What happened to socially/politically concious rappers

RIP joe c.

Rip Lou dogg

I kind of wish RT was still here so I could ask him one thing he's ever done for African-Americans other than torrenting Ras Kass records.

― The Reverend, Friday, January 9, 2015 8:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

tbf ras kass isnt even listed in his OP, "Nature of the Threat" might do him some good

RT not into west coast rap at all based on that orig list

Ras is towards the bottom. But the only west coasters listed are nwa pac and ras

oh he just wrote 'ras', ctrl-f fail

I've been thinking about this thread for the better part of the day, and I was kind of piecing together some thoughts...I know next to nothing about jazz, and I was reading the wikipedia article for bebop a week or so ago and it struck me how it talked about how its architects were deliberately moving away from dance music into more challenging areas, and that one of the main reasons cited was because white musicians would come down to the club and steal whatever music they heard for their own bands. And I mean most of us have to be familiar with the early days of rock, when white singers had no qualms in confiscating catchy R&B songs, slapping a vanilla arrangement onto them, and crediting themselves as songwriters and just unleashing them onto the pop charts and making a bunch of money off that. So I don't necessarily feel totally off the mark by saying that relentless push forward that takes place in a lot of black pop in the past half-century has been at least in part fueled by well-grounded fears of white co-option. I absolitely get the impressionhat's the case with hip hop, which accounts for just a huge portion of the most radical and incendiary modernist art ever created. Even thirty-five years on, it still is p much completely irreplicable. And it seems to me even from my lay-nebbish distance that a large part of that is that there's something in there that is always pushing to go as extreme and as subversive and as radical as possible in the context of its times. Certainly it's a bit of a stretch to say that the anxiety of white plagiarism is a reason why hip hop turned away from socially conscious themes--I can't imagine anyone really thought a white person could expect to be taken seriously aligning him/herself with the Nation of Islam & Five Percenter rhetoric (though there were probably many people who thought the same thing about Rastafarianism in 1977, and look at us now!)--but it could be argued that the rapid rate of mutation, the constant willingness to change the game comes from a deep-seated desire to stay out of reach from white theft. 

You can't say this for every genre for sure (like my beloved space rock) but def for hip hop it seems like if you are measuring what's going on right now against what was happening five, or ten, or twenty years ago, then you are at least partially missing the point.

I don't really want to make any assumptions about RT/ANA's race, but it's probably safe to say for this same reason that any white person to say that Wayne or Keef or Soulja Boy is terrible compared to earlier MCs will probably neverplay well. Whatever changes goes through hip hop seem, even from my squinting distance, to always be grounded in the desire to preserve the integrity of the culture. Which I think is why almost everybody itt thinks that hip hop is still a subversive and active political agent sans overt political content (which does exist,in its current form no matter how the OP tries to trivialize and dismiss it)

(sorry if I'm making hip hop culture seem more monolithic than it really is)

"Corporate rule$$ keep the people dumb..."

It seems like you answered your own question at the end. The 80s artists had the luxury of not having millions of dollars at stake. They had the freedom to say what was on their minds. It can still be done, but you have to be cleaver, or extremely gifted, like De La Soul, or 2Pac. The ma$$es never liked to be preached to. Appealing to the lowest common denominator will always mean less knowledge , and more ass.

I never understood why people have a problem with this. Business is business. Business will never be socially responsible.

De La were from the 80s

the capital of De La Were is HOVA

lay-nebbish!

hahaha that's awesome

"Everything is just weed and trainers and bitch on my dick idk"

britishers can be hard to take when they talk about rap...

no offense to the rest of you dizzzeee rascalz out there...

hey hey hey
are we SURE he's british?
we don't really have raccoons here.

yeah, nobody says trainers here. he might as well have said "everything is just flash jumpers and biscuit tins from fortnum and mason idk"

i actually heard a classmate use the "punk is just kill your mother music" cliche in about 1979. wonder if it goes back to 1976/77. probably. i don't remember the first time i heard the "rap is just guns/money/bitches" thing though. a long time ago. i still hear it all the time. people hate rap so much.

and country

Not sure that there's great multitudes of people out there with a visceral hatred of country music

there definitely are

there's a reason P4K refuses to ever review a Country album

isn't "i like everything but rap and country" the ultimate cliché for ppl who fancy themselves open-minded listeners to say?

If we're talking about hatred of country music comparatively with rap across all demographics, it doesn't stack up.

don't agree

rap is bigger so its haters will probably be more vocal whereas country haters can still get away with pretending it doesn't exist, but the (very similar) disdain is assuredly there if you even start to scratch the surface

lol come to Oregon sometime and we'll take a tour of some bars so you can see just how much country is played (tons) versus rap (zero)

isn't "i like everything but rap and country" the ultimate cliché for ppl who fancy themselves open-minded listeners to say?

This is, or at least was, true from my experience. I think it's a class thing - rap and country historically being the music of the poor.

there are like 3 or 4 different radio stations that play country where i am. in western massachusetts. you can't hear rap at all.

that's another reason why many people hate Country so much--its unescapable-ness in rural areas

consistently people tell me how much they hate rap when they come in my store. i could play death metal in my store all day and some people might raise eyebrows but if i played rap all day people would leave. which is a good tactical device when i get those pesky baby boomers in my store.

my stepdad always says he has never 'gotten' rap music, the point of it, the appeal, etc. he is kind of a racist tho so.

rap is bigger so its haters will probably be more vocal whereas country haters can still get away with pretending it doesn't exist, but the (very similar) disdain is assuredly there if you even start to scratch the surface

― lex pretend, Monday, January 12, 2015 3:15 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You don't need to scratch anything to get a sense of how rap is detested. Large swathes of people think it is responsible for crime, poverty and moral degradation. Its reception is heavily informed by a legacy of racial hatred and contempt and is believed by many to be completely artless and require no talent. Nothing similar could be said about country music even in its heyday decades ago.

That Country is not hated for the same reasons or by the same people doesn't mean that it isn't widely hated

Country is pretty hated and hugely popular

to a lot of people, especially in large coastal cities, Country represents the South, ignorance, racism, flyover state blandness, corniness, etc.

hmmm, maybe it's a toss-up. i do hear country hate too, but the rap hate seems more...hateful. like the idea of it is so terrible. like the geezer who said he felt like he was being aurally raped when i had rap on in the store one day. that visceral thing again...

rap is bigger

waht lol

not in America

there are places other than america

i mean i hear rap-hate from non-white people too. it's divisive no matter how you slice it.

did you guys watch the premiere of Empire? is there a thread on ile? high hopes...

rap hate seems to be an age thing too

perhaps relevant

xxp i really enjoyed empire! it seems poised to be pretty ridiculous and melodramatic but it's very effective as such & I liked most of the music in the pilot

it's a cliche with every kind of listener but i hear again and again from people that rap was great 5/10/15/20 years ago and sucks now. basically it was great when that person was paying attention - high school or college - and then completely sucked forever more as soon as they stopped paying attention. i hear that with rap way more than any other genre.

LEX, you should check out Empire if you get a chance. you might dig it.

i started a thread. but probably nobody will care because everyone hates rap.

Empire - The Rap to Riches Answer to Nashville on Fox

i still haven't got round to nashville yet!

oh man nashville is the best.

i love the music on nashville. i really do.

so far empire hasn't hit a home run with the music, but it's okay so far. kinda time warp-y in a weird way. the musical identity hasn't been established like it is on nashville.