the white hip-hop canon

shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member


ur-eminem (everything that's good and shit about him in the same tune, all of it in exaggerated form), peak white rap canon
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member


what we're getting at a bit i think in this thread, apart from excellent turns of phrase like mcgangly battercrease, is what happens to rap when its divorced from its original african-american milieu. which is a thing that has a whole load of baggage basically coz of how race works in the US.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
loads of mates at college listened to all this kind of stuff. the other one i'd put in this thread is atmosphere, but not sure which tune of theirs would fit in the canon coz i didn't like it and never listened to it
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
before - and after - they made great hardcore, The Criminal Minds were at the hardest and purest end of Britcore

very much in the vein of Hijack etc

not sure if they're all white but mostly, I believe

skip head to to ~0:30 when the Cape Fear theme kicks in
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
version said:
I've always thought the silly Slim Shady stuff was better than the Eminem / Marshall Mathers stuff where he's trying to be all earnest and motivational.
Click to expand...
i think looking back on it now its pretty much all bad with eminem. don't like the tunes. but there's something about the mean, nasty, defensive, thing that he used to have that resonated with a tonne of people including me back in the day. the earnest and motivational thing sounds like the flipside of that to me. like he's asking for forgiveness, lots of guilt and regret. the love the way you lie one is full of clunkers and there's something fucked up about a tune like this being on the radio and popular. but at the same time you can hear that moral conflict and struggle that he's having with himself in it which is his strength i think. find him way outside the norm for both the rap and pop worlds that he's a part of in that respect.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I think the rapping in a lot of that early 80s disco not disco stuff - i.e. Rapture - stands up quite well

specifically it's not that far from contemporary rap proper - I think Kool Moe Dee was the only dude doing internal rhyme schemes etc at the time

or going the other way rap itself was still in the post-disco milieu, hadn't yet established itself as its own thing

so the relation of white post-punks rapping to rap is the same as everything else in disco not disco to disco proper

i.e. mostly white guitar band people trying to, for once, have an interesting dialogue with black popular musics

and the rapping is just an element in that dialogue, rather than the later dynamic of either appropriation or slavish, generally lesser, imitation
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
if this was by some kool DT NYC art people instead of the guy from the Damned it would be hailed as a Rapture-type disco not disco classic

the music is a pretty shameless Chic ripoff but again so were most rap backing tracks at the time

a personal favorite, has that blazed dreamy disco-dub vibe the early 80s excelled at



Modern Romance - Can You Move, is another one. and I love Wham Rap, especially the Francois K dub.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
not white rap, but white-rap adjacent

Masta Ace (mistakenly) hears the High and Mighty dudes had talked shit about him, so brutally takes them to pieces

"next year y'all be up at Rawkus, internin'" really says it all
 
pattycakes_

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
version said:
I've always thought the silly Slim Shady stuff was better than the Eminem / Marshall Mathers stuff where he's trying to be all earnest and motivational.
Click to expand...

Had a bit of time for the SS stuff when I was a teen, but would you listen to any of it now?

shakahislop said:
i think looking back on it now its pretty much all bad with eminem. don't like the tunes. but there's something about the mean, nasty, defensive, thing that he used to have that resonated with a tonne of people including me back in the day. the earnest and motivational thing sounds like the flipside of that to me. like he's asking for forgiveness, lots of guilt and regret. the love the way you lie one is full of clunkers and there's something fucked up about a tune like this being on the radio and popular. but at the same time you can hear that moral conflict and struggle that he's having with himself in it which is his strength i think. find him way outside the norm for both the rap and pop worlds that he's a part of in that respect.
Click to expand...

He came along at the right time when there just wasn't much competition at that level of hype. Cut back to 96 and before and he wouldn't have stood out at all. It was just good timing. And yeah, some of it was catchy, but looking back it's all grating
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
pattycakes_ said:
He came along at the right time when there just wasn't much competition at that level of hype. Cut back to 96 and before and he wouldn't have stood out at all. It was just good timing. And yeah, some of it was catchy, but looking back it's all grating
Click to expand...
grating is the world sonically. his voice is hard to get along with and the beats are exactly the right age to sound properly dated. to me i find it absolutely obvious that the reason (ok there are many factors but a major one) he became properly massive is the animosity he expressed.
 
william_kent

william_kent

Well-known member
Cindy Ecstasy does that "rapture" style rapping on the Soft Cell MDMA album - perhaps the original "molly" rapper?



Soft Cell ft Cindy Ecstasy - Memorabilia
 
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