Hell in a Handcart: Music as a Symptom of Moral Decay

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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
entertainment said:
with this woke capitalism, maybe music is taking exile in the amoral

people seeing morals as co-opted, corrupt, rotten and unleverageable through art.
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i find people moralising or being political in any music after 1990 to be excruciatingly embarrassing for the most part. sizzla and wu tang are allowed and that's about it.

the thing is people have urges that are materialistic, violent, 'problematic' sexually and so forth and art is the best place for those things to express themselves.

i'm sure there's a correlation (though of course no causality) in the uk and states at least with music becoming more immoral with young people becoming more moral (as assesed by attitudes to race, gender and sexuality, violent crime rates, etc.).
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
and definite correlation between politics/realism in music seeming less viable, and the creeping feeling that nothing can ever change for the better. taking refuge in the aether or in violent fantasy or in both simultaneously
 
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Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
Perhaps what's happened is that adopting a persona has become much more common place in music since, say, the 90s. So all the sex drugs and violence stuff isn't really a reflection of the moral state of the artist singing /rapping about those things, but rather a persona they're playing with. Audiences have become much more worldly
and acceptance of this role playing - or at least with the idea that the music reflects on *one* side of the artists personality and doesn't indict the rest.

In the 80s people genuinely thought that judas priest were satanists who were inciting murder. Very few people are that daft now- we realise it's all a game, a performance
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
i dunno, in drill what's notable is that the violence is very real, in a way that seems different in scale from what went on before. it seems that the gap between performance and reality has shrunk (in some areas of music) if anything
 
entertainment

entertainment

Well-known member
I agree somewhat, Barty. Something like this, for example, does sound corny. The problem is that my stomach can't tell me if this an expression of genuine passion and deepfelt despair or a show of fireworks for the crowd. I can't say it's not written from the heart, but it's just not that interesting.

 
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Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
baboon2004 said:
i dunno, in drill what's notable is that the violence is very real, in a way that seems different in scale from what went on before. it seems that the gap between performance and reality has shrunk (in some areas of music) if anything
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Yeah drill might be the exception I guess. I was more thinking of someone like stormzy. For all the vuiolent or whatever elements to some of his lyrics everyone knows he's a lovely guy. I don't think audiences were that intelligent in the olden days
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Positive lyrics in rap are now tied up with being a throwback. Someone with lyrics about institutional racism or Sonething is also invariably going to be rapping over some jazzy soul sample. It’s pastiche.
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
The other thing is we’re all snowflake liberals who envisage a utopian future of mixed race transexuals in hijabs running around everywhere. So lyrics with a liberal message are a bit insane. It’s preaching to the converted.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Simon silverdollarcircle said:
Yeah drill might be the exception I guess. I was more thinking of someone like stormzy. For all the vuiolent or whatever elements to some of his lyrics everyone knows he's a lovely guy. I don't think audiences were that intelligent in the olden days
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Weeeeelllllll - tabloid reaction to Stormzy even suggesting that Britain might be racist has partly concentrating on trying to character assassinate him with reference to his lyrics not making him morally upright enough to have an opinion
But I do take your point at the same time
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
sadmanbarty said:
The other thing is we’re all snowflake liberals who envisage a utopian future of mixed race transexuals in hijabs running around everywhere. So lyrics with a liberal message are a bit insane. It’s preaching to the converted.
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there's a bloody culture war for the ages going on out there - it's like Stephen King's the Stand!
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Simon silverdollarcircle said:
Perhaps what's happened is that adopting a persona has become much more common place in music since, say, the 90s. So all the sex drugs and violence stuff isn't really a reflection of the moral state of the artist singing /rapping about those things, but rather a persona they're playing with. Audiences have become much more worldly
and acceptance of this role playing - or at least with the idea that the music reflects on *one* side of the artists personality and doesn't indict the rest.

In the 80s people genuinely thought that judas priest were satanists who were inciting murder. Very few people are that daft now- we realise it's all a game, a performance
Click to expand...

The shift between illmatic ("had dreams of being a gangster") and It was written. From documentarian to fantasist.
 
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forclosure

Well-known member
Simon silverdollarcircle said:
Yeah drill might be the exception I guess. I was more thinking of someone like stormzy. For all the vuiolent or whatever elements to some of his lyrics everyone knows he's a lovely guy. I don't think audiences were that intelligent in the olden days
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i dont even think its drill specific cause road rap had the exact same things its just people are so much more privy and deeply invested in the lives of these people most of the time they have no connection to

Used to be that such things wouldnt be public knowledge or if it was it was some weed carrier in the crew that only the diehards cared about and if you were one of those people who said they could only listen to rappers if you really REALLY did what you did people regarded you as a weirdo

now imcriminating yourself is the norm Tay K, XXXtentation, Six Nine, everybody knows No Plug is the guy who killed Bankroll Fresh cause he got interviewed about it by DJVlad yet nobody seems to feel a type of way about hanging around the guy
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
sadmanbarty said:
Positive lyrics in rap are now tied up with being a throwback. Someone with lyrics about institutional racism or Sonething is also invariably going to be rapping over some jazzy soul sample. It’s pastiche.
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I would like to know why this is true. I would also like to know what changes after 1990 to make politics impossible in music. (I'm sceptical about it ever having been acceptable but that's another story).

The Cold War? The end of opposition. What's happening? Hip-Hop Culture wars.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Why should it be impossible to express a positive sentiment? When you put it like that it sounds quite alarming. Aside from any moral considerations it means, if true, that there has been a very serious contraction in what music is able to express. It's shrunk and withered. It's sick, diseased, dying.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
I can't remember which thread it was, maybe 'beyond soul' but I was talking about how a love song seems fairly impossible now. I find it very difficult to imagine one being made. A similar contraction and loss.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
sadmanbarty said:
Positive lyrics in rap are now tied up with being a throwback. Someone with lyrics about institutional racism or Sonething is also invariably going to be rapping over some jazzy soul sample. It’s pastiche.
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But also what you are describing are liberal politics whereas when rap music was political it was, as often as not, black seperatist, and as often as not, socially conservative. It wasn't at all acceptable to liberals, it was completely beyond the pale.

One of the things about hip-hops black capitalism or whatever, is that it is consistent with a long standing line of black seperatist thought. It is in line with the Nation of Islam's teachings for instance. The idea is to become self-reliant as individuals and as a community. Only once you have money are you able to gain some leverage against the oppressor.
 
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