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

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

x-post: I suppose I have to admit that even I realize Lil Jon hasn't been real prominent for a while.

Waka sounds like more of the same stuff I keep being repulsed by when I check in with what ILM rap fans like, or when I pay attention to what's rolling down the street. I probably have a skewed idea of where rap is commercially, since ILM really is my main exposure to the genre these days.

Maybe try Currensy?

Good suggestion. For a while, I was recommending the Knux to people who like hip-hop but don't like its most popular current iterations.

ilm rap fans like a real range of stuff? WAKA is hardly representative when other faves include, like, curren$y and lil b and the jacka and na'tee and yelawolf

and ANGEL HAZE <3

jeez

I think the point about Lil Jon just underscores how quickly everything is liable to and does change in rap.

maybe its because im getting old and there have been some times at my bar where i put on the old-skool hip hop on sirius and the young kids have no idea who the older artists are, i mean if your a hip hop fan how can you not know Eric B, Public Enemy etc?

almost half of this list is p trad sounding, and around 100% of this one is. all 2010 releases.

also i dispute that ian was made fun of :P

why should they?

it's totally a vow of mine never to act outraged or disbelieving when some kid says he's never heard/heard of [legendary act]. (unless it's j0rdan and madonna because WTF.)

i don't think anyone is required to know anything about anything

the same reason why i would want to learn about new hip hop Lex. I dont act outraged, just surprised. yeah but wouldn't you think Eric B and not knowing who WU-TANG was would be a WTF?

see Raekwon. yay. someone i know. I also like Rick Ross.

maybe everyone in your bar hates rap music. like you!

nah i dont think so, with their baggy pants and godamn sideways hats.

you have a bar?

maybe your bar is a gay bar! does everyone smell nice?

If I were a politician, I guess I'd something like "I care too much."

My biggest problems are a) I'm too hung up on melody, which means all kinds of less melody-driven music largely pass me by (blues and funk would be two prominent examples), and b) I'm too much of a list-maker, or too much of a cannon person; I too easily discard music that isn't a candidate for a Top 100, or isn't going to be saved on my permanent hard drive. Lots of "pretty good" music ceases to exist with me.

Um, canon. There may be a song or two about cannons that I like too, I'm not sure.

http://cdn.picapp.com/ftp/Images/0074/c47ac3fb-93c5-49f9-8970-6fd575bf8b3e.jpg

i dont have a bar, i work at one a few nights.

someone make me a playlist of newer hip-hop? i will be forever grateful, and make you an old bastard one.

I don't really care about personality, I have no particular interest in music being played live, I'm not especially interested in hearing a bunch of songs by the same person,

Don't think any of these attitudes suck though, they're just what they are

xp: Not gonna make a whole playlist right now, but see what you think of this.

that kyleon verse is so dopeeeeeeeeee

verse of the month

we shld do Hip Hop Quotable thing, a verse of the month rolling thread

i could listen to more old music, more new music, more music made by people very different to me culturally, more music with a different order of priorities to what i recognise as my preference...but i tend to feel like i do or have done these things to a reasonable extent already tho obv there is always something else to hear/learn/consider theoretically. i do want to do all of those things more but i don't really want to do them based on people's recommendations. instead i want to discover them more 'accidentally' or indirectly and form opinions without reading anything for/against beforehand. something about that is good but something about it also sucks (just as being selfish is often bad but sometimes necessary).

probably a bigger source of frustration is that i'm nowhere near as much of a musician as i would like to be and that has an effect on my tastes and attitude that may cause them to occasionally suck (not in the 'i should value lyrics or singing or melody more than other stuff' sense, more a 'i want to be more confident about and back up the arguments i do make with more technical knowledge of Music from an academic perspective').

xp: Yeah, start it.

ok rev, thats pretty fuckin awesome.

^___^

this has been the most civilized & erudite goon dogpile in years

see stuff like that i can get with, its mostly those shouting things i cant. their flow reminds me of something, cant quite place it.