Finally Rich - Chief Keef

did you quote my post on purpose because i wasn't talking about lyrical content at all

oh. frankly i'm not sure what you're talking about.

so i don't know... that question of how far to separate his backstory and old music from the 15 or so songs on 'finally rich' is probably something that tripped me up in my review. but i think it's also muddled the debate a lot because people are talking about different things even if they don't realize it.

― J0rdan S., Friday, January 11, 2013 8:04 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well yeah, it's also kind of weird since if people (and I'm not singling you out in particular) are gonna focus on the organic, grassroots-driven success that keef has had, then it's gonna be because of the more grim earlier stuff. like, if you want to use the CHICAGO YOUTH MOVEMENT as one point to support taking chief keef seriously, you don't get to also totally erase the part of his past that got him that support in the first place by only talking about finally rich.

the earlier stuff wasnt THAT grim either. there were songs like 'true religion jeans' and 'designer' and 'everyday' that had basically no gang banging

if anything the 'realness' of keef that scares so many people makes a lot of 'violent' rap that doesn't have that same angle seem cheaper and more exploitative to me, rather than the other way around.

the earlier stuff wasnt THAT grim either. there were songs like 'true religion jeans' and 'designer' and 'everyday' that had basically no gang banging

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Friday, January 11, 2013 8:29 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

well idk... there were some songs like that but the majority of it is pretty grim

j0rdan you make it sound like some Trout Mask Replica thing inventing his own language. he's making a variation on Soulja Boy rap, and he can't catch the beat with a butterfly net, just like Soulja Boy.

― trey songza (some dude), Friday, January 11, 2013 7:49 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i agree btw that he's making a variation of soulja boy rap. i just think he's really really good at it and does things on the album that are pretty unique. all i tried to do w/ my review was talk about his place in the matrix of artists like wayne/gucci/soulja/waka/jeezy/future etc. i don't necessarily think that keef himself is a gamechanger or a groundbreaker but that entire group of artists definitely is (and continues to be). i think keef makes songs as good as any of them and is helping carry that baton to whoever the next artist is.

i think he's a dope rapper who made a dope album & part of this clusterfuck is about the timeless ILX activity of eating up boredom by trying to reframe each other's arguments so that you sound less crazy by a narcissism of small differences & then someone says something that is a little past the line & then you characterize it as totally nuts, and someone else says something a little more out there & they get characterized as completely wrong, and it's about trying to get your opponent to 'slip up' and admit something as horrible as liking this more than that perfunctory meek mill album (which i also like, but is about 100x more boring than the keef record)

so now you can't say its important or that he's not doing something new w/out RADICALLY OVERSTATING HIS SIGNIFICANCE COME ON GUYS HE ONLY HAS ONE BILLBOARD HIT AS A SOLO ARTIST even though 8 mo. ago i was saying, 'this guy could do something' & everyone's like HE"LL NEVER GET AN ALBUM OUT but as the mood shifts, so do the goalposts, and people who thought he'd never have a major label debut think he won't sell, and then when he sells they set up this false sales expectations as if those of us who like keef's music were expecting him to do 100k+ without any songs in rotation

shit is silly & sorry but Al is a big part of why this style of argumentation is completely frustrating

the malik yusef vid is great

I agree with all that deej but the thing is you are just as responsible for the clusterfucking as anybody else! me included

i have no idea what will happen w/ him and his career but he was without a doubt one of the most interesting recording artists -- contextual shit ASIDE -- in 2012. his songs were most interesting, i wanted to hear them the most, his rapping engaged me, i cared what he was saying, which are my main expectations for rappers

xp i do take responsibility for the clusterfucking generally, i am nothing if not playing my role

dayo as far as shameless trolls itt go, at least guys like some dude and DJP have enough confidence in their intellectual capacity to also contribute to the discussion

I am just coming back to this thread and this may be projection/overstepping but I seriously doubt anyone who has graduated with an Ivy League degree feels any any doubt about their intellectual capacity; in fact this charge may be the single dumbest thing I've seen in this argument.

nah it's cool DJP; I get what he was saying.

yeah i mean 乒乓 brought some quality content to the thread after and seemingly in response to that post

I should have kept reading before I posted

i was just trying to goad dayo into not being a dick for 5 minutes

wait dayo did you go to an ivy? i had no idea

i mean i was also sort of mad at him too

I think it's been a running thing in the goon threads how I only pop in to snipe and zing and troll people, which is probably pretty true!

pfft you don't need an ivy degree to do that

but otherwise goon threads are just deej ship and whiney meshed into a neverending http://i.imgur.com/YfJmn.gif

Lol now I feel like I just blew up dayo's spot

lol I've posted about it before plus j0rd should have known from fb

as an independent observer, i thought everyone was p. chill despite talking past each other for 1k posts

not like a [MODERATOR EDIT NECESSARY FOR ALL OUR SANITY] or anything

lol

Yeah I hope slocki doesnt find this thread too

The one thing about the jazz/keef things that breaks down for me is that free jazz dudes who were challenging rhythmic conventions were all schooled in the classics and completely technically adept enough to knock out sets of standards, where it's not like keef could like knock out a Do or Die type verse

"You already know how to rap. Now rap wrong and make THAT right": Keef D-Bags Thread 2013

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M-OqF8-N-Dw#

like this is one of the first coltrane recordings and you can here him pushing a bit compared to the others but only slightly, this was a wilbur hardin record

god y'all some bop boys

there were individual jazz players who had idiosyncratic styles from day one tho. t monk is an extreme example

but anyway w/ jazz i was just talking about swing that basically every artist does, where the shit is written out as if it's right on the beat but if a classical musician plays it it sounds stiff and if a jazz artist plays it, it's actually slightly behind or w/e on the beat

I'm guilty of this too but comparing rap or rock artists to jazz dudes is always kind of a stretch because most rock or rap dudes are basically pants pooping infants, musically speaking, compared to jazz dudes

Except chief keef, of course

i'm not making an argument about anything musically except how the artist finds a rhythmic pocket on the beat. what is wrong w/ you guys

http://media.mediapost.com/images/inline_image/2012/10/11/Hot-pockets-B.jpg

It's an analogy that comes across as a legitimization because it doesn't really fit, cf.

The one thing about the jazz/keef things that breaks down for me is that free jazz dudes who were challenging rhythmic conventions were all schooled in the classics and completely technically adept enough to knock out sets of standards, where it's not like keef could like knock out a Do or Die type verse

― fart the police (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, January 12, 2013 3:12 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I understand what you're trying to say, deej, but it feels like an overstatement because you don't really need jazz to say it . Rap has been about finding individual styles and flows since day one, or at least day two or three.

but anyway w/ jazz i was just talking about swing that basically every artist does, where the shit is written out as if it's right on the beat but if a classical musician plays it it sounds stiff and if a jazz artist plays it, it's actually slightly behind or w/e on the beat

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Saturday, January 12, 2013 3:30 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that is not the same thing as what matt is talking about

Except a lot of the record he's just flat out sloppy and it's got nothing to do with that

i dunno i'm listening to 'diamonds' right now & it sounds pretty in control to me. as we discussed upthread, this isn't like when lil b would just completely disregard the beat

and as rtc said it's not an either-or thing (control vs. chaos), there's def a chaotic-ness to his style but it's not completely out of control

No, but would you really say that about, say, Thelonious Monk? "There's def a chaotic-ness to his style but it's not completely out of control" - a lot seems to hinge on the "completely" there. The sentence would pretty much mean something completely different. I'm all for sloppiness and the will to try new things as great-reasons-for-breakthrough-in-art, but again I'm not sure if the jazz analogy is the best.

*sigh*

ditto, lol. I'm sympathetic to the cause, I just don't see the great illumination here. I definitely agree that if you gave the same lyrics to, say, Wale, they wouldn't sound equally good. Keef's flow/delivery/off-ness definitely contributes to his shit sounding good. The question is how big of a point this is for you.

I'd still love to read something perceptive on Keef's vowels and consonants though. As I've said before, his o and a game is unparalleled in rap - and the drawn out wovels and swallowing of consonants soften the rapping in a really interesting way that runs counter to what is often referred to as his "steely, unemotional style". It also merges with the slowed down trap sound of young chop in a way that brings out its undulation and the way it surges in different ways than, say, Luger or Lil Lodi does. And I'm not only talking about young chop's production here - much the same happens on/with the citgo beat.

is lex luger over?

http://cdn.fashionista.com/uploads/2013/01/over.png?9d7bd4

Him being a big thing is definitely over but his career is not.

what has he even done this/last year?