Hip Hop 09?

4linehaiku

Repetitive
Trawling Guardian comments is pretty much shooting fish in a barrel (or possibly catching them in enormous dragnets I suppose), but all the same:

"Speech DaBelle, Scroobious Pip, Akira The Don?"

Thank fuck, Hip-Hop is saved!

Edit: I see that ILX thread has managed to be obviously scathing before me. This is not particularly surprising either I suppose.

Double Edit: I really don't get ILX.
 
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franz

Well-known member
this argument about how Reynolds is contradicting himself because he complains about bling talk now but thought three 6 et. al. were great on the other side of the decade is missing the point completely. it's annoying.

i don't know if i agree with the man, but the last two paragraphs are pretty interesting anyway (regardless of whether you apply them to rap or something else). and it is tough to argue about the general vitality of things, from where i stand. altho pointing out that Lil' Wayne's debut was in 1999 willfully neglects that he's really only become the phenomenon that he is now in the last 5 years... whether or not Weezy makes much more of himself beyond this point, i do feel that he is one of the main arguments/lifelines for future creativity in this area.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
"Speech DaBelle, Scroobious Pip, Akira The Don?"

that was very funny.

As to the article, the first half of this decade was a pretty glorious stretch for the meeting point of hip-hop and RnB. I must say I have listened to a lot less hip-hop from the past five years.

Edit: but saying juke and hyphy are the same because they both reference electro, is silly.
 
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DavidD

can't be stopped
this argument about how Reynolds is contradicting himself because he complains about bling talk now but thought three 6 et. al. were great on the other side of the decade is missing the point completely. it's annoying.

is it?

surely no more annoying than suggesting soulja boy, gucci mane, lil boosie and yung 'doc' are all the same
 

BareBones

wheezy
SR's definition of a genre being dead - "doesn't mean literally disappear – it may even generate good stuff now and then –but refers to stagnation, irrelevance, becoming uncoupled from the zeitgeist" - makes me think, is simon reynolds dead?
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I just like the way he only ever logs in here when people are talking about him.

I think he's pretty much right, although like baboon says the pat dismissal of juke - surely the only musical form around that is head-fuckingly futuristic - is more to carry his argument.

There's also something to be said for just looking at the US for hiphop now as being redundant, there's far more interesting hiphop coming from Africa and Poland. Y'know, global culture. I don't think anyone looks to the US anymore for anything cultural, do they? That done happened.
 

woops

is not like other people
sr's definition of a genre being dead - "doesn't mean literally disappear – it may even generate good stuff now and then –but refers to stagnation, irrelevance, becoming uncoupled from the zeitgeist" - makes me think, is simon reynolds dead?

that's a PARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
 
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4linehaiku

Repetitive
i should probably just ignore this since yr from berlin but no he hasnt

I'm not at all, it's a total lie. I just haven't got round to changing it. So uh, feel free to continue not ignoring it, now safe in your German avoiding principles.

I'm not referring to this article in particular, but do you not think writing critical, fairly uninformed articles about the state of UK dance music whilst living in New York and not going to any raves could be regarded as "uncoupled from the zeitgeist"?
Or do you take umbrage with the "good stuff now and then"? That would be a bit mean.
 
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Gavin

booty bass intellectual
I think my main complaint is that he's such a philosophical idealist when it comes to music. Hip hop begins in the ashes of Keynesianism, and served as a kind of "black CNN" throughout all the shockwaves neoliberalism sent through the black community -- the war on drugs, affirmative action/rise of black middle class, movement of industry to the South (the relation b/w this and the rise in dirty south hip hop is really underexplored)... this was not frequently at the transparent level of lyrics, but apparent on aesthetic levels. Now that economic system is sputtering out in the U.S., you don't see major shifts happening -- everything's stalling. This is also related to the larger strife in the commercial music industry, with which HH always had an interesting relationship. I'd argue that the latest narrative HH is approaching is gentrification, but that's something I'm working on in my head still, not properly thought out.

I think mistersloane is right to point our eyes to other places where it can be read in context of neoimperialism/postcolonial struggles and shakeups, other places newly opening up to consumer capitalism.

I mean, music does run & change on other music to some extent, but that's not the only thing that causes major shifts in culture. You can't ignore the economic. I do remember reading something by Mark Fisher about HH and Neoliberalism a little while back, but it seemed very simplified to me.

For me the most interesting pop music changes in the U.S. are happening with the influx of immigrants, so lots of Latin stuff, but little of it goes in a HH direction -- HH is still very much a black thing in the U.S.

[Slone's also right that juke isn't just dirty booty bass music... I remember talking to some Detroit producers who made ghettotech about how they couldn't get as much attention now that commercial pop and hip hop is basically the same thing (they mentioned Fergie - My Humps). Best to just go back to making weird dance music, which seems like what is happening with juke. Plus there's been juke parties for very young children for years, and the dirty talk ain't exactly appropriate there. Actually DJ Nate and these younger producers making the out-there shit were probably raised on those. Er, I think that's enough digression for one post.]
 

franz

Well-known member
I think he's pretty much right, although like baboon says the pat dismissal of juke - surely the only musical form around that is head-fuckingly futuristic - is more to carry his argument.

i was thinking juke wasn't really coming into this, but i see now that it does get mentioned in his article. i'm not sure that it would fit the definition of the music SFJ is talking about in his article. whether or not SR knows anything about it, it doesn't feel like much of a rebuttal to cite, given how intensely local it is--and how peripheral its relation seems to 'rap' or 'hip hop'.

i do think it's a bit impatient to declare just because we didn't hear much from Weezy this year... i am still kind of waiting to hear what kind of creative responses his music will generate.


on an unrelated hk9 note

http://huntsvillegotstarz.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/the-album-is-here-take-it/
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I think my main complaint is that he's such a philosophical idealist when it comes to music. Hip hop begins in the ashes of Keynesianism, and served as a kind of "black CNN" throughout all the shockwaves neoliberalism sent through the black community -- the war on drugs, affirmative action/rise of black middle class, movement of industry to the South (the relation b/w this and the rise in dirty south hip hop is really underexplored)... this was not frequently at the transparent level of lyrics, but apparent on aesthetic levels. Now that economic system is sputtering out in the U.S., you don't see major shifts happening -- everything's stalling. This is also related to the larger strife in the commercial music industry, with which HH always had an interesting relationship. I'd argue that the latest narrative HH is approaching is gentrification, but that's something I'm working on in my head still, not properly thought out.

I think mistersloane is right to point our eyes to other places where it can be read in context of neoimperialism/postcolonial struggles and shakeups, other places newly opening up to consumer capitalism.

I mean, music does run & change on other music to some extent, but that's not the only thing that causes major shifts in culture. You can't ignore the economic. I do remember reading something by Mark Fisher about HH and Neoliberalism a little while back, but it seemed very simplified to me.

For me the most interesting pop music changes in the U.S. are happening with the influx of immigrants, so lots of Latin stuff, but little of it goes in a HH direction -- HH is still very much a black thing in the U.S.

[Slone's also right that juke isn't just dirty booty bass music... I remember talking to some Detroit producers who made ghettotech about how they couldn't get as much attention now that commercial pop and hip hop is basically the same thing (they mentioned Fergie - My Humps). Best to just go back to making weird dance music, which seems like what is happening with juke. Plus there's been juke parties for very young children for years, and the dirty talk ain't exactly appropriate there. Actually DJ Nate and these younger producers making the out-there shit were probably raised on those. Er, I think that's enough digression for one post.]

Really great post Gavin, I'll digest and come back to it in a bit. Very interesting what you say about juke - it certainly feels like, sounds like resignation as much as anything else, but not in the 'ringtone' resignation way; it has an apocalyptic nihilism that hasn't been matched since the heady days of Mobb Deep and Bathory, and it'll be interesting to see where it leads. As the UK heads into potential Conservative majority rule and everything that comes with that, I'm expecting some very weird things to come from here as well.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound

franz

Well-known member
G-Side and Slow Motion Soundz/Paper Route Gangsterz are an exciting thing in rap music in k9.
 

Gavin

booty bass intellectual
Here's that K-Punk piece... seems like it was edited drastically, but the connections he makes are really facile. He's trying to shoehorn most of HH history into his "capitalist realism" thesis. Says some of the same things about "funkiness" that SFJ said.

http://www.newstatesman.com/music/2009/07/hip-hop-record-rapper

"hip-hop was no longer commenting on the savage realities of the ’hood, but hyperbolically revelling in them."
-- 1) Far too simplistic. 2)That's not commenting on them?

"The world they projected – of generalised betrayal, distrust and exploitation – was in tune with the capitalist realism of neoliberalism, except that hip-hop’s celebration of the crime lord, its sense that there was ultimately no difference between the tycoon and the criminal, acted as an unintentional parody of neoliberal rapacity."
-- Name one other popular art form that repeatedly connects capitalism and crime -- you would think a leftist would celebrate this type of parody! He's not saying anything that hip hop's liberal critics (a label that surely would offend him) aren't saying.

I often get the sense when reading British critics on American HH that the importation across the Atlantic really distorts the overall sense of the genre... and when they try to connect it to black social life in the U.S. the problems get worse.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I just wish you'd write longer pieces Gavin, or if you do that you'd point me towards them, I really rate what you're saying.

What gets me on reading K-punks New Statesman article is the musical reductionism; I'm not nearly good enough to critique the rest; however what I can say is that he's fundamentally misheard an idea of hiphop, in my opinion.

"But Sa-Ra are not alone: it is possible to hear their music as the culmination of an anti-gangsta tendency – including J Dilla, OutKast and Kanye West – that has quietly coalesced in hip-hop over the past decade. In fact, it is difficult to classify West’s last album, 808s and Heartbreak (2008), with its strange electronic melancholy and uncanny auto-tuned singing, as straightforwardly a hip-hop record at all. Instead, West and Sa-Ra are perhaps best considered a return to psychedelic soul, the genre synthesised from out-there rock, jazz and funk by Sly Stone and developed by the Motown sonic conceptualist Norman Whitfield in his experimental productions for the Temptations and the Undisputed Truth."

I fundamentally disagree with this. I personally think Premiere, Lord Finesse, Havoc and any of the NY 'golden era' (heavy inverted commas) producers were a definitive link to the Norman Whitfield productions he cites as being 'psychedelic soul', and it's a triumph of content over form that K-punk doesn't see it. It's like saying Phil Spector wasn't psychedelic, it depends on how twisted you see the form, how 'dark' you see psychedelia going, and I think he isn't hearing the form at all, in fact. It's refusing to see hiphop as art, and with that I just *brushes dust off my shoulder*.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
He also doesn't mention the Neptunes at all - Kaleidoscope was doing that "nu-psychedelic soul" thing way before Sa Ra were ever heard of (afaik)...he seems to be ignoring the existence of recent RnB by contrasting 808s and Heartbreak with hip hop rather than linking it with RnB.
 
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