Finally Rich - Chief Keef

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

if not, most likely won't be.

this just isn't true at all

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

rap threads have always been part of a larger conversation that takes place on rap blogs, in comment sections and on twitter

Omg im differentiating myself, super problematic

when middlebrow rap fandom moves onto Chief Keef type shit, will you ditch it to go and enjoy something else that doesn't have that stink on it?

when you're over age 22, yeah I think it's problematic but hey enjoy the never-ending quest

Yeah definitely, I would totallllly LOVE stalley if his fans werent nerds! *rolls eyes like slot machine*

there's a lot of 'clowning' on people, which afaik doesn't really happen w/discussions of other genres.

its almost like the culture that we're celebrating is rooted in cutting and the dozens and lyrical battles

ilm's rap taste (if there is such a thing) accepts plenty of middlebrow stuff, by the way. not all of it, but that characterization is backwards as hell.

i do honestly think the goon threads should be a little more open to the good backpacky stuff that's poppin right now (Homeboy Sandman, Serengeti, Oh No, Angel Haze) but its partially my fault for not really posting that stuff as often as I should

Even me dissing wale is a bit wrong... I wrote a positive review of his show for the tribune last year, and havr defended a portion of his catalog. The idea im rejecting isnt the artist as much as it is the misguided/rockist thinking that led me to value a flawed concept like "progressive" bc anti pop consortium made some "difficult" material

angel haze has her own thread that stays popping

Antipop Consortium is great, fuck your prog guilt

Lol. I still like "bubbles" that song was a banger

Again tho, what im trying to say its not a critique of the artist, its a critique of the reasoning behind it

*behind championing it

ffwd to 0:28 and tell me this shit doesnt sla

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00W9zT1rZs4

p

that shit sla

Haha snap

when middlebrow rap fandom moves onto Chief Keef type shit, will you ditch it to go and enjoy something else that doesn't have that stink on it?

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Sunday, January 20, 2013 1:30 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

By the time middlebrow rap fandom moves onto Chief Keef type shit, Chief Keef type shit will be old hat and no longer cutting edge and someone else we've never heard of yet will be doing more exciting things that are more deserving of our attention.

its almost like the culture that we're celebrating is rooted in cutting and the dozens and lyrical battles

I realize this but it comes off as mean (w/o the playfulness/cleverness of the template) and rooted in self doubt. also, techno threads aren't filled w/minimalists posts, jazz threads aren't trade offs of improvs on a theme.

the jazz threads are cool, because it's pretty much a dead artform, no longer mainstream popular, def not among youth. threads are about the music w/lil else getting in the way (found it odd that there was so much "spiritual hat" jazz in the albums poll, but makes sense due to the taste backgrounds of a lot of posters. hiphop is too current, still too tied up coolness identity and affectations.

Techno threads on ILX terrible tho

Provocative post: its kind of weird that a white person like aero could assert that any white fans of a particular black artist must be racist for liking that artist

^^^ if I made this argument sincerely, it would be the equivalent of what aero is arguing here

Ok, reddit

thats not a reverse racism argument at all, thats what you mean

im talking about a white person deciding that a particular black person, a human being, embodies a stereotype

*if thats what you mean

I think the only person here who has made such an argument is Dan.

I think if you're honest about what art does it shouldn't be surprising that the street-level stuff is better -- i.e. art tries to make up the difference between our infinite, expansive feelings and finite, cramped realities. And ghetto/street life is pretty cramped and finite -- so the music has a bigger infinity to traverse so to speak, more to make up for, more emotional work to do in order to be redemptive.

Or you can think about it economically, in terms of skill development -- I remember Dave Van Ronk recounting a conversation where somebody was musing: why are so many famous blues guitarists blind black men from the South? I mean isn't that uncanny? perhaps suspect? indicative of an audience fetish?

Dave's rejoinder: if you were a blind black man from the South prior to WWII how else would you make a living?

Within a demographic, an economic decision will be made more often if there's a smaller opportunity cost. And, within a demographic, if there are a disproportionate number of say rappers, there will also be a disproportionate number of GOOD rappers!

provocative post: poor people make better music. They have to, because their lives are worse.

for 'poor' above feel free to sub in crazy, alienated, lonely, messianic, high, prone to fits -- anything really as long as you don't wanna feel complicit

very provocative

btw "projecting your preconceptions of x onto this stuff and pronouncing it good because it serves them back to you" is how *any* idea about *anything* is formed!

Good to remember in terms of human psychology sure but imo not a particularly effective approach to examining one's conscience re: enjoyment of street rap ---