Revenge of the Nerds: Backpack Rap Appreciation Thread

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Voice was weak but no weaker than jays

I dunno, listening back through some songs now I actually find his voice quite grating in large doses. Jay was a bit more like him in the earlier days, more obviously constricted by rhyme schemes, more obviously 'technical'. But he loosened up, adopted that conversational, laid-back style, and prospered.

People hate on Jay-Z and I recognise there's a case for him being overrated, but OTOH there's a reason he became THAT dude, and it isn't just cos Biggie got shot. Nas inadvertently gave Jay props for his music by saying 'what you think you get girls now cos of your LOOKS?'
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
i played it a lot. more than their first album. its got some brilliant production.

you can hear big l doing some of that fu schnickens/jay-z type of acrobatics on this -
i used to listen to this and like all those people thinking big l could have been a contender, thought all his crew should have had record deals and had their own albums out the following year. mcgruff had a good voice. that pained, cormega kind of grain. weird hearing camron on this. he doesnt really stick out much at this point.

this is one of big pun's best vocals -
i think i was wrong about him besting kool g rap. if you listen to kool g rap himself around this point, he was at his absolute peak (eg his verse on mop's stick to your gunz or fat joes you must be out your fucking mind). he became more furious actually, and then also had a new sort of OG authority. but pun was still ridiculously fluid.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Wow, Big L has come in for a pasting...

in general I don't see that being limited in what you can do is necessarily a bad thing, if you're exceptionally good at that one thing that you do - as Big L was. I used to love the Lifestylez album, and a big part of that was that the album was so cohesive - not a huge amount of variation, but it came together brilliantly as a whole, a particular vision superbly realised.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Roots of Evil is good Corpse, you need to relisten to that.

in general I don't see that being limited in what you can do is necessarily a bad thing, if you're exceptionally good at that one thing that you do - as Big L was.

Rather that Lord Finesse had already done and done a million times better and Big L just ran into the ground. There's only so much worth in "Peanut Butter Ass Rappers; Damn Skippy" type bars, and people have to admit that to themselves. Vitriol aside Big L was good at a thing, but it was a gimmick, there was little else he could do, and then eventually when he died those limitations weren't recognized as a "Well, its a shame he didn't get to evolve into a better rapper/artist" it became "SLEPT ON". Nobody's sleeping on someone who can demonstrate all his best qualities in one verse, let alone one track.

(I actually forgot Diamond D who had easily one of the best albums of his era let alone of his crew so kudos to rubber to correcting me there)

I'm not interested in punching down, I'm more struggling with the eternal saga of the underground punching up at an opponent who isn't necessarily fighting them all the time; like some underachieving sibling resenting the other for following commonplace expectations. And its very rarely the artists themselves who hold onto those chips on their shoulder until they become older and get upset with things that are so divorced everything they worked towards (a la the Pete Rock / Lil Yachty fracas). Also the division between commercial and underground is usually more perceived from down the hill than up... Like, Alchemist albums had everyone in the mainstream, 50 Cent rapped over Exile and Disco D. Hell a dude in the DITC collective made "Woah!" which was a commercial banger for a guy on a label most often associated with undermining "The true Spirit of Hip-Hop" and all that. I wish I had better allegories than production-based examples in my head at the moment but...
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I'll have to check out Lord Finesse's early stuff in that case. But I just don't see any clear distinction between 'gimmicks' and things that are 'worth something' - some of the best records ever use 'gimmicks' if you wanted to name them as such, and were made by artists who ploughed the one furrow... it all gets to sounding a bit rockist very quickly

Otoh, I totally see that Big L wouldn't have been able to become the type of flexible superstar that Jay-Z became. That seems clear
 

forclosure

Well-known member
I do get what Crowly is saying about the whole punching up aspect

i mean in some way or another its still there but i think at a certain point even the backpackers themselves got tired of hearing that old "all these guys talk about materialism, im a rapper trying to do something realer" routine when that kind of rapper practically became its own sub-genre.

The collapse of alot of the big labels from that era and downloading play a big part in that(Rhymesayers is the last one standing),once the safety net went all that "we're staying underground forever" talk just sounds so silly in retrospect.

But then again as somebody who lives in Europe considering that we still let Jurassic 5 sellout festivals and let La Coka Nostra tour Germany any chance they get, it might aswell still be 1998 over here.

also off topic but Black Robs first album is a classic

Roots of Evil is good aswell but alot of the beats on it stink
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy

I just remember when I was listening to Rawkus stuff in particular I had such a romantic idea of New York. All the iconography - the a-train, the graffiti, the cyphers, etc. Skateboarding. Blunts. (I was really into that movie 'Kids', and also 'La Haine', which was obviously about Paris, but was also sort of about New York.)
 

entertainment

Well-known member
what a fucking classic movie ^^

Some stuff I remember listening to in Copenhagen when smoking weed and practicing our tags down by the train tracks:

"Suck my dick EP" straight outta the South Bronx of Northern Europe
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Some stuff I remember listening to in Copenhagen when smoking weed and practicing our tags down by the train tracks:

It's interesting that that 'real hip-hop/4 pillars' culture was (and is?) so popular in Europe. In interviews I used to read, the old legends and more boom-bappy newschool artists always said that they were more popular in Europe than the US.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
It's interesting that that 'real hip-hop/4 pillars' culture was (and is?) so popular in Europe. In interviews I used to read, the old legends and more boom-bappy newschool artists always said that they were more popular in Europe than the US.

For Europe rap has to be consumed as an import genre and so when stylistic shifts happen the home-grown audience is turning over with that and may/may not continue to support but for the European consumer you want the specific thing that came with Boom Bap Real Hip-Hop. It helps that the Real Hip-Hop style is designed around urban environments and often samples jazz (which uses instruments generally of european origin) or classical. G-Funk and West Coast Styles do not translate as well necessarily and certainly not southern rap which when it does attempt sampling often relies on blues/soul samples. Obviously that's not 100% the case because Snoop is able to tour and do well in Europe but I'd like to see which if any of those non-East Coast or East Coast Indebted* acts do well touring in Europe.

(*so in that regard, obviously The Alkaholiks aren't from NYC but they don't make West Coast Rap like the NWA affiliates do and therefore are easier to be consumed by real hip-hop fans, and that applies to the Dilla affiliates of Detroit or Cunninglynguists from the South)
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
That's all true, although of course rap music along the lines of Drake, Migos, Rae Sremmurd, etc. are all really popular here with da kidz, not to mention the rise of yer Giggs's and yer Stormzy's. Thank GOD UK rap seems to have shaken off the DJ Premier worship! (Where's Luka when you need him with an art history analogy.)

Road rap is obviously Brits spinning a US sound, but at least it's a relatively contemporary sound!
 
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