lol@crackerjack. rappers/mcs need to take some responsibility for the messages they put out there. they know theyre glamourising, or at least not just doing 'reportage' but instead they play the innocent card, which these days, after so many years of these excuses, is pretty pathetic.
lethal bizzle - back to bizznizz
- Thread starter gumdrops
- Start date
Noah Baby Food
Well-known member
Won't be listening to this. Not interested. Kate Fucking Nash???? I quite liked the beat on that "Bizzle Bizzle" tune but not enough to want to own it. Maxwell's trying to get paid ain't he? Good luck to him, but he's becoming an Uncle Tom for indie kids, imo. "Oi" is a groundbreaking tune, and he got some good MCs together and a sick D'explicit beat for "Forward", but face it, he's a wack MC.
Really you just sound like every inarticulate person on the internet who tries to slag on hip hop influenced music from the outside. You're just regurgitating lazy stereotypes as an admitted non-listener that has been inspired by a review of an album that you haven't even heard.
also, you're the one who mentioned race in this thread in the first place.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
And you're "on the inside", are you? Tell me, how is Ice Cube these days?
There is plenty of hip-hop I like, and I've heard plenty that I don't particularly like. I don't have some sort of blanket fear of the genre if that's what you think. As for stereotypes, maybe they are stereotypes, but that doesn't make them untrue. Are you seriously denying that a significant proportion of rap and rap-influenced music doesn't involve lots of macho posturing? Five minutes watching MTV will put this to rest. If hip-hop is stereotyped, it's because it stereotypes itself.
I like to think we can converse on this forum on a level where mentioning race doesn't automatically equal OMG RACISM!!!.
Edit: this discussion is for another place, I'm going to leave the people who want to talk about the album in peace now. xXxXx
Last edited:
There's a mix of "glamourizing" and "reportage" in the majority of non-backpacker hip hop and hip hop-influenced music and there always has been. Even the underground gangsta shit that never blew up has always vacillated between "I need to get out of the hood/society is fucked up" and "I'm going to kill you and sell drugs" even within one track on an album. Beyond that most of the most mainstream stuff you hear released as singles is more about partying and sex than anything.
Some people in this thread are all just saying that "hip hop is slack" and "slack is bad" without the least bit of nuance. I mean what do you really mean by "rappers/mcs need to take some responsibility for the messages they put out there." It's just sounds like one of the buzz phrases a Bill O'Reily would use when talking about Ludacris or Mistah F.A.B.
Earlier in this thread you claimed to not listen to hip hop related music, excuse me for putting you on the "outside" of a conversation about a genre that you are primarily exposed to through mtv. Beyond this, your stereotypes are profoundly lazy as you are just regurgitating the easy "hip hop is slack, slack is bad" that I mentioned in my previous post.
but on the race card: the association of race with urban crime and the formation of perceptions and stereotypes from that is one the more pressing problems with modern racism (You find this in most urban centers where there are reasonably obvious social and spacial divisions between the classes that often enough correspond to racial and ethnic divides as well as/or immigrant/citizen divides). The lazy buzz phrases harped on by anit-hip hop talking heads that hip hop is nothing but an embodiment of that stereotype have strong racist connotations. The fact that you rely on them for your "general observations" for "this kind of music" doesn't speak well for your use of race being entirely innocent.
28 Gun Nice Boy
Well-known member
I wasn't slurring you personally as a racist: I directly referred in my post to "the perception...that it (grime) boils down to young black males banging on about guns & bitches" which yes, I would maintain is informed by racism. How else do you explain people dismissing a music which they've never really listened to as being essentially about those things?
What makes you think I assumed you weren't black? Why would being black negate you being a racist? I know plenty of black people who dismiss grime and hip hop for the same reasons as you've given so I don't understand your point?
You're right about one thing though, I am lazy.
28 Gun Nice Boy
Well-known member
Yes, and the idea that music can only be validated by the 'meaning' of it's content is nonsense. You could argue that most art is essentially concerned with the same things, again and again, the innovation is in in finding new ways to express it. This is why I find it annoying when critics harp on about misogyny and violence in hip hop or 'urban' music, it's not usually on moral grounds but on creative ones - like rock or indie music doesn't rehash the same themes constantly?
Logan Sama
BestThereIsAtWhatIDo
50 Cent says hello from his 52 bedroom mansion he bought from the proceeds of his 20 million album sales.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Alright, I shouldn't have said I "don't listen to it at all", it's just that it forms a minority part of my music collection. But hanging on here for a moment:
So are you saying there is *NO* relation between race and urban crime? Look, I'm not trying to make any kind of point here, I was just commenting on the fact that if stereotypes exist about hip-hop-derived styles of music (such as grime), it's generally because the people involved in making that music collude in perpetuating those stereotypes. Is this really so unspeakably controversial? I said I was going to shut up in this thread, but if people are going to reply to me specifically I think there's no reason why I shouldn't defend myself...
Edit: @ Big Gun Boy: my crititicisms come both from the objectionableness of the lyric subject matter itself, *and* the sheer repetitiveness of it. It's not an either/or.
Last edited:
Well, stereotypes are almost all to some degree based in reality, the problem is when they are used to generalize about a population. The stereotype that hip hop and related genres are nothing but guns and bitches is first of all: a stereotype. It's perpetuated by artists who do rhyme about such themes and any media that sensationalize those artists. That doesn't make the stereotype valid though.
A Lethal B rap about using guns does perpetuate the stereotype that grime is all about guns and violence. A hip hop video of a song about drugs perpetuates the stereotype is all about drug culture. Neither of these makes the stereotype that all hip hop (grime) is about guns and violence valid. Beyond this fact, to assume then that hip hop that is about only that is just an acceptance of that lazy stereotype about the genre. Then making a questionable moral and "creativity" based claim about the genre being bad based on that very stereotype is both a boring and unnuanced perspective of how slack functions in the context of the music/culture/whatever itself as well as an ignorant perspective of the diversity found in the genre itself.
Obviously people do this to other genres (indie is sad quirky white middle class people), but because of the racial and class divides I referred to earlier the question of "racism" can't help but become more palpable as part of the discussion. Also hip hop related musics tend to be scapegoated more than any other type of music (with the exception of metal) for all sorts of problems in the world. This isn't to say that you're racist, but that statements about urban music in this context are hard to make race neutral.
So in summary:
1) hip hop (grime etc) is not always slack
2) hip hop is sometimes slack, especially what tends to be seen on mtv and heard on your average hip hop radio station
3) slack is not necessarily morally "bad", but it's obvious worthy of analysis.
4) slack is not necessarily "bad" creativity wise either, as mentioned by 28 gun, but can be good or bad depending on quality of the artists' writing, rhyming, and backing beats - just like any other genre. ("Another bossa nova song about 'saudade,' how insightful!" "How boring, another old black man is singing about having the blues!")
A Lethal B rap about using guns does perpetuate the stereotype that grime is all about guns and violence. A hip hop video of a song about drugs perpetuates the stereotype is all about drug culture. Neither of these makes the stereotype that all hip hop (grime) is about guns and violence valid. Beyond this fact, to assume then that hip hop that is about only that is just an acceptance of that lazy stereotype about the genre. Then making a questionable moral and "creativity" based claim about the genre being bad based on that very stereotype is both a boring and unnuanced perspective of how slack functions in the context of the music/culture/whatever itself as well as an ignorant perspective of the diversity found in the genre itself.
Obviously people do this to other genres (indie is sad quirky white middle class people), but because of the racial and class divides I referred to earlier the question of "racism" can't help but become more palpable as part of the discussion. Also hip hop related musics tend to be scapegoated more than any other type of music (with the exception of metal) for all sorts of problems in the world. This isn't to say that you're racist, but that statements about urban music in this context are hard to make race neutral.
So in summary:
1) hip hop (grime etc) is not always slack
2) hip hop is sometimes slack, especially what tends to be seen on mtv and heard on your average hip hop radio station
3) slack is not necessarily morally "bad", but it's obvious worthy of analysis.
4) slack is not necessarily "bad" creativity wise either, as mentioned by 28 gun, but can be good or bad depending on quality of the artists' writing, rhyming, and backing beats - just like any other genre. ("Another bossa nova song about 'saudade,' how insightful!" "How boring, another old black man is singing about having the blues!")
Last edited:
28 Gun Nice Boy
Well-known member
Again, I wasn't referring to you personally, I had broadsheet music critics in general more in mind. I think this is an interesting debate (to which you've contributed) and what I thought dissensus was all about - I don't think anyone has so far suggested that you need to shut up.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
OK, fair enouth, I was probably getting a bit too defensive there.
I wasn't trying to claim ALL rappers/MCs are about money-guns-n-bitches and nothing else - the hip-hop I like tends more towards Grandmaster Flash, Public Enemy, the kind that's anti-slack, in a sense - just that the kind that gets the most exposure often is.
I really WILL shut up now..
I wasn't trying to claim ALL rappers/MCs are about money-guns-n-bitches and nothing else - the hip-hop I like tends more towards Grandmaster Flash, Public Enemy, the kind that's anti-slack, in a sense - just that the kind that gets the most exposure often is.
I really WILL shut up now..
Last edited:
vimothy
yurp
Black Metal ist BRAP!
vimothy
yurp
Thought some of you might find this interesting - In the Heart of Freedom, in Chains, by Myron Magnet.
How can there still exist a large black urban underclass imprisoned in poverty, welfare dependency, school failure, nonwork, and crime? How even today can more black young men be entangled in the criminal-justice system than graduate from college? How can close to 70 percent of black children be born into single-mother families, which (almost all experts agree) prepare kids for success less well than two-parent families?
The legacy of slavery and racism isn’t the reason, economist Thomas Sowell has long argued. That legacy didn’t stop blacks from raising themselves up after Emancipation. By World War I, Sowell’s data show, northern blacks scored higher on armed-forces tests than southern whites. After World War II and the GI Bill, black education and income levels rose sharply. It was only in the mid-1960s that a century of black progress seemed to make a sudden U-turn, a reversal that long-past events didn’t cause. Beginning around 1964, the rates of black high school graduation, workforce participation, crime, illegitimacy, and drug use all turned sharply in the wrong direction. While many blacks continued to move forward, a sizable minority solidified into an underclass, defined by self-destructive behavior that all but guaranteed failure.
The legacy of slavery and racism isn’t the reason, economist Thomas Sowell has long argued. That legacy didn’t stop blacks from raising themselves up after Emancipation. By World War I, Sowell’s data show, northern blacks scored higher on armed-forces tests than southern whites. After World War II and the GI Bill, black education and income levels rose sharply. It was only in the mid-1960s that a century of black progress seemed to make a sudden U-turn, a reversal that long-past events didn’t cause. Beginning around 1964, the rates of black high school graduation, workforce participation, crime, illegitimacy, and drug use all turned sharply in the wrong direction. While many blacks continued to move forward, a sizable minority solidified into an underclass, defined by self-destructive behavior that all but guaranteed failure.
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
It's quite interesting in the context of the rest of this thread is that the writer's complaint at Bizzle isn't that he goes on about violence in the way that other grime MCs do, it's that he specifically exaggerates that aspect of his lyrics and plays up to stereotypes in order to seem 'edgey' to indie kids. I haven't heard the album so I don't know if that's actually the case...
Also, whether you like the music or not, the indie crossover marketing thing seems to be working pretty nicely. Pragmatism or sellout? Discuss.
Also, whether you like the music or not, the indie crossover marketing thing seems to be working pretty nicely. Pragmatism or sellout? Discuss.
artists make work about WHAT THEY KNOW. writers write about the goings on around them.
simple.
some of the best music come from impoverished areas, and artists with little formal education. but we all love it (grime, dirty south, dancehall, etc.) because there is a vitality in the music that is lacking in OUR lives, which comes from the struggle of day to day survival in situations much tougher than what we non ghetto dwellers have to face.
to the extent that the subject of money guns hos has become a cartoon cardboard cut-out cliche and heavily stereotyped in the media is boring as fuck, but that doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the subjects in and of themselves as valid themes for expression, a reflection of *real life* in the streets.
simple.
some of the best music come from impoverished areas, and artists with little formal education. but we all love it (grime, dirty south, dancehall, etc.) because there is a vitality in the music that is lacking in OUR lives, which comes from the struggle of day to day survival in situations much tougher than what we non ghetto dwellers have to face.
to the extent that the subject of money guns hos has become a cartoon cardboard cut-out cliche and heavily stereotyped in the media is boring as fuck, but that doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the subjects in and of themselves as valid themes for expression, a reflection of *real life* in the streets.
Lethal Bizzle makes work about the most effective way to make Sick Boy vomit down his shirt.
This is more of a scientific approach than a personal one based in experience. All things considered, he really accomplishes what he set out to do with Back To Biznizz.
Last edited: