Finally Rich - Chief Keef

this isn't quite true but i guess i just like of love sosa as a kind of ambient track with some compelling wordless vocals or something.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, January 18, 2013 6:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if ur not listening to the words imo u kinda 'miss the point'

noz made a good argument for this applying to asap but i think the words are more central to keef's appeal despite the opinions of h8rs

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Saturday, January 19, 2013 12:05 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's also funny that ppl who say he's a bad lyricist are rockists, clinging to old, outdated definitions of hip hop, but the ppl who appreciate it strictly on sonic/rhythmic/vibe terms and enjoy it also aren't enjoying it in the ”right way”

i don't wanna get into the minstrelsy thing either, but I think there's an interesting double standard wrt to the pass given to rappers like Keef and the reaction same people have towards indie/backpacker/"conscious" rappers

It's also funny that ppl who say he's a bad lyricist are rockists, clinging to old, outdated definitions of hip hop, but the ppl who appreciate it strictly on sonic/rhythmic/vibe terms and enjoy it also aren't enjoying it in the ”right way”

― fieri inna babylon (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, January 19, 2013 2:26 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://scienceblogs.com/thoughtfulanimal/wp-content/blogs.dir/351/files/2012/04/i-534ec9e4fe422e37f2c7b9b58810e809-operation%20game.jpg

i can't disagree w/ people who like the song?

this isnt about 'taking sides'

i got lots of commas / I rap like Tuomas

Obviously I lolled

I can fuck Tuomas / not braggin just honest

Finnishly Rich

i don't wanna get into the minstrelsy thing either, but I think there's an interesting double standard wrt to the pass given to rappers like Keef and the reaction same people have towards indie/backpacker/"conscious" rappers

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Saturday, January 19, 2013 1:31 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's only "interesting" if you start from the assumption that there's nothing else in CK's music to sustain interest!

i mean jeez people is it possible to just agree to disagree about his music? do you have to insinuate that we get our jollies on keef's "realness" as a chicago gang banger or something?

like i said i had no idea of the backstory before i heard (some of) the music. i just found it weirdly intense and compelling sonically. if you think i'm a chump b/c the music is bad, then whatever. that's OK. but this need to search for *other* reasons, and thus to invalidate those who disagree with you, is... i dunno it just seems like waste of thought, honestly.

he is also v. intelligent so i kind of assume that he realizes that it is possible some people actually like his music and aren't just indulging in some kind of fetishization of an imagined "authenticity" or something. i think he just hates the music so much he has a hard time imagining this.

it's plenty possible. it's also very worth ~thinking hard about~ how a lotta white dudes whose personal investment in/experience with the sorts of environments described by e.g. chief keef is strictly optative i.e. they're not from the neighborhoods whose stories they're most interested in, they don't have any relatives in the projects, if they care about people in the projects then that's terrific but wow it is ~kinda odd~ how very aggro white rap heads get about their images of black men, how their tastes seem so often to run to a violent/drug-related tropes, and how largely uninterested they seem in other images of black men being presented in the art they consume/write about/rep for: how their preference, in what they choose to write/talk/think about, seems strongly toward the image of a young black man as a guy who carries a firearm, takes and/or deals drugs, and thinks very little of women. when the reality of the black experience is broad and various and diverse, but you wouldn't really know that from the preference a whole lot of white dudes seem broadly to have for "hard"/"authentic"/w/e rap that describes a reality which is, in fact, only a segment of that reality. I could be 100% wrong about this, I'm nobody's expert on race, but that's always how this shit feels to me. generally speaking I think it's super-fair, given the long history of white americans and their tastes in black art, to ask sometimes: "are you projecting your preconceptions of black realities onto this stuff and pronouncing it good because it serves them back to you?"

^this
really found it ~interesting~ when ethan (white guy) would mercilessly clown nate (white guy) for his taste in hip hop. and maybe i'm just missing the threads, but it's ~interesting~ that there's basically zero discussion of non-"thug"/"gangsta" non-mainstream hip hop on this board.

it's only "interesting" if you start from the assumption that there's nothing else in CK's music to sustain interest!

you left out half of my equation ie the dismissal/contempt of backpacker/conscious rap

OT a bit but the this strain of shit-talking lyrics (i fuck your mom/gf, haha you're poor) comes off one way when you listen to a recording, and another way live. i've been to shows of "up n coming" rappers who use this as their main schtick and the crowd is SILENT. it's awkward. "yeah you fucked my girl!! yes love this guy!!" never happens, respect to anyone who can win a crowd over with that.

that there's basically zero discussion of non-"thug"/"gangsta" non-mainstream hip hop on this board.

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Saturday, January 19, 2013 11:53 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

guess you really don't go to the rap threads huh

^this
really found it ~interesting~ when ethan (white guy) would mercilessly clown nate (white guy) for his taste in hip hop. and maybe i'm just missing the threads, but it's ~interesting~ that there's basically zero discussion of non-"thug"/"gangsta" non-mainstream hip hop on this board.

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Saturday, January 19, 2013 11:53 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

which underground conscious rap would you rather see covered?

i mean a big reason that stuff isn't talked about as much is because a lot of it hit a fuckin wall after 2006 or 2007. unless you're really dead set on digging through the endless '90s NY pastiches or Blowed/Hiero/now Odd Future-derivative stuff from the West, there both isn't as much interesting-sounding underground shit AND less people willing to make that dig (which i think is rooted in some people being ashamed of their former status as hiphopinfinity-ass underground fans before the big shift toward rap poptimism but that's its own thing).

but i mean interesting stuff does exist, so you wanna talk about the underachievers or b l a c k i e or pyramid vritra or whatever the fuck, i mean knock yourself out, i'd like to see discussion of that music (and a lot of it DOES get covered in the rolling rap threads or at least it has in the couple months i've been here, like going off what's said you'd think it's just endless drill tapes and post-brick squad shit when that's really not the case)

(i am drunk btw so my apologies if that doesn't cohere)

Or Granny just sees Kendrick, Action Bronson, Danny Brown, Yelawolf, Big KRIT, Ty$, Shabazz Palaces, Angel Haze and like 40000 other ILX-goon-approved artists as "gangstas" and "thugs"

And also avowed street rap diehard D-40 does dominate the convo with his ALL YOUTUBE EVERYTHING shenanigans, so you may have missed me riding for Serengeti or w/e but it happens

calm down bitches, answer is "maybe i'm just missing threads". really got turned off by the trifeization of hiphop discussion on ILM 5 yrs ago or whenever and haven't delved into it much.
there's 1 thread on MURS started in 2003 by, you guessed it, Nate P. No Oddisee thread, barely a post mentioning him. I just find that odd for a board that has a thread on virtually everything. hip hop prob more than any other genre gets tied up in notions of cool still. feel like people screen out stuff A PRIORI if it has even an inkling of perceived coffeshop-chicks-and-white-dudes appeal.

and the amount of derision directed towards proponents of those artists makes me think it's less "i really can't stand that coffeeshop chick vibe shit" and more "i really can't stand being seen as someone who would like this shit". hip hop as an identity badge, i'm not like THOSE white people, i'm hipper than hipsters.

think for me this all comes down to a) i thought ethan was a douchey bully caught up in narcissism of small differences and b) the overt white racists I have known LOVED thug rap

can u rly use 'a priori' like that

ethan was the best poster ilm ever had

but if it makes you feel any better, he would probably be calling me and deej clowns for riding for keef. or probably has somewhere else.

Ethan wasn't at all an all thug rap all the time guy, also.

r.i.p. ethan

i can't disagree w/ people who like the song?

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Saturday, January 19, 2013 2:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this isnt about 'taking sides'

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Saturday, January 19, 2013 2:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

with all due respect man, I've seen you make this point again and again so I feel like I have to say that, there's something about the way you respond to people that does make it seems like you're taking sides - even when you largely agree with the poster you're responding to and only disagreeing over a small point!

like you write a lot about how you are frustrated with the discourse that surrounds goon threads but I think a lot of posters are also a lil' bit frustrated with the hard tone you take, it really does seem like when you advance your opinions that only your opinion is valid and ought to be the domineering filter through which the conversation takes place. I think there are other ways for you to express your 'disagreements' that would feel a lot more inclusive and less combative and would probably serve to temper the discourse.

Good post aerosmith, I've had those thoughts about myself at times

dayo otm. congrats on developing a discernible posting style tho.

this shit is bonkers guys

1. if you want to make it personal, i think anyone who's paid attention to what i listen to on this board knows that my taste in black music is not only 'thug rap.' ive got a collection of 70s disco, 80s house, 90s house on vinyl, i am an avid jazz fan, & i love R&B. i have a pretty wide range of tastes w/in 'black music' as a whole.

2. within rap i'd say that the board's bias (and my own) is more a defensive posture about 'LCD' rap which is NOT solely 'thug rap' at all -- if anything, i've been pretty dismissive of a fair amount of 'thug rap' i find generic (i.e. alley boy). And yeah, the LCD-rap defense can go overboard (as any fandom can) i remember lightly clowning jordan for repping for a completely random youtube find of some '09 swag rapper as being so dope when it was obv pretty much a 'random rap' (obscure version of a more popular artist) type track, but for the most part, the board's general stance as far as I can tell is in response to a wide-ranging middlebrow rap fandom that thinks jcole & wale are the 'real lyricists' or w/e.

3. My actual personal bias is partly 'defend LCD' like the rest of the thread's posters, with a privileging of the pop-rap era that came up when i was in high school, when 75% of the billboard charts were rap or rap-R&B, when hip-hop was still 'street' but had a very open aesthetic style, appealed more to women & was largely social music, as opposed to the 'ibiza bloodfarts' (registered whiney trademark) of today's pop charts, and also the rappers...

3. ...had strong styles. which leads to my 3rd point, which is that more than how 'hood' someone is what interests me (and, i imagine, many of the people here) is strong personalities/ personal rap styles. It should also be noted that for the most part Which is why I think Alley Boy is boring & Chief keef is dope. rappers used to have distinctive styles. DMX did not have a conventional rap style. mystikal did not have a conventional rap style.

4. the easiest way to find rappers w/ strong styles like that is generally through street rap. the tendency is that the stuff that is the most 'problematic,' the most at-street-level, does seem to be where a lot of the strong personalities emerge. This isn't always true (cf MF Doom) and there are bajillions of wack generic rappers 'at street level' but the core original audience of rap music tends to be the real 'tastemaker' when it comes to what rappers are interesting, and i find that listening to those audiences often means you're finding out about more distinctive artists.

i fucked up a c+P in #3 but hopefully you guys can work out what i meant

with all due respect man, I've seen you make this point again and again so I feel like I have to say that, there's something about the way you respond to people that does make it seems like you're taking sides - even when you largely agree with the poster you're responding to and only disagreeing over a small point!

like you write a lot about how you are frustrated with the discourse that surrounds goon threads but I think a lot of posters are also a lil' bit frustrated with the hard tone you take, it really does seem like when you advance your opinions that only your opinion is valid and ought to be the domineering filter through which the conversation takes place. I think there are other ways for you to express your 'disagreements' that would feel a lot more inclusive and less combative and would probably serve to temper the discourse.

― 乒乓, Sunday, January 20, 2013 8:06 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're going to have to parse for me what makes me saying 'i think it's this way not that way' different from when everyone else does it.

i will say that if i sound combatative it's because of how consensus around here can get ironclad & feel impossible to break, like, i registered disagreement about the dawn richard tape & everyone's immediately dismissive until tim & matt dc weigh in w/ concerns. i mean, they obv did so w/ more nuance which is fine, but i dont think my concerns were automatically dismissable

i also post about dom kennedy, uptown xo, chance the rapper, etc. none of which are really 'thug rap'

i mean Al was dismissing me the other day for even indicating i was softening on the joey badass thing

i will say that i tend to have an aversion to stuff that sounds particularly RETRO, and i've never been into weird/IDM-y rap music like that, at least not since i was 19 & thought anti-pop consortium were, like, totally groundbreaking

the tendency is that the stuff that is the most 'problematic,' the most at-street-level, does seem to be where a lot of the strong personalities emerge.

this is an extremely dubious assertion & says more about the very thing I'm talking about (why do white rap listeners find "street"/"problematic" personalities "strong" - why does the former tend to code as the latter for them?) than it does about any "this just seems to be the correlation"

i am an avid jazz fan

http://cml.music.utexas.edu/assets/SheetMusic/_resampled/SetWidth620-clarinet-hemiola-baby.png

Its a tendency, not a rule, aero, although it seems there is plenty of historical precedent. Imo its a pure numbers game... If ur a kid growing up in the burbs youre not growing up immersed in hip hop culture

I think pretty much any apparent correlation between taste and social archetype can look problematic if you want to frame it as such, and fans of street rap have been over-pathologised by the rock critic establishment way too often over the past twenty five years for me to put too much stock in such arguments. Also it's one of the nastiest legit-sounding ad hominem tactics that crops up on ILM (see also frank kogan and teen pop).

within rap i'd say that the board's bias (and my own) is more a defensive posture about 'LCD' rap which is NOT solely 'thug rap' at all -- if anything, i've been pretty dismissive of a fair amount of 'thug rap' i find generic (i.e. alley boy).

this is why i don't pay attention to rap threads. they seem limited because of being ground in this reactionism, ie they're more about Music than music. i don't understand the need to defend LCD, other than to distance oneself from corny white guys who go on about true hiphop or w/e. there's a lot of 'clowning' on people, which afaik doesn't really happen w/discussions of other genres.

Also aero youre willfully misrepresenting what I said, and the distinction I made between keef and say alley boy, or t.i. vs shawty lo, or say king louie v. The 1000s of chicago rapper vids I got sent daily (many of which are scarily "real" but lack artfulness)

@ GD its not about clowning backpackers, its that we actually, u know, enjoy songs like swag surfin and laffy taffy

but you kinda switched what you enjoyed after getting clowned a lot, that's how it seems to me. you were just saying you (lightly) clowned jordan for liking something. i just find it to be an environment that isn't conducive to liking music that doesn't fit into a limited mold.

I clowned him for liking something that lacked originality, not that wasnt sufficiently hood

Haha granny perhaps you never hung out on the dance music threads when vahid was in full flight.

I "switched my enjoyment" from anti pop consortium when I realized that I was fetishizing some abstract and fictional notion of "progress" that was really about differentiating myself from my peers than it was actually really caring abt the music

if an artist is "street" or "LCD", it's gonna get repped for or at least talked about. if not, most likely won't be. it's more about the image you're trying to put out (I am a type of person who enjoys this type of rap) rather than the music itself.

but now you're differentiating yourself from people who think Wale is where lyricism is at