REAL TRAP (/ TRVP) SHIT (SHITE?) 2013

[trilliam]

for ME it's about recognition not who's bigger

to quote from this http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1730 ra article on trap

Part of what makes trap so objectionable in the eyes of some is its appropriation for populist ends.

if this shit blows up and the only guy that is gna get credit from the original thing is lex luger i will be pissed to fuck and idc if thats comes across as "snobby, elitist" or whatever

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

stuff like this -

so I realize this is unfairly deep to get when you're just tossing off an example, but I can't resist:

that video is of a performance at a wealthy, totally demographically unrepresentative private university that along with Penn is almost literally a segregated enclave from the rest of black, working-class West Philadelphia, an enclave that was created about 60 years ago by forcibly evicting thousands of black residents under the guise of "urban renewal" so Penn could build its beautiful Ivy League campus buffered from poor black people. when I saw it I couldn't imagine something that better symbolically demonstrates the exact opposite of the point you're making. or maybe not the opposite but it's definitely on a serious irony thing.

the presence of MCs 'cluttering up' their music

yeah impossible to overstate how big that is

 

[UFO over easy]

trap rap is already "populist", and lex luger has had multi-page spreads written about him in the new york times - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/magazine/lex-luger-hip-hop-beat-maker.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

so I realize this is unfairly deep to get when you're just tossing off an example, but I can't resist:

that video is of a performance at a wealthy, totally demographically unrepresentative private university that along with Penn is almost literally a segregated enclave from the rest of black, working-class West Philadelphia, an enclave that was created about 60 years ago by forcibly evicting thousands of black residents under the guise of "urban renewal" so Penn could build its beautiful Ivy League campus buffered from poor black people. when I saw it I couldn't imagine something that better symbolically demonstrates the exact opposite of the point you're making

the only point that i'm making is that there is a dialogue - even if it's a superficial one, and even if it represents something shitty. i'm not speaking in defense of anyone or anything, all i'm saying is that this is complicated and the analysis we've had so far on this thread is at best surface level and at worst factually incorrect

interesting info re: the video - do rappers not play those kind of venues by themselves all the time though? like college parties etc? when you're repped by a big label and big bookers you go where the money is

 

[trilliam]

me too, but its not exactly a marginal difference in those facebook numbers. baauer, flosstradamus etc are like the biggest names in this kind of sound and they have under 100,000 likes each. the internet fan-base of pretty much any vaguely established major label rapper dwarfs them both combined, and the internet is where you're saying the EDM-trap dudes have their biggest following? or have i misunderstood?

white middle class people have constituted a big component of raps audience for a long time too

ur rhetoric is gd ill give u that but uno what it is end of the day

first of all how outspoken do u think the internet following of yo gotti, gucci mane, etc is?

u reckon their audience is clamouring to write 1000 words on how groundbreaking their shit is?

lastly internet hype, mainword HYPE, is what got baauer to number one, the same internet HYPE is responsible for getting guys like trinidad james a deal but after the ironic appeal wears off do u think anyone is gna buy his single?

lets not act like the majority of the ppl into trap, mixtape rap actually buy records or have a surmountable say in what gets big

 

[trilliam]

trap rap is already "populist", and lex luger has had multi-page spreads written about him in the new york times - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/magazine/lex-luger-hip-hop-beat-maker.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

lex luger is not the be all and end all

waka flocka is not the greatest "trap artist" of all time

its this kind of thing im getting @ highlighting one at the expense of the other 99

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

crunk/southern rap/trap beats have been both mainstream AND underground for a while, so its a tricky thing to say where it fits exactly. i dont think its about appropriating it for populist ends, more that, as with dubstep and its move into brostep/the more american version, its divorced from its roots. but hey, thats nothing new. this is a sound for white students, a way for them to enjoy it as frat party/keg emptying music. and big as higher ground and bauuer are, i think theyre diff enough from the original stuff to not really count as being trap in the jeezy/waka/luger/gucci mould. i wish they were actually, as it would be nice to have something really new come around in hip hop.

 

[trilliam]

yeah impossible to overstate how big that is

imagine how RIDICULOUS it is going to be (or may be already) when guys start complaining about ppl rapping over trap beats

 

[UFO over easy]

first of all how outspoken do u think the internet following of yo gotti, gucci mane, etc is?

i think their following is diverse enough to make that question a weird one. they get coverage all over the place too. immediate example just from this forum, corpsey reviews these guys for the wire. look at the vast list of places noz writes for?

lastly internet hype, mainword HYPE, is what got baauer to number one, the same internet HYPE is responsible for getting guys like trinidad james a deal but after the ironic appeal wears off do u think anyone is gna buy his single?

lets not act like the majority of the ppl into trap, mixtape rap actually buy records or have a surmountable say in what gets big

big artists don't make their money off the back of record sales anymore, and the internet HYPE that you dismiss like facebook numbers and youtube hits are what a&r people and the people who stand to make these artists a lot of money make their decisions off the back of now

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

also I don't follow this as closely as some people so I couldn't speak to generalities but I have worked at a lot of big concerts here in Chicago and the crowd for kenny chesney was x100 more diverse in every way (race, class, etc) than the big EDM festivals w/flosstradamus + sinden. it ain't just white (although it is that) - like ben said rap's audience has been largely white since the early 90s at least - it's an audience that has zero to do with rap. I doubt most of the people there had ever heard of gucci mane. which is fine. i'm just saying i'm pretty dubious of any trap rap/edm crossover.

 

[trilliam]

trap music while not new NOW is a pretty modern movement in hip hop.. obvs

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

for ME it's about recognition not who's bigger

this is an ancient, never ending phenom though - new black music style comes around, people like it but think its generic and samey, white artists do something different with it and its elevated as being individual and innovative and distinct, and it becomes 'safer' to enter/deal with than the black version, etc. yeah, loads of white kids buy rap cds, but i dunno, the recognition or attitude towards it is different.

tbh im less into the argument that trap is like the new blues or whatever, with white artists putting black originators into obscurity, then the argument that quite a bit of the nu-trap tracks are quite annoying, seem gimmicky, and faddish and their 'fun'-ness borders on the queasily ironic (i do like some of it though). i dont really see it as affecting 'real' rap producers, just as in the past no one in hip hop ever really gave a shit about portishead, tricky or massive attack which non-rap critics and listeners were into and elevated as being more interesting than actual hip hop, but trip hop and appropriations like that belong to another era. the way most 'outsiders' latch onto or borrow from hip hop/R&B these days is very much post-diplo/hollertronix, with all the cringey stuff that tends to entail. but ill reserve judgement until i see a piece about trap parties having kids turn up in blackface (i remember that old piece about someone from cocorosie turning up to some diplo-related party in new york spouting all sorts of weird attitudes) or pretending to be d-boys, etc. but then im not into the idea that white artists shouldnt touch black music out of some sort of post-liberal guilt - some of the most interesting stuff has come from what happens when that occurs.

 

[huffafc]

wow these responses are coming too fast to keep up with - i was in the middle of writing the below - some people have addressed this a bit already. but the point is that - given how mainstream, pop cultural music like lex luger's (the entire legacy of hip-hop, since it's mid-80's breakthrough really) is and has been for decades in the us - the audience for lex luger, bauuer, diplo and waka flocka can't be separated. much of the audience is the same, and that's not a new thing. before harlem shake was getting played at frat parties waka flocka was and before that jay-z was and the Beastie Boys and Eminem and Beck doing hip-hop and Dr Dre and NWA etc etc etc.

trap rap is already "populist", and lex luger has had multi-page spreads written about him in the new york times -http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/ma...anted=all&_r=0

definitely, lex luger's beats have been behind top 40 hits (and frequently played at frat houses, mainstream radio and vegas clubs) in the states for several years. there is nothing marginal about his music. so, although i don't particularly like this instrumental, edm-trap stuff, i think it's unfair to criticize artists of any stripe who choose to appropriate and twist music that's a fully established part of the popular cultural mainstream.

in fact, this whole narrative of supposedly white, middle-class appropriation of supposedly, authentically black, urban, lower-middle class music has been so ingrained in the history of hip-hop in the US for so long - and has been strategically deployed by artists, labels, advertising, movies and on and on for so long - that it's absurd to think of anybody coming from 'real' 'authentic' 'street' origin musically, culturally when making hip-hop

…

trap music while not new NOW is a pretty modern movement in hip hop.. obvs

i don't know - depends on what you mean. i've thought the reception of lex luger, drumma boy has been oddly decontextualized and de-historicized - this stuff's a new variation on a set of musical genres sure, but not radically different than say Shawty Redd productions like this from 2005:


and Three 6 Mafia tracks from even earlier.

on the other hand the edm-instrumental stuff is, of course, really new.

 

[trilliam]

trap music while not new NOW is a pretty modern movement in hip hop.. obvs
i don't know - depends on what you mean. i've thought the reception of lex luger, drumma boy has been oddly decontextualized and de-historicized - this stuff's a new variation on a set of musical genres sure, but not radically different than say Shawty Redd productions like this from 2005

id point to shawty redd as the inception of it and the main godfather. lugers never made a beat as intense as who dat

//

whilst i hear what you're saying with the race stuff rapids and i was getting at it as well, i wud liken my gripe more to the way skrillex is more famous/makes more money/more of a household name than benga

//

ben - my idea of internet HYPE isn't numbers its words, the more ppl talk about something the more hyped it becomes

 

[trilliam]

that it's absurd to think of anybody coming from 'real' 'authentic' 'street' origin musically, culturally when making hip-hop

i find this quite sad, still like most things i blame it solely on the internet, guys like odd future and the whole asap rocky clan were dreamt up by some complex reading, rapgenius contributing a&r

chief keef is a great example of someone coming from real authetnic street origins, obviously u aint saying that never happens and i'd be the first to concede that's the exception to the rule in mainstream rap

but thats why there's MIXTAPE rap

guys like a-mafia, ar-ab who r legitimate street dudes making legitimate street music

 

[UFO over easy]

ben - my idea of internet HYPE isn't numbers its words, the more ppl talk about something the more hyped it becomes

i dont think this is necessarily true, it seems to me that it's one aspect of something quite complicated. in any case, journalists and writers don't occupy the privileged position that they once did, everyone has a voice, comments threads and so on

i find this quite sad, still like most things i blame it solely on the internet, guys like odd future and the whole asap rocky clan were dreamt up by some complex reading, rapgenius contributing a&r

the a&rs capitalised and monetised something that existed already. same with harlem shake - the viral-ness of the thing was an accident, the way it was monetised afterwards was not

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

do rappers not play those kind of venues by themselves all the time though? like college parties etc?

oh absolutely, it's bread + butter. hella $, hella young people, hella young people w/$. I'd imagine it varies depending on the rapper + his audience (does Gunplay play as many college as Atmosphere? I have no idea) but I'm not the person to ask about where + how rappers get booked

my comment was as much about issues way larger than trap (urban segregation, access to higher education, etc) anyway, don't wanna get o/t tho

 

[huffafc]

i find this quite sad, still like most things i blame it solely on the internet, guys like odd future and the whole asap rocky clan were dreamt up by some complex reading, rapgenius contributing a&r

I guess what i'm saying is regardless of the material realities of any artist's background in order to appear 'real' - they have to speak a language of realness that we all, to some extent share, and that language has been written as much by "Boyz N The Hood" and Jay-Z as it has by the founders of the Crips and the Bloods. And the founders of the Crips and the Bloods were probably inspired by movies they watched too - as Jay-Z was when he was developing his persona in the Marcy projects.

The streets have always already been a movie set.

But that doesn't mean there isn't the possibility of shitty, exploitative moves by artists and labels etc - but I don't think looking for realness is a good way to pinpoint shittiness.

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

if purity ever existed (nwa and snoop and them were all watching and obsessed by blaxploitation movies, many of which were directed or written by white dudes, jamaican dancehall guys loved mafia movies... etc etc, i wonder if blues artists were in cinemas watching scarface and the public enemy, actually i wonder what movies bluesmen watched in general, if any), its def harder to come by now than it was... keef might be authentic but idk if im comfortable with using that as a measure of his greatness (just cos well, he isnt very good - young chop is actually a much more interesting producer than keef is as a rapper, but hey, im glad young street kids can still be big in rap, even if im also dismayed that keef seems to believe and is taught that authenticity can get you a pass over all else).

 

[Corpsey]

bitch I'm cooler than a cooler
big shouts out to my jeweller

 

[CrowleyHead]

keef seems to believe and is taught that authenticity can get you a pass over all else).

If he really thought that was the case, he'd be constantly wondering why Reese isn't more famous than him for being 1000x less talented, but very much a criminal.