i can't help but feel that it's really really adolescent male angsty to expect like a spiritual experience from every song you hear on the radio just because it's an "urban"-like male performing it.
maybe i am missing something, but what is weird about that interview... i am guessing at least 25% of males between the ages of 13-21 would say the same thing about 50...
i dont really like this souljah boy tune, but if you go on youtube and search for "i got me some bapes"... well thats another matter. amazing song, really dark production.
Citing this as a reason for not liking Soulja Boy is over analysing to the point of absurdity. This is really off the mark for most people, I think, and wouldn't really represent how a lot of people approach modern rap, which isn't really about being all deep and clever in your "cypher" and shit. Hip hop produces loads of huge and really good pop hits: for instance, T.I., Young Jeezy, Ludacris, G Unit, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, Lil Jon etc.
These songs are by no means "spiritual experiences" to me, and I recognize them as great pop tracks, and the way I make value judgements on a lot of the hip hop I listen to is its effectiveness in a club environment. You know: "catchy music with big, loud, epic production values," and that sort of thing.
For me Soulja Boy is just too much of a self-parody for my liking (he started off as some punk kid making "joke" versions of rap songs at his high school). And whereas a lot of rappers these days' main aspiration is making chart smashers, and therefore have huge marketing teams behind them to make this happen, this is ALL Soulja Boy seems to have going for him.
Which occasionally has produced some good shit I guess... but I just can't get down with this over-exaggerated, over-dumb one hit wonder train coming out of hip hop right now (Hurricane Chris, Jibbs, Mims, et al). Like I said: you got house music, and then you got Eric Prydz and Bootyluv.
If you like it though - more power to ya. I just don't think you can try and explain away why someone wouldn't like it the way you just did.
Soulja Boy is not corroding the soul of pop music. There's no way he possibly could, it's never had one.
And it's by no means universally acknowledged that Crank Dat isn't catchy and has no merit by pop standards. On the contrary many people would say it manifests everything that is great or typical about pop music.
its *transparently* contrived and calculated and intelligence-insultingly so, neither quality of which i would say is great or typical about great pop music.
oh its catchy. but its still shit. its *transparently* contrived and calculated and intelligence-insultingly so, neither quality of which i would say is great or typical about great pop music.
From this forum I kinda got a small grasp on what you like so I can see what yer saying, but most pop music is totally contrived and calculated, the KLF being the best example I can think of immediately.
A hiphop 'Clapping Song'.
theres plenty of better clapping songs for hip hop, ones which actually emanate pure unmitigated joy much better than crank that imo. those songs - rob base's it takes two, for one - are much more true to the spirit of 'pop' than the likes of fucking crank that.
i know this is dissensus but people saying that pop has no soul or that theyd rather it was explicitly and openly contrived is depressingly cynical.
I'd really like to zoom into the future and see whether Crank Dat ends up as a 'ring o ring o roses' for future generations or whether it just withers, I've got a suspicion it's now in playgrounds for evermore, which, if so, is quite a feat, a mind-blowing acheivement actually.
You don't like the sound of the song. It's not to your taste. That's fine. Just don't toss in the righteous language about how anyone with any taste whatsoever knows that this song is "garbage". Pop by definition is disposable, ephemeral, and decadent. Deal with it.
Yup! Just realizing this is hitting the charts across the pond -- this song was the biggest thing all summer and fall, wonder what it'll be like there. I've seen kids as young as 5 doing the dance; I saw a teenager roll up in a car along side a school, open all the windows in the car, and blast the song at full volume while dancing in the street. The lyrics have a way of looping around in your head -- something about the rhythm and the rhyme (I always get "I'm Jocking On Yo Bitch Ass / And If We Get The Fightin / Then I'm Cocking On Your Bitch Ass" looping for days).
It is interesting that something so "dark" sounding -- only those orchestra hits really lighten/cheesify the beat at all -- could be so big with youngins, but maybe that's how we living in '07/08. I thought it was about selling drugs when I first heard it.