sadmanbarty

Well-known member
not much nuance come to think of it. the best i can do is say that there was a golden age in the 90's, there was some good stuff in the early 2000's that was largely just feeding off the ideas from the 90's, then there's a 10 year period where interesting ideas were formulated but the music itself wasn't that good. some of those ideas eventually coalesced and bought us the post-2014 golden age. waka made some great choons in the middle of all that.
 

luka

Well-known member
not much nuance come to think of it. the best i can do is say that there was a golden age in the 90's, there was some good stuff in the early 2000's that was largely just feeding off the ideas from the 90's, then there's a 10 year period where interesting ideas were formulated but the music itself wasn't that good. some of those ideas eventually coalesced and bought us the post-2014 golden age. waka made some great choons in the middle of all that.

i suppose in my head there was a golden age (which actually only last 2 or 3 years) in the 90s and then, at turn of century, a huge break with the past as sampling becomes passe. that plays out across both rap and r&b, and probably to greater effect in the latter, the timbaland-aaliyah collaboration and so on...

the worst period for me was something like 96/97/98. puff daddy era. worst period up until now anyway.
 

luka

Well-known member
i also think 90, 91, 92 are pretty dull, comparatively speaking. but i was listening to hardcore then and though hip-hop was for old people.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
that plays out across both rap and r&b, and probably to greater effect in the latter, the timbaland-aaliyah collaboration and so on...

the worst period for me was something like 96/97/98. puff daddy era. worst period up until now anyway.

i think i might of said to you at one point that anything rap did in the 2000's, rnb did better.

96-98 had muddy waters, dmx, mobb deep and wu tang sequals
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
When are you going to write your rap book, Crowley?

IDK if it'll happen.

In all seriousness my graduate thesis was going to be about studying adolescent rap and its relationship with internet technology as a method of underground networking and call it "The Futuristic Manifesto" as a cheeky nod to that text but also to Calvin Johnson's idea of the International Pop Underground and to the 'futuristic' movement of late 00s Atlanta that Flocka wiped out but later became the real source of current day ATL influence. But who knows if I'll get into a grad school at this rate b/c life and writing the damn thing is going to be an ordeal and a half and right now the writing career is so stagnant I can't imagine anyone thinking a BOOK from me would be worthwhile.

I haven't done much that isn't cheap and trite.

Navel-gazing aside, that's something I want to write and eventually a book about Rap's relationship with religious movements (5%, Nuwubainism, the 90s descent into banal Christianity and apostasy emerging after 9-11)
 
Last edited:

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Rap's biggest problem is its never actually had one singular moment, despite the changing of the history to suit such. Def Jam was ultimately a non-existent movement consisting of friends who weren't on their label (Run DMC) who were actually considered retroactive and lackluster by the larger scene, a minstrel act by punks (Beastie Boys), an industrial group of neo-conservatives fronted by an old man from Long Island (P.E.). Their only act who was contemporaneous and actually progressive was LL Cool J and his production constantly suffered and rotted into the past while non-Def Jam rap acts were being produced in much more significant ways.

You think A Moment in rap is real but then you realize how its reflective of larger and larger things. But we tend to think every experience was the same. The scene in True Detective where the cop is running through a drug den in Louisiana in the mid 90s... and they have the nerve to play a Wu-Tang record. Because the people who dictated the history were the people who got there first.

Now there is no history because historicization was done so badly and now nobody does it at all because its seen as such an abuse. All of the access and information results into an ahistorical ignorance which in many ways is fine but its also sad because you can't FIX the past if you just pretend it never happened.
 

luka

Well-known member
Rap's biggest problem is its never actually had one singular moment, despite the changing of the history to suit such. Def Jam was ultimately a non-existent movement consisting of friends who weren't on their label (Run DMC) who were actually considered retroactive and lackluster by the larger scene, a minstrel act by punks (Beastie Boys), an industrial group of neo-conservatives fronted by an old man from Long Island (P.E.). Their only act who was contemporaneous and actually progressive was LL Cool J and his production constantly suffered and rotted into the past while non-Def Jam rap acts were being produced in much more significant ways.

You think A Moment in rap is real but then you realize how its reflective of larger and larger things. But we tend to think every experience was the same. The scene in True Detective where the cop is running through a drug den in Louisiana in the mid 90s... and they have the nerve to play a Wu-Tang record. Because the people who dictated the history were the people who got there first.

Now there is no history because historicization was done so badly and now nobody does it at all because its seen as such an abuse. All of the access and information results into an ahistorical ignorance which in many ways is fine but its also sad because you can't FIX the past if you just pretend it never happened.

i dont know what this post means but an industrial group of neo-conservatives fronted by an old man from Long Island is a very funny line.
 

luka

Well-known member
if rap has a major problem i would be inclined to call it the co-option of the culture by major labels so that what is presented as 'hip-hop' is really just a product.

it's the distance and distortion caused by viewing that culture solely as a series of products that makes Euro opinions (mine etc) and interpretations seem so risible to Americans who are able to see the thing organically.
 

luka

Well-known member
we get it heavily filtered by capitalist imperatives. it's a very skewed picture. who gets signed. what music are they told to make and with what producers and engineers. who gets marketed. how are they marketed. who gets left behind and what gets left out. all this conspires to make what we consume a kind of simulacrum of culture.
 

luka

Well-known member
speaking of which i've never been able to believe the game is really real, an actual person. seems a simulacrum of a rapper, a promotional tie-in for GTA San Andreas.
 

luka

Well-known member
reynolds talks about the feedback loop that operates in very localised, independent scenes like jungle or grime, just how accelerated and energised its motion is and how effectively it communicates. it's information rich and so can respond and react in real time.

now those loops clearly still exist in hip-hop, on a local level, and esco at magic city seems to have become the generic example, and where that exists, you get pockets of health, but taken as a whole, that system of communication seems to have broken down a long time ago. and of course for anyone outside of the US it doesn't exist at all. we are consumers only.

poptimism normalises and valorises that model of culture, the spectacle, engaging solely as consumer, but if you've seen, even just glimpsed, culture as a participatory proposition, that becomes unacceptable.

the more the music industry breaks down, is shattered and scattered to the winds, the better. a handful of people 'escaping' and winning lucrative careers for themselves is no fit recompense for what gets lost.
 

luka

Well-known member
i'd even be inclined to go further and say that culture imposed from above is not culture, it's propaganda. you can only have culture if it's built from ground up.
 
Top