rolling stupid fruity crazy swag thread

maybe i'm naive or just disinclined to give the DJs that much credit but i always assume the relationships are primarily between artist and producer as far as picking beats and releasing songs, and that the artist just decides whether to do a quickie mixtape or a more crafted album-ish one based on their own career plan.

this is kind of what we were talkin about in the simon reynolds thread.

there's no easy way to get into new rappers, and i don't necessarily see it as a bad thing if rockist dudes start finding out abt ppl because they start putting more energy/time into making mixtapes that sound and feel like albums. One coherant statement is way more impressive to me than 6 mixtapes

I mean, I def would rather have rock crits repping dudes who put in the most effort to an album rather than this blogger/diplo/Fadermag Harry-Smith-of-the-streets shit where ppl act like christopher columbus when they "discover" regional rap trends and bring them to the attention of whiteys

to me the Cold War series was kind of an unintentional statement on the fallacy of DJs mattering at all anymore in the ziptape era -- sure Gucci worked with 3 different DJs to show them each love and give them material to push, but virtually every person that heard 1 of those tapes heard all 3, and usually got them all from the same place/site...it's not like DJ Scream had an audience that got the DJ Scream tape and the DJ Holiday audience got the DJ Holiday tape.

xpost

lol @ whiney

i get it but im saying now this dj is acting as the discoverer, packaging it nicely in a way that gets the attention of people who normally would discover a Big KRIT for instance on fader or through a gorilla vs dilpo or whatever the fuck

you've got a point, Whiney, but at some point it's like..OK, if someone like Big K.R.I.T. shows up on my radar, as a guy compared to T.I., wearing sunglasses on the cover of a mixtape called The Last King with song titles like "The South" and "Get Money," and a couple people say he can rap his ass off, the only reason I'm giving him more than 5 seconds of consideration is that it's rev or deej saying that and not some random guy on the internet whose taste I don't know. xpost

the "way in" point is somewhat moot as someone outside the US - if i want a "way in" to a new rapper which just emerges from the pop culture ether i'd probably be stuck with flo rida and wale. i was really surprised at how few of the major label albums in that poll the other day i was even aware existed. but while i'll give ilx cru recommendations more time than other random dudes - though stellar guest verses on bigger artists' tracks are often a good way in - i've found that if the artist is REALLY worth following i'll be able to find my own way in fairly naturally after hearing a few tracks.

i'm going to be a harry-smith-of-the-internet right now and post this very random video of a guy named iceberg tony from central florida. i've watched it like 10 times, it's oddly compelling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSl1TMw0kPo

the "way in" point is somewhat moot as someone outside the US - if i want a "way in" to a new rapper which just emerges from the pop culture ether i'd probably be stuck with flo rida and wale. i was really surprised at how few of the major label albums in that poll the other day i was even aware existed. but while i'll give ilx cru recommendations more time than other random dudes - though stellar guest verses on bigger artists' tracks are often a good way in - i've found that if the artist is REALLY worth following i'll be able to find my own way in fairly naturally after hearing a few tracks.

― lex pretend, Sunday, January 3, 2010 1:10 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

fair point, but i was careful to say "single or signature song" and not "hit single" because so few worthwhile rappers become known through hits these days...guest verses are a good example, though, part of the affiliation thing i was talking about. but even, like, a personality trait or a weird voice or sense of humor, to me those are the kinds of things that get me interested in a rapper more than just "he's a guy in the T.I. mold and he's good" etc.

even someone who does have a signature song like Pill -- i'll be damned if i can tell what makes "Trap Goin Ham" so special and it seems like the majority of its buzz came from the video rather than the song

xpost i think we call those things "memes"

some dude, i have the rapper for you, his name is bo burnham

trap goin ham was special because it was the THIRD song in as many years to flip that fucking "New Style" sample and that's like white blogger catnip

but even, like, a personality trait or a weird voice or sense of humor, to me those are the kinds of things that get me interested in a rapper more than just "he's a guy in the T.I. mold and he's good" etc.

MINAJ!

no, i totally agree, which is why i haven't bothered to listen to the big krit mixtape yet even though deej and rev's repping made me download it, and why guest verses are so important. pill is a good example of someone whose particular skill set isn't one that differentiates him from the pack, but who is just so excellent at it that his ability itself becomes the way in - i feel pretty compelled to constantly return to both his mixtapes without having to make an effort to remember to.

whiney you don't like rappers that have interesting voices and funny things to say and unique personalities?

is there an exciting world of rapping robots programmed to generate rhyming couplets that i'm not aware of?

haha, no i do! that's why freddie gibbzzzzzzzz is boring. But I mean, if you're gonna saying that having those three things is all important round these parts, someone's gonna eventually say the G-word and Deejenstein is gonna rise from his slab and start throwin yall in the pond

idk if it can be broken down as easily as that - factor in beats and actual skills, and you can be lacking in certain areas but still hit the sweet spot.

whiney get off deejs dick

al shipley may like this, great doubletime and bun's best verse in a minute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Dj4A0GD7M

I know you were just giving a straighforward answer to a simple question, but this kind of gets to where I was going. I miss having a 'way in' to new rappers w/ a lot of these new online/mixtape cats, whether it was just a single or signature song, or a backstory or an affiliation . those things are sometimes very surface-level or have nothing to do with the quality of their music, but they were still concrete things to latch onto. now it's like, sure everything's free, it only costs you the time to download and listen to it, but why should i bother? sorry, i'm ranting.

― some dude, Sunday, January 3, 2010 12:28 PM (1 hour ago)

your point is totally otm and fair but...sometimes this is why there are music writers

yeah, but as music writers, there's just no system in place to tread through this shit.

When I write about indie rock bands there's like 25 publicists who are gonna work all the "major releases" and 85% of what you read about indie rock AT ALL is gonna be those records.

With non-indie rap it's like a bunch of instant-delete emails from WORLDSTARHIPHOP DOT COM and 8-minute Vlad.tv videos of ppl freestylng, and Nah Right who posts like 300 things a day for google traffic and 7000 blogs all competing for attention.

reading nah right makes me incredibly sad; makes me think dude hasn't left the house in about 6 years.

With non-indie rap it's like a bunch of instant-delete emails from WORLDSTARHIPHOP DOT COM and 8-minute Vlad.tv videos of ppl freestylng, and Nah Right who posts like 300 things a day for google traffic and 7000 blogs all competing for attention.

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Sunday, January 3, 2010 2:45 PM (4 minutes ago)

well yeah i wasnt talking about nah right...i'm talking about the couple dozen ppl whose taste you know and somewhat trust who also happen to write about music

xpost

yeah, all the blogs that rise to the top are usually built on inhuman posting cycles, which, to a print critic, really makes me mad at ppl who are like CHANGE WITH THE TIMES, MAAAAAN. Since my passion is writing about music not reprinting press releases and linking to mp3s 18 hours a day

well, NR is run by like 3 guys who mainly cut-and-paste stuff from their e-mail inbox without listening to or watching more than a tiny fraction of it, so i think they find the time to leave the house.

yeah i was gonna say

When I write about indie rock bands there's like 25 publicists who are gonna work all the "major releases" and 85% of what you read about indie rock AT ALL is gonna be those records.

With non-indie rap it's like a bunch of instant-delete emails from WORLDSTARHIPHOP DOT COM and 8-minute Vlad.tv videos of ppl freestylng, and Nah Right who posts like 300 things a day for google traffic and 7000 blogs all competing for attention.

so true and so frustrating, but no excuse - it's something one has to work around. annoying cuz when i pitch about rappers i have to make extra sure they're ~for real~ or at least not gonna turn out to be terrible, but...idk, i find it a lot better to just bypass the useless PR system completely, until and unless they happen upon an artist i already like. if i can't get access to the artist there are other means of covering them. there's no rule that says you have to go through any system here.

also, being a rap journalist is a piece of piss compared to pitching anything serious about r&b, ie not "what rihanna is wearing today". EASY to get editors to take rap seriously!

Yeah, I wouldn't say Big K.R.I.T. has a signature song. I was going to bring Pill up in contrast as someone who does have a signature song (and an affiliation, via Killer Mike or whatever he's bowlderized his name to), but since you already did, I think that was a conscious, and smart, career move on Pill's part that K.R.I.T. hasn't taken, because it does give listeners an in before they spring for a whole tape.

I think calling Krit just some rapper influenced by T.I. shortsells him. He definitely is post-Tip, but no moreso than any other lyrical Southern street rapper of the past five years. I think Deej was more talking about T.I. as a archetype for rappers in his wake than doing that, though. I also hear a lot of Pimp C and, in his more reflective moments, Cee-Lo in Big K.R.I.T., but that's also reductive. He's definitely his own rapper, and very versatile at that, comfortable rapping fast, slow, aggressively, laid-back, nimbly switching syncopations, and combining any of those elements. As a lyricist he's also versatile. He doesn't stray at all from standard rap subject matter, but he's plenty comfortable going anywhere within that realm, so he's not really rapping about the same things song after song. He's pretty topical for the most part, but at the same time has no problem dropping something offbeat like "I keep a bad yellowbone in a playaz circle/ Whoopi Goldberg cause she color purple/ Did I do that? Just call me Urkel/ Crawlin' green in a hardtop like turtle" in the middle of a sex rap. He also comes up with pretty catchy hooks. Deej called him "virtuosic", and while that might be a bit premature, I don't think it's too far off at all.

Going back to what you guys were saying about DJ Burn One, I feel that, but DJ Breakem Off does even better to make a coherent tape. Instead of taking Burn One's more hands off approach, his mixing actually improves the tape, rare thing. The first five tracks are played as a mixed suite, with hooks and beats overlapping onto one another, and Krit goes hard on each of those. He doesn't really give you a chance for your jaw to snap back into place until about 10 minutes into the tape. Past the opening suite, it's just really well sequenced. I listened to his previous mixtape with a different DJ, and sure good raps and good beats, but it didn't feel like more than the sum of its parts than this one.

His beats definitely place him in this Gulf Coast lineage, but are distinct because he isn't afraid to let the seams show. They're kind of ramshackle and unpolished, kinda like if BlockBeataz had just a tiny hint of early RZA (Krit seems to share RZA's love of ominous string loops).

This is my favorite track of his, and pretty representative. It has the aforementioned lines and features his dude Big Sant rapping leadoff, who is also awesome, but I can't quite place who he sounds like even though it seems like it should be obvious.

http://limelinx.com/files/3ff93c278eea00182d6c49e55834a214

I'm excited about Krit because I see him as having a lot of room to develop but is already coming from a pretty high spot to begin with. I'm not saying by any means that he's going to blow up (for one thing, he has to get better at marketing himself first, especially being that he's from the middle of nowhere), but I can see him as releasing good music for quite a while.

And yeah, his name is kinda funny.

As for "Trap Goin' Ham", I think your assumptions about people only liking it because of the video/sample (I know, the latter was Whiney, but him saying that I only like this song because I'm white(!?) pisses me off, even if that's not really what he was trying to say) are way off since I hated the video at first and it took me way forever to place the sample, but I was immediately bowled over by the song. I ended up playing it more than any other rap song of 2009, except "9xs Outta 10". The combination of slow, hard-hitting beat with frantic, spider-scurry synths gives it a great pacing, and Pill keeps up. The parts where he doubles his flow for the middle two bars of each verse play into that and are impressive in their own right. Besides that, the lyrics are hella novel. I mean "Trap goin' ham, we got pies flyin' out the spot" is the goddam hook! To say nothing of the verses, which are dope, too.

I still need to listen to the Yelawolf tape.

rev, if i'm taking generic swipes at rap bloggers, know that i don't ever mean my euroswag brethren

fair enough about "Trap" -- "9xs Outta 10" is like my least favorite song on BlaQKout, so obviously mileage does vary.

i still don't have the slightest idea who Big K.R.I.T. is and it almost seems like some elaborate prank that a bunch of critics are repping for a rapper with that name out of nowhere. i read deej's long post about him but it was 90% about other rappers and didn't really tell me anything about the guy.

― some dude, Sunday, January 3, 2010 9:05 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dude, critics repping for a rapper out of nowhere? its just me. the only 'critics' repping for him as far as i can tell are dudes on here, who read my post. its not some critic phenomenon, its just a great rap tape. the first person i heard rep for the tape was young buck's twitter

also, f.u. whiney for saying jay z made the best rap song of 09. embarrassing

i can't win today hahaha

young buck's twitter = a person

to be fair it was a pretty retarded statement

well yeah i didn't say K.R.I.T. crit love was widespread, just that you + rev + keller = multiple writers being excited about him. you don't have to get your back up about every little thing and interpret it in whatever way you can feign the most righteous indignation about.

ok i guess "a bunch of critics" is a poor way to describe 3 guys but w/e

in reality "On to the next one" is prolly number 3 on my list after Quik/Kurupts's "Watcha Wanna Do" and Lay Me Down by Antipop Consortium if we wanna talk serious challops

sorry i ruined euroswag

"On To The Next One" is #2 on my Pazz & Jop singles ballot after this fire jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=113kJKz2mMI

Yeah, I wouldn't say Big K.R.I.T. has a signature song. I was going to bring Pill up in contrast as someone who does have a signature song (and an affiliation, via Killer Mike or whatever he's bowlderized his name to), but since you already did, I think that was a conscious, and smart, career move on Pill's part that K.R.I.T. hasn't taken, because it does give listeners an in before they spring for a whole tape.

I think calling Krit just some rapper influenced by T.I. shortsells him. He definitely is post-Tip, but no moreso than any other lyrical Southern street rapper of the past five years. I think Deej was more talking about T.I. as a archetype for rappers in his wake than doing that, though. I also hear a lot of Pimp C and, in his more reflective moments, Cee-Lo in Big K.R.I.T., but that's also reductive. He's definitely his own rapper, and very versatile at that, comfortable rapping fast, slow, aggressively, laid-back, nimbly switching syncopations, and combining any of those elements. As a lyricist he's also versatile. He doesn't stray at all from standard rap subject matter, but he's plenty comfortable going anywhere within that realm, so he's not really rapping about the same things song after song. He's pretty topical for the most part, but at the same time has no problem dropping something offbeat like "I keep a bad yellowbone in a playaz circle/ Whoopi Goldberg cause she color purple/ Did I do that? Just call me Urkel/ Crawlin' green in a hardtop like turtle" in the middle of a sex rap. He also comes up with pretty catchy hooks. Deej called him "virtuosic", and while that might be a bit premature, I don't think it's too far off at all.

Going back to what you guys were saying about DJ Burn One, I feel that, but DJ Breakem Off does even better to make a coherent tape. Instead of taking Burn One's more hands off approach, his mixing actually improves the tape, rare thing. The first five tracks are played as a mixed suite, with hooks and beats overlapping onto one another, and Krit goes hard on each of those. He doesn't really give you a chance for your jaw to snap back into place until about 10 minutes into the tape. Past the opening suite, it's just really well sequenced. I listened to his previous mixtape with a different DJ, and sure good raps and good beats, but it didn't feel like more than the sum of its parts than this one.

His beats definitely place him in this Gulf Coast lineage, but are distinct because he isn't afraid to let the seams show. They're kind of ramshackle and unpolished, kinda like if BlockBeataz had just a tiny hint of early RZA (Krit seems to share RZA's love of ominous string loops).

This is my favorite track of his, and pretty representative. It has the aforementioned lines and features his dude Big Sant rapping leadoff, who is also awesome, but I can't quite place who he sounds like even though it seems like it should be obvious.

http://limelinx.com/files/3ff93c278eea00182d6c49e55834a214

I'm excited about Krit because I see him as having a lot of room to develop but is already coming from a pretty high spot to begin with. I'm not saying by any means that he's going to blow up (for one thing, he has to get better at marketing himself first, especially being that he's from the middle of nowhere), but I can see him as releasing good music for quite a while.

And yeah, his name is kinda funny.

― condaleeza spice (The Reverend), Sunday, January 3, 2010 7:38 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is a very good post, & very otm

i thought i wrote a fair amount of how what was so good about the big k.r.i.t. tape was pretty much how much promise i thought it showed ... hes definitely not fully developed as an artist yet, but he seems to hit a lot of different touchpoints I like, & his style feels a lot more flexible & diverse &, i dont know, interesting than gibbs & pill who usually strike me as pretty dry. I dont think any of these dudes have dropped masterpieces, but the conceit of my post was this: if we were to play a predictions game on rap artists likely to have great careers, K.R.I.T.'s tape sounded the most promising & i found it to be the most listenable, i was much more caught up in it than I was in the pill or gibbs stuff, he's just less dry & connects on an emotional level in a dungeon fam style ... hes messy in some ways on a lyrical level, with a filler line or something that doesnt quite ring like its supposed to -- less precise & technical than a guy like pill -- but also more genuine, & its inconsistent in the way "I'm Serious" was ... the T.I. comparison is on a broader level than just a lyrical influence, it was, like, he's a well-rounded rap artist w/ a number of different approaches.

the other thing is, yeah, this tape is hella listenable, simply because of how its sequences & mixed.

*sequenced

i'll wait for the lil wayne freestyle over "on to the next one"

and fuck that autotune cuz we OOOooooooon

i'm a sucker for big stupid nu-swizz but the appeal of that song has so far eluded me.

and you also hate "let me transform ya"

that's more for the hook and the wayne verse, though, the beat's generic swizz but more or less functional.

btw can i just say i'm already starting to get depressed about the prospect of clicking on the "rolling euroswag thread" for the next 360-something days. can we agree on something else and get a mod to change it? i liked "rolling stupid fruity crazy swag thread".

otm