Simon Reynolds - C or D

"there aren't all that many resources for low-income people to seek out "underground" music."

how did hip hop rise through the bronx, philadelphia and all those other places then? ditto blues, R&B, etc etc? they didnt exactly come pre-packaged through clear channel and MTV did they?

as for this theory - "Feel so good" = Kool & The Gang sample + sung hook/"Around the way girl" = Keni Burke sample + sung hook."

its stupid. yes on paper you can say 'hey kool and the gang sample and sung hook, its the same two songs' but if you hear them, its obvious theres a world of difference.

i suspect people got their backs up re: clinton's comments for the same reason white rap fans and white soul fans get reynolds' back up (according to the comments here).

as for the marley marl comment, clinton got the source wrong - it was in scratch magazine, not XXL. and marley did say that he quit making music for a while during puffy's reign. still, i dont expect ILMers to care about such arguments that much, i think the post-96 period of hip hop is more loved here than any of the previous eras.

I won't defend my theory to the death, but I will say that it seems pretty obvious that radio and 'black music' has changed a lot since those days. When it was all on the local level, underground as far as white America was concerned, there weren't alternative strains because it was grass roots. It was the alternative. Now you have five different radio stations with the same shit in rotation, and rap music/R&B have largely crossed over and are big business. When I moved to Oakland a few years ago, I was excited because I thought everything was going to be Blackalicious, Heiroglyphics, and Jurassic 5. I was surprised to see that those shows were just as white as any of the rock/metal shows I've been to. The stuff on the radio was tinny-sounding synth beats and Ludacris, and Lil' Jon, Snoop, and Black Rob, and shit like that (and Eminem, too!) I guess it got me wondering why, with all this quality stuff, in one of the blackest cities in the country, these rappers were spreading a positive and intelligent message about mainly black issues to a bunch of white kids with khaki cargo pants and dreads/crewcuts. It's kind of an awkward experience, really. I guess I can't really think of a better reason than Clear Channel and Viacom. I'm open to other theories.

I'm trying to judge the level of seriousness of your statement here.

there's a lot more underground than, uh, overground mainstream radio.

How does that negate anything I said? As far as I can tell, most of the underground stuff is supported by a predominantly white audience (in the states at least). What do you have... the backpacker crap, the groups (People Under the Stairs - last time I heard them anyways)who still think it's the early 90s, the Ill Bill/Necro crap, the conscious spreading-the-knowledge battlerap Blackalicious stuff, Grime, "house hop" ... am I missing anything significant? (please don't say anything about Juggalos) I'm not trying to be some kind of an expert on hip-hop, so please correct me if I'm wrong. Are all those scenes not predominantly white? Is any of it on the radio?

deej 100% otm.

xpost- yeah, but it's not on the big radio stations, either. It must be actively sought out.

not particularly, criticism-wise. his recent "free folk" piece in the voice was fucking terrible, no surprise. he seems like a nice enough dude otherwise, though. i wouldn't mind reading his new book.

Do you ever listen to KMEL? Where the fuck are you from? Yeah, yeah, yeah, "synth beats" blah blah blah. Frontline & Balance. Keak Da Sneak. Turf Talk. E-40. Mac Dre RIP. Too $hort. etc, etc...the political issue is too deep for me to get into right now, but you may have a point on the corporate tip. After all, Davey D got bumped from KMEL for talking too much shit, but still.

metal shows

See, that's your problem right there. Why don't you come cruise the E14 with me so we can pretend we're black together. Then we'll go to Sweet Jimmy's and get stomped in the parking lot.

Get Stoopid

At least we stopped obsessing over Simon Reynolds.

its stupid. yes on paper you can say 'hey kool and the gang sample and sung hook, its the same two songs' but if you hear them, its obvious theres a world of difference.

Why is it stupid?

Both are sampled from old cuts the 70s and 80s hip hop d.j's (from Flash to Kid Capri) used to play and both are on Ultimate Breaks & Beats compilations. Both Mase and L.L were smooth rappers (no homo !!!) making cuts for the ladies but which still bumped enough for guys to be able to appreciate them. "Feel so good", like "around the way girl", is a straight loop of a classic hip hop break with Mase talking slick over the top and a sung hook. There is no "world of difference" whatsoever.

if you think ll's rapping style or lyrics are anywhere near the same as mase's lazy mush mouth blabberings, or think that marley marl's beat on around the way girl is like the paper thin, blanded out to the point of funkless-ness of mase's song, that's nice for you. feel so good makes around the way girl sound positivly hardcore.

by the way, i dont think around the way girl does sample kool and the gang - always thought it was keni burke and mary jane girls.

seriously, i get what youre saying - both have sung hooks, both R&B flavoured, but feel so good was fluffy pop stuff compared to around the way girl IMHO. around the way was still soulful and funky, feel so good sounded bland as anything when it came out.

Never ceases to amaze me how these corny white rap fans and backpackers like tracks like "around the way girl" by LL and the smooth jams people like Grand Puba or Pete Rock & C.L Smooth made but somehow convince themselves that tracks like "one more chance" remix and "mo' money mo' problems" by Biggie or "feel so good" by Mase are some "flossy glossy sellout rap".

Hilarious.

stretch and bobbito must be some corny fucks too cos last time i saw stretch armstrong play, he wasnt playing hip hop and he had a 'hip hop is dead' card on his turntables. bobbito doesnt play new hip hop anymore either. he must be a corny white hip hop fan. masta ace says he doesnt really feel modern rap or didnt much care for the bad boy stuff - he must be a corny white hip hop fan too. k-def thinks production is soft these days. another white cornball. who else? large professor didnt like any of that stuff. not even the lox liked it, and they were ON bad boy. they must all be corny white fuckers. keep on pulling out the race card and generalising dude, as if its only corny white fucks who thought the bad boy stuff was lame.

Hiphopfan must be British. I've had the misfortune of living in the U.K the last two years and have met far too many of his type. I don't see any difference between me making generalizations about white rap fans and you making generalizations about commercial rap and the people that enjoy it. At least i admit my racism.

Again, Mase was a hardcore rapper who ended up making commercial music just like LL. Puffy's whole production steez was taking the old r&b and funk cuts he used to hear when attending the Brucie Bee and Kid Capri parties at the rooftop and then looping them, just like Marley and Pete Rock did. I can't see any difference between their commercial tracks whatsoever. In the 80s everyone from Spoonie Gee to Slick Rick used to make club records. I can't see how you backpackers can claim that Mase isn't "real hop hip" (a despicable term) when the music he and Bad Boy in their prime made is far closer to actual, ya know, "real hip hop" than all this earnest backpacker nonsense you guys seem to think is authentic.

Strech has always been a cornball, Bobbito is cool but put out a lot of shitty rap on Fondle 'Em like Cage and the like, Masta Ace is old and bitter and boring, K. Def is my man, Large Professor fell off, The Lox were better on Bad Boy than they have been since.

there more to production than fucking 'taking the old r&b and funk cuts [...] and then looping them'. if you knew this you might be able to tell apart the records made by two different hip-hop producers.

Good god, you're a fucking moron. Stick to Company Flow you limey faggot.

Again, i just can't understand how you limey idiots can't seem to grasp that rap has always been club music made for the dancefloor. Baffles me. Back in '98 you'd hear "feel so good" in clubs in N.Y next to "ebonics" by Big L and "superthug" by Noreaga and it was all just good rap.

mase WAS a hardcore rapper in children of the corn, but he totally changed his style when he signed with bad boy. are people supposed to be happy about that? i dont hate club records, never said i did, i just dont like lowest common denominator club records, big dumb club records. just cos a record is a club record, doesnt mean all club records are the same (and im a huge lil jon and ludacris fan). not sure why you think that is. its like saying that just cos talib makes suposedly conscious music, i should like him as much as i did KRS, when talib is actually lame, and his music is shit.

and i dont like backpacker music. so get off your 'authentic' high horse. i like kanye, diplomats, bun b, slim thug, little brother, . but most hip hop these days bores me. underground AND commercial. the music is pretty much stagnant lyrically. its only musically its doing interesting things. and even then, most of it sounds lightweight (a result of everyone trying to get on the radio in the late 90s, which has stuck with the music), theres little heaviness to the sonics anymore (apart from some stuff like lil jon or whoever). hip hop isnt trying to push the boundaries anymore cos its won, its mainstream.

fuck what you think of stretch, bobbito, masta ace or whoever, the fact is only about 10% of the old school arent old and bitter and about the same number have been able to survive when things change. im not mad at that, older rappers always get left behind. but it doesnt mean their points arent valid.

the funny thing is that you think anything with a core black audience is automatically authentic, when rappers dont give a shit about the core audience anymore, theyre more interested in selling to middle america.

"Yes, but that has been the basis of NYC rap production since 1986."

man, listen to i dunno, rakims my melody then listen to clipses grindin and tell me which one hits harder. my melody fucking POUNDS, grindin was made for radio. hip hop used to be about saying 'fuck the radio', now its all about pleasing the radio. for me at least, that doesnt really do much.

Yep. "1 thing" by Amerie and "crazy in love" by Beyonce are hip hop beats. Certianly more hip hop than what passes as underground rap these days.

there's no way of telling difft trax apart?

Um, im not sure where i said anything like this.

idiot.

Yes you are. Took us a while you you to admit it, though.

It's great when you're a N.Y native being told about rap by cretinous British guys with hilarious username puns based on soccer players who've probably never been to N.Y or an N.Y club whose criticisms consist of "OMG it's popular and flossy it suxz!!"