Splitting. Bifurcation.

Trillhouse

Well-known member
Decade or so later than what? I'm not following I'm afraid. All the songs I quoted from are from the same year. 1996.

Well after the Natives Tongues (& similar) formed and started pushing their personal vision of what hip hop could or later should be or sound like. By 96 they'd been releasing music for nearly a decade.

The whole 'real hip hop' thing is a narrative that was pushed by diehards in the 00s trying to promote something that recreated, or kept that flame alive.

And to me it seems that that has coloured the view of people in this thread when it comes to looking back on this music very much after the fact.

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That's at least how I understand it. It's incredibly hard to discern what is or is not meant (beyond my own understanding of it) when there's no clear consensus, which reading this thread there doesn't seem to be. This place is impenetrable at times anyway because threads consists of 20 pages of broken thoughts between people who have spent a long time conversing with each other, that move on to a completely different topic by the time you've got done reading them, not to mention they reference other 20 pages of the same, with a history that goes back years.
 
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entertainment

Well-known member
The whole 'real hip hop' thing is a narrative that was pushed by diehards in the 00s trying to promote something that recreated, or kept that flame alive.

And to me it seems that that has coloured the view of people in this thread when it comes to looking back on this music very much after the fact.

I understand that. Perhaps you're right. I don't listen to it anymore. The dissansian take, I believe, would be that it lies beyond a barrier now, that the culture has evolved in a way that's punctured the gravity of its expression.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
I suppose the phrase hadn't coagulated yet, but there where threads from then that carried over.

Common wrote I Used to Love H.E.R. in 94. This message that money and gangsta lifestyle was corrupting the culture is pretty clear, the last line being a direct progenitor for the phrase.

Now I see her in commercials, she's universal
She used to only swing it with the inner-city circle
Now she be in the burbs, lookin' rock and dressin' hippie
And on some dumb shit when she comes to the city
Talkin' bout poppin' Glocks, servin' rocks and hittin' switches
Now she's a gangsta rollin' with gangsta bitches
Always smokin' blunts and gettin' drunk
Tellin' me sad stories, now she only fucks with the funk
Stressin' how hardcore and real she is
She was really the realest, before she got into showbiz
 

Trillhouse

Well-known member
I suppose the phrase hadn't coagulated yet, but there where threads from then that carried over.

Common wrote I Used to Love H.E.R. in 94. This message that money and gangsta lifestyle was corrupting the culture is pretty clear, the last line being a direct progenitor for the phrase.
Sure, but the historical context is completely different.

In 94 what Common says is somewhat relevant to hip hop (but even then he was an outlier). In the mid late 00s it isn't so cromulent.

Back in 88 when De La Soul, ATCQ etc came out talking about stuff like positivity & Afrocentricity, they're speaking to their friends and contemporaries, and a mainly black audience. In the 00s version rhh seems to be a small minority of black dudes preaching to a mostly suburban white audience. Surely lumping them all together as the same thing is problematic.

By the mid 00s the 'real hip hop' thing no longer seems like an issue of a diverse genre actively posturing, gatekeeping, constantly defining and redefining itself. It feels like a dying movement desperately trying to justify its continued existence.

I've never really had the time to converse or pay attention to what the latter day 'real hip hoppers' believe constitutes 'real' beyond occasionally noticing what they deemed as not. Plenty of golden era rap didn't preach in the way De La Soul or Common did. I presumed that these 'real heads' were simply really into the boom bap era. That covers an incredibly diverse area when it comes to lyrical subject matter. Do they not like Wu Tang becauses ODB said shit like "I want pussy for free, I want pussy for free, You can not have my money”. Surely they love Mobb Deep despite expressing their willingness to "Rock you in your face, stab your brain with your nose bone"?
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
their usual line is 'hip hop not rap.'

which makes it even more absurd to take it as a major cultural dividing line.

lil jon is rap but run DMC is hip hop? disco rap is hip hop but hyphy isn't?

they don't know jack shit. moronic white people.

these people would have to argue that something like Curtis Blow the breaks isn't real hip hop b/c it's superficial party rap.
 

Arthur Brick

Mortar Life
This place is impenetrable at times anyway because threads consists of 20 pages of broken thoughts between people who have spent a long time conversing with each other, that move on to a completely different topic by the time you've got done reading them, not to mention they reference other 20 pages of the same, with a history that goes back years.

HaHa! This is why I come here often but don’t post much!
 

entertainment

Well-known member
Sure, but the historical context is completely different.


Back in 88 when De La Soul, ATCQ etc came out talking about stuff like positivity & Afrocentricity, they're speaking to their friends and contemporaries, and a mainly black audience. In the 00s version rhh seems to be a small minority of black dudes preaching to a mostly suburban white audience.

Yeah, this is was what my initial bit was about. 'Real hip hop' the discourse/orthodoxy, not the music that it subsumed, was evolving into a way of keeping rap/black music marginalized. That's why it had to evolve in a break rather than gradually progress. The splitting.


Surely lumping them all together as the same thing is problematic.

Agree, I used the term in quotation marks but no, I see what you mean that bringing it up like that still puts blameless artists under a negative label.

I've never really had the time to converse or pay attention to what the latter day 'real hip hoppers' believe constitutes 'real' beyond occasionally noticing what they deemed as not. Plenty of golden era rap didn't preach in the way De La Soul or Common did. I presumed that these 'real heads' were simply really into the boom bap era. That covers an incredibly diverse area when it comes to lyrical subject matter. Do they not like Wu Tang becauses ODB said shit like "I want pussy for free, I want pussy for free, You can not have my money”. Surely they love Mobb Deep despite expressing their willingness to "Rock you in your face, stab your brain with your nose bone"?

That's right it doesn't make a lotta sense, but the gritty and grim was also real to them. A symptom of struggling. ODB surely was at odds but still more street hustler than showbiz. In any case, anything older, or as they'd say 'old school' was 'real hip hop' in the later day meaning of the word. Which emphasizes the shallowness, that it was mostly just a reactionary thing aimed at what was on the radio at that time.

But that's not the same as saying it didn't pick up threads from the earlier scene, as legitimization.
 

Trillhouse

Well-known member
Yeah, this is was what my initial bit was about. 'Real hip hop' the discourse/orthodoxy, not the music that it subsumed, was evolving into a way of keeping rap/black music marginalized.
I'm not saying there isn’t truth in this, but is it really all that sinister? Or is that what KRS1 is really about?

When Chris Rock said in his set that it's now impossible to intellectually defend rap music because of the shameful level lyrical content had dropped to. Is he not echoing similar, fairly widely held, sentiments - just not reaching the same conclusion.

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FWIW, none of my ire was directed at you or one particular post E. but thank you for engaging with me.
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I'm fucking not over sensitive

tenor.gif
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
The *real* hip hop thing is an interesting discussion. Definitely an element of hip hop fans (usually white/euros) projecting standards onto the music - but also definitely an element of actual rap music, the "underground" backpack scene almost defined itself entirely by opposing the bling / fake gangsta rappers.

Then you'd get these interviews with e.g. mos Def where he said actually I really love cash money records or whatever.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
I'm not saying there isn’t truth in this, but is it really all that sinister? Or is that what KRS1 is really about?

When Chris Rock said in his set that it's now impossible to intellectually defend rap music because of the shameful level lyrical content had dropped to. Is he not echoing similar, fairly widely held, sentiments - just not reaching the same conclusion.

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FWIW, none of my ire was directed at you or one particular post E. but thank you for engaging with me.

No that's cool haha.

I don't know about intellectually, but morally, a lot of it gotta be indefensible. Which is completely fine. Obviously they're not really shooting people in the head between studio sessions, but on the other hand, many of these workarounds that pop culture journalists do in order to salvage it, that it's all just stories and zero glorification, that it's the exact same thing as mafia movies, seem disingenuous as well, right?
 

Trillhouse

Well-known member
No that's cool haha.

I don't know about intellectually, but morally, a lot of it gotta be indefensible. Which is completely fine. Obviously they're not really shooting people in the head between studio sessions, but on the other hand, many of these workarounds that pop culture journalists do in order to salvage it, that it's all just stories and zero glorification, that it's the exact same thing as mafia movies, seem disingenuous as well, right?

Rock was talking more specifically about Lil Jon rapping about sweat dripping from his balls. Skeet skeet.

There's an old interview with Fatlip from Pharcyde talking about how he'd listen to Wu Tang and be amazed at how they were simultaneously managing a rap career and all their drug business; when he was struggling to cope with the pressures of fame. He obviously later realised that they were just stories.
These days I’m not so sure. The whole gangsta thing is so entrenched and guarded, if you are rapping about stuff like you actually lived it and aren't at least co-signed by people who have, people will likely call you out on it. Now even people like Chris Brown rep a set and claim close ties to gang activity.
Conversely MC Hammer was one of the most gangster mfs to pick up a mic, but you never heard a peep about it, even when he was being clowned by people in 'real hip hop'. Although he's considered a pioneer these days, so that street credibility probably came in handy eventually.
 
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