classic Wu-Tang solo run poll

its a bit weird seeing all these classic dudes being referred to as "punchline rappers", a term i always thought existed w/ a dismissive connotation to refer to guys like...i dunno, vakill or jedi mind tricks whose raps are actually like 90% punchlines and not just wordplay

it's not a term with a neg connotation, just a ref to an aspect of style born of east coast battling tradition -- there's even a rapper called punchline from when this style was in ascendancy -- but i mean i guess it's just referencing an aspect of a style wrt some classic dudes rather than something that's meant to sum them up.

i really want to listen to lord finesse right now.

actually i just downloaded a punchline free online EP from a couple years ago...him and a dude called fokis...it's actually pretty good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDFgnwJWX68

basically you know it's some some gully old east coast punchline shit when a series of lines ends in words or phrases that rhyme in "catastrophe" :)

Guys can we please stop with the rap authenticity jackoff sesh and talk about Wu-Tang albums again?

― more than ever convinced ilxor is a sock (ilxor), Thursday, October 14, 2010 5:01 PM (Yesterday)

then fucking do it dude

do it Rockapella!

I'm not sure I grasp what is being meant by "intertextualized context" in this thread

ilxor, this isn't a buzzband thread, u don't need to keep worthlessly posting to it.

afaict it refers to how coke-dealing has become so ingrained in the genre that it's taken for granted, it basically serves as an accepted backdrop that informs the genre as a whole and is approached as such by modern rappers...?

It encourages a responsive practice which takes that intertextuality for granted (again, a lot of people don't like this: presumably the call for rap to be either more real or more cartoonish is at base the call for it not to take intertextuality for granted, but to either minimise or foreground it consciously).

cuz yeah, basically, this is my reaction

xp

xxxp yeah i love that stuff too, i kinda got into rap thru wu-tang -> undie punchline stuff, and it took me a while to understand why all the real rap heads here aren't really interested in it. liquid swords was my fav of these back then too! but now cuban linx and ironman just sound way more impressive to me, even in terms of 'wordplay'

also i found that it's tricky to get into mainstream rap when that's your starting point, since you end up looking for a type of cleverness that doesn't really exist, or when it does it's way more subtle

punch & words are/were dope. "in rap battles you'll dial 9, just to get a line out"

t took me a while to understand why all the real rap heads here aren't really interested in it.

p sure everyone idolizes finesse, big l etc. but ny fell off hard and this aspect went with it

percee p is the other kinda lost great of that axis

gr8 footage of percee p battling finesse on the block circa 1988 on youtube

haha man i've been kinda kicking around the idea of starting a rap battles youtube thread cuz i figured i'd annoy the fuck out of the swag thread if i started posting them there, maybe i should

yeah do, stop me being all memory lane itt.

This was where everyone went off on deej, and with good reason IMO because by rolling his damn eyes and calling that a grocery bag metaphor he (dis)missed like three layers of intertextual density in that line as if making multiple allusions in a sentence is now anathema to making "good" hip-hop.

― GLEERILLAZ! (HI DERE), Friday, October 15, 2010 8:55 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

'three layers of intertextual density,' what?? its a simple straightforward punchline
& btw do you ever go off on moonship when he does similar shit in dance threads? or croupier himself for that matter? since when is speaking in absolutes & making the 'imo' silent while dissing received wisdom such a bfd to ilx??

i mean other than hi dere seeming to have it out for me the past couple mo's

http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG

fwiw im not 'anti punchline' -- its a certain style of punchline that hasnt aged well imo. obviously GZA >>>>>> young money, but thats like Nirvana >>>> puddle of mudd. sorta like how the pfork list had nirvana outside the top ten could be read as making a statement of how the artists it influenced may have reflected badly (if unfairly) on them in retrospect, im taking a similar stance w/ gza & what remains of 'punchline rapping' today

i mean i still like jada & fabolous as far as punchline rappers go, although fab i pretty much only like on R&B/ryan leslie type shit any more ... kinda interesting that i think the punchline style really works well on those cuts for some reason -- i guess because hes just trying to be slick & clever flirting w/ the singers instead of acting hard? and if a rapper's main goal is variations on the aesthetic of sounding hard/street then it can undercut that if you're trying too hard to be 'clever' --

in fact what i liked a lot abt gucci worked in that way, his clever-ness was sorta disguised instead of being all obvious & GROCERY BAG!!!

I thought "grocery bag" meant a complete nonsequitur rather than a corny simile. Has Urban Dictionary lied to me yet again?

as far as i know, "grocery bag" on ILX means the construction (young money style)

like instead of saying

I keep hoes running back and forth like a soccer team

you say

I keep hoes running a back and forth.....SOCCER TEAM!

but ... GZA clearly says "LIKE" in the line quoted

how did like 100 terrible definitions for "grocery bag" get accepted but my perfectly correct definition of "lightweight jammin" was rejected?

It's conspiracy.

i don't recall the case of the state vs. whiney g's definition of "lightweight jammin'", what's the deal?

"three layers" is rhetorical overstatement but I'm just going to post a direct link to s1ocki pointing out that there's more than one level going on with that line:

classic Wu-Tang solo run poll

"interpretation" is not quite the right word here, maybe "evocation"...? IOW it's a metaphor that, when you look closer at what he's talking about, is tied pretty intricately to what he's discussing and is used to move into another metaphorical lyrical space that transitions to yet another one in the subsequent couplet: Don't even stop in my station and attack/while your plan failed, hit the rail, like Amtrak

xpost, omn urbandictionary

wow I wish I hadn't looked up the definition of "grocery bag" on there

Ick.

grocery bag

when a poor man cant afford any condoms so he re-uses his old one.

"bitch settle down, im gettin this grocery bag all up in your shit"

Pretty no one a) does this and b) refers to it as "grocery bag".

why does he want her to settle down

did we ever figure out how to parse the original grocery bag line or is it just one of those unsolvable riddles of time and space

I guess she's running away from used condom covered junk.

Another classic bit of naturalistic dialogue from Urban Dictionary.

but ... GZA clearly says "LIKE" in the line quoted

― i was like a person at a table at a place (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, October 15, 2010 12:40 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah obv -- thats why i said 'proto-'
its a simile that doesnt really add anything to the street vibe hes trying to convey

― j. sargent & lil k3v (deej), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:18 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^ which sl0cki already proved was a stupid thing to say and everyone agreed

what should we call a "proto-grocery bag"? a "burlap sack" maybe?

N.O.R.E.

to clarify so this doesnt turn into another 200 posts, the thing that bothers us about GROCERY BAG punchlines is that they take u out of everything & make you focus on the grocery bag construction gimmick -- it doesnt feel like a naturalized part of an individual's rapping, it feels like yr fitting into some grocery-bag-rapper-formula.

suggesting that gza line was proto-grocery bag was a way of suggesting that he was on the tail end of a style where you were just trying to pack as many similes into each verse as you could, and that this was about as 'mainstream' as that style would be for awhile -- that his persona got kinda overshadowed by laundry lists of similes/metaphors

^ which sl0cki already proved was a stupid thing to say and everyone agreed

― gr80 antebellum (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, October 15, 2010 12:52 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

he 'proved it'??

i dont see how what slocki said has anything to do w/ my point

This thread =

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3TNmNytvi8

is he really trying to convey a street vibe on that particular song though? just sounds like battle rap to me, its not like the line is in 'cold world'

xxxp with science.

alex why are you here? isnt there a reggae thread u can post on?

is he really trying to convey a street vibe on that particular song though? just sounds like battle rap to me, its not like the line is in 'cold world'

― only built 4 cuban linux... (ciderpress), Friday, October 15, 2010 12:55 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^discovered wu tang from a dude playing acoustic guitar in a blacklit college dorm room in 2003

that his persona got kinda overshadowed by laundry lists of similes/metaphors

maybe this happened to him later (I don't know) but I wouldn't say this is the case on Liquid Swords at all, where it's more just straight-up storytelling with a few exceptions (Labels, B.I.B.L.E.)

xp