Finally Rich - Chief Keef

yeah, the more there's a cultural narrative around an album and the higher the "stakes" feel to people, the easier it is to focus on anything but what it actually sounds like

which artists tend also to play to their advantage imo

easier still to imagine a great self-deception in people liking something you refuse or are unable to engage with

"Love Sosa" entered the Hot 100 this week.

i don't think people who love this record are lying to themselves, i just think they have a high tolerance for monotone offbeat rapping

aero otm

i wouldn't say monotone, what stands out to me is that half the time keef is most of the way to singing, but it's always the same three note melody.

add this guy to my kinda-long list of Guys Whose Music Is Interesting To Talk About But To Me Not Very Interesting To Hear, a list about which I have conflicting emotions

fwiw re: sh1pl3y's complaints i actually think he has a pretty masterful sense of rhythm cf 1:45

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys4hIkqPteY&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys4hIkqPteY

how you hear that as a masterful sense of rhythm is completely beyond me musically. it sounds like he did that a capella and then it was later cut in as near the beat as was possible. like I would be genuinely interested, if you're up for it, how that's masterful - there's a long and great tradition in say toasting of throwing in triplets, runs of 16th-notes/syllables, etc, over a straight 4/4, so the voice is essentially serving as both percussion and vocal and it sounds like maybe that's what he's trying to do? but he doesn't pull it off at all imo. like when he says "sad stories like soapbox/you ain't no gangster Tupac" - it's like he's just not listening very hard for how those would fall in with the beat. however props to him for the Xiu Xiu reference in the next line

yeah that youtube as a rebuttal is hilarious

I was really looking forward to some crazed irregular-rhythm tuplets like you get in harp and piano music so actually getting "I'm a 32-note late on every entrance like a hesitant singer who isn't sure where the beat or the note is" was kind of a letdown

i don't have a great handle on pitch or theory so when you talk about a lot of vocal stuff i take your word for it, but it genuinely surprises me when anybody with ears can't seem to get a handle on how rhythm works and whether a performance is on or off the beat

kind of get the impression that keef does that deliberately, or at least whether he's *able* to rap on beat or not, his general strategy for approaching it is deliberate and in keeping w/the rest of his persona

i think it's part of his persona to not both doing a 2nd take, but i don't know if he realizes or cares what his performance might gain if he took another pass with the beat turned up louder in his headphones

not caring is part of his persona too i guess

persona doing some heavy lifting itt

well the rapping ain't gonna!

persona doing some heavy lifting itt

that this whole interpretive approach makes it out of undergrad classes at all is kind of a crying shame - it's not like use of persona isn't a working trope but people hold onto it like it's a great way of explaining why a given musician doesn't write/rap/sing/play well

Hes not "off beat," or if he is its not what makes his verse notable there. its possible they mislaid his vocal track so its "early" (the engineer on the kanye version of "i dont like" dropped his vocal track in at the wrong time) but its SO early it seems more likely to me it was intentional

Or arguably big lean's people dropped it in at the wrong time, but that doesnt really say anything about keef's rhythmic control

It sounds like hes trying to place his words at unexpected parts of the beat, hes coming in "early" and ending each line early

Also its "sad stories like soap ops" as in operas

youtube commentors arguing the same thing:

bigwillonmygrind 23 hours ago
damn keef was off beat
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Ontibadboy 21 hours ago
nawq he wasn't he was goin with the drop
Reply · in reply to bigwillonmygrind

Tha Sheen 9 hours ago
yea he not off beat the first time i heard it i thought he was but listen again keef crazy
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STPLamzino 11 hours ago
he's not off beat, he's just switching his flow.......
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naturezoo 19 hours ago
Keef ain't off beat wtf are y'all talkin bout. Nigga just comin with a diff flo.
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then to be fair to Al there's ppl claiming d-riders are delusional and that he's 'off beat'

haha blaming the fuckin engineer is shameful. the thing about Keef's phrasing is that a lot of times he starts a line at the right time, but he rushes to the end so that the syllables fall in weird places and he finishes the phrase earlier than it seems like it should, which works out especially badly for him since he leans hard on end rhymes.

im not blaming the engineer, i think its intentional (think dont know). but i disagree, his entrances are all coming in on the same early count -- it sounds like his verse (or the waveform) is shifted to the left.

although i kind of like this too lol:

KENNY GK 2 days ago
Keef killed this. the beat is just fucked up smh
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pretty much every track he's ever made has this issue -- either all of them (including the ones on his major label albums) were engineered by the same incompetent/sabotaging guy or hmmmm nope that's the only explanation

ok well in that case we're apparently talking about two completely different things because what i'm hearing here is not present on any of his other tracks

dude even the "huah huah huah" drifts off-beat at the end of the loop every time

fwiw the engineer story on the i dont like remix is true so stop being a cock about this

it's not the orthodox craft one but it seems evident keef does have an innate musicality and not simply a delinquent anti-aesthetic

like j0rdan said it follows on from the pervading post-fruity youth swag

deej was misguided in trying to validate it thru classical metrics, ships' "what his performance might gain" was stuckist condescension falsely implying objective benchmarks

i thought the "i don't like" thing was an issue of a verse being dropped in a weird place in the melody of the beat, but it still locks in with the rhythm fine? apples and oranges xp

yeah i will cop to condescension -- i often play armchair producer and think "get back in the booth, man, you coulda killed that verse if you actually tried"

i'm talking about where his vocals drop in on the beat, ship, like i said, we're talking about two different things

which classical metrics are u referring to rtc

well after you concluded we were talking about two different things, you said i was being a cock about disregarding thing 2 after you brought it up and continuing to focus on thing 1

look i mean i get it, keef is by received standards "off" and in another time might be laughed out of town, but idk i listen to the album and that shit works 4 me, by its own logic, just like kendrick's falling-down-the-stairs flow or whatever

i understand there's a fine line where you feel one has to be vigilant against brainwashing yourself and automatically giving the kids free passes but the other maybe greater danger on the other side of that coin is you end up kinda listening to yourself listening to music rather than just listening to music, i know that sounds like a risible formulation but idk

oh shit i should have known deej would someday lure me into the worst dr. seuss story ever

LOL

i mean idk daisy age dudes were probably smh-ing to deliberately flat-ass tunnel banger choruses way back when, this is just the next episode

KENNY GK 2 days ago
Keef killed this. the beat is just fucked up smh
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ive decided im going to ride with this explanation bc its the funniest

which classical metrics are u referring to rtc

― D-40, Monday, 31 December 2012 20:49 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

"masterful sense of rhythm" can logically only refer to past masters

im referring to the polyrhythmic jazz drummers of eras of yore.

what did u think of his guest verse on the youtube in question, intentional creation of a novel flow, mislaid audio track, or off-beat accident?

he actually has some intricate flows, it's not like he's kicking some blocky run dmc cadence, just the way he's not hitting the syllables suggests his reach exceeds his grasp. it's like listening to a kid who's still learning the chords to "stairway to heaven" attempt the solo. breath control is like the last thing rappers seem to master these days.

maybe the diff between what we're talking about is im talking about the general rhythmic structure of his verses & you're talking about his precision. i would agree he has a self-consciously 'sloppy' style and can see how that might be off putting but to me it works. when i say he has a 'masterful' rhythmic command i'm talking more about the underlying rhythmic ideas rather than how flawlessly he executes them

clarity!

I totally thought a few of the Keef songs on the album sounded like an engineer goof! It reminds me of the story about how run dmcs 'king of rock' is all "off" because the vocals and the beats got seperated. Except on #chihuahuahua they didn't do the best job of reconnecting them.

yeah it just sounds so much like soulja boy and other swaggy mixtape rappers-type 'relaxed' vocal style that i assumed the final product is pretty much his performance without much technical interference

what did u think of his guest verse on the youtube in question, intentional creation of a novel flow, mislaid audio track, or off-beat accident?

― D-40, Monday, 31 December 2012 21:00 (36 minutes ago) Bookmark

part intentionally clipped, part "fuck it" swag, it's a fluid dialectic between the two rather than concrete percentages tho

but all this vague underlying rhythmic ideas of the polyrhythmic jazz drummers blah is some counterproductive fanution imo

i thought it was obvious the jazz drummer thing was not to be taken too seriously, i don't think he's self-consciously making complex polyrhythmic decisions

i do think he's aware, tho, that he's doing something musically new / fresh-sounding, kicking a flow that he hasnt heard someone try before, & that involves coming in 'early' (but actually on time)

he's doing a sexy vampire voice on "love sosa," right