Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Forgot to mention Ab Soul (Black Hippy crew mate of Kendrick Lamar). His album has plenty of interesting lyrics and like Kendrick he subverts the gangsta cliches of rap music while simultaneously subscribing to them - although less so than Kendrick, perhaps, as a product of the suburbs.
The whole topic of cliches and beyond that antisocial/violent attitudes in rap music is a huge one which I am interested in but can't even begin to engage with. I wrote about this area in this blog post about Chief Keef - I can't recall what I wrote (and it was off the top of my head, so heaven forbid that I stand by it!) but I'm definitely aware of the problematic nature of listening to and advocating gangsta rap.
It's a tricky situation, especially as (as I think I wrote in the blog post) I think that the nasty side of hip hop isn't as much besides-the-point/unfortunate-side-topic as some of its more liberal fans might like to think - by which I mean, the violence and nastiness of someone like Chief Keef is something which is actually part of its appeal to me, not something that I must accept for the sake of the music, despite my distaste.
Anyway, I think what baboon is saying is that even beyond the moral implications of sociopathic rap music there is something aesthetically dull about it for him and I can sympathise with that. I think my whole approach to rap music has changed since I used to listen to it, in that I no longer really expect or look for 'content' but see things more as a matter of style. This in itself is another can of worms, of course - separating style and content, the contention that you can IGNORE the moral content of music if it makes your toes tap/neck snap, the previous (half) point I made that sometimes the nasty content IS the appeal of it... It is nice when you find a rapper with intelligent/socially conscious lyrics that also makes genuinely exciting music but even with those rappers (i.e. Kendrick Lamar) you would have to say that they can't do some of the things that, say, Waka Flocka Flame can do. Perhaps one of those things is tapping into a not particularly palatable but certainly thrilling part of us that WANTS to feel angry, bitter and violent.
Ahhh I could write all day about this, in a meandering and ultimately fruitless way...
The whole topic of cliches and beyond that antisocial/violent attitudes in rap music is a huge one which I am interested in but can't even begin to engage with. I wrote about this area in this blog post about Chief Keef - I can't recall what I wrote (and it was off the top of my head, so heaven forbid that I stand by it!) but I'm definitely aware of the problematic nature of listening to and advocating gangsta rap.
It's a tricky situation, especially as (as I think I wrote in the blog post) I think that the nasty side of hip hop isn't as much besides-the-point/unfortunate-side-topic as some of its more liberal fans might like to think - by which I mean, the violence and nastiness of someone like Chief Keef is something which is actually part of its appeal to me, not something that I must accept for the sake of the music, despite my distaste.
Anyway, I think what baboon is saying is that even beyond the moral implications of sociopathic rap music there is something aesthetically dull about it for him and I can sympathise with that. I think my whole approach to rap music has changed since I used to listen to it, in that I no longer really expect or look for 'content' but see things more as a matter of style. This in itself is another can of worms, of course - separating style and content, the contention that you can IGNORE the moral content of music if it makes your toes tap/neck snap, the previous (half) point I made that sometimes the nasty content IS the appeal of it... It is nice when you find a rapper with intelligent/socially conscious lyrics that also makes genuinely exciting music but even with those rappers (i.e. Kendrick Lamar) you would have to say that they can't do some of the things that, say, Waka Flocka Flame can do. Perhaps one of those things is tapping into a not particularly palatable but certainly thrilling part of us that WANTS to feel angry, bitter and violent.
Ahhh I could write all day about this, in a meandering and ultimately fruitless way...
