corpse's deconstructed rap thread

luka

Well-known member
My impulse would be to ignore all the precursors pretty much. I don't think what Barty thinks of as rappety rap was ever all pervasive, there's always been a thousand ways to navigate a beat. What corpse meant by deconstruction was something other than just, I dunno, irregular flows. He meant this current period, which is distinctive enough for Barty to want to give it a new genre name to distinguish it from rap proper.

I would home in on that, draw up a timeline of that, work out what strategies are in play. Migos obviously don't fit in here because they rap normally, very similar to lots of much older stuff, whereas Keef is to all intents and purposes, almost unrecognisable as rap.
 

luka

Well-known member
In all honesty though I don't think we have the expertise here to do a decent job. We don't have the knowledge base.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
I don't think what Barty thinks of as rappety rap was ever all pervasive,.

what i meant to say is that normal rapping really crystallised by the mid-90's and was as far as i can tell all pervasive.

rappety rap was fruitless intensification. taking rap to the point of a parody of itself. lifeless. it belongs on the timeline as a signifier that rap needed to move on.
 

luka

Well-known member
Yeah that's true for New York definitely. And agree with the fruitless intensification. It's not just em being uncool it's also that it is so obviously the end of the line. Why take it further? It just hits parody.
 

luka

Well-known member
What you have to remember is people from large, densely populated cities are quick witted and highly verbal whereas people from smaller or more sprawling cities, or rural people are very slow and much less verbal. That's why English people from outside london seem stupid. It's not so much that they are necessarily less intelligent, just that words are difficult for them and they are used to moving at a much slower pace. This maps onto rap music.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
the problem with trying to pit migos vs keef is that their central innovations are the same. my take would be keef hinted at what i call cantonised rap, then migos solidified it as an aesthetic and fleshed it out.
 

luka

Well-known member
the problem with trying to pit migos vs keef is that their central innovations are the same. my take would be keef hinted at what i call cantonised rap, then migos solidified it as an aesthetic and fleshed it out.

I don't follow this at all.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
I don't follow this at all.

i might just be missing what you find interesting about keef.

as far as i can tell he's got a handful of sonic innovations (and of course there's his impact on the culture and industry too):

1) so there's the cantonised flows. 'bang', the aye flow, etc. shifting rap away from rhythmic contiguity.

2) a certain melodic quality. so for example lil uzi's made a career off of reimagining 'love sosa'

3) vocal delivery. doing a funny noises. mumbling. etc.


number 1 is the most important. the other two will end up being closer to trends whereas the first will really reshape what rap is for a long time to come.

so for me keef made tracks that alluded to this kind of broken, non-flowing flows. but he did so in a way that on their own were novelties, they didn't quite reach the point where you could say 'there's a whole style in this'. migos took it, made it more rhythmically sophisticated and you can see that its only after them people really start copying.
 

luka

Well-known member
You lot are being all weird today. Keef sounds like he's had a stroke.Migos sound like aerobics instructors.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
OK I've definitely scoured some of these posts and I wanna touch on something third was expressing frustration about translating elsewhere...

Proper Rappity Rap is a strange thing because it goes in relation to the sounds of organic drums. The sampled drums, the loop. This sort of cyclical, insular, almost waltz-like existence (not so much in the actual 3/4 time signature but the sense that you know you're supposed to endlessly repeat a pattern and so you can rely on that as a heartbeat).

Kool Keith is a very interesting suggestion because he picked up on something from rap outside of NYC who are more or less the initiators of this school of thought for rap as both a imposition of sampling as an aesthetic from the top down. Remember, sampling was a art-class thing from the Art of Noise and that like which then had to be duplicated OR was to emulate the ability of DJs and MCs from Disco. Thus sampling is inorganic to America in this sort of fixated format because that situation doesn't exist outside of New York City (very similar to what I spoke about in another thread about Disco being urbane and East Coast Elite). Keith, in just casually paying attention to rap outside of NYC out of boredom, noticed just how little rap outside of NYC sounded like it, but could still sound like it's peers in the rest of the country. Texas rap emulated G-Funk, as did Midwesterners who also emulated Memphis Rap, who also emulated New Orleans and Florida. The ideas from NYC they got had to slowly be transmitted over the course of years so that an idea could fully gestate leading to the 'localized' versions. Just as an example:

<iframe width="545" height="409" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mg_7nX0Fj5I" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> A young Mannie Fresh with Gregory D, a very NYC styled rapper. BUT! It's in 1987 in which KRS-One, Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, NYC is already advanced beyond the Run-DMCisms of Gregory. NYC was able to accelerate itself in technique thanks to it's constant electricity of the 5 boroughs speeding itself along insularly but the rest of the country lacked that sort of access and thus moved at a more glacial pace. That was to their advantage though as through the speed NYC became overly solidified to the point of crystallization. They deepended to much on those drums whereas the rest of the country relied on the 808 weight and the SPACE to develop their voices as the rhythm. My dad used to have issues with this, complaining about Southern Rappers being 'so slow they can only rap exactly on the beat' not realizing They Are The Beat. This is why Keith would later go out of his way to emulate Bay Area or Southern Rap. Plenty of experts thought it was parody but my personal understanding is Keith just found their approach so much more liberating, especially when you consider that he was a Zulu Nation kid originally and had grown up with a much looser understanding of hip-hop than the tiring jazz-trad hegemony of loops and samples.

To go back to something Web/Odai brought up: in this regard I would NOT actually say Freestyle Fellowship were able to deconstruct rap, because they're formalists or perhaps modernists are the exact term. They're consciously operating in an extreme and excessive version of East Coast aesthetics, they're not interested in West Coast Rap's original primordial ooze form from Too Short or the like; instead they want to be like the Rakims or the Kool Keiths (specifically of Ultramagnetic).

<iframe width="545" height="409" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4I-LUdwVn_8" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
This, as you see, has nothing to do with

<iframe width="727" height="409" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uB0bXXp6_nQ" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

BUT it does have more to do with:

<iframe width="545" height="409" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ALJZ7z05Vnw" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

That's my offering for some stuff. I gotta meditate more on pointing at modern things.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
ok 2 things 1) i feel like rappity rap is a phrase more applicable to that underground rap shit round the turn of the millenium

2) i feel like the first rap "deconstructer" was Kool Keith i mean you can say hes doing a more psuedo-scientific T La Rock but on Critical Beatdown aswell as its like hes breaking down all the stuff that came up to that point ASWELL as laying down new groundwork for rapping, you dont get say Sadat X if it aint for Keith who i know seems like a weird pick but all even now amongst the peers of his generation he doesnt sound like anybody content might be the same but the road through his verses is far more scattershot and sometimes it sounds like he isnt even rhyming


also where do you lot stand on the The Good Life/Freestyle Fellowship cause Myka 9 and them man (Pharoahe Monch) for their times were going above and beyond what qualified

yeh i mean i did wanna say this but i think corpse was getting at something else. like i don't see how if you think lil jon was a rap deconstructor you can't ignore the fact that he shifted mainstream chart rap away from the breakbeat and the timbaland style classy funk lick. that's key if we're going to look at the concatenated flows.
 

luka

Well-known member
OK I've definitely scoured some of these posts and I wanna touch on something third was expressing frustration about translating elsewhere...

Proper Rappity Rap is a strange thing because it goes in relation to the sounds of organic drums. The sampled drums, the loop. This sort of cyclical, insular, almost waltz-like existence (not so much in the actual 3/4 time signature but the sense that you know you're supposed to endlessly repeat a pattern and so you can rely on that as a heartbeat).

Kool Keith is a very interesting suggestion because he picked up on something from rap outside of NYC who are more or less the initiators of this school of thought for rap as both a imposition of sampling as an aesthetic from the top down. Remember, sampling was a art-class thing from the Art of Noise and that like which then had to be duplicated OR was to emulate the ability of DJs and MCs from Disco. Thus sampling is inorganic to America in this sort of fixated format because that situation doesn't exist outside of New York City (very similar to what I spoke about in another thread about Disco being urbane and East Coast Elite). Keith, in just casually paying attention to rap outside of NYC out of boredom, noticed just how little rap outside of NYC sounded like it, but could still sound like it's peers in the rest of the country. Texas rap emulated G-Funk, as did Midwesterners who also emulated Memphis Rap, who also emulated New Orleans and Florida. The ideas from NYC they got had to slowly be transmitted over the course of years so that an idea could fully gestate leading to the 'localized' versions. Just as an example:

<iframe width="545" height="409" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mg_7nX0Fj5I" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> A young Mannie Fresh with Gregory D, a very NYC styled rapper. BUT! It's in 1987 in which KRS-One, Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, NYC is already advanced beyond the Run-DMCisms of Gregory. NYC was able to accelerate itself in technique thanks to it's constant electricity of the 5 boroughs speeding itself along insularly but the rest of the country lacked that sort of access and thus moved at a more glacial pace. That was to their advantage though as through the speed NYC became overly solidified to the point of crystallization. They deepended to much on those drums whereas the rest of the country relied on the 808 weight and the SPACE to develop their voices as the rhythm. My dad used to have issues with this, complaining about Southern Rappers being 'so slow they can only rap exactly on the beat' not realizing They Are The Beat. This is why Keith would later go out of his way to emulate Bay Area or Southern Rap. Plenty of experts thought it was parody but my personal understanding is Keith just found their approach so much more liberating, especially when you consider that he was a Zulu Nation kid originally and had grown up with a much looser understanding of hip-hop than the tiring jazz-trad hegemony of loops and samples.

To go back to something Web/Odai brought up: in this regard I would NOT actually say Freestyle Fellowship were able to deconstruct rap, because they're formalists or perhaps modernists are the exact term. They're consciously operating in an extreme and excessive version of East Coast aesthetics, they're not interested in West Coast Rap's original primordial ooze form from Too Short or the like; instead they want to be like the Rakims or the Kool Keiths (specifically of Ultramagnetic).

<iframe width="545" height="409" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4I-LUdwVn_8" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
This, as you see, has nothing to do with

<iframe width="727" height="409" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uB0bXXp6_nQ" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

BUT it does have more to do with:

<iframe width="545" height="409" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ALJZ7z05Vnw" frame order="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

That's my offering for some stuff. I gotta meditate more on pointing at modern things.

Not to be impatient but I don't understand a word of this. Can you put it in simple English?
 

luka

Well-known member
The moon must be emitting a strange vibration or something cos all these theories you lot are coming out with today are nutty professor
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
I'm talking about hereditary techniques. Schools of thoughts. Systems. And I'm talking about how A lot of comprehension of rap is taught around one system that's v. beloved but applies to a specific group of people in America based on geography and how and where that actually using comprehension based on That School is flawed.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
luke hes saying that in some pretty significant black communities EG in the midwest, south etc disco just wasn't a thing.

A lot of the new york school was far more in touch with post-disco European and English electronic music. hence sampling had to be imposed from the topdown as A) an attempt to duplicate the live dj but B) to also duplicate the recording band. remember that disco rap was pretty much the first rap, played by real muzos.

 
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CrowleyHead

Well-known member
People are talking about swords in relation to war whereas I'm saying "There were a lot more weapons than swords."

Especially the Liquid ones.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Just a thought - were does Gucci fit into this? Direct predecessor of Thug and Migos, huge influence on Keef yet I find his tapes to have much of the "virtues" of older rap styles - that wit, rhyming, wtf did he say moments. Any thoughts? Did he open any specific doorways that others then passed through? Future as well. From rhyming to songs and hooks, autotune textures.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
rappety rap was fruitless intensification. taking rap to the point of a parody of itself. lifeless. it belongs on the timeline as a signifier that rap needed to move on.

Think this is spot on, and if you keep going for another 20 years, pointedly ignoring the wider culture, you end up with High Concept Records and Ocean's Wisdom. The image comes to mind of those Japanese soldiers, discovering in a cave in the Philippines somewhere, still fighting WW2 in 1968.
 
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