My gf and I went with a friend to AmsterJam 2006 at Randall’s Island this past weekend. We had a great time - it was overcast so we weren’t getting baked to death. It rained a little bit in the evening, but not all that heavily, and the rain basically ended in time for Foo Fighter’s set. The Foo Fighters fuckin’ rocked. Great, great set.
My gf enjoyed one of the latin-esque bands, I enjoyed FF and Tom Petty. But the rest of the line up…argh. All hip-hop crap. After suffering through about three of these acts, including LL Cool J, I realized why hip-hop has absolutely no socially redeeming value as a music-related art form. Every friggen’ hip-hop act was the same: some guy screaming disgusting, vile lyrics into a mic and grabbing at his dick while a homeboy shouts ‘yo yo yo’ at various intervals, all of this to a backing track (not a single music instrument in sight), with four or five women dressed up as ho’s in skimpy halter tops and practically invisible skin-tight hotpants doing raunchy dance moves. For some reason, Foo Fighters and Tom Petty made the risky move of not relying on the ho’s and instead depended entirely on their music to entertain people. :rolleyes:
Any music that needs 95% naked ho’s to entice people to listen ain’t music. And any artist that uses their own name in their lyrics needs to seriously get over themselves.
The problem as I see it is that you’ve only heard the hip hop that gets on the radio. Go listen to some Sage Francis or Atmosphere, try to really absorb the lyrics, and see if you can still make the same blanket statement.
I’ve given a semi-honest try to like hip hop, and I have to say that I did find maybe two songs I liked. This is in the past twenty+ years. To the rest of it I say:
“Damn youngsters! Turn down that damned noise! Dang kids don’t know nuthin’! Why, back in my day, we had real music! We listened to nice songs! Ever heard of a nice melody? It’s all just noise, noise, noise with you young whippersnappers these days!”
Then I hitch up my trousers to just under my nipples, smooth back the three gray hairs on my otherwise bald head, and saunter off in my big Buick, with Black Dog cranked up to three.
I guess you’re not a big Counting Crows fan (Murder of One. Nor do you enjoy the stylings of The Unicorns (pretty much their whole album)?
I’ll agree with you that live hip-hop is generally a pretty hard sell, since the music can only be considered “live” in that a DJ plays a sans-lyrics version of the song while rappers try to get a close to the record’s flow as possible. Why would you want to listen to something that’s basically a lame version of what’s on the record? Exceptions: The Roots (often claimed to be “the best live band in hip-hop,” loved by many many white people in college), Wu-Tang (live show often insane, especially during ODB era – once showed up on stage by surprise when he was dodging the feds because of a warrant for his arrest and no one knew where he was), pretty much everybody in Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.
That said, the rest of your post is pretty obnoxious. After listening to LL Cool J (!) live (!!) (and, to be fair, 2 other rappers) you’ve concluded that all of hip-hop sucks? You’ll forgive me for suggesting that your sample size is small. You’ll also forgive me for suggesting that you weren’t listening to hip-hop the way it’s meant to be listened to. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that a lot of music works better outside of concert halls – I’d prefer to listen to Sigur Ros through headphones alone in my room than inside a massive building with 10000 people sitting in silence grooving on the music. Just because music doesn’t work as well live doesn’t necessarily mean it’s shit. Moreover, just because you don’t enjoy something doesn’t mean it’s shit*.
Yay hip-hop!
I don’t actually believe this relativism. If I don’t like something, it’s absolute shit and nothing anyone can say can convince me different because they’re wrong. Eat it, contemporary jazz!
You’re a clown. You have no idea what you’re talking about, but yet you flap your lips. Hip hop is every bit as vital a musical art form as anything in the world, and it’s more vital than most. Aesop Rock. Deltron 3030. Handsome Boy Modeling School. Prince Paul. A Tribe Called Quest. De La Soul. Goodie MOB.
Go listen to “Labor Days” by Aesop Rock and then tell me hip hop sucks, Captain Generalization.
Watch Jay-Z’s Fade to Black, or Dave Chappelle’s Block Party. No way could you say all hip hop SUCKS. The Roots, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Fugees, Mos Def and Talib Kweli, I could go on. Suffice it to say, fine not to like it, but some of it is awesome.
I think you’re mainly referring to a particular segment of hip hop. The sort that sings about thuggin’, bling, blunts and hos. The Fifty Cent set. I’m not a fan of hip hop at the best of times, but not all of it is like that. Just the commecialized, pre-packaged crap and the wannabes.
Now, I didn’t actually mind the rap/hip hop back in the 80s. Grandmaster Flash had something to rap about back then, and there were some positive messages. I really don’t hear stuff like that these days. It always seems to be about the thug life, being gangsta, and crap like that. They do not, as far as I’m concerned, have anything worth saying, but they say it loud and proud just the same.
I’m sure there’s probably some half decent quality stuff out there, but it’s just not my cuppa anymore – not that it ever was to any significant degree, but what of it was ceased to exist decades ago.
What Ogre said, but I’ll add that the Foo Fighters suck. Because you like them so god-damned much, you’re obviously a tool whose opinions of musical talent can be disregarded.
I also forgot to mention that hip-hop just dominates pop music right now, and you’d be certainly hard-pressed to find the level of creativity in top 100 rock as you find in top 100 hip-hop (compare the level of experimentation shown by Timbaland with that of his chart rock analogues, Nickelback). No one is fucking around at the top of the charts like hip-hop is.
Only one of the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 is not hip-hop or R&B (Nelly Furtado and Christina Aguilara both turned to hip-hop producers for their new albums).
Oh, I don’t believe that at all. I’m not a fan of golf, for example, but I can still appreciate the skills needed. And I’ve just listened to a bit of stuff from some of the other names that people have mentioned here, and some of it does sound interesting - one would hope they don’t need to resort to ho’s on stage for their live performances.
But based on what I see the ‘thuggin’, bling, and hos’ segment of hip-hop is the largest/most popular segment. Every genre probably has its talented geniuses. But if the ‘thuggin’ and hos’ segment of hip-hop continues to be represenative of the genre, I’m going to continue assuming that most of it sucks.
Necros, my username is based on an inside joke among my band mates.
Rap and hip hop does have the problem of sometimes relying too much on studio production to make things sound great, and that live reproductions can sometimes amount to some dude just shouting incoherently on the mic (See Ad Rock from the Beastie Boys for a great example) over badly sound mixed beats. Lots of rappers never meant to give concerts on the scale that they do.
Question: Is Hip-Hop and gangster rap the same thing? I thought gangster rap was the “bitches and ho’s” and killing people. I always thought Hip-hop was like Coolio and the stuff they play on the radio. Please cure my ignorance.
Much to my dismay, I’m going to have to agree with the rest of the posters. I personally can’t stand hip-hop; it just doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t like the relative lack of melody, the vocals, or the lyrical content. However, there is some legitimate talent in the underground. I can appreciate it for the skill that goes into it, but I can’t relate and I don’t enjoy listening to it.
One of my musical genre mainstays gets abused just as much (maybe even more)by mainstream acts like Slipknot, Cradle of Filth, and their ilk; I’ve often had to explain to people that’s NOT what good metal sounds like, and there’s legitimately talented stuff out there in the underground. Its completely unfair to classify that whole genre by the few that found a market with the whole “teenage angst” angle.
Hip-hop gets the same poor rap (no pun intended) in the mainstream, except one of their main angles is sex. Mainstream music is about making money, not making music and face it, sex sells. So, I’ll agree with you that mainstream hip-hop sucks, and that the underground stuff just plain doesn’t do a thing for me. Unless, of course, we misinterpretted and you’re only refering to the acts that actually use the whole “naked ho” on stage… in which case I agree with you. I do, however, agree with you unequivically on artists that use their own name in their lyrics. That’s just plain lame.
He’s right, hip-hop does suck. And it sucks hard. At least the ghetto faboo bullshit we’re being spoon fed by mass market media. LL Cool J? He hasn’t mattered in hip-hop in nearly 20 years. I’m guessing you saw Busta Rhymes too. Y’know, he’s a good rapper, but he’s lost a little of that edge, like they all do when they make it “big”
Really, like many have said, it’s the underground stuff that makes hip-hop a legitimate musical style. Innovation, powerful lyrics, and the introduction of actual (rather than pre-recorded) music are important things that most of the hip-hop acts in the mainstream aren’t
making a part of their act.
All that said, you do have a point, but that point can be applied to everything from death metal to mongolian throat singing.
I don’t care for much of it myself, but I remember liking the very first rap track that I heard (circa 1984, something about “Survival…only the strong survive”). Honestly, I don’t think its the format, I think it’s the content.
Somebody who went to see the Foo Fighters is complaining that hip-hop sucks?
Yeah, and the biggest, most popular rock acts are doing great, innovative music? Have you listened to the radio lately? I haven’t, except when inadvertently exposed to it, but when that happens I’m not particularly impressed by the most popular rock bands around today. Would it be valid, then, to declare that rock is inherently low quality? Does this work in every genre? Kenny G probably outsells virtually every other jazz musician today - does that mean that we should declare that jazz as a genre sucks just because shitty smooth jazz happens to be popular?
Based on the evidence here in my town, I have to assume that this would be:
“from within one’s car, containing bass speakers the size of refrigerators, played at the highest possible volume, producing geological disturbances measurable on the Richter scale for a three block radius”
I work in an office in which the vast majority is in the target audience for this genre and I’m about as far from that target as one could get. I’ve volunteered my services whenever we have an in-house function at which music is played so I had to get stuff that everyone, including me, like. Most of which was suggested by Pandora, purchased via iTunes, and downloaded to my iPod.
Among what I have saved on Pandora and/or my iPod are tracks by Destiny’s Child, Shaggy, Craig David, Jesse Powell, Black Eyed Peas, Donell Jones, Monifah, Houston, Chante Moore, Kelly Rowland, and Ruff Endz.
