killer mike raps el-p produces "R.A.P. Music"

this is great. so is the new el-p 'cancer4cure'. old dudes in rap otm.

it's pretty good but def. overrated and people are glossing over the flaws - production gets pretty monotonous over the span of the album and the choruses are boring. the choruses are even more of a problem on cancer4cure.

the skits and speeches on "Don't Die" and "Reagan" unnecessarily stretch those tracks.

this is way way better than cancer 4 cure which i found as wearily worthy, if not actually awful, as every el-p thing i've heard

the politics might be the worst thing about rap music, it's all a bit...standard conspiracy theory BS

and the bit where he goes on about worrying whether women will change their names is seriously eyeroll-worthy, he seems an old dude in the bad sense there

It's more complicated than conspiracy drivel, lex. He's pointing the finger at his community for falling for the likes of Reagan, both Bushes, and Obama: "We should be indicted for bullshit we incited." Plus his tone and timbre are A+.

yeah the best thing about "reagan" is that he acknowledges rap's history of bullshit conspiracy theorizing even as it falls prey to it a little bit

killer mike contains multitudes, etc.

i mean it verges on bill hicks style "every politician is a servant of the corporate overlords" simplification but the first verse's implication of mike himself (as well as rap as a whole) for selling violent pulp as a lifestyle and the second's life-someone's-lived specifics almost earn it.

standard rap conspiracy theory shit rules lex!

you sound like someone that's never truly beheld a pale horse :(

danity kane is illuminati politricks >:(

mike's politics, at least what he presents on record, are a little simplistic, but i think it's good that at least someone is putting these kinds of lyrics out there. n/a otm about the hooks and tunas otm about his flow - i like it in small doses but it does get tiring after a while. and to tie this all together, his flow does seem to stiffen up when he's trying to deliver those political punches, which make them harder to take

that was all kind of a mess sorry, ftr i agree with most of deej's stoned twitter thoughts from last night if anyone else read them

the amount of love for this record really does baffle me though, i'll never understand what makes p4k types rally around a certain record, especially rap albums. this sounds like every other killer mike record.

this sounds like every other killer mike record.

^^this is why i like it

though i think ghetto extraordinary is still his best record

the amount of love for this record really does baffle me though, i'll never understand what makes p4k types rally around a certain record, especially rap albums. this sounds like every other killer mike record.

― twittering spinster (k3vin k.), Thursday, May 31, 2012 1:35 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

k3v are you kidding, the title may as well have been "best new r.a.p. music" when they announced the fucking thing

seriously

well also they've been pretty supportive of his last couple of albums so it's not really weird that the trend would continue for a new album that sounds like his others

oh yeah don't get me wrong i like it and killer mike. pledge 2 is probably my favorite mike. it's just always funny when this kind of attention seemingly comes from nowhere. and good for him, he's had a nice career and deserves the buzz

xp m@tt

the amount of love for this record really does baffle me though, i'll never understand what makes p4k types rally around a certain record, especially rap albums. this sounds like every other killer mike record.

― twittering spinster (k3vin k.), Thursday, May 31, 2012 5:35 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Has little to do w Killer Mike and mostly everything to do with El-P, imo.

well it's the combination of El-P's production and the idea of Killer Mike as an underrated craftsman who's been toiling away all these years

the amount of love for this record really does baffle me though, i'll never understand what makes p4k types rally around a certain record, especially rap albums. this sounds like every other killer mike record.

― twittering spinster (k3vin k.), Thursday, May 31, 2012 1:35 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

k3v are you kidding, the title may as well have been "best new r.a.p. music" when they announced the fucking thing

― some dude, Thursday, May 31, 2012 1:40 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh yeah i get this, on some level it was a business decision. and it was a smart one! i'm not knocking him for it or anything, and like i said i'm glad he's getting the wide attention he's apparently getting now

outside of "reagan" this album isn't really more or less political than any other killer mike album

i think the production is good, i think El-P did a good job of trying to make his style work with mike's more southern style and it's a good hybrid IMO

agree

apparently only the clean version is available on spotify smh

?? i am listening to the explicit version on spotify as we type

lol i forgot that the last thing i heard killer mike on was a song called "slumerican shitizen"

all time song title

i really like some tracks on the killer mike fwiw

its def not surprising that this record is big & its not that i don't think good criticism hasn't been written about it, more that once something hits this critical consensus mass i feel like it's no longer about what's happening on the record & becomes a kind of boring general enthusiasm. where you end up hearing people talk about the record in revered tones

its at least a more singular / less uneven record than that big boi one everyone went nuts for, even if i like some individual tracks on that one more

While I agree (2nd para), what can you do? Just not talk about it?

its def not surprising that this record is big & its not that i don't think good criticism hasn't been written about it, more that once something hits this critical consensus mass i feel like it's no longer about what's happening on the record & becomes a kind of boring general enthusiasm. where you end up hearing people talk about the record in revered tones

i agree but i don't know what you want to do about this? i think people are pretty much honestly reviewing the record and just like it a lot. you might have some people who are just following consensus and reviewing positively because everyone else is but this gets balanced by the knee-jerk contrarians. it's more just a problem of too much criticism in general.

maybe the thing going on is some people don't listen to much southern rap unless there's a wite auteur type co-signing it (see also "climax" being probably the most acclaimed song of usher's career)

Lol the first I realised "everyone's talking about it" was seeing everyone talk about how everyone's talking about it

Having lived with it for a couple of weeks the immediate impact def wears off, it doesn't even have the repplay value of big boi let alone quik + k. Totally a fine album but doesn't merit instacanonisation (not that any album does really)

Climax surely not husher's most acclaimed! That's yeah, right?

maybe the thing going on is some people don't listen to much southern rap unless there's a wite auteur type co-signing it (see also "climax" being probably the most acclaimed song of usher's career)

― some dude, Thursday, May 31, 2012 1:21 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

are we living in some imaginary world where southern rap hasn't been dominant for like a decade and embraced by pitchfork types for a long time?

acclaimed relative to its success would be more precise i guess -- "yeah" was #3 pazz & jop, "climax" prob won't be that high

i mean ppl in THIS VERY THREAD have reviewed gucci mane mixtapes on big bad pitchfork

are we living in some imaginary world where southern rap hasn't been dominant for like a decade and embraced by pitchfork types for a long time?

― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, May 31, 2012 2:24 PM (19 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i didn't say how large a group "some people" is or how much it intersects with "pitchfork types" although obv i'm trolling here

also i think it's pretty natural honestly for the general critical community to be late on something that genre critics/nerds have been raving about for months or years

there are, uh, def other aspects to why people care about this mike album, but that's one of them

"something" is a stupid term, i mean "artists"

i agree but i don't know what you want to do about this? i think people are pretty much honestly reviewing the record and just like it a lot. you might have some people who are just following consensus and reviewing positively because everyone else is but this gets balanced by the knee-jerk contrarians. it's more just a problem of too much criticism in general.

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, May 31, 2012 1:19 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah and when i raised stuff on twitter i got accused of all kinds of hipster contrariness or what have you. & fair enough, i can say that i was kind of ready for this to be what we all agree is great & that kind of put me off to begin, although i have def come around on some tracks & the production on it.

i mean, rather than being like, 'i wish more people hated this' its more like, i wish this was making more waves, or causing more discussions, that it almost feels like by being so uncontroversially agreed-upon that its the same as when something is universally reviled, the battles arent being fought over it

i'm kinda suprised Fox News hasn't tried to drum up something with the "i'm glad reagan's dead" line, seems like that would be fun for those guys

i mean tbh i stopped paying attention to mike bigga (lol) around the time pitchfork dropped a FIVE STAR TRACK REVIEW on that stupid "that's life" song so dude has coded as overrated critic bait to me for 6 years

plenty of good writing/criticism can come even when almost everyone agrees

well, if you mean, causing arguments isn't a measure of quality, i agree

but when its so politically coded, surely that has to be taken into account?

maybe i'm just used to years of hearing about nwa being targeted by the fbi, how incendiary ice cube records were, the response to 'cop killer,' etc.

i guess lots of critics really supported PE though too

holding mike up to the social agitation standards of NWA or ice cube seems a bit unfair

the state of 'political rap' on a mainstream level at this point is just kanye saying the same "the government invented aids!" shit over and over and lupe fiasco managing to look dumb next to bill o'reilly. below that level of media exposure it's not like what someone as relatively unknown as killer mike is going to cause any controversies OR change anyone's mind.

no one now coud ever have that level of impact like PE or NWA. it's a different world. plus at that time rap was still relatively new to america.

yeah things are definitely different now, but the problems NWA & PE were talking about are still here.

no, the police have been fucked, they won iirc

yeah that blatant homophobia is hard to ignore, especially in dancehall

i say dancehall cause that's where doom got the batty boyz slang from

yeah it was basically the f-word equivalent at my school

oops Killer Mike's got Chappelle on his new track

DBNS

That was really disappointing to see. Feels like a misreading of a large part of the audience he's gained since Run the Jewels blew up, but then again I see a lot of uncritical praise for the songs on Twitter so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not sure how big the Anti-Chappelle Rap fan contingent is

The Chappelle intro is easy to skip at least. It's gross but not really surprising - KM hasn't taken issue at all with TI's creepiness about his daughter or any of that, BFFs with Bill Maher, etc..

not to mention appearing on NRA TV

I can understand that appearance, as he believes in Black gun ownership as a means of self-defense given the lack of support from police, which makes total sense to me in the current climate. He was a bit naive to think the NRA wouldn't pervert why he was actually appearing, for their own reasons, which is why he apologized afer.

*after