padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
sure a particular scene, like jungle is the classic example maybe, but I mean there's always something going on somewhere...it's like when people said that the 70s was just this musical wasteland before punk rock, that was only true if your scope was limited to mainstream rock. I just to think to say all across music is a bit much.

and to that other guy, bro, whatever. that's why I said no offense it's absolutely nothing personal. I just wanna, you know, put the contradicting statement on record. the whole point was that the hipster/not dichotomy is a false + stupid one. plenty of hip arty metal rocks hard, and some of it sucks. just like with the kvlt necro stuff. but anyway...
 

FairiesWearBoots

Well-known member
I don't think I know anyone who was born in London and still lives here. White Londoners are born and grow up here but move away as adults, and people from elsewhere in the country (to say nothing of elsewhere in the world) move in.
QUOTE]

this is basically it, people (I include myself in this) come to London when you're young because it offers EVERYTHING, but after 10+ years of 'enjoying' the city - as you get older, moving somewhere more chilled is WAY more appealing,

besides you can travel from anywhere in the UK and have a proper 'London' weekend (friends,clubs,events,shops etc) and then go back home to chill
 

luka

Well-known member
i think though padraig that maybe you misunderstood th point he was making. it wasnt that main attrackionz and danny brown make bad music. its that they seem to represent something new. i think he quite likes their music. its just that a rapper rapping about selling drugs and gtting blowjobs while sporting a haircut like this
http://www.highsnobiety.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Danny-Brown-Cartier.jpg
wearing tight jeans and going on about dizzee rascal and grime music and def jux is fairly indubitably something new (isnt it?)
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
this is true. it applis i think to journalism as well as gentrification. i think there are intersting parallels. (this is in response to padraig by the way)

ok yeah I can see that, killing the cool by conceptualizing it or something like that. I think one difference is that a real estate developer is both the hype man + the salesman, whereas a journalist at least theoretically isn't doing out + out marketing (tho I'm sure that's an ever-increasing gray area). or, in art there's at least theoretically always a debate, friction between art + profit-making, whereas in real estate it's only about the bottom line, exploiting the cool/image/vibe to make $. either way I think a lot of gentrification happens at levels that we don't see up front - I mean demographic shifts, municipal politics (developers being major political contributors, always), larger economic shifts and so on - and that the hip young people ingredient is just kind of an inevitability in the process.
 

daddek

Well-known member
yes. dannybrowns probly my fav rapper atm. im just struck by the fact that he even exists, for exactly the same reasons. (re luka)
Im also sometimes struck by the fact that nowadays people can walk around with such wtf haircuts & clothes, including me sometimes, when it wouldve meant instant street abuse / fight when i was a kid. This decade perplexes me often, & not in a bad way.
 

luka

Well-known member
im very pleasd with this thread and i would like to stay and keep stoking the fires but it is past my bedtime. please keep it up and dont descend into name calling so i have something fun to read whn i get home from work tomorrow. thank you.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
The hipster rappers thing is quite interesting, is it something to do with an increasing number of black americans belonging to the middle class/suburban world? Odd Future, for example, seem to be a very suburban group of kids.

I suppose the internet must also have had a big influence in terms of spreading cultures that would previously have been more locally situated.

The thing is though, there's always been a relatively healthy mix of 'middle-class' and 'blue-collar' types in rap/hip-hop. Obviously the whole 'conscious rapper' movement screamed "I grew up somewhere where parents took me dropping out of high-school seriously", but so many 'hood' types were yet again, actually middle-class kids from Long Island. Prodigy, for example; former graphic design student at an art university from my old home-town. Criminal background is pure phantasm. Keith Murray on the other hand, comes from Suffolk County which is TO THIS DAY, overrun by meth and crack, so I know better than to question his life's story.

I think it's just post-The-Holy-Three (Kanye/Pharrell/Lupe) it's become a lot more tolerable to look middle class. Plus, the lower-class kids try to look middle class/"white" to demonstrate they're rich now (Hence the return of Polo, Dipset's rank-and-file trying to look like badly aging rockers, etc.).
 

outraygeous

Well-known member
The moving away from London thing is true. I didnt move that far away from London but its like the Londoners dream

Like all the people that live in Essex, you do well in the city and then move out to the 'countryside'

But with regards to movements, like im 31 and when I was in my teens partying age it was all about jungle and garage. The clubs were full of people from London. All the old, north London make some noise, south London make some nice stuff (south always won, not sure why)

So where are all the thousands of kids going now, I know road rap is big but is that just confined to youtube videos? Is there an actual scene?

I sometimes cannot connect to the whole East London thing because it over complicated and its not a single movement.

Its hard to pin point but alot of people my age who go raves/clubs say the vibe is very different. Its just us getting older and not really being able to connect with the new things.

I dont think London will die, there will always be hipsters that will turn up to anything because Vice wrote about it.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Yeah, I suppose more rappers are openly aspiring to that level of 'sophistication'.

Crowley have you ever read this thread on project covo about writing pools in rap music? Guy who started the thread says he has been signed to a major and names loads of rappers who apparently use ghostwriters (who are lesser known rappers who are signed to write for the big boys without ever getting a record out). Dunno how true it all is and to what extent rappers like Nas/Eminem/Jay-Z etc. are supposed to use these writing pools (just for hooks? for whole verses?) but its quite an interesting read.

Links in with what you say above in terms of rappers portraying a false image...
 

outraygeous

Well-known member
ghost writers?

Dr Dooom (kool keith) - leave me alone

Who try to put out underground MC’s
Try to get me to rap on a wacky-ass track for one G
How dare you try to insult me?
I got 40 grand for 3 minutes to write a song with (for?) Prodigy
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Mad Skillz, of course.

What interests me about the thread = 1. the names he brings up in connection with the use of ghostwriters (some are unexpected) 2. the idea that labels will sign promising young rappers essentially so they can exploit their writing skills, rather than pushing them as musical artists.

This is a bit off-thread, though, so maybe should put it in the hip hip '11 thread? If its interesting to anybody, that is.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
just tbc I never thought anyone was saying that hipster rap (or whatever) is bad or something. I'm not saying it's bad (or good) either. I thought it was a sweeping generalization - that kind that can never be wholly true - about the hipster infiltration of all hardcore underground music in its many iterations. my point was just that it always happens in all forms of music, it's an ongoing + endless process. but whatever, really.

the hipster rap or whatever thing is interesting in the kinds of things it throws together. tho as crowley said there's always been a strong middle-class element (covert + otherwise) in rap, and further there's always been the hip element, from the whole downtown 81 scene on down...it kind of hibernated through the era of gangsta dominance but it's always been present I think. anyway I might be wrong but I'm fairly certain there hasn't been some big uptick in the black middle class. if anything you'd except the opposite. the notion of it being an internet styles fusion sounds way more plausible.

also, I know zero about fashion really but one note - how much of this fashion (maybe via the whole jerk thing) seems to have come straight out of the fusion of punk rock + cholo that prevailed in all these 80s Euro thrash bands (Larm, Ripchord, Negazione, etc) which they basically had gotten from Socal (i.e. Suicidal Tendencies) + d.c. (via Socal) hardcore punk - seriously, tight pants + Vans (80s skater basically), flannel shirts, tons of bandannas...interesting in kind of a genealogical way, to me at least.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
im waiting for scenes that make a thing of NOT doing anything on the net - where theyre against it and try their hardest to stay off it. i mean, if the old 'no sell out' 'underground forever' 'fuck the mainstream' attitude from the 90s (which came from hip hop a lot too) was still around then i imagine 'fuck the net' would be part of that too. but no one thinks like that anymore do they. not from the london scenes were talking about in any case.

i dont get the danny brown hype. great interview subject and he has good taste in other rappers but he seems to lack personality? but then i feel the same/similar about freddie gibbs.

the hipster thing in hip hop is all post kanye imo. pharrell too but pharrell was more skateboard chic. kanye is more preppy. look at tinie tempah - its all from kanye. he made it ok for rappers/guys who would previously never have gotten out of sportswear to wear suits jackets and so on. hip hop isnt confined to 'the streets' anymore and kanye just took it out of there visually too. so now you can have (shit) british rappers like ghostpoet and dels too, who are basically like indie kids doing hip hop. the general audience or industry here at least prefers its british rappers to be a bit self effacing and the whole geek-but-street thing kinda ties into it. but i dont consider that stuff hipster rap. thats more stuff like bonde do role, yo majesty and spank rock etc.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Im also sometimes struck by the fact that nowadays people can walk around with such wtf haircuts & clothes, including me sometimes, when it wouldve meant instant street abuse / fight when i was a kid. This decade perplexes me often, & not in a bad way.

Yeah, it's weird the way hipster-type fashions seem to have become very mainstream. I mean, in the 60s/70s a guy walking around the wrong area with long hair and a paisley shirt would be liable to get a kicking from some skinheads, and where I grew up (rural/small-town area in the '90s) there were certain towns or parts of towns where anyone who looked like a punk/mosher/greebo would come in at least for some verbal abuse from the local townies (this was before 'chavs' as such were invented).

Nowadays you see 18-y-olds stacking shelves in Tesco sporting haircuts that Hoxton hipsters had ten years ago, and chubby adolescent girls in pink velour tracksuits wearing one of these:

AAAAAl2o8UUAAAAAAR6x0g.jpg


...and Motorheard T-shirts in Top Shop, and so on and so on.
 
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daddek

Well-known member
Cant help but think the narrative for music discusion is overly focused on specific artists creating change.. rather than, being manifestations of them. re kanye, lupe etc.
they are somewhat inventive of the climate, but also just reflective too. It gets funneled through them, the best channel at the time.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
music is done anyway. there is nothing new to happen here. its a global malaise. we are all linked and sharing our happy inertia together.
 
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