barty's magical mumble rap roundup

DannyL

Wild Horses
You guys heard the Key! tape yet? It's seriously great. Falls into Barty's first category I think. Musically, a lot of it sounds like Pierr Bourne's Carti productions but he's not on there (I think)

Also loving this one at the moment - seems to be using "trap" as a metaphor to go a little emo:

 

craner

Beast of Burden
mumble rap and soundclap rap are terms that have sprung up in the last few years to describe the most recent generation of rappers.

these terms tend to clump together rappers that actually belong to two distinct groups:

1) one set of rappers rap about traditional tropes such as cars, guns, girls and lean. they tend to rap with hyper-fragmented, interlocking flows, they dabble in phonetic absurdism, they use auto-tune often non-melodically, pitch is often used in a way that neither resembles melody nor conversation and they have studio effects on their voices that aren’t typical for rap such as huge reverbs or chorus.

2) the other set of rappers often have a preoccupation with teen-angsty themes of suicidal ideation, self-harm, depression, etc. they don’t particularly or consistently exhibit lots of the rhythmic or sonic qualities i listed for the first group of rappers and will often be far more overtly melodic; outright singing as opposed to rapping.

i love the first group and don’t like the latter, i also happen to think that conflating the two isn’t very useful or accurate.

i’d rather the first group be called mumble rappers and the latter can be soundcloud rappers or emo rappers.

That's why I like you Barty. You didn't just say, "fuck off you boring geriatric bastard" -- you actually took time out from to try and explain it to me.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
What, you mean this has been going on since 2013???

Autotune rap has been going on for a long time, since T-Pain and Lil Wayne at least.

Mumble rap is a pejorative term that came about due to the rise of the South in rap.

Slurred words, elasticated rhymes, a sort of melting into inarticulacy, grunts, snorts, shouts.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
This one needs to be in this thread I think. The vocals on this are bananas. Remaining an unoffical release 'cos they couldn't get the sample cleared I think.

 

DannyL

Wild Horses
kodack's pretty much ignored all innovations from the past 10 years. he's no more evolved than gucci mane.

I love Kodak but I can't think of him as anything other than a great traditional rapper. That's why he's good in fact. The lyrical interplay on No Flockin' all the way through to his last tape - it's all about wordplay, none of it's about fucking with tone, cadence, breaking the parameters like say Carti does.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Emo rap. I kinda think this is objecnively terrible but I still quite like it, in large part 'cos it's such a deliberate challenge to rap's norms of masculinity. I wonder if the video is an attempt to speak directly to his intended audience - you can't more emo than incinerated goths. On a more meta-level I love this 'cos it's like no matter how long I listen to rap, just when I've written it off (again) as creatively redundant and boring it completely genration gaps and confuses me. AGAIN.

 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Yeah hate that it's so whiney

Really like the tune Juice WLRD did with (him again) Kodak - but mainly the Kodak bit

 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
history lesson

What, you mean this has been going on since 2013???

Precedents

In many ways mumble rap is a return to Jamaica’s penchant for vocal novelty, gimmickry, melody and phonetic Dada that was abandoned when Jamaican toasting became US rapping.

So Fatman’s use of “bo”, “bim”, “oink” and “ribbit” are actually quite similar to ad-libs in mumble rap.


Similarly mumble rap’s more extreme vocal buccaneering is closer to something like major mackerel’s squawks than it is to the conversational naturalism we tend to associate with US rap.


Old dirty bastard also deserves a mention given his vocal delivery and crazed drug-fiend persona chime with mumble rap.


lil jon re-popularised call and response rap ultimately kicking off a trend of cantonised rap. mumble rap is in a sense the attempt to rhythmically reconcile the sophistication of ‘flow’, while avoiding it’s rhythmic contiguity.




Proto-mumble rap

I point to Lil Wayne’s ‘lollipop’ as proto-mumble rap with its use of auto-tune, it’s phonetic playfulness (‘hair’ becomes ‘her’, ‘love’ becomes ‘loov’) and you could even say the choppage of ‘l-l-like a lollipop’ is an incredibly crude preempting of the todd edwards-flows that would emerge in the mumble rap era.


chief keef is another important figure due to his promenenant ad-lib centrism. the use of ad-libs that became a fundamental component in mumble rap’s new rhtyhmic language.


i’d also point to wacka as an ealry exponent of more fragmented flows that were more sophisticated from mere call and response


future’s ‘tony montanna’ is widely pointed to as pioneering mumble rap due to its slurred delivery, but this is an incredibly reductionist understanding of what mumble rap actually is. future’s also important for using auto-tune subtly, in a less overtly melodic way


young thug and to a lesser degree rich homie quan popularised playing around with vocal delivery; doing silly voices, making silly sounds and having unstable pitches that aren’t conversational or melodic. crowley has an incredible in-depth knowledge of of the future swag lineage this belongs to.


migos popularised the use of staccato triplets with ‘versace’. it is also an example of a latent rhythmic aesthetic that they’d fully crystallise a few years later.



Post-‘Monster' Mumble Rap

in the middle of the 2010’s future released a trio of mixtapes that signified maturity; ‘monster’, ’56 nights’ and ‘beast mode'. the first was a concept album and they all dealt with more lofty themes such as divorce, drug addiction, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDIRKOzIn8I


after that you see mumble rappers transform from being rather inane and internety to producing proper music:

from this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovA6iPznvzw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHT1EDXtxws

to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg9ZxQKSDuw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm1YFszJWbQ
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
Mumble rap is a pejorative term that came about due to the rise of the South in rap.

Slurred words, elasticated rhymes, a sort of melting into inarticulacy, grunts, snorts, shouts.


pejorative terms often - in my experience (wink-emoji) = sign "here be interesting music"

it is just about the only interesting mainstream-ish music of recent years - interesting / intensely enjoyable / new / unexpected

i mean, "melting into inarticulacy, grunts, snorts, shouts" - what's not to like?
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
me and si are co-authoring a big piece about mumble rap.

he's making me do most of the legwork, but i'm getting paid 3 times what i otherwise would just by having his name on it.

not a bad deal.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
i'll get him to throw a couple of fancy adjectives in here and there just to earn his keep though. a paul virilio quote in the context of playboi carti. got to keep it on brand.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
i'm just going to recycle some bits from Blissed Out

it all fits

texture > text etc etc

Barthes rather than Virilio would be the apt go-to Frog Theorist


thing is if you want wordy, lyricist-MCs there are plenty of them still out doing the more traditional thing, getting the rave reviews

it's not a zero sum game

this is like a whole new thing - MCs playing with voice rather than with language

actually what i think might fit )in terms of more contemporary theory references) is some "affect theory" a la Lauren Berlant

music as moods, vibes, emotional atmospheres, floating vague psychological states - but nothing so coherent as a worldview or narrative
 

droid

Well-known member
Good to see an acknowledgement of the source. There is a loooong history of insane vocal noises in dancehall. I have an unfinished piece for Woofah 5 all about novelty Deejays.

There must be more precedent in 80's.90's hip hop as well? Doug E Fresh, Gravediggaz, Shorty shit stain, beat boxing etc? What about Grime? Flirta D? Demon?
 
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