classic Wu-Tang solo run poll

Well, you did say Meth's career hasn't lived up to his early rep, but it seems he's had the most succesful career of all Wu members.

maybe career was the wrong word to use, I'm not using records sales as any yardstick of merit here

otherwise we might as well rank this poll in records sold and be done with it

"clever and/or unexpected wordplay is so dated" goes a very long way towards why I don't feel a lot of current hip-hop

― GLEERILLAZ! (HI DERE), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 2:21 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

its more 'exceedingly corny wordplay is so dated' that is at issue here. or 'wordplay that breaks character'

you guys have it exactly backwards -- by becoming consistent characters rather than rappers 'performing' characters it freed MCs to play roles & inhabit them more fully & convincingly instead of being these detached 'performers' of various characters or w/e

since NWA the more grimey shit has always trumped the less grimey ish. thats why wu tang was a big deal in the 1st place -- they were coming off grimier than what was before them (which included that juice crew influenced obvious metaphor shit)

"Ima tell it to you straight / i dont need a metaphor" - t.i.

its more 'exceedingly corny wordplay is so dated' that is at issue here.

Wait, in an era where we have songs like "Bedrock" you're calling out Wu emcees for being exceedingly corny????

lol i think that song is more than corny its just awful

lyrically

the "in character" portion of your argument makes more sense to me; my big problem is that I am really not interested in most of the characters these guys are portraying

who are 'these guys'

most prominent punchline rappers nowadays really suck, which is why there's been like three famous new rappers from the northeast in the past 10 years

yeah imo punchline rappers now being shitty is more an argument against gza aging well than for him

man you dudes aren't up on IRON SOLOMON huh?

who are 'these guys'

like.. 90% of the people who are currently selling records

basically the only emcees out that I am even halfway interested in are all past-their-prime fossils

the best punchline rapper of the past three years has been... raekwon

the "in character" portion of your argument makes more sense to me; my big problem is that I am really not interested in most of the characters these guys are portraying

^^^OTM

unfortunately cliche critique of hip hop as being all just about thugs (everybody's a drug dealer, a pimp, a murderer, etc.) has sadly become MORE prescient over the years, not less

it's like jesus don't you ever get tired of this schtick, it is now almost 30 years old

"Ima tell it to you straight / i dont need a metaphor" - t.i.

= you are about to bore me

(and I say this as a guy who likes some TI)

swimsuit mammal handle

if you want a deathless onslaught of 'clever' rappers there are tons & tons of underground rappers boring the shit out of anyone who listens on a daily basis

seriously dudes just go download royce tapes & stop whinging

deej playing the backpacker card

(i love royce)

backpacker is such a weird pejorative

if you want a deathless onslaught of 'clever' rappers there are tons & tons of underground rappers boring the shit out of anyone who listens on a daily basis

I think Edan was the last backpacker I really liked and that was more for the beats than anything else cuz he wasn't all THAT clever

Liquid Swords is my favourite rap album ever but they are all great, Tical is probably the weakest.

don't know which i dislike more: current 'these guys' '90% of rappers selling today' or the posturing/condescension inherent in how rap is discussed nowadays

i'd like to know what backpack rappers a deej likes

actually maybe it's just the posturing/condescension inherent in how deej discusses rap

i like royce & crooked i. although not together and not with joe budden or especially ortiz.

backpack has nothing to do w/ it?? lots of backpack rappers dont spit this way

maybe my condescension is directly related to your boring, 1.5 decade old argument of received wisdom. can we take on HIP HOP ALBUM SKITS next??

u know what i hate?? when rappers 'go pop'!!

serious question deej: how do you approach/interpret/deal with the subject matter of the majority of mainstream rap? I'm assuming you aren't in denial about the prevalance of drug dealing/mysogny/violence/nihilism/materialism, and given that the "thug" persona rules mainstream rap in general, I just wonder what you find so interesting about infinite sub-permutations of it. Like, I'm assuming you aren't really cool with dealing coke or shooting people or fucking strippers or whatever, do you just look past all this stuff? Cuz to me, after awhile, the nihilism of it all becomes crushing. I'm not saying this kind of subject matter is unacceptable or without merit - I like plenty of music with grim subject matter, rap included (and metal and rock etc etc) - but it just seems SO dominant in mainstream rap, and so explicit and bare... I dunno how people look past it, really.

xp

fwiw this is not condescension directed at ppl like m@tt and dan who are content to listen to old dudes doing new stuff or whatever

i mean, an example of a rapper who never dealt w/ clock-radio-speakers type raps is SCARfACe who has cross-generational appeal. lots of rappers now, particularly the ones on the charts, follow the pattern of moving rap more towards the realm of persona/character instead of constructions of dense wordplay. imo, this was largely a good thing, considering how boring so many rappers 'in it for the wordplay' turn out to be

of course 99% of rappers are garbage but i dont really take every dude with a rapping myspace into account

fully aware you probably won't answer this and will just go for the zings but hey

xp

SCARfACe

I mean I'm old enough to remember when these criticisms were lodged at rap the first time around back in the 80s, but back then you could really point to a LOT of other mainstream stuff that wasn't gangsta or whatever, there really did seem to be a wider range of approaches that were explicitly NOT "underground", backpackers didn't even exist then

HOW COULD ANYONE WACTH THE SPORANOS>!??!

deej is this "moving to the realm of persona/character" a thing you can hear in the music or are you talking about branding/twitter or something? Cuz I don't recall rappers from previous decades being particularly short on persona or character

serious question deej: how do you approach/interpret/deal with the subject matter of the majority of mainstream rap? I'm assuming you aren't in denial about the prevalance of drug dealing/mysogny/violence/nihilism/materialism, and given that the "thug" persona rules mainstream rap in general, I just wonder what you find so interesting about infinite sub-permutations of it. Like, I'm assuming you aren't really cool with dealing coke or shooting people or fucking strippers or whatever, do you just look past all this stuff? Cuz to me, after awhile, the nihilism of it all becomes crushing. I'm not saying this kind of subject matter is unacceptable or without merit - I like plenty of music with grim subject matter, rap included (and metal and rock etc etc) - but it just seems SO dominant in mainstream rap, and so explicit and bare... I dunno how people look past it, really.

xp

― i was like a person at a table at a place (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 6:34 PM (47 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i easily get tired of lots of rappers working in this vein btw -- its what i found kind of crushing about freddie gibbs. the answer is that variation in style & substance can make up for a lot of 'depressing topics,' and also that just because topics are depressing doesnt mean that i dont think we shouldnt face them? i dunno i mean ppl still post to the politics thread daily & imo thats a much more oppressive & nihilistic exercise on some level.

i enjoy the musicality of it, and it seems to me that a lot of times when ppl get excited about 'wordplay' rappers its part escapism & partly just ... not whats fun about music. i like rappers who have musical approaches, and unique approaches. im not really excited by guys who are doing rote styles either! i mean isnt the fundamental thing here that i find say gucci or waka to be unusual, interesting stylists, while you find them to be typical/generic? i mean swag cru and old heads (& ppl who make up both groups like m@tt) often find common ground in old-head rap debates but i kinda like how this raekwon / gza argument shows that its aesthetics at stake here, not 'subject matter' -- so im not really sure how your question relates to the issue at hand.

i like rappers who are convincing / consistent. the less frequently im taken out of the world they're creating the more likely i seem to be to want to hear their tracks again & again. After a few years GZA's stuff just makes me feel like im listening to a dude who was rapping really well for his time, but wasnt really ready for the changes that were coming in rap style. where ghost in the immediate future & rae in a kind of timeless roughneck way were on the cutting edge of stylistic developments

deej is this "moving to the realm of persona/character" a thing you can hear in the music or are you talking about branding/twitter or something? Cuz I don't recall rappers from previous decades being particularly short on persona or character

― da croupier, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 6:40 PM (30 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nothing about twitter -- im talking about the way their aesthetic choices become more ... consistent? all-encompassing? there are lots of older rappers who i would argue 'aged well' because their rapping stayed consistent, in character etc. -- thinking Too $hort, rakim, even schoolly d. and there are others where stuff just doesnt age as well. this doesnt make it less important, it just means im less likely to listen to it -- a lot of Run DMC stuff today sounds a lil silly. this is the nature of the context of the present -- thinking 'call me sire'-type Run DMC lyrics. or LL saying he'll take a musclebound man and put his face in the sand.

Don't see what Run-DMC's datedness has to do with a lack of persona/character/consistency

btw my favorite recent 'playing with context' bit of rap writing i posted on fruity swag thread the other day -- j0rdan pointed it out to me --
http://realniggatumblr.tumblr.com/post/1293579216/lost-boyz-feat-canibus-dogg-pound-music-makes

The deaths of BIG & Pac gave birth too many random (and sometimes unnecessary) collaborations between East Coast & West Coast artist. There’s a bunch of big titty bitches at a pool party mean while Canibus is talking about murdering people and burying their bodies on another planet

geographical context can have stuff seeming 'more' or 'less' corny, or in this case LOL, as well

I don't understand when/why "the entertaining guy with the funky-fresh flow" stopped being a compelling 'persona'

Don't see what Run-DMC's datedness has to do with a lack of persona/character/consistency

― da croupier, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 6:45 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dunno, that rappers saying you should 'call them sire' isnt really a 'character'? it breaks the consistency of a person playing a role other than 'rapper'? it totally takes me out of the song & sounds kinda 'silly'?

thumbs up to any discussion that forces a multi-graf, interesting, non-knee-jerk think-through from deej instead of "oh no your argument is old & therefore invalid" -- as if something that sucks for longer than a year magically stops sucking because we failed to stop it early

fwiw i dont mean artistic consistency, i mean holding together a consistent persona that is fleshed out more than 'really good rapper'

did they do "call me sire" more than once & anywhere else than in the context of a song called, bolded for emphasis here, king of rap

I could be wrong but I think the sire bit is like maybe a reference to the king part

just thinkin out loud here

I think I get what you prefer in rappers - a kind of earthbound straightforwardness that doesn't risk embarrassment through flights of fancy - I just don't think it has anything to with having more "persona". I love workmanlike singer-songwriters like JJ Cale but I wouldn't say he has more "persona/character" than Neil Young.

the failure of which doesnt necessarily make for bad music or anything -- obv run dmc are totally classic & awesome & i do listen to them, same with gza, its just this kind of ability to withstand current trends that puts cuban linx or schoolly d slightly ahead in my playlist

I think I get what you prefer in rappers - a kind of earthbound straightforwardness that doesn't risk embarrassment through flights of fancy - I just don't think it has anything to with having more "persona". I love workmanlike singer-songwriters like JJ Cale but I wouldn't say he has more "persona/character" than Neil Young.

― da croupier, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 6:51 PM (13 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nah thats not it -- if they have 'flights of fancy' i just want those flights to be consistent to the character making them.
husalah does this all the time ...

A yo the Husalah shines on the steet
But at night the bright lights will have it bright enough
Picture this a million stones, I got brand new kicks
The world is ours you understand it huh? Sometimes I get too deep

A yo the Husalah shines on the steet
But at night the bright lights will have it bright enough
Picture this a million stones, I got brand new kicks
The world is ours you understand it huh? Sometimes I get too deep

what the fuck does all this really mean? i dunno its pretty 'out there' -- but it fits into his character, which is supposed to be pretty 'out there'

the answer is that variation in style & substance can make up for a lot of 'depressing topics,' and also that just because topics are depressing doesnt mean that i dont think we shouldnt face them?

this is kinda what I expected you to say, more or less. I guess my problem with so much of it is that the variations I hear don't make up ENOUGH for me, they seem kinda minor a lot of the time. as for facing depressing topics, I guess I've been facing coke-dealing thug topics in music for 30 years and I can't say I, or society in general, is any better for it. If anything things are even WORSE now than they were in the 80s. I guess I know more about coke dealing than I would have otherwise, and it sounds like the life of a coke dealer sucks pretty bad. the subject matter has just become background noise for society in general, it's just taken for granted, it's like that's just what you can EXPECT rap to be about, it's "just the way it is" *shrug*

many xposts