# Help me be a big rap superstar and live large. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 27, 2013, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666 "2013-07-27T12:41:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2013, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/21 "2013-07-28T03:06:12Z")
In fact, lemme tell ya about bein’ a [rock superstar](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4VpE-0zitU) and about bein’ a [rap superstar](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7D27mL2JkI). ---
**Author:** ![PlainJain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5daacb/32.png) [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2013, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/22 "2013-07-28T15:01:25Z")
> [@Askthepizzaguy](#): > > … apparently, I’m wasting my time in the pizza delivery business… What was your first clue? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2013, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/23 "2013-07-28T18:36:04Z")
C-. You may wish to try sampling the rants of more talented writers in your material. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2013, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/24 "2013-07-28T21:19:41Z")
Stick with this ‘mystery’ awhile, it will eventually expand your mind. Why do artists who seem to suck succeed so often? You can’t detect the ‘art’ of their work. Whoosh! ---
**Author:** ![DoctorJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctorj/32/2904_2.png) [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2013, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/25 "2013-07-28T22:45:35Z")
> [@](#): > > Bling bling, bang bang, get the money, b\*\*\*\*es and hos, N-word, dollah dollah bill y’all. See? I can do it. Just to point out how outdated this rant is, the [track you’re referencing here was released 20 years ago](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjZRAvsZf1g). ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2013, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/26 "2013-07-29T02:26:55Z")
I’ve thought about it a long time, and I think the problem is that bitches be trippin. ---
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2013, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/27 "2013-07-29T23:34:30Z")
> [@DoctorJ](#): > > Just to point out how outdated this rant is, the [track you’re referencing here was released 20 years ago](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjZRAvsZf1g). …and every year since. The reason this rant works today even though it’s from 1998 is because nothing has changed. ---
**Author:** ![enomaj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/59ef9b/32.png) [@enomaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enomaj)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2013, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/28 "2013-07-30T13:24:19Z")
I’m pretty sure rappers no longer live large. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2013, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/29 "2013-07-30T13:44:40Z")
> [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](#): > > …and every year since. The reason this rant works today even though it’s from 1998 is because nothing has changed. Then you’re not listening to rap. Which is fine, but seriously. ---
**Author:** ![Stealth\_Bragg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4bbf92/32.png) [@Stealth\_Bragg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stealth_Bragg)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2013, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/30 "2013-07-30T14:39:43Z")
Like this? NSFW lyrics, so spoilered. [Youtube Link](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAzPETvQqZU) ---
**Author:** ![Werekoala](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/7993a0/32.png) [@Werekoala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Werekoala)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2013, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/31 "2013-07-30T15:57:10Z")
Not necessarily rap-related; I can predict the content of the next hit single from several currently-popular artists with near 100% accuracy. Usher - “I’m Usher!” Taylor Swift - “Why do all men suck?” Bruno Mars - “Why do women hate me?” (should do a duet with Taylor Swift) Pink - “I’m breaking up with you!” Pitbull - “I’m from Miami. And I’m rich. And I’ve got lots of women after me. And I’m from Miami. Did I mention I’m from Miami? And rich.” ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2013, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/32 "2013-07-30T16:22:44Z")
I refuse to admit that I am elderly until someone starts a Golden Oldie radio station for rap. Regards, Sho “Imma pop a cap in your Depends” dan ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2013, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/33 "2013-07-30T16:52:35Z")
> [@Stealth\_Bragg](#): > > Like this? NSFW lyrics, so spoilered. > > [Youtube Link](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAzPETvQqZU) Kind of looks like a younger version of Clark from the Office. ETA: Although it apparently appears to be an adult comedian named Andy Milonakis. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2013, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/34 "2013-07-30T16:59:07Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Regards, > Sho “Imma pop a cap in your Depends” dan Win. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2013, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/35 "2013-07-30T17:12:20Z")
> [@Askthepizzaguy](#): > > So I’ve been listening to the radio, and apparently, I’m wasting my time in the pizza delivery business. Did you know that any moron with connections to a record producer can make a million dollars? I’ve been carefully studying this phenomenon, and taking notes. While I don’t want you all to steal my idea that I’ve stolen from these other artists, I would appreciate any help you could provide in advising me further. > > Based on my research I have learned the following: > > **1) Originality or creativity is a horrible accident gone awry and must be slain, and not only that, wants to be slain, much like the Brundlefly.** > > Conclusion A: Do cover songs, re-use sections of other songs, re-use beats, and generally avoid generating new content. Go with what other people have done, or you have already done before. > > Conclusion B: Wherever possible, instead of writing new lyrics for your song, simply repeat the same lines over and over, for as long as your audience can plausibly stand it. Example, “we started from the bottom now we’re here. We started from the bottom now we’re here. We started from the bottom now we’re here.” I am Drake and you can too! He started from the Canada and now he’s here, and won’t go away. > > **2) Gratuitous use of echo to make your lame song sound more mysterious.** > > Conclusion C: You don’t need talent, just someone who can mix audio. > > **3) Gratuitous use of auto-tune to make your terrible squawking sound like music.** > > Conclusion C again: You don’t need talent, just someone who can mix audio. > > **4) Slow down your hardcore rapping so that your voice sounds deeper and more authoritative, to the point of ludicrousness.** > > Conclusion C yet again: You don’t need talent, just someone who can mix audio. > > **5) Women are whores and b\*\*\*\*es to be simultaneously degraded and glorified as nothing more than sex-holes-for-pay.** > > Conclusion D: It will sell even if half of the human race finds it to be ignorant misogynist trash. In fact, it will be so ubiquitous than some women grow to tolerate it. > > _6) The N-word is a perfectly acceptable term for “gentleman”, “friend”, “stranger”, “brother”, “father”, as a random expletive, interjection, or even as a compound word like Fake-N, P_\*\*\*-N\*, Real-N\*, or as a randomly inserted prefix for words that have absolutely nothing to do with male youths, or even human beings in general.\*\* > > Conclusion E: You don’t need to write lyrics, just randomly insert the N-word into your music and that makes you hardcore. > > **7) There aren’t enough songs about getting rich, and the problems associated with making it big and then having to deal with people who want some of your money.** > > Conclusion F: Complaining about the annoyances of being rich therefore dooms you to being rich. > > **8) Refer to hard drugs and running from the police in every other song.** > > Conclusion G: That makes you gangsta. Screw the police! Unless someone be illegally downloading my music, yo. That’s wack… g. > > \*\*9) If you actually _can sing, make sure it’s only a song about how you can’t stop thinking about vagina and all the things you’d like to do to it._ > > Conclusion H: Make sure everyone knows that you’re not homosexual. This is very important, and technically counts as a love song. > > In summary, if I wrote a song that was approximately 50% the N-word, with sprinkled lyrics about shooting cops and running drugs and using the money to get bling and whores, so that I could do all kinds of freaky things to your vagina when we get back to my place, auto-tune it until it sounds like I can sing, slow it down so it sounds like I have a deep threatening voice, and put echo all over the place, and completely copy someone else’s beat, the only thing I’d need to complete that song is about three minutes of just shouting out all my homies who are featured on this track, even if all they did was stand there and say “Yeah!” every now and then. That clearly deserves a career in music. Maybe they get a few lines where they bust out the N-word, just for a change of pace. And they can freestyle the N-word and just add it on to other words to make those words sound more N\*-hardcore. > > Do you think I’d make a cool million dollars and then spend the rest of my career complaining about how hard it is to live the life of a rich hard thug? Because this is what I am destined to do. And with your help, I may be able to. I realize I am so white that I am almost translucent, but I wouldn’t be the first white rapper. So I’m being fresh and true to myself by doing exactly what everyone else did before me. > > Tell me, is there anything I’ve missed that would absolutely guarantee me success, merely by copying the masters of modern rap and R&B? All they do is copy each other until the entire radio station sounds like the same terrible noise all day long? I really want to contribute to this genre of musical artistry. > > I may not know art, but I know what I like, and I like a cool million dollars, G. > > Bling bling, bang bang, get the money, b\*\*\*\*es and hos, N-word, dollah dollah bill y’all. See? I can do it. Get me some auto-tune and I will display artistry the likes of which you have only heard before about a million times. When my brother was in high school (early 1980s), he had a “band”, and they would just bang on their instruments and make noise while my brother screamed obscenities at the top of his lungs. 😛 After Nirvana hit the big time, I was telling some people at work about it, and one person said that if this “band” existed now, they could go to Seattle and get rich quick. 😃 My brother still has the tapes they made of this. Before that, MAD magazine had a piece where they went to a recording studio, and one performer orders a sandwich with all kinds of bizarre ingredients on it. Another person said, “You’re not going to eat that, are you?” and he replies, “No way! I’m gonna PLAY it!”. Someone else said, “I feel sick.” Yet another person says, “Hook up a mike - we have a hit single here!” and someone else says, “Throw a band behind him, and we’ll have a top ten album!” :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2013, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/36 "2013-07-30T19:09:40Z")
Here’s the thing. There are literally hundreds of thousands of kids who are trying to make it big in the music business. Or “music” business, if you can’t stand the noise the kids are listening to nowadays. If it was super-easy to be a superstar, then there would be hundreds of thousands of superstars. There ain’t. So what does that mean? It means it ain’t easy to become a music superstar. It certainly is true that the dancers and vocalists who get up on stage aren’t necessarily the most important part of the product. In hip hop this is even more true than other styles of music. This is why “producers” are the real superstars in hip hop, just like Motown used to crank out songs by interchangeable girl groups. The person standing on stage and moving their mouth, or providing the vocal track on a recording, is often a hired hand. Sometimes literally, sometimes essentially. Often groups have people who are essentially dancers who are an important part of the stage show, but don’t actually contribute much if anything to the recorded music. So how is it that some people get rich in the music industry, and some people end up delivering pizza? If it were as easy as saying “Nigga Nigga Bitch Bitch Money Money” then any pizza guy could do it. But if any pizza guy could do it, then the actual guy saying the words is an interchangeable frontman who can be bought and sold and sent back to the pizza joint when his services are no longer required. The funny thing is, just about every so-called musician you’ve ever heard of, no matter how much they suck and how horrible their music is, is probably more musically talented than 99 out of 100 people. That’s because you have to actually try to make music before you can make it in the music business. Yeah, there are plenty of top 40 groups that aren’t much better than the bar band that plays every weekend at your local watering hole. But that bar band at your neighborhood tavern is actually really talented musically–compared to most people. ---
**Author:** ![DoctorJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctorj/32/2904_2.png) [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2013, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/37 "2013-07-30T22:21:39Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I refuse to admit that I am elderly until someone starts a Golden Oldie radio station for rap. Do yourself a favor and don’t go to [Sirius 46](http://www.siriusxm.com/backspin). ---
**Author:** ![Blackberry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blackberry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackberry)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2013, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/38 "2013-07-30T22:29:02Z")
> [@Werekoala](#): > > Not necessarily rap-related; I can predict the content of the next hit single from several currently-popular artists with near 100% accuracy. > > Usher - “I’m Usher!” > Taylor Swift - “Why do all men suck?” > Bruno Mars - “Why do women hate me?” (should do a duet with Taylor Swift) > Pink - “I’m breaking up with you!” > Pitbull - “I’m from Miami. And I’m rich. And I’ve got lots of women after me. And I’m from Miami. Did I mention I’m from Miami? And rich.” T.I. - “I’m awesome.” Seriously that’s all he ever fucking says. Ever. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2013, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/39 "2013-07-31T00:15:15Z")
> [@Werekoala](#): > > Not necessarily rap-related; I can predict the content of the next hit single from several currently-popular artists with near 100% accuracy. > > Usher - “I’m Usher!” Correction: “Ursher baby!” ---
**Author:** ![curlcoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@curlcoat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curlcoat)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2013, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666/40 "2013-07-31T03:21:52Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Yeah, there are plenty of top 40 groups that aren’t much better than the bar band that plays every weekend at your local watering hole. But that bar band at your neighborhood tavern is actually really talented musically–compared to most people. That is an extremely scary thought, given the lack of talent on the radio. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-be-a-big-rap-superstar-and-live-large/664666.md?page=3)