I Confess : What sucks most about your musical tastes and attitudes ?

Haha, reading upthread it seems "dilletante" is the mot du jour ITT.

My pop/hiphop/r'n'b tastes have widened. Whereas I used to despise most pop, not understand r'n'b and new hiphop alienated me, thanks to ILX polls I'm coming round to all three.

I used to find hiphop frustrating because I felt it needed a lot of attention paid to the lyrics, which isn't always practical if you're reading or something.

Conversely another thing that frustrates me about the music I listen to, is it's getting more accessible. This is down to living in closer proximity to people than before. I can't exactly blast Deicide all day long without complaints.

Not interested in new music. Actually, that's not true, I love the new stuff which I get largely from polls on here or, um, from shazaming when I'm at the shops. But no way am I spending my own time doing the filtering, so while I miss out on tons of dull stuff, no doubt there are masses of great tunes that I'll never hear.

Also, lyrics are basically dead to me now. I like the voice as just another instrument, with the advantage that it's the one that's most fun to bellow along to, but a tiny sample does basically the same job as I get from all but the best singing. The exception that I do appreciate is cleverness with form - I'll get a kick out of a long series of rhymes, say, but I'm not hearing the meaning at all (kind of odd because what I like reading has followed more or less exactly the opposite trajectory).

The days of being thrilled by an eighteen-year-old with an attitude are not, I think, coming back.

My resignation that R&B and hip-hop will never again mean anything to me. Used to listen to quite a lot, but when I met my wife she actively disliked it, so I stopped playing it anywhere near so much. And now I have preteen kids I dare not put any on for fear of the language. And having been away so long I have no idea where to return to.

^^^
Who you hang around with can have as much of a negative impact as positive when it comes to things like this.

Yep. But, you know, my wife makes me happier than hip-hop, so it's not a hard choice. First Wu-Tang album was the definitive cut-off moment: the skit about anal rape (am I remembering that right?) saw her walk over to the CD player, press eject, and tell me she didn't want to hear that, because it upset and offended her.

I can't help feeling like there's something disingenuous about people's shame about listening only to older music. But that's probably because I'm sometimes embarrassed that the vast majority of what I listen to is new.

i refuse to give any new hip-hop or R&B a listen. i stopped listening to anything in those genres in 1998...the hip hop I have heard sounds like complete shit and to me is a disgrace to the classic hip hop of the past...it just seems like anyone with a beat, some screaming and a stupid fucking name like waka flocka fucka and whatever can make a hip hop album. I'd like to hear what some classic artists think of the new shit.

Lex to thread.

Wow. I'm really surprised to see such a blatantly regressive attitude expressed on ILM. I mean, if you're not interested in current hiphop or think it compares negatively to that of the past, that's altogether fine, but to put it in those terms...I generally assume everyone here is smarter than that.

i think most ARE smarter than that, cf WAKA (rightly) placing second in the 2010 trax poll we've just concluded.

I've totally come round to stuff like Waka Flocka - sure it's not really dextrous rap in the original sense (Fu Schnickens or whatever) as the rapping's slower and more, i dunno, shout-along i guess? but it's unadulterated fun - pure maniacal glee in tracks like Hard In Da Paint. Comparing it to old stuff doesn't make much sense. It's like trying to compare Chase & Status with Altern-8.

hip-hop is not, like, one monolithic thing with one set way of doing things and one set spirit to keep alive. its essential formal values can encompass a huge range of stuff. i don't know why in 2011 i still seem to have to say that.

I find it really weird when people say they only listen to new music (and many on here do). Do you throw away albums when they reach a certain sell-by date? Do you not enjoy having a historical frame of reference to the current stuff? I like new music, but things like, say, there are certain production values in sixties music which just don't exist any more but are just as welcome to my ears as something produced in an ultra modern studio.

assume they just mean that they find enough good new shit to keep them occupied, rather than a stance or w/e - not endorsing that but it's easy enough to do

i don't think anyone says that, not even me! i prioritise new music, which isn't the same thing. i've spent most of this week listening to old (and new) pj harvey.

lex, just out of interest and i'm not challenging anything here, but how often are you tempted to delve into older music that came out "before your time" i.e. Sure you could go back and listen to the PJ Harvey back catalogue, but I'm assuming you were previously familiar with some of her stuff?

haha and now i am listening to "let the dollar circulate" by billy paul which was like 1975 or something.

Good title for a song that

I will sometimes buy music because the artwork is pleasant or the artist looks hot in the music video.

And that sucks. Music shouldn't be about models or museum exhibits.

i mean, we've gone over this before though - i can and often do listen to music "before my time" but like 90% of the time i find it's impossible to have ownership of them, really find my way into them like i can for music i'm around for (or - like i could had i been around for them). it's, like, someone else's zeitgeist.

That makes sense. It's interesting that being a part of a current zeitgeist is important to people, and I can appreciate that.

I guess coming from a dormitory town with no real culture of its own to speak of, I always used music to escape the monotony of middle England and to inhabit other worlds time travel being a part of that. So e.g. if I listen to the Beach Boys, that's as close to East Coast '60s America as I'm likely to get. And to an extent, '60s LA is as foreign and exotic to me as a basement in Peckham, so be it grime or surf-pop, it's all an escapade.

xpost: When I actively followed and enjoyed hip hop, I responded most to the elements that made it work as club music. I can't discern those elements so readily in contemporary hip hop. It feels, to me, in my admittedly reduced experience (not helped by feeling that I lack vast swathes of useful context), less funky, more abrasive, hence less personally appealing. But then again, I can totally appreciate that the rhythmic and linguistic dexterity of the best contemporary rappers tends to be, in general, streets ahead of the old school. I listened to some old Tribe Called Quest the other day, and the rapping just sounded so tame, lame and formally constrained. On the other hand, I heard Young MC's "Know How" played before a gig a couple of weeks ago - very much a club track, of course - and was blown away by it all over again. As for newer stuff, I enjoyed some Bun B recently but was put off by the gangsta-isms, and I'm all over "Coming Home" - but it's slim pickings, and I don't feel motivated to try harder and delve deeper.

i should clarify, i've checked out a few of the newer artists, just find it all annoying. And basically what mike says above, just not motivated by any of it. To me it sounds like grunts, growls, autotunes...i just dont get the feeling with this newer stuff that i would with EPMD or Eric B. It just doesn't compare to me.

is it because its more dancey now than in the past...i don't know. it just doesn't grab me like older stuff did and does.

you old fart

i mean educate me people, is there stuff thats isn't so auto-tuney and more classic sounding? Like dog latin said, i dont care for the shout-along aspect of it.

educate yourself fool! get on it!

get on the tip!

people get more conservative as they age. its a fact.

and lex is in his 20's, right? he should be listening to new music. he should kill old music with a stick. don't listen to them, lexy!

Let your freak flag fly!

to some extent I do kind of understand chris's POV - a lot of rappers in the last few years sound like they're going out of their ways to be obnoxious: arrogance, commodity fetishism and dunderheaded gangsta mentally all play a part in this. While this is obviously the point and the attraction for a lot of modern rap fans, I can see how older fans might have trouble with Flocka's steez, as opposed to, say, Chuck D's brand of call-to-arms rap, or Q-Tip's fluffy quirkiness. Flocka and Gucci are grotesque cartoon anti-heroes who are not necessarily likable in a buddy kind of way. They probably don't give a fuck if you don't agree with whatever it is they're saying. So this is really something one has to buy into, otherwise I can see how it would be totally annoying.

i don't listen to current top 40 at all, and probably haven't for close to 8 years (since the last time I had a car and listened to the radio regularly.) i only keep up with a few contemporary artists.

waka flocka flame and gucci mane are not the only archetypes in contemporary rap

i tried to post on ilx about contemporary rap but got made fun of for being 6 months behind the times :(

autotune, love it or hate it, doesn't seem to be going away any time soon and has become as much a part of this era of music as the flange guitar in the 60s, or slap bass and saxophone in the 80s or the amen break in the 90s. It's just another instrument really, all too often confused as a substitute for "real singing", which it shouldn't be.

xpost lex - no i realise this, but I use gucci and flocka as examples.

chrisv - why not take a look around some of the entries in the EOY lists. This is how I opened up to new hiphop and r'n'b.

Maybe try Currensy?

The vast majority of rap today is neither autotuney or shouty and a fair amount of it is very classicist. If anything, Waka's success has been in part because there was an empty niche for loud, aggressive rap.

yeah, waka sounded refreshing to me!

Oh and Strong Arm Steady - The Search For Stoney Jackson is kind of classic sounding too.

rilly sometimes music SHOULDN'T be for you. i used to rant about that ed banger/justice stuff until i realized that i was old man yelling at cloud. it wasn't made to appeal to me! its for the kidz. that's why i hate when people go on and on about how awful some animated movie they just saw was. hey dumbo you are 30 years old! the movie is rated G! its for 5 year olds! sorry it didn't meet your lofty standards. and 5 year olds ENJOY disposable crap.

rev otm - WAKA broke through in a landscape where commercial rap = soft-serve, lightweight slop like drake and b.o.b, and most non-chart rappers emphasised lyrical prowess. his kind of raw aggressive energy (and ability to channel it as an aesthetic rather just a one-off random song) marks him out as a bit of a one-off atm.

it wasn't made to appeal to me! its for the kidz.

part of the reason that someone like ke$ha makes me so pissed off is because her schtick is EXACTLY that which always has appealed to me - trashy party girl on banging club pop tracks. so it really really annoys me to see her getting it so wrong.

rilly sometimes music SHOULDN'T be for you. i used to rant about that ed banger/justice stuff until i realized that i was old man yelling at cloud. it wasn't made to appeal to me! its for the kidz. that's why i hate when people go on and on about how awful some animated movie they just saw was. hey dumbo you are 30 years old! the movie is rated G! its for 5 year olds! sorry it didn't meet your lofty standards. and 5 year olds ENJOY disposable crap.

― scott seward, Tuesday, February 8, 2011 11:23 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

To some extent I am starting to feel this way about people who bitch about the star wars prequels.

rev otm - WAKA broke through in a landscape where commercial rap = soft-serve, lightweight slop like drake and b.o.b, and most non-chart rappers emphasised lyrical prowess. his kind of raw aggressive energy (and ability to channel it as an aesthetic rather just a one-off random song) marks him out as a bit of a one-off atm.

― lextasy refix (lex pretend), Tuesday, 8 February 2011 16:24 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

Forgive me here cos I'm out of my depth, but isn't this what Lil Jon and people from that scene have also been doing too? I dunno, when I heard Flocka, I liked it for all the reasons you mentioned, but I'd assumed there was a whole style of music that did this kind of thing?

Yah, but there's a good intervening half a decade there.

assume they just mean that they find enough good new shit to keep them occupied, rather than a stance or w/e - not endorsing that but it's easy enough to do

Yeah, that about sums it up. And of course, it doesn't mean that I *never* listen to old music. For one, I still listen to old music that was once new to me. But it's rare that I actively seek out older stuff I haven't heard.

to some extent I do kind of understand chris's POV - a lot of rappers in the last few years sound like they're going out of their ways to be obnoxious: arrogance, commodity fetishism and dunderheaded gangsta mentally all play a part in this. While this is obviously the point and the attraction for a lot of modern rap fans, I can see how older fans might have trouble with Flocka's steez, as opposed to, say, Chuck D's brand of call-to-arms rap, or Q-Tip's fluffy quirkiness. Flocka and Gucci are grotesque cartoon anti-heroes who are not necessarily likable in a buddy kind of way. They probably don't give a fuck if you don't agree with whatever it is they're saying. So this is really something one has to buy into, otherwise I can see how it would be totally annoying.

― Bernard V. O'Hare (dog latin), Tuesday, February 8, 2011 11:12 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is what im trying to say, excuse my grumpiness in my first post!

I mean, Lil Jon and that whole style were well out of style by the time Waka emerged. Even Jon himself has been for years focused more on making party hits than street music.

xxp