Hip-Hop Culture Wars
- Thread starter luka
- Start date
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
simon reynolds doesnt really need to post on here does he? everyone on here has the same POV anyway. on one hand, yes, rap is best when its intense and no frills, but i dont see anyone calling out big name rappers for their inherent conservatism - why do only indie/'conscious' types get stick for this? my favourite experimental rap is stuff like el-p which is intense as well as self consciously arty/whatever, but there should be a place for stuff in rap that isnt 'intense' and 'street' at the same time.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
i dont know what im saying anymore, ive got a rap fans defensiveness. if someone only likes shabazz palaces, i think theyre corny and prob sneery of 'proper' rap. if someone only likes future or thugga or boosie, i am also suspicious.
rap fans who lol at common or lupe or whoever are as predictable as those who think theyre better than keef or future.
but a lot of the exaggerated 'hood-ness' of a lot of street rap in the last decade or so can be pretty vacuous really, and while i think people are beyond criticising at this point for fear of looking corny or not wanting to appear out of touch, the fact there isnt much debate around it seems a shame (ie to say there isnt actually any sort of 'war' like you mention going on anymore - people just accept it as is). its a bit like simon reynolds won actually - everyone has come round to his absolute view of rap, or maybe black music in general, which is that the harder, visceral end is always superior to the other side, whether youre waxing rapturous about drakes sublime vacuity or futures fractured machismo, etc.
maybe its just aesthetics
or maybe its about perceived authenticity
that the visceral stuff is more authentic and therefore better
and if its not immediate and gut punching (or god forbid, sounds a little cerebral) then its got something missing from it, or that its less true in some way
rap has never been a genre for the feint of heart after all
but i think thats wrong too and is too absolute
this thread has too many old references actually - not sure why we are talking about common and the roots and mos def in 2015
today its more like theesatisfaction (i think theyre corny, but like them musically), shabazz, open mike eagle (which is maybe more collegiate rap?), and kendrick on a mainstream level, though i dont consider him musically interesting, that new album is just a return to the soulquarians style of 2000, which i liked at the time, and do/did consider innovative in a subtle way, but dont really need it again
rap fans who lol at common or lupe or whoever are as predictable as those who think theyre better than keef or future.
but a lot of the exaggerated 'hood-ness' of a lot of street rap in the last decade or so can be pretty vacuous really, and while i think people are beyond criticising at this point for fear of looking corny or not wanting to appear out of touch, the fact there isnt much debate around it seems a shame (ie to say there isnt actually any sort of 'war' like you mention going on anymore - people just accept it as is). its a bit like simon reynolds won actually - everyone has come round to his absolute view of rap, or maybe black music in general, which is that the harder, visceral end is always superior to the other side, whether youre waxing rapturous about drakes sublime vacuity or futures fractured machismo, etc.
maybe its just aesthetics
or maybe its about perceived authenticity
that the visceral stuff is more authentic and therefore better
and if its not immediate and gut punching (or god forbid, sounds a little cerebral) then its got something missing from it, or that its less true in some way
rap has never been a genre for the feint of heart after all
but i think thats wrong too and is too absolute
this thread has too many old references actually - not sure why we are talking about common and the roots and mos def in 2015
today its more like theesatisfaction (i think theyre corny, but like them musically), shabazz, open mike eagle (which is maybe more collegiate rap?), and kendrick on a mainstream level, though i dont consider him musically interesting, that new album is just a return to the soulquarians style of 2000, which i liked at the time, and do/did consider innovative in a subtle way, but dont really need it again
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CrowleyHead
Well-known member
Rap music playing with rock is always such a dead end in so many ways because so much of the rock they play with is terrible blues stomp which is not what rock is. They just want the guitar to give them some sort of signifier of the lost culture...
Recently Greg Tate put up a video of Eddie Isley explaining his guitar licks on youtube, and that send GT into a tirade about how Disco killed the R&B circuit... which is a lie, the 80s scene kept the synth bands and the funk groups alive, session musicians just kept more straight ballad singers in check. But the narrative of 'soulfulnuss' comes in where people get scary and reactionary.
I want to touch on both my feelings on the meek and Drake issues and the sonic and cultural conservatisms on rap, but Corpsey brought up the Bronson issue and as someone who actually has mutual friends with Action, I can explain the situation really succinctly.
Action is obviously Noisey endorsed and suffers from a huuuuge ironic fanbase of terrible rap fans who don't know shit about shit. But he is legitimately a Queens Rapper who used to run with J-Love (who is curiously enough, Ghost's occasional mixtape DJ!) and a ton of NYC Underground guys. Proper underground shit, dudes who'd have to open for Showbiz and AG reunions at SOBs type shit. And Action is obviously white of Albanian descent, but he is working to lower-class from what I understand. He might not be black but he's OF the NYC rap cultural field just as much as anyone if not more than a few other rappers, but I digress.
Bronson stylistically, comes out of a love of post-G Rap music and yes, Ghost is a prominent figure in that scene. I don't believe he raps like how Ghost raps necessarily, they are both just big dudes with high voices. And to be honest, Bronson's success has seen him abandon competent rapping for muddled innuendo and plays at 'abstraction' which Ghost doesn't do anymore. Listen to most of Ghost's bars nowadays and his imagery is very direct (I believe that's because earlier he was under the influence and to bring this back to similar themes, GHOST WRITTEN by people like Cappadonna and Lord Superb, but never mind that for now).
Now Bronson says Ghost doesn't produce music of a quality that's comparable to his glory days and honestly... that's not unfair. Whenever Ghostface returns to the Hip-Hop music he sounds tired and forced, but when he is in his R&B mode he sounds the most happy and creative. But again, his fans aren't the Steve Harvey conservative R&B Crowd, its a bunch of dudes who want Supreme Clientele who want to see this man chained to a turntable playing old breaks for the rest of his life, freestyling until he expires. Bronson's comment isn't wrong, but its being applied into the context of him trying to dissavow Ghost's influence.
That in itself is not great for a person of Bronson's stature because he's always 'the interloper' because of his ethnic background. Its not good because he's obviously the younger devotee of Ghost's image, AND HE'S AFFILIATED WITH SOMEONE FROM GHOST'S CAMP AS A MENTOR. Plus the two of you did a record together. You cannot distance yourself from Ghostface so eagerly and call him into question. For one, you upset Ghostface (and as proven by the Joe Budden incident many years ago, Wu-Tang are not the type to act rational about friendly competition amongst MCs) and two, you come off as an arrogant opportunist biter who also just happens to be *agressive 5%er vox* THE WHITE DEVIL UP TO HIS OLD TRICKS.
And the best part is this is all real rap rap, which means these guys are fighting over 30 thousand record sales in the exact same audience at best.
Recently Greg Tate put up a video of Eddie Isley explaining his guitar licks on youtube, and that send GT into a tirade about how Disco killed the R&B circuit... which is a lie, the 80s scene kept the synth bands and the funk groups alive, session musicians just kept more straight ballad singers in check. But the narrative of 'soulfulnuss' comes in where people get scary and reactionary.
I want to touch on both my feelings on the meek and Drake issues and the sonic and cultural conservatisms on rap, but Corpsey brought up the Bronson issue and as someone who actually has mutual friends with Action, I can explain the situation really succinctly.
Action is obviously Noisey endorsed and suffers from a huuuuge ironic fanbase of terrible rap fans who don't know shit about shit. But he is legitimately a Queens Rapper who used to run with J-Love (who is curiously enough, Ghost's occasional mixtape DJ!) and a ton of NYC Underground guys. Proper underground shit, dudes who'd have to open for Showbiz and AG reunions at SOBs type shit. And Action is obviously white of Albanian descent, but he is working to lower-class from what I understand. He might not be black but he's OF the NYC rap cultural field just as much as anyone if not more than a few other rappers, but I digress.
Bronson stylistically, comes out of a love of post-G Rap music and yes, Ghost is a prominent figure in that scene. I don't believe he raps like how Ghost raps necessarily, they are both just big dudes with high voices. And to be honest, Bronson's success has seen him abandon competent rapping for muddled innuendo and plays at 'abstraction' which Ghost doesn't do anymore. Listen to most of Ghost's bars nowadays and his imagery is very direct (I believe that's because earlier he was under the influence and to bring this back to similar themes, GHOST WRITTEN by people like Cappadonna and Lord Superb, but never mind that for now).
Now Bronson says Ghost doesn't produce music of a quality that's comparable to his glory days and honestly... that's not unfair. Whenever Ghostface returns to the Hip-Hop music he sounds tired and forced, but when he is in his R&B mode he sounds the most happy and creative. But again, his fans aren't the Steve Harvey conservative R&B Crowd, its a bunch of dudes who want Supreme Clientele who want to see this man chained to a turntable playing old breaks for the rest of his life, freestyling until he expires. Bronson's comment isn't wrong, but its being applied into the context of him trying to dissavow Ghost's influence.
That in itself is not great for a person of Bronson's stature because he's always 'the interloper' because of his ethnic background. Its not good because he's obviously the younger devotee of Ghost's image, AND HE'S AFFILIATED WITH SOMEONE FROM GHOST'S CAMP AS A MENTOR. Plus the two of you did a record together. You cannot distance yourself from Ghostface so eagerly and call him into question. For one, you upset Ghostface (and as proven by the Joe Budden incident many years ago, Wu-Tang are not the type to act rational about friendly competition amongst MCs) and two, you come off as an arrogant opportunist biter who also just happens to be *agressive 5%er vox* THE WHITE DEVIL UP TO HIS OLD TRICKS.
And the best part is this is all real rap rap, which means these guys are fighting over 30 thousand record sales in the exact same audience at best.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
i know its been covered a bit already but i do find the class thing interesting. and how rap's working class dominance affects those who are m/c. eg the need for de la soul to defend themselves on the second album and show they can get violent too if need be. or maybe its just about how hyper masculinity infects everyone who enters rap, pretty much (whether its drake or whoever), barring a few who resist it.
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rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
i sometimes think that rap's whole subtext is basically 'crisis of masculinity'
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
Its funny, Pharcyde is literally a commodified version of a lot of things that were outliers in LA Rap as antithesis to "Gangsta Rap" such as Freestyle Fellowship or Ahmad/Skee-Lo, but then again there were a lot of people who skated the line a little more... Either Hi-C or AMG, Quik affiliates, doing "Sittin In The Park" is kind of a grounding to the idea. Eazy-E being the financial backer for stuff like Blood of Abraham or Black Eyed Peas in their early form. The lines were a lot blurrier there the same way Gang Starr were such good friends with Freddie Foxx who is basically a goofy rap guy but a arch goon IRL. And that isn't to say I don't love Pharcyde's first album.
But that's the point, at the dawn of the 90s it wasn't thaaaaat unusual for a larger network of people to come from differing walks of life in hip-hop. Even in Native Tongues, the Violators (including the late Chris Lighty) were the strong-arm section who were known for starting fights if you tried to disrespect who they were protecting because they were soft. When Tupac kept doing his tantrums and spats against Tribe and De La, it would be people like the Zulus and the Violators who'd give him the ol' "Say Sorry" treatment.
Its one of the strange sagas of the Native Tongues movement I described in that "Rap's Altamont" tangent we had a while back, but its an evolved timeline...
You have basically "PSK" as the first gangster rap record, and then Ice-T and KRS-One rip that off and turn it into album length personas (prior to that, Ice-T is another Shan/LL clone, and KRS is basically never gotten much further than early Philly rappers like Schoolly and Steady B combined with Just-Ice). Now Bambaataa watches KRS get rejected by the drug money funneling Juice Crew dominating commercial rap center, and then determines to 'save' KRS. KRS is only a step or two removed from Bam because DJ Red Alert is Zulu backed and that's who supported KRS when Marley Marl / Mr. Magic rejected him, and Ced Gee from Ultramagnetic who features ex-Zulu dancer Kool Keith does a ton of the beats for Criminal Minded. So at the same time that Keith and The JBs are pushing a moralistic yet 'playa-type' aesthetic, with humor and self-awareness backed with self-conciousness, they work on Kris and polish him a bit into the Teacher persona. It helps that you have a respected dude who used to crush other human beings skulls and is now a very benign peaceful DJ/Gang Leader turned Cult Leader.
So eventually what happens is certain kids, namely De La and Tribe go to the Zulu/Native Tongues transition, as does Latifah. Latifah, as well! Her family background is full of a lot of goons, but she doesn't carry herself that way. Whereas Tribe and De La are basically... they were the weed carriers at first. They were joyful and playful and that fit the Zulu aesthetic because obviously they were influenced by those groups. Public Enemy was a separate entity, but also fit very well within the aesthetic group.
So, what happens is this movement gels and centers around... 1989-1990. And what happens is JBz and Ultra and PE make their booms. Now since PE is marketed as a 'black punk rock' group by Island, its ridiculously easy to blow them up beyond the rap market. Ultramagnetic, their 2nd album is so obviously attempts at making a 'commercial party' rap album, and that implodes. JBz always liked but perpetually on labels without Island's PR connections. "Crews" are abstract concepts to this day unless they're bunched on a label such as a Death Row, so you can't market a loose collective as well as you can DEF JAM THE LABEL OF RAP. But by the time there was an audience that you could do that to, the paradigm had shifted. Because now Rap's commercial audience had expanded and Tribe and De La had obvious hits, and pop writers obsessing over them, and were just arguably a lot more accessible because they didn't say shit about shit. "The Abstract" nothing, they were just a bunch of dorks conceptualizing the fact that they just freestyled about nothing. And made good music out of it.
But then of course, that whole movement got bloated and there were the Johnny Come Latelies and the terrible KRS-One follow up albums, the boom of happy pop rap... Its very hard for Tribe to seem all that impressive in those old Video Music Box blocks (which my dad had on VHS) where it'd be Tribe, Fushnickens, Kwame, YZ, and its just a melange of the same record over and over. Never mind the US over, even in NYC.
So like I said, west coast did similar things because remember, Bam had sent Afrika Islam to LA to help make "The Rhyme Syndicate", with Divine Styler and Everlast, and keeping people who were more moderate like King Tee and Toddy T around Ice but then by then... NWA, which is full-fledged misogynoir piloted by Public Enemy / Ultramagnetic fans Ice Cube and Dre respectively. Lost cause. So you have a sort of more diverse approach to full-fledged gangster rap or whatever. (Most 'Gangster Rap' in NYC never made it... Kool G Rap was always 'marketed' as the gangster, but he didn't have a big street rep. Actual criminals like the ones who made up Mobstyle like Azie of the Paid In Full crew generally got kept to the wayside).
So boom, Tribe and De La are over in the public consciousness after Wu-Tang and Nas and Biggie and Tupac and all these types blow up. What do they do? They get mad and blame the labels, blame the fans for being ignorant, blame the new artists themselves... Meanwhile they were just fucking passe. Sorry, but Midnight Marauders is already so fucking old hat by the time it comes out from the perspective of the records the gen pop of NYC was starting to gravitate to. 'hardcore' was in, and dancing in overalls was out, can ya blame 'em? But that's what the second wave did, because they had gotten a taste of mainstream money because the industry knew how to handle them better than they did the Def Jam era, the same way the ones who came after them benefited further from the industry being more creative in marketing rap, and so on. There's a great bad capitalist metaphor in their behavior somewhere, but I don't have the language or the desire to point it out.
So then what happens next is that as the fanbase kind of solidifies and codifies to a certain core audience for these guys, De La and Tribe react both with a greater desire to sell out and a more cynical attitude in general. YOU NEVER SEE THAT in the Jungle Brothers, they simply just keep it moving, they try doing jungle, doing an album backed by the Roots, do a dance-y themed album with Black Eyed Peas very early, whatever. De La fall further and further into orthodoxy, getting rid of Prince Paul who was arguably their greatest attribute while Tribe continuously sell out harder and more desperately to making lighter and poppier music while the album material is actually super fucking depressive.
So as I'm saying, a lot of these guys are discovering the Slum Villages, the Rootses, the Blackstars, guys who were the wannabes, who didn't fit in with the new rap environment. They came in with their own additional hangups because they were often pointed out as being conservative and retroactive compared to the climates they were in, and often responded with childish disdain for the others (The Roots specifically so; ?uestlove still loves to run his fucking mouth. I can't explain how disgusted I was when he publicly took to youtube to chide Method Man & Redman for wanting to play their single on Jimmy Fallon with just a DJ. Like jeez, how dare rappers use a fucking DJ and not your inept backing rhythms). And as I discussed earlier, a bunch of these acts didn't cut their teeth alongside the people who got deals and had notoriety in the underground of the 90s. The Roots never politicked in NYC, they just went straight to a deal based off their renown in Philly. SV, big in the Midewst, very few people actually knew about them in NY at first. And as NYC centric as my argument is, the industry was to certain aspects built around one highly competitive market/field in that era and only juuuuuust starting to really consider the various urban communities of different metropolises for national artists. It was still very fracticious with NWA being booed offstage in NYC, NY groups getting booed down south, etc. etc. Artists profiles, commercial value, and audience prominence never actually matched perfectly even then.
And what tends to be the issue is that a lot of these guys who were 2nd or 3rd generation N.T. guys, or had the aesthetic around that... They weren't approaching it from the same perspective or goals. It wasn't about "we have to make music that tells kids to love themselves more than Big Daddy Kane loves his gold rope chain bought by him for guys who hire people to shoot AKs into crowded barber shops", it was "We are better than THAT." It all got made into crude finger pointing and then the divisions became a lot more fixed that underground rappers acted like this and commercial rappers acted like that. And since popularity and sales make someone seem bigger, commercial rappers were the 'real' ones. Classism totally plays into that because lower class success stories are obviously more authentic, so discoveries of things like "Ja Rule went to private school and is from a middle class part of Queens" is damnation when he wants to be a star and is posing around like a fake Tupac guy. Albeit one with no real content and who makes R&B songs.
That honestly isn't so big an issue until the N.T. side starts making it an issue. Shit, Wu-Tang was as a collective somehow completely at ease with having Raekwon and Gza and Method Man and ODB at the same time.
But that's the point, at the dawn of the 90s it wasn't thaaaaat unusual for a larger network of people to come from differing walks of life in hip-hop. Even in Native Tongues, the Violators (including the late Chris Lighty) were the strong-arm section who were known for starting fights if you tried to disrespect who they were protecting because they were soft. When Tupac kept doing his tantrums and spats against Tribe and De La, it would be people like the Zulus and the Violators who'd give him the ol' "Say Sorry" treatment.
Its one of the strange sagas of the Native Tongues movement I described in that "Rap's Altamont" tangent we had a while back, but its an evolved timeline...
You have basically "PSK" as the first gangster rap record, and then Ice-T and KRS-One rip that off and turn it into album length personas (prior to that, Ice-T is another Shan/LL clone, and KRS is basically never gotten much further than early Philly rappers like Schoolly and Steady B combined with Just-Ice). Now Bambaataa watches KRS get rejected by the drug money funneling Juice Crew dominating commercial rap center, and then determines to 'save' KRS. KRS is only a step or two removed from Bam because DJ Red Alert is Zulu backed and that's who supported KRS when Marley Marl / Mr. Magic rejected him, and Ced Gee from Ultramagnetic who features ex-Zulu dancer Kool Keith does a ton of the beats for Criminal Minded. So at the same time that Keith and The JBs are pushing a moralistic yet 'playa-type' aesthetic, with humor and self-awareness backed with self-conciousness, they work on Kris and polish him a bit into the Teacher persona. It helps that you have a respected dude who used to crush other human beings skulls and is now a very benign peaceful DJ/Gang Leader turned Cult Leader.
So eventually what happens is certain kids, namely De La and Tribe go to the Zulu/Native Tongues transition, as does Latifah. Latifah, as well! Her family background is full of a lot of goons, but she doesn't carry herself that way. Whereas Tribe and De La are basically... they were the weed carriers at first. They were joyful and playful and that fit the Zulu aesthetic because obviously they were influenced by those groups. Public Enemy was a separate entity, but also fit very well within the aesthetic group.
So, what happens is this movement gels and centers around... 1989-1990. And what happens is JBz and Ultra and PE make their booms. Now since PE is marketed as a 'black punk rock' group by Island, its ridiculously easy to blow them up beyond the rap market. Ultramagnetic, their 2nd album is so obviously attempts at making a 'commercial party' rap album, and that implodes. JBz always liked but perpetually on labels without Island's PR connections. "Crews" are abstract concepts to this day unless they're bunched on a label such as a Death Row, so you can't market a loose collective as well as you can DEF JAM THE LABEL OF RAP. But by the time there was an audience that you could do that to, the paradigm had shifted. Because now Rap's commercial audience had expanded and Tribe and De La had obvious hits, and pop writers obsessing over them, and were just arguably a lot more accessible because they didn't say shit about shit. "The Abstract" nothing, they were just a bunch of dorks conceptualizing the fact that they just freestyled about nothing. And made good music out of it.
But then of course, that whole movement got bloated and there were the Johnny Come Latelies and the terrible KRS-One follow up albums, the boom of happy pop rap... Its very hard for Tribe to seem all that impressive in those old Video Music Box blocks (which my dad had on VHS) where it'd be Tribe, Fushnickens, Kwame, YZ, and its just a melange of the same record over and over. Never mind the US over, even in NYC.
So like I said, west coast did similar things because remember, Bam had sent Afrika Islam to LA to help make "The Rhyme Syndicate", with Divine Styler and Everlast, and keeping people who were more moderate like King Tee and Toddy T around Ice but then by then... NWA, which is full-fledged misogynoir piloted by Public Enemy / Ultramagnetic fans Ice Cube and Dre respectively. Lost cause. So you have a sort of more diverse approach to full-fledged gangster rap or whatever. (Most 'Gangster Rap' in NYC never made it... Kool G Rap was always 'marketed' as the gangster, but he didn't have a big street rep. Actual criminals like the ones who made up Mobstyle like Azie of the Paid In Full crew generally got kept to the wayside).
So boom, Tribe and De La are over in the public consciousness after Wu-Tang and Nas and Biggie and Tupac and all these types blow up. What do they do? They get mad and blame the labels, blame the fans for being ignorant, blame the new artists themselves... Meanwhile they were just fucking passe. Sorry, but Midnight Marauders is already so fucking old hat by the time it comes out from the perspective of the records the gen pop of NYC was starting to gravitate to. 'hardcore' was in, and dancing in overalls was out, can ya blame 'em? But that's what the second wave did, because they had gotten a taste of mainstream money because the industry knew how to handle them better than they did the Def Jam era, the same way the ones who came after them benefited further from the industry being more creative in marketing rap, and so on. There's a great bad capitalist metaphor in their behavior somewhere, but I don't have the language or the desire to point it out.
So then what happens next is that as the fanbase kind of solidifies and codifies to a certain core audience for these guys, De La and Tribe react both with a greater desire to sell out and a more cynical attitude in general. YOU NEVER SEE THAT in the Jungle Brothers, they simply just keep it moving, they try doing jungle, doing an album backed by the Roots, do a dance-y themed album with Black Eyed Peas very early, whatever. De La fall further and further into orthodoxy, getting rid of Prince Paul who was arguably their greatest attribute while Tribe continuously sell out harder and more desperately to making lighter and poppier music while the album material is actually super fucking depressive.
So as I'm saying, a lot of these guys are discovering the Slum Villages, the Rootses, the Blackstars, guys who were the wannabes, who didn't fit in with the new rap environment. They came in with their own additional hangups because they were often pointed out as being conservative and retroactive compared to the climates they were in, and often responded with childish disdain for the others (The Roots specifically so; ?uestlove still loves to run his fucking mouth. I can't explain how disgusted I was when he publicly took to youtube to chide Method Man & Redman for wanting to play their single on Jimmy Fallon with just a DJ. Like jeez, how dare rappers use a fucking DJ and not your inept backing rhythms). And as I discussed earlier, a bunch of these acts didn't cut their teeth alongside the people who got deals and had notoriety in the underground of the 90s. The Roots never politicked in NYC, they just went straight to a deal based off their renown in Philly. SV, big in the Midewst, very few people actually knew about them in NY at first. And as NYC centric as my argument is, the industry was to certain aspects built around one highly competitive market/field in that era and only juuuuuust starting to really consider the various urban communities of different metropolises for national artists. It was still very fracticious with NWA being booed offstage in NYC, NY groups getting booed down south, etc. etc. Artists profiles, commercial value, and audience prominence never actually matched perfectly even then.
And what tends to be the issue is that a lot of these guys who were 2nd or 3rd generation N.T. guys, or had the aesthetic around that... They weren't approaching it from the same perspective or goals. It wasn't about "we have to make music that tells kids to love themselves more than Big Daddy Kane loves his gold rope chain bought by him for guys who hire people to shoot AKs into crowded barber shops", it was "We are better than THAT." It all got made into crude finger pointing and then the divisions became a lot more fixed that underground rappers acted like this and commercial rappers acted like that. And since popularity and sales make someone seem bigger, commercial rappers were the 'real' ones. Classism totally plays into that because lower class success stories are obviously more authentic, so discoveries of things like "Ja Rule went to private school and is from a middle class part of Queens" is damnation when he wants to be a star and is posing around like a fake Tupac guy. Albeit one with no real content and who makes R&B songs.
That honestly isn't so big an issue until the N.T. side starts making it an issue. Shit, Wu-Tang was as a collective somehow completely at ease with having Raekwon and Gza and Method Man and ODB at the same time.
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
'crisis of the right to exist' is more appropriate.
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
Thanks Crowley, that was a great read.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
thats an interesting read crowley but youre basically just reinforcing the usual idea that what's ruling, and dominant is best, and anything that isn't, deserves to get shitted on and mocked. not that i dont think a lot of reactionary rap doesnt deserve that, but its like, thats the standard party line really (esp these days, when the anti-gangsta NY bias - eg - ronin ro's death row book - is old and dated; its also a tad rockist, that only the stuff with attitude is lauded or worth anything). and actually pretty reactionary in itself. anyhow, midnite marauders didnt do too badly for an album apparently out of step (i would argue it wasnt as out of step as you make it sound however, and that there was still space for that kind of NY rap), it still hit the top ten album chart.
and i will defend the love movement to anyone who dares dis it!
and i will defend the love movement to anyone who dares dis it!
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