Dead @ last Luka post
I find Common has always employed a style where he never commits to a direct flow that rides the beat, instead flashing and displaying a sort of 'spastic' quality; this is the same thing I was complaining about in Kano who in all honestly raps INCREDIBLY CLOSE to Common. Its a lot of affected voice, very post-De La phrasings where you could imagine the voice looking like a heart pulse readout "I-surMIZEtheMAstuhMICconTROLla". I can concede that perhaps when he failed drastically after his first album in which he was rapping joyously about nothing and making a bunch of cartoon squeaks and gimmicky noises (because Common was signed on a huge buzz and if I recall correctly his first album was such a colossal flop critically and sales wise), that Resurrection's bitterness and borderline alcoholism is possibly a very real and compelling element. Then later on it was a lot of headwraps, smugness...
I don't like a lot of that College Rap/Soulquarians vibe, because there was a cynicism underneath some of those people. Q-Tip was bemoaning southern rappers and their behavior because his latter albums with Tribe didn't sell as much as Trick Daddy or whatever, but you really want to be proud of "Vibrant Thing", which is a blatant betrayal of the Native Tongues aesthetic to have club hits?
And the thing is, black pride, artistic takes on identity and everything went in various directions... David Banner and Killer Mike for example. Yet consistently people insisted it had to adhere to rap orthodoxy/conservatism of a certain aesthetic "college rap", "Backpack Rap", "Neo-Soul" and whatever other convenient labels to imply it was an alternative from the trashiness and hedonism of the mainstream.
I always return to that one Roots video where they're making fun of rappers hiring attractive women and buying champagne. Materialism is corny, sure, but if you know WHY displays of financial success (artifically boosted by the labels) are significant to people as a "WE MADE IT", why would you be so cynical to rib them for it? Especially if your albums are doing 1/3rd of them because you're not as commercial.
This actually ties into a big issue I have with the Drake and Meek Mill thing in which raps classism has really gotten bad. Everyone thinks that say "Right, Meek is saying he's a real rapper and Drake isn't" and while that's an argument with validity, that's not what he's talking about. Meek has been talking about how he's a street rapper, one of the few allowed on a pedestal of celebrity status (at least in the rap industry), for about a little over a year now. He's been remarking about how he doesn't concern himself with being compared sales/career wise to your J Cole, Kendrick and Drake's because they speak to a different audience and in certain cases have a different background than him. Drake cannot make a "Traumatized", pure and simple, nor does he have the courage to talk about real issues. Drake complains on songs that teens read phones more than books, or that men are emotional and petty... Those aren't deeper societal issues. Yet inherently Drake is always presumed to have more content than Meek.
So when Meek is criticizing and exposing a Drake, its not just the fact that Drake is fake, etc. A lot of social media is OFC defending Drake and claiming Meek is motivated by jealousy because of Nicki or w/e. Moreover, its the fact that Meek who is a genuine rapper rapper, diligent worker STILL has a glass ceiling on him, whereas Drake is less of a talent than a brand/industry can do whatever he wants and reap tons of rewards.
This is the issue I had years ago with the college rap scene, and what I have now with art trap or Drake or whatever... The double standard that AUDIENCES place on certain artists due to their perceptions of what their music is doing. Because rap is sooooo complex on multiple levels of technique, lyricism, production, presentation, whatever I get that sometimes its easy to get tripped up by visual signifyers like "Oh, so and so wears a lot of wool and talks very educated" and presume they perform a 'higher' art than another, but it isn't necessarily true.