Finally Rich - Chief Keef

everyone is allowed to like or dislike keef as they wish, what i think jordan & i are bristling at is the implication that there's nothing we could possibly appreciating about his musical approach so it simply MUST be tied to stereotyped views of black people.

IMO Keef is doing the most interesting version fo this type of music right now. I can't think of an artist in this lane that is doing it as well. (And Future, although influential on him, is a completely different kind of artist).

well tbf I am making a distinction between "like" and "give a shit about" - not trying to throw Keef under the bus here, I still like 3Hunna & I Don't Like

xposts

yeah i enjoy "I Don't Like" but i don't really place any more stock in Chief Keef's artistry than Ca$h Out or anyone else with one or two good songs

normally I would ridicule the conflation of "song" with "album" but, after trying to get through the Chief Keef album, I completely understand why one would assume that liking one song would automatically lead to liking the whole album

― Solange Knowles is my hero (DJP), Tuesday, January 8, 2013 2:55 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

see, this kind of dismissal though seems so absurd to me—it's the kind of critique like "he has great beats but cant rap" that crops up EVERY time a rapper comes out in this lane & that suggests to me the person is simply outside the target listenership for that style of music period.

even if you don't like the music most of these songs really don't sound that identical to each other, even less so than Flockaveli

cash out is so much more generic, tho

as rap albums go, Finally Rich is more self-similar than most

i think the aspect of the +ve crit i've read about keef that i take most issue with is the angle that he's doing something innovative or different - really it sounds like slower, less fun waka to me. i mean i fux with "i don't like" but it doesn't work on that level at all, it's just a screwface anthem

one man's consistent/cohesive is another man's monochromatic/repetitive (xp)

oh c'mon deej they sound pretty similar! to the album's benefit i think, it's not an aesthetic that grabs me but it gives the album a coherence and purpose - it succeeds on its terms

i hate bein' sosa, i'll take you to the magic stick

i cant agree. 'ballin' sounds more like a rich kids type track, 'diamonds' has more of a waka sound, 'citgo' is just bleary weirdness, 'love sosa' is in its own world, 'hate being sober' swipes that melody but shifts to an upbeat / major key context, 'no tomorrow' is mike will & has the weird echoing adlib styles ... each song sounds pretty distinct to me

keef does not have even one millionth the pop nous that peak 50 cent did, that comparison is completely ludicrous to me

i think the aspect of the +ve crit i've read about keef that i take most issue with is the angle that he's doing something innovative or different - really it sounds like slower, less fun waka to me. i mean i fux with "i don't like" but it doesn't work on that level at all, it's just a screwface anthem

― lex pretend, Tuesday, January 8, 2013 3:00 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he doesnt actually sound anything like waka, wayyy too casual / laid back style

xp flockaveli is also more diverse than it initially seems (like "no hands" and "grove st party" don't really fit into the big elephantine lex luger riffs thing) but fundamentally yes the songs do all sound the same, especially in comparison to a lot of major label albums these days which are all over the map

He gets compared to 50 Cent?

idk that's just a completely bizarre perspective to me. the keef album almost feels a bit too piecemeal, i was hoping for something MORE cohesive rather than stuff taken from all over the place

xp yes hence "slower, less fun", but the aggressive chant-along functionality is what's similar

He gets compared to 50 Cent?

― tsrobodo, Tuesday, January 8, 2013 3:05 PM (15 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

50 cent compared him missing the 'hate being sober' shoot to if 50 missed the 'in da club' shoot

deej i hope you realize how much you sound like a Guided By Voices stan painstakingly explaining WHICH track on the new album corresponds to WHICH band from Nuggets

I'd love for Ca$h Out to make an album as good as Finally Rich. Let's hope he does!

And Finally Rich isn't too self-similar soundwise. If I have a problem with anything it's that Keef is a much less... relatable rapper than even most Bricksquadians. I have no idea about who he "really" is - even Juicemane's puppy dog-like enthusiasm is easier to relate to. Which is not to say that he isn't a bigger star than Juicemane or that other people don't feel like they can't relate to him or his blankness or even that his blankness isn't interesting in its own right - just speaking for myself.

lol I'm back reading deej's descriptions of this stuff and going "how on earth can you justify these claims, this guy's shit sounds fucking identical from track to track unless you go waaaaaaay out of your way to pretend it doesn't"

it is borderline hilarious that deej is attempting to tell me, a dude who has spent more than half of his life listening to entire genres of dance music built off of either one drum loop or one specific combination of drum machine and synth that these grossly similar songs are actually vastly different and I'm just missing the nuance

Finally Out of Cash

"way out of my way"?? i feel like people acting like this album all sounds the same have absolutely no context in recent rap which, (hey jordan's review!) except then Al is here agreeing with them, which makes no sense

i don't really get that keef's music is any MORE nihilistic or negative than most street rap, either - i guess the back story plays into this? playing surliness for kicks isn't a new thing. actually keef's persona reminds me of a lot of grime MCs from back in the day

it is borderline hilarious that deej is attempting to tell me, a dude who has spent more than half of his life listening to entire genres of dance music built off of either one drum loop or one specific combination of drum machine and synth that these grossly similar songs are actually vastly different and I'm just missing the nuance

― Solange Knowles is my hero (DJP), Tuesday, January 8, 2013 3:07 PM (26 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

surely within that context it makes MORE sense that I would think these songs sound unique?

i guess you guys thinking 'all these songs sound the same' it makes a lot more sense that you can't divulge any meaning from them.

kaykay is a fukkin autotune rap ballad, sounds exactly the same as 3hunna? or kobe? none of those songs use the same sounds, the same producers, or the same rap styles

IF I CATCH ANOTHER MOTHERFUCKER TALKIN SWEET ABOUT CHIEF KEEF, IM FUCKING BEATING THEY ASS

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Tuesday, January 8, 2013 4:06 PM (55 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

his flow is different on each one. the effects are different. the production tools are different. the subject matter is different

Rap has been nihilistic for a while now guys. Too much nihilism can't be the real problem with keef.

funny xxp but i'm talking purely about the accuracy here, i'm def not trying to convince the lex to put keef on his year end list

his flow is different on each one. the effects are different. the production tools are different. the subject matter is different

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Tuesday, January 8, 2013 4:10 PM (18 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://i.imgur.com/7WOj5.gif

man reading these posts is kinda like "well halloween was on a thursday last year, this year halloween is on a wednesday"

obv i agree w/ deej that the tracks don't sound the same. and i don't think dissecting their influences on a per-track basis is a bad thing. keef is nothing if not a product of his influences.

i think the album fails only at its most generic post-luger (i.e. the french montana track)

deej all i said was "as rap albums go, Finally Rich is more self-similar than most," which i think is pretty undeniable, if we're talking about the major label rap world of Nicki Minaj doing a pu pu platter for multiple radio formats or Game doing guest MC karaoke, etc.

this year halloween fell on a weekend

man reading these posts is kinda like "well halloween was on a thursday last year, this year halloween is on a wednesday"

― 乒乓, Tuesday, January 8, 2013 4:12 PM (13 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this year halloween fell on a weekend

literally i'm the pu pu

the songs "sound the same" only if the context is, like, the entire history of music or something. but w/in the context that the album came from, the songs don't sound the same.

you need zero context to listen to an album's worth of music by an artist in any genre and say whether the tracks sound similar. you, for example, could listen to a Heinous Killings album as say "you know, all this shit sounds the same" and you'd be otm (I like Heinous Killings btw, "all the songs sound the same" isn't necessarily a knock in all cases as far as I'm concerned ) and then listen to Havohej's Kembatinan Premaster and say "well this is all pretty relentless but there's definitely sonic variation from track to track that seems headed somewhere" - you could do this despite this being almost surely the first time you've heard either band mentioned. there can be variation within a small field, as djp notes. but the only real barrier for discussion is whether a person has listened to music - an honest listener shouldn't need some "recent rap" skill set to decode whether one track sounds different from another.

i think within the scope of 2012 rap, which is a pretty broad tent, it's not THAT varied. i mean, he found one of the biggest sonic outliers on the album by searching for "Finally Rich type beats" on the internet. xp

this is like when deej got in that huge fight about the wild difference between "soooober" and "soooosa" like it was "Back in the USSR" vs "Revolyution no. 9" on the White Album

that huge fight you made up?

you need zero context to listen to an album's worth of music by an artist in any genre and say whether the tracks sound similar. you, for example, could listen to a Heinous Killings album as say "you know, all this shit sounds the same" and you'd be otm (I like Heinous Killings btw, "all the songs sound the same" isn't necessarily a knock in all cases as far as I'm concerned ) and then listen to Havohej's Kembatinan Premaster and say "well this is all pretty relentless but there's definitely sonic variation from track to track that seems headed somewhere" - you could do this despite this being almost surely the first time you've heard either band mentioned. there can be variation within a small field, as djp notes. but the only real barrier for discussion is whether a person has listened to music - an honest listener shouldn't need some "recent rap" skill set to decode whether one track sounds different from another.

― too many encores (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, January 8, 2013 3:15 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

all metal sounds the same cookie monster vocals and screeching guitars

i mean, he found one of the biggest sonic outliers on the album by searching for "Finally Rich type beats" on the internet. xp

― ThePartyHater (some dude), Tuesday, January 8, 2013 4:15 PM (7 seconds ago) Bookmark

idk "citgo" is in the same vein as "ballin" and "kaykay" which are a few of the album's oldest songs

those three songs all sound pretty different, in mood, in effect. "ballin" and "kaykay" are closer, tho still pretty distinct to anyone w/ a passing understanding of hip hop

T.I. and Wiz and A$AP and Ross and 2 Chainz made recent albums that each reflect a much larger variety of production styles or lyrical influences -- i'm not saying that makes them better albums, in fact it directly contributed to some of them being much worse

all metal sounds the same cookie monster vocals and screeching guitars

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Tuesday, January 8, 2013 4:17 PM (44 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

youre not wrong and I still like it

that huge fight you made up?

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Tuesday, January 8, 2013 4:17 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it was on ilx idk

i would argue that 2 chainz album is probably more same-y in sound overall