when swordsmen of different styles connect

[toko]

now that I'm thinking about it he has worked with london artists and mentioned it in his music so he probably has a presence there. plus ny/london scene has crossover

 

[forclosure]

now that I'm thinking about it he has worked with london artists and mentioned it in his music so he probably has a presence there. plus ny/london scene has crossover

that and he spent some of his childhood seperated from his mother over in London aswell, think in an early interview he said he heard some track on Channel U and that gave him the inspration to rap. but to answer your previous question i'd say he's about as well known here as somebody who makes that style of music is over here.

But the back and forth connection between here and the US does kinda lend something to him that will have certain people over here liking him more than other us rappers. like how 21 Savage was born here

 

[shakahislop]

@shakahislop these two are gonna be coming over to london, Mike on the 21st of this month and Key Glock on the 5th of next month

i like both but i'm interested to hear your thoughts on either of them

Like the beat on that first one. The video is class too, that was my lockdown running route, it's a still industrial bit of queens that doesn't have a subway so people I know don't even know the name. It's cool that he (or someone) saw that same glistening city in the background thing thing with the water and space and put it in a video. No one ever mentions that bit of town and for me its very atmospheric. So that resonated.

 

[forclosure]

Like the beat on that first one. The video is class too, that was my lockdown running route, it's a still industrial bit of queens that doesn't have a subway so people I know don't even know the name. It's cool that he (or someone) saw that same glistening city in the background thing thing with the water and space and put it in a video. No one ever mentions that bit of town and for me its very atmospheric. So that resonated.

MIKE's a New Yorker at his core but he spent some of his time growing up in London i can see how that resonated with you

what about Key Glock? i thought you'd be more into that because he's the more extroverted of the 2

 

[shakahislop]

@WebEschatology I love this tune, i might of put it on choon of the day before

 

[shakahislop]

@shakahislop these two are gonna be coming over to london, Mike on the 21st of this month and Key Glock on the 5th of next month

i like both but i'm interested to hear your thoughts on either of them

putting that key glock one on the playlist. nice tone to his voice and i like the beat. on the other hand, it does kind of sound like a billion other tunes. which isn't necessarily a bad thing but doesn't have that 'what the fuck is this' newness that i get from rap every now and then (a high bar i know)

 

[forclosure]

putting that key glock one on the playlist. nice tone to his voice and i like the beat. on the other hand, it does kind of sound like a billion other tunes. which isn't necessarily a bad thing but doesn't have that 'what the fuck is this' newness that i get from rap every now and then (a high bar i know)

it's an absurdly high bar but it also happens less often than alot of people would like and when they hear it their first response is usually "this is the worst shit i've ever heard in my life" and with rappers they usually would've give the time of day.

more often than not @shakahislop i think it was third who said it best that what people actually want is not real deal genuine newness but novelty which gives them the feeling of newness

 

[sus]

I've been thinking recently about "builds." In e.g. the RPG/DnD sense.

I have been playing Playstation a decent bit lately, in part out of Assassins Creed Valhalla envy, in part because I have nostalgic memories of Star Wars Battlefront in elementary school, in part because I always wanted to explore RDR2's open world

In Battlefront you have 4 standard classes—assault, heavy, sniper, officer. And they're all sorta balanced but also, some builds are better for some maps, and stack up better against certain opponents. (The way rock beats scissors, scissors paper, paper rock.) But at different tiers of skill you can unlock powerful stuff in e.g. the officer class that you can't if you're lower skilled. Lower skilled players play a lot of heavy, which is basically a machine gunner, because it requires less agility/accuracy.

And then on basketball teams apropos Rolling Locker Room thread, each position comes with certain builds that match it better

 

[sus]

This is a great lecture but the long and short of it is that, contra Kantian imperative idea—that the best situation or equilibrium is everyone doing the same "correct" move—society works through a lot of specialization, where people have different schemas, scripts, models, value systems, behavioral algorithms, whatever you wanna call it.

And there's a sort of balance in many ways between these heuristics—you can think of political power, cultural power, physical power—all these things, these character classes and stats you can choose to max out. Styles for how you play. Philosophies for moving through the world. They're not perfectly balanced but they're suited to different situations, you can be the most powerful political player in the world and be killed in a fist-fight, there are checks and balances, a satirist can start the French Revolution.

And choosing between these scripts and styles and philosophies is hard because, definitionally, they're frameworks for value, for choosing what's "right." It's easy to evaluate two options within a framework of values, and hard to evaluate two different value systems—hence why some people opt for relativism.

 

[sus]

A build is something like "a set of tactics that work well together, and whose value is largely emergent." So, it's not like, "just pick the best tactics." It's like, within a network or complex of tactics, you need to think about internal "fit" and synergy.

 

[sus]

And then having a group of different builds working together is always most powerful, because individuals' strengths aren't redundant, and their weaknesses don't compound. Rather, their strengths cover each others' weaknesses, and their abilities are magnified by playing together. Each helps create the local ecosystem in which each thrives.

 

[sus]

In basketball, like many sports, about "matchups" between teams and players matters a lot. There isn't an "objective" ranking just in the same way rock isn't objectively "better" than scissors.

 

[shakahislop]

it's an absurdly high bar but it also happens less often than alot of people would like and when they hear it their first response is usually "this is the worst shit i've ever heard in my life" and with rappers they usually would've give the time of day.

more often than not @shakahislop i think it was third who said it best that what people actually want is not real deal genuine newness but novelty which gives them the feeling of newness

yeah. it's a rare feeling for sure. that's alright though. we've all had that experience with footwork or whatever, where it takes some time to get your head round it. probably all had the experience as well of giving something new a chance and it turning out to just be something you're never going to like (drill for me).

'this is the worst shit i've ever heard in my life' is a feeling that i've come to trust might mean further investigation is a good idea. also if a load of other respectable people are saying that, it usually to me means that it's worth giving it a chance.

i'm not sure where i would draw the line between novelty and newness.

 

[shakahislop]

but with rap it is one of the main things that i get out of it, the way that it changes so often and new things pop up both in the super popular stuff and the less popular stuff. which is interesting because there's also i think a conservative thread running through rap fandom - that bit of it that i see, i don't follow it closely, just mates and bits and pieces i see online - where there's a load of people who have moderately strict parameters about how it all should sound.

 

[forclosure]

@suspended are you sure you wasn't mean to put all of that in a different thread?

 

[forclosure]

but with rap it is one of the main things that i get out of it, the way that it changes so often and new things pop up both in the super popular stuff and the less popular stuff. which is interesting because there's also i think a conservative thread running through rap fandom - that bit of it that i see, i don't follow it closely, just mates and bits and pieces i see online - where there's a load of people who have moderately strict parameters about how it all should sound.

i mean lets face it all facets of rap fandom have their strict parameters of what they want and how it should sound whether it be people who've been making music for 30 years or not and super popular rap is the last place to look for that exception, i remember one guy i briefly talked to on facebook saying how he only listens to "non-lyrical rap" and i thought that was fine because rap is broad enough to where you can just listen to that and only that if you want

we've talked on this before where yes compared to whatever else is on the radio you get certain songs on popular rap that by comparison sound like they're different but again those are exceptions and honestly what also factors in with this is who are you comparing to? cause if you're comparing them to "rock" bands or pop stars that's one thing but the ground is uneven and only a very small number of rappers really reach that level and if you're comparing them to other rappers then its arguably more level but it also might have the effect for somebody where this tune you thought was singular and profound is just like one of 20 songs that sound like that at THAT partiular moment.

 

[forclosure]

This is why me Third and Crowl got so aggravated with Barty when he kept trying to say Migos were singular pioneers in ATL rap because if anything they're more at the arse end of rappers who came up from within that scene and world and while they did put out some solid tunes if anything they were the rappers you bring up around your friends who swear that trap is terrible but admit that they at least like bad n boujee lol

But he didn't wanna hear that because that got in the way of his "vision" that he was trying to put together and having to engage in that would result in him having to do more work in that space and rewire how it all fits together

 

[forclosure]

also like @shakahislop if you're just gonna focus on that particular level of rap in that manner you're both gonna miss out on alot of good interesting music that doesn't fit in those margins and frankly never will and this is how alot of johnny come lately rappers who make more approchable versions of particular sounds end up being hailed as pionners and "singular visionaries" who get talked about like they're something other than rappers when they're clearly not it happened to young thug it happened to Future and it happened to Carti

cause what matters in rap like every other industry right now is output and the law of deminishing returns is very real and Sturgeon's law if anything holds more importance now than it did when he first coined it

and i ain't gonna lie part of me just feels like you're overthinking it i'm no poptimist but a good song is a good song regardless of whether it sounds new or not this track 5 years ago was the biggest tune in the world even one or two punk people i know who wouldn't claim themselves as rap fans loved it and i don't think anybody would say its pushing things forward

 

[forclosure]

@shakahislop maybe you're not so much a rap fan as more somebody whose into pop music and how rap works in around that which is fine i get that but alot of poptimist types know FUCK ALL about rap music and if anything feel petrified to even talk about it because they feel like their knowledge on it is insubstantial

and there's only one real way to do that it might seem like a gigantic leap but its just a small step and if you're as interested as you say you are you can MAKE that step, nobody should "bully" or peer pressure you into making it nor that be the case for you to make it.

 

[forclosure]

part of the reason i like Key Glock is cause yes he is working in that Memphis rap production style that's been influenced by Atlanta as of late but the kind of beats he picks(some of them produced by go to producer Bandplay) are off set by this often interesting production decisions whether it be a baroque ass sounding section or backwards drums or guitars it keeps things fresh and it sets him apart from certain people who only rap over 2 specific sounding beats over and over

that plus the fact that outside of the two albums he did with Young Dolph (R.I.P.) there hasn't been any features on any of his albums really sets him apart and speaks to a certain kind of confidence that he has in his abilities(hell he barely does any features with other rappers on their so when he does appear on something its a special moment)