Leo

Well-known member
quite a fascination with gangs and guns. does that whole schtick get a little old at some point?
 

Leo

Well-known member
I get it, and I'm not disparaging it. it's just kind of interesting that the presentation and acting out has barely evolved since the gangsta rap days, like a cliche of a cliche. I guess the pseudo-emulation of ISIS is a new wrinkle, and there's always a steady stream of new teenagers (or younger) who get into it.

to this old dude, it's like watch a John Wayne western at this point. boring! ;)
 

luka

Well-known member
I get it, and I'm not disparaging it. it's just kind of interesting that the presentation and acting out has barely evolved since the gangsta rap days, like a cliche of a cliche. I guess the pseudo-emulation of ISIS is a new wrinkle, and there's always a steady stream of new teenagers (or younger) who get into it.

to this old dude, it's like watch a John Wayne western at this point. boring! ;)

I think the world is ripe for another excursion into the psychedelic. It's so like the 80s with the kids so bored and amped up all they can do is attack one another. I know what you mean Leo, it's really grim, when music can be euphoric and open portals to other galaxies and we still earthbound squabbling blood spilt ion the ground. We already got past tnT once didn't we? Why we going back?
 

Leo

Well-known member
LOL, I'm more the little blond kid.

I actually don't have a problem with all those music videos, they're just so cliched at this point that they bore the shit out of me. they're not bad, just unimaginative. dull.
 

Leo

Well-known member
reminds of black metal bands who all wear the same leather and spikes and studs and chains, all have the same unreadable band name logos, maybe some minute variations on their corpse paint. it's fine. just a little monotonous.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
quite a fascination with gangs and guns. does that whole schtick get a little old at some point?

i parody my own taste in music as being 'gangs and stabbing', but that's not actually the case either in the sense of only listening to gangster music (i love rnb, jazz, reggae, garage, pop, etc.) or even finding gangsterism the appealing part of the music.

in the case of drill for example its the rhythms, rather than the lyrical themes, that appeal to me. as it happens there are intriguing elements to the lyrics; the density and sophistication of allusions and metaphors, the asexuality, the slapstick nature of some violent lyrics, the phonetic buoyancy, the numerical nature of many lyrics, the cryptolectic nature of a lot of it, the interplay of various dialects, etc.

as far as being a cliched goes, to my ears a guitar rock band writing a song about Wittgenstein or zero lower bound interest rates are likely to be infinitely more derivative than artists who are working within a genre that didn't even exist a year before they made the track.

in terms of this thread, the notions that a puritanical middle eastern islamist militant group is borrowing cultural cachet from extravagant, hedonistic US rap and that teenagers in south east london are in turn mimicking these jihadists are noteworthy cultural phenomenon.
 

Leo

Well-known member
I agree with all of that. Just to clarify, I wasn't commenting on the music or lyrics of gangsta stuff (or black metal), just the (in my mind) stale visual representation in the videos. the full-circle ISIS element is definitely an interesting development, though.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member

cherie blair's sister converted too. wonder if it's the new 'eat, pray, love' trend of dipping into exotic spirituality
 

body_wall

Member
Oryt u old fuckers. Been away for a bit actually making some music but I'm back to jump on this discussion cos mans thought about this a lot.


A lot of mimicking call to prayer melody lines in this stuff, that lil fall at the end of each line. Used to hear some local guys in Manchester walk around blasting guys singing lines from the Qua'ran and it reminded me of this a lot.

Also worth noting that the new wave of drill and trap is the first time to my knowledge that SE Asians have been heavily involved and influential in UK music (Allow Faze Miyake) It's not just a Jamaican/ African thing anymore and they're bringing a lot of their cultural gestures with them.
 
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