if someone told me a Redman record wasn't "about" anything I'd be like OK i guess but who the fuck cares?

http://www.tradebit.com/usr/djmixtapez/pub/9002/The-Mixtape-About-Nothing.jpg

from fact magazine:

Thank Me Later is as strong a debut as the rap genre has had for years now, and with it Drake deserves to be popular and acclaimed to boot. His story might be different, his style might be quirky, but his relevance right now can’t be denied; this album could be as important for hip hop as Merriweather Post Pavillion was for contemporary indie rock.

i mean what is this the global challops conspiracy?

clearly it's the skinny jeans Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

if it was just the critics who were rating this thing then i'd just put it down to ignorant critics still searching for the "big Hip Hop record" that didnt come out last year. but then theres the rappers co-signing drake too. don't get it

i think the rappers co-signing are more understandable/predictable than the critics. dudes in the industry are basically a bunch of yes men who'll rally around whoever it makes sense to feature on their next single etc. anyway.

i mean a critic can at least have an opinion on shit without any real consequences most of the time. if a famous rapper doesn't like or publicly endorse another famous rapper it quickly becomes "beef." i think Jay-Z might be just kind of passively going along with the Drake thing because anytime he didn't vocally throw support behind someone like Game or Wayne when they were coming up it turned into some ridiculous media circus.

yeah that is true i suppose. whole thing is quite depressing. i'm left hoping jeezy or t.i. drops some jaw-dropping summer album and the industry can actually rally around something worthwhile.

tbh T.I. could drop a Drake cover album and I would enjoy that more than Drake himself, because I really can't stand the way dude sounds

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/clicktrack/2010/06/album_review_drake_thank_me_la.html

Chris Richards (ex Q and Not U and now Wash. Post critic)likes it:

His concluding paragraphs:

Though he's been championed as incumbent rap royalty, Drake's strongest analog resides in a neighboring star system. Her name is Taylor Swift.

For generations, both country singers and rappers have traded with the same currency: the notion of authenticity. Accordingly, both Drake and 20-year-old Swift are pushing their respective genres forward by retooling what it means to be "real." He gets his heart crushed in the tabloids, she gets her heart crushed after sixth-period Biology. Both can flip these painful personal experiences into supremely pleasurable hooks.

Yet as similar as they are, Swift's songbook galvanizes fans with its youthful charm. Drake's output feels far more downcast, much more remote.

He's tugging on a strand of pop music that feels both magical and rare - the kind that brings us all together by reminding us that we're all alone.

christ what is with this theme of drake's universal relatability

the record these ppl want this to be was released last year by kanye west!

xpost to some dude: also his management were tight with jay era roc-a-fella

the richards review was upthread

yeah obviously Jay has personal connections to the guy via Kanye and other people too. i'm just saying i think Jay is probably tired/wary of "get out of the way old man" friction with new stars and is just trying not to rock the boat at this point.

supposed to have a phone call w/ Richards today abt something unrelated on the terms of "let's not talk about Drake" haha