Black guy rapping to some beats, rinse, repeat ad nauseum. Same formula, nothing new. Time for this genre to die out along with punk music. You can only take the same formula and push it so far.

Trolling is a art.

Mike, that is the typical response I get from people who aren't able to formulate an intelligent comment.

Think about rock music for a second. You have all these interesting sub-genres that push the limits of the music, introducing new sounds, taking the music in different directions. In rock you have everything from Sufjan to The White Stripes to Radiohead to The XX, Sunset Rubdown, Tool, The Walkman, The Stills, The Eels, Sigur Ros, Spoon.

These are all bands that create their own type of music which sounds vastly different from others bands in their genre.

And then you have rap/hip hop. And it all sounds pretty much the same. Everything from Lil Wayne, to Ghostface, to Kanye, Big Boi, Jay Z and even the lesser known guys like Black Spade and Dollabin that you talk about. All these guys are doing the same thing. And think about it, what is rapping? It's talking fast. There's hardly any variance in pitch, there's very little tonally happening when someone is rapping.

So in between drinking their Crystal and buying their bling, these hip hop guys are trying to find different sounding beats so that all their songs don't sound exactly the same. Because really, the only thing that separates one rap song from the other are the artificially rendered beats you hear behind the fast talking.

First guy: Hey did you hear the about the latest awesome hip hop album? It's a guy talking really fast over some cool beats. Second guy: Oh yeah, well I'm listening to a totally different hip hip album. It's a guy talking really fast over some cool beats.

Wow.

Most music in its various genres is pretty, well, generic and samey.

They all have their rules and a rare few make it interesting within the rules and even more rarely sometimes way outside of them.

I'm not going to try too hard to make a case for hip hop if creative beats and rapping ain't your thing but for your ear's sake if you have a mo, try Edan's "Beauty and the Beat", Madlib's Madvillainy, Cannibal Ox's "Cold Vein" or Outkast's "ATlien" or People Under the Stairs' "Fun DMC".

I know all those albums quite well. I am a fan of rap. I just think it's run its course. And within rock, I don't think the bands have a similar problem with the samey sound. Look at Animal Collective and Sufjan Stevens. Or Neko Case and Sleater Kinney. Nirvana and John Mayer. Rock provides a big enough umbrella to fit many different sounds whereas rap does not.

Great to hear you are not missing out on the great stuff that is currently out there.

As for the lifeline of hip hop - give it time Chaos - it's still a relatively young form of music.

Think about how many times the proclamation has been issued that "rock is dead" and yet as time passes it finds more ways to remain alive.

Also, we need to separate out "rock" from other related forms like country, folk and pop - the same way you need to separate out hip hop from its other cousins under its own umbrella blues, r'n'b, soul, disco, and rock itself on occasion.

Perhaps in time more avant garde/prog developments in hip hop will become more exciting for you and others - for me as long as there is groove, soul and great storytelling, hip hop will be alive and well for me - either way, early days yet.

Chaos, I disagree with your opinion that rapping is just talking fast. Rapping is also about rhymes, vocabulary, cadence, and storytelling. It's true that they're all basically talking over beats, but within those boundaries there is quite a bit of variation. You've got rappers like Kool Keith and Ghostface who rhyme halfway offbeat and throw out all kinds of left-field references but are still effective. You've got rappers like Cam'ron and DOOM who, at their best, come up with a ridiculous amount of internal rhymes. You've got the intelligent hardcore style of Canibus, the absurdist stoner style of Lil Wayne, the Canadian straitedge redneck, Tom Waits-esque style of Buck 65, the almost alien complexity of Aesop Rock, the impressionistic flow of Andre 3000, the hard-nosed virtuosity of a Jay-Z or Bun B, the unhinged bizarro nastiness of ODB (and ocassionally Pimp C), etc, etc, etc...The list goes on.

The musical backing for this "fast talking" has plenty of variance, too. El-P's productions sound nothing like Kanye West's. DOOM's are nothing like Timbaland's. The Roots use real instruments. There's plenty of variety.

Robert, while I appreciate the time you took with your post, it still doesn't change the fact that an apple cut in different slices or flavored with different spices is still an apple. Rap is formulaic. It's an apple that has been cut every way possible and flavored to the max.

And mel, I've never heard anyone say "rock is dead". That's just lame.

Wait, so you say "I know all those albums quite well. I am a fan of rap" and you also say "Same formula, nothing new. Time for this genre to die out." You like music this genre provides but you want to see it end. Are you confused or just dumb?

This is some god-awful trolling Chaos. God-awful.

As an aside, thanks for reminding me about Black Spade, dudes mad nice.

i'm totally playing devil's advocate here, but i partly side with chaos.

it's true, rap is due for an overhaul.
the 70's was the birth
the 80's was storytelling
the 90's was violence, anger, and glitter
the 00's was crossovers, saturation, and mainstreaming

in a nutshell, it's generally become less inventive. it has mainstreamed to the point where soccer moms are driving down the highway with their 5 year olds singing 'lollipop' and black eyed peas are doing halftime shows. the drives hip-hop purists nuts. kanye has overexposed himself. the roots (still love them but...sigh) have been comercially maximized doing comedy with jimmy fallon. common is an actor. jay-z is cashing checks, and i for one can't listen to him without that feeling that by now its cut-copy-paste-$$$ for him. lil wayne is clever, yes, but he's rapped over more songs that aren't his, than are. there's definitely something off-putting about where the genre has headed.

rappers have become less likeable. it feels greedy and saturated. rap needs a newer, saner, clearer voice. the spotlight and attention are in the wrong place.

i know you can pick apart the argument and cite specific examples, and of course there are exceptions, but 98% of the population hasn't heard beauty and the beat or madvilliany. we're talking about the genre as a whole, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

luckily everything in music eventually runs its course. i don't think rap will disappear but i do believe that it will eventually shift focus and (hopefully) change for the better.

quote:

Originally posted by chaos:
And mel, I've never heard anyone say "rock is dead". That's just lame.

It may be lame but it has been said very often since the 1970s - first punk was meant to revive it, then the new wave was meant to revive punk, then hard core was meant to revive it, then grunge, then the retro rock a la strokes and white stripes.

You really need to get out more!

I don't think you should be reduced to a troll but you really need to get some musical perspective and musical education (not in university btw) before throwing stuff out there to see if it sticks - that will help convince people that your comments have anything more to them than empty sloganeering.

Your music recs elsewhere clearly show you have interesting tastes - you know these are enough to get people's attention without having to blow up some empty controversy? Right?

quote:

Originally posted by melvolume:
- you know these are enough to get people's attention without having to blow up some empty controversy?

Empty controversy? I guess you missed youmustlearn's post, which sums up my opinion very succinctly. He hit the nail on the head.

Except youmustlearn's post doesn't sum up your opinion. He makes a different (and arguably valid) point that you eventually latched on to.

Perhaps if you need to be reminded of your opinion, you should look at, I don't know, THE TITLE OF THIS THREAD.

If anything, youmustlearn's point refutes yours, as he talks about how rap has grown and changed over forty years.

And you've really never heard anyone say rock is dead? What are you, twelve years old?

Hey, I just picked up the new Ghostface album. It's a guy talking fast over some beats. How inventive. Sounds just like the other rap album I bought with a guy talking fast over some beats. Yeah, I agree with youmustlearn. This genre has run its course.

Yeah, ignoring salient points and repeating your same mundane one using reductive language is really working, chaos.

By the way, I just picked up a rock album. It's a white guy singing over guitars. How inventive. The genre has run its course.

Look, I can play your idiotic game, too.

I love how you can say the genre is dead then continue to purchase CDs from said genre. Way to follow through.

quote:

Originally posted by bonzob:
By the way, I just picked up a rock album. It's a white guy singing over guitars

I don't know too many rock albums consisting of just a white guy singing over guitars, so you're really reaching on that one.

99% of rap/hip hop albums= "yo yo yo I just bought my new lambo and diamond watch, yo yo yo, I fucked a bunch of ho's cuz I'm a mack daddy, yo yo yo, I'll fuck you up with my gat if you step to me cuz I'm from da hood yo".

The other 1% of rap is the cool, indie approved rap that discusses the oh so important social issues.

Yeah, that's a genre with a future. Watch me talk fast like Woody Allen while trying to rhyme to some hot beats.

No shit it was a reach, I was being reductive just as you were.

Call it "fast talking" all you want (typical right wing use of negative language to try and frame your bullshit argument, by the way, but that's not surprising from a moron who thinks we all had it better in the '50s). Do you honestly not see how rapping is a tenet of the genre? What would you replace "fast talking" with? Slow talking? Singing? No talking? Oh wait, then you'd have instrumental hip hop, which not only exists, but is how the genre got started. Guess that pokes a big fucking hole in your dumbass argument.

What you are saying is absolutely the equivalent of saying rock albums are boring because of all the singing on them. If you cannot see that you have no business expressing your thoughts anywhere but in your own head. I mean, honestly, what the fuck? I refuse to believe anyone, even a Republican, is this stupid.

With rock there is a world of unexplored avenues to go down. With rap, which is basically one dimensional, there's really nowhere else to go. The whole fast talking over synthesized beats thing has been done to death. There's only so many different way a guy can't talk fast over synthesized beats. And rap has reached its limit.

By the way, have you heard the new Raekwon album? It's a guy talking fast over synthesized beats. Really groundbreaking stuff. yawn.

Verse 4 (Method Man)
Man, ya niggas ain't shit to us, still a pistol bust
Split your melon like I split the Dutch
Got a lot of piff to puff, and I ain't come for fisticuffs
Or for the cop that wanna clip the cuffs
Man, is Staten in this bitch or what, don't get it twisted, we
Twist it up and even mixed with dust
See these fans can't resist the rush, they Wu-Tang for life
Scarred for life, they can't forget the cuts
Got a whole line of classic joints, and while you at it
Pass the joint, let's push this music past the point
Of no return, 'til they crash and burn, down the ashes
Then placed inside Ol' Dirty Bastard's urn
When it's my time to go, for sure, ya nigga goes to war
What you think I brought these soldiers for?
To send shot like forget me not, at any nigga
Respect, bitch, that figure they gon' get me got

(Kung Fu Sample)
Hehe, your basic kung fu is no good
You can't move fast enough
And you don't have enough strength
And your body movements are like a street fighter
It's too easy for me to trip you up
*fighting*
Hehehe, how's it feel, huh?

Chaos: It's no fair, I'm afraid my back is broken.

Hahaha, you still got a lot to learn, Chaos.