corpse's deconstructed rap thread

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
corpse claims that the 2010's has largely been about deconstructing rapping itself. (keef, thug, et all)

i've posited that the story begins to emerge at the turn of the millenium with nelly melodies and the popularisation of lil jon non-contiguous rapping. luke also points to 50 as a melodic rapper.

luke thinks that eminem's uncoolness made rap realise that rappidy rapping was no longer the best path to pursue.

we need to map this:

at what point to proper rapping become redundant?

what paths were explored to try and circumvent rappidy rap?

by the end of this thread we should have a sprawling, pedantic timeline of events.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
proper rapping never became redundant, it just lost its social base. the two are different imo.

it's like the malcolm x thing, you are like that's a bygone world. and in some senses i do feel the gravitational pull of that temptation as well. it's certainly a compelling argument but im always hesitant about embracing it as it tends to fetishise the market more than anything else. but it is compelling when capital has domesticated all protest to its own logic. so that's worth touching on but probably not too much.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I don't know if my rap knowledge is up to doing a timeline but I'd posit geography as a factor here, and therefore distribution networks. New York rap still does that dense, grimy word heavy rhyme style (Billy Woods being a recent example who I love). But it seems the moment you escape NY's gravity, styles start to change. As a UK listener I could hear early on how v different West Coast stuff was and Atlanta and the South are taking it one step further. I would posit the reason that you get annoying true school heads in the UK (or used to at least, even my straw men are past their sell by date) is the strength of distribution networks between New York and London. Meant we were plugged into Wu Tang in a way that we weren't with say, No Limit. Perhaps the decentralisation of distribution has something to do with the growth of these regional styles as forces?
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
the thing about true school is it's actually a revisionist purism in its own way. for proper oldskool hip hop heads it was long since over when wu-tang came along. I kind of wanted to touch on this in the grime thread but here's a better place for it.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
It's a completely false cargo cult narrative. I hate it. But like I said, I think it's old. Are these people even around anymore?
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Case in point - the four elements of graf, breaking, rapping and turntablism. You can now follow a lot of old school New York writers on Insta and these guys are mostly like "rap had nothing to do with graffiti - I never listened to rap, I was into Sabbath" (or salsa or whatever). That was an imposition put in place by Wildstyle (the movie) then exported.
 
Last edited:

DannyL

Wild Horses
We could maybe win a Dissensus prize for most rapid tangential shift away from the topic in hand here.
 

body_wall

Member

I deffo point to this Irish donny showing some deconstructed flows. It's funny but I don't think this guy is really trying to do comedy

The Eminem comment above is a violation but yes very true :mad::crylarf:

I guess whats interesting to me was auto tune mumble rap being used as a tool to chat real mournful lyrics over a beat. But letting the spitter hide his bars in the haze without forgoing the machismo.

Can't lie, as a rapper and a big advocate of deconstruction and middle fingering nostalgia I want to post up my own music but I'll hold off for a while and see where this goes *humble*
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
i was saying to luke the other week that the different between rap and 'mumble rap' is as big as the difference between disco and house.

or likewise rock n roll and rock, soul and funk, etc.

it's actually been this huge paradigm shift- a whole new macro-genre possibly- and its merely a bit of unimaginative taxonomy that's stopped it being recognised as such.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
We could maybe win a Dissensus prize for most rapid tangential shift away from the topic in hand here.

no no this is far more interesting and can get into the emo stuff, which me and web esh still adamantly believe should have been confined to the status of embarrassing teenage white people phase.
 

luka

Well-known member
Third you don't have to try and sabotage every single one of the poor boys threads you know?! Sometimes just play along, help him out! Join in! Not everything has to be a fight to the death!
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Third you don't have to try and sabotage every single one of the poor boys threads you know?! Sometimes just play along, help him out! Join in! Not everything has to be a fight to the death!

im not? am just talking. otherwise the thread is just gonna be look at this, look at that, a + b = C. boring. need some more granular talk here. lil jon's grain is different to Lil Wayne's.

Even if we talk about lil wayne as rap it's far more a rap subsumed by emo. lil jon's isn't so much deconstructed as just electro rap, atlanta, miami bass, etc etc. which is interesting given that 80s electro was seen as a fad by most right thinking people in he 00s when the revival came around.

But yeah, pure electro isn't it


take out the rapping and it's not far away from a detroit ghettotech tune.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
2000s club rap


early 1980s club rap

the dynamics in the club or strip club necessitates a more concatenated flow. a flow based more on the drum track.
rac city of course a contemporary example of this.

It's more that hip hop has always been caught between two sometimes conflicting aesthetic tendancies.
 
Last edited:

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
lollipop is not a club rap tune.

gas pedal is a club rap tune.

which one is more deconstructed? i struggle to answer that one.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
does the demise of proper rap begin with rza's verse on 4th chamber? was there one like that before it? organized konfusion or somehting?
 
Top