I’m pretty sure there’s not a single gangsta rapper out there who would announce his love for a guy named Rob in a song… 
Sorry, could resist.
My own conception of most live hip-hop acts is not far off from your own, Dragon, but I disagree with you as to the root cause. There’s a reason why, in my humble opinion, the most essential rock concert image of the last 20 years is Kurt Cobain sitting on a stool and singing into a microphone during MTV Unplugged* and the most essential hip-hop concert image of the last 20 years is hip-pop singer Justin Timberlake ripping off Janet Jackson’s vinyl bra during the Superbowl. Rock post-grunge is a genre that values authenticity, hip-hop post-NWA values spectacle. You could say that authenticity is superiour to spectacle, but then I’d just have to call you a rockist.
In any case, the reason why hip-hop acts have video-screens, large groups of yelling back-up shouters, and dancing girls (albeit rarely – there are more dancing girls on stage at Britney concerts than at hip-hop concerts) is because this is what the audience wants. People that enjoy going to hip-hop concerts enjoy the theatricality of it (cf: every Eminem tour ever) because without that element of spectacle and theatricality, then hip-hop concerts basically consist of a guy rapping over pre-recorded music (this is not much fun). The differences between hip-hop shows and rock shows comes from the differences between the genres. It’s certainly not to distract from how much they suck.
You have to agree that it makes sense for hip-hop artists to aim their shows at people that are not you (people like you being people that dislike hip-hop). Even if it was set up like a Sufjan Stevens show you still wouldn’t like the music, and it would be weird to set up a rap show like that anyway. You don’t go to a DJ set expecting the same set-up as a jazz quartet.
(Bolding is mine.)
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What exactly are “proper vocals”?
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What is poor lyrical content? Several others in this thread have pointed out that other genres of music tackle some of the same subject matter. And in some other cases, the content relates to experiences that are unique to the performers and in the manner in which they grew up. What aspect of rap makes the lyrics poor?
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As for the incoherency of the rapping, I understand more rap music on first listen than I do rock music. Perhaps this is a function of what you’re accustomed to hearing? It could be analagous to trying to listen to someone speak English with a heavy foreign accent that you haven’t been exposed to. Very little rap is incoherent to me.
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The idea that the music can’t stand on its own is pretty silly to me. It’s the repeated playing of the rappers’ music over the radio and in CD players and iPods that drives people to their concerts to begin with. Some artists like fireworks and dry ice and crowd surfing during their shows; others like attractive, scantily dressed dancers. In either case, if the music sucked, people wouldn’t come to the shows.
And I’m not saying you aren’t entitled to your opinion, no matter what I may think of it. I just don’t believe the reasons you cite for rap being an inferior genre make much sense.
One of my all-time favorite bands, The Stranglers, were known for having nude dancers on stage quite a bit in the 70s. Interestingly, their manager - a guy named Paul McGuinness - manages U2. It’s rock 'n roll!
The Rolling Stones had a giant inflatable dick onstage in the 70s as well.
If we want to move to video, how about Whitesnake having Tawny Kitaen writhing around the top of a car? Warrant’s “Cherry Pie?”
Albums? How about Roxy Music’s Country Life? The Cars’ Candy-O? List goes on.
Even the chick in the Dandy Warhols flashes her boobs during the show (I’ve seen it!).
Here you’re showing how little exposure you’ve had to hip-hop. Again, in today’s environment, commercial means a certain look and a certain sound. Tom Petty, who you name-check and who I think is great, would never get a shot to make it today. Doesn’t have the look or the sound. He’s up there because he’s a legend. Check out someone like Common, or even international stars like MC Solaar.
Not a fan of the genre, but you know it well enough to know that “bling and hos” are the core element? :rolleyes:
You like the Foo Fighters, as do I - saw them at the Tabernacle in Atlanta in '00 and they rocked the house - but what if I went to a Limp Bizkit concert, saw Fred Durst climb out of a toilet bowl, and bore me for the next hour, and then said, “Dude, nu-metal/rock sucks.” (Depends where you categorize 'em.) That would be supremely ignorant, because there are any number of artists who blow those posers off the stage, Wes Borland-era lineup nonwithstanding.
You’re kidding right? If it was indeed only a ‘small selection’ or ‘not representative’ I wouldn’t have a problem with it - I’d equate it to people dissing all video games because of Grand Theft Auto.
I like hard rock, so I dig pretty deep to find new, interesting bands - bands that aren’t necessarily mainstream. While my iPod does have a lot of music from the ‘popular bands’, it also has a lot of new, less known stuff (thank you, Pandora). Thanks to the Internet we don’t need to depend on media moguls and suits to discover new stuff for us.
Anyway - my girlfriend doesn’t like rock, so the only rock she hears is mainstream - she knows U2 and Green Day, for example. In the same way, my knowledge of hip hop is limited to the mainstream - seemingly nothing but bling and hos and drug deals and fucking. Precisely because it’s the core, mainstream element is why I came to the conclusion that all hip hop must suck. And my experience at AmsterJam this past weekend only reinforced this notion.
Let’s face it, folk, blues, country and jazz are worthless genres: their lyrical obsessions endorse drinking, drug abuse, violence, murder, lawlessness, fornication, objectification of women, contempt for authority and crass materialism. Ban this sick filth!
Please, DragonAsh, listen to Black Star’s eponymous album, or Kanye West’s College Drop Out, or *Fear of a Black Planet * by Public Enemy, and tell me that hip hop has crappy vocals and lyrics. I came up as a fan of classic rock and metal but now I am a hip hop convert (I still like the old stuff, but I also listen to new stuff). It’s the lifeblood of modern music, like it or not, and it’s so because it is an art form worthy of the attention.
Listen, 90% of everything is crap. This goes for hip hop no more or less than any other genre. You don’t have to like it, but it’s not morally or artistically inferior to the music you happen to like. You sound like a crank when you make these blanket statements.
I have to agree that hip hop is garbage. I’ve never been able to understand what anybody like about it. It’s just misogynists in clown suits stealing samples from real musicians and chanting obscene and/or violent tirades over them while grabbing their dicks. It involves no mucisianship whatsoever and it all sounds exactly the same. I’ve never been able to see any art in it. It’s just chanting inanities over a beat…usually a stolen beat.
/cranky, middle aged dad
This thread has been brought to you be those people who have forgotten (or were too young ever to learn) Sturgeon’s Law.
Right now Jet is praying that you never discover the Stooges, lest they too become targets for your rage (fuck you, Jet!).
As I’ve mentioned previously in this thread, hip-hop producers are doing more creative things with pop music than anyone else out there. I’m not suprised that you don’t know this – you don’t like hip-hop, so you don’t listen to it. But you have to concede that you have no clue what you’re talking about when it comes to the artistry that goes into crafting rap music.
Seriously, is anyone else on the pop charts crafting number one hits out of choruses that are complete gibberish (Missy Elliott and Timbaland)? Why is that when Bjork and the Neptunes release singles at pretty much the exact same time where most of the precussion comes from people clicking their tongues one is hailed as a bold eccentric on the forefront of musical experimentation and the other is dismissed by you (sound unheard!) as thieves who are incapable of creating art? These examples of bold, experimental hip-hop are not from the underground – these are singles that tore up the Hot 100.
What is it about hip-hop that makes people incapable of simply saying “I don’t like it”? Why is it that people have to resort to lame excuses about ‘violent content’ or ‘lack of artistry’? It’s fine not to like something if you just don’t like it. It’s not fine not to like something for reasons which are lies, errors brought on by ignorance, or hypocrisy.
Hip hop does suck, but the main reason it sucks is sampling. For almost all hip-hop what gets the fan interested (besides the video) is the music, not whatever lyrics are shouted over it. It’s not about talent anymore, it’s about who can go in their record collection and find the best hooks. The musical hooks are what gets the listener and these are taken from previous records, so when you “like” a hip-hop song what you are usually liking is the sampled song, which the artist did not create himself. And yes, I guess it takes talent to piece together various hooky snippets to form a cohesive whole. And most hip-hop concerts suck b/c you usually have no band playing, just 10-20 guys on stage yelling into microphones- when will they realize how to synchronize the banter so it doesn’t all run together into one large ball of noise?
I don’t blame the videos- sex sells. IIRC BET cancelled their nightly news program to show videos b/c they have a much larger audience. These videos give the masses what they want, unfortunately.
I wouldn’t make a sweeping generalization like the OP, but I will say that I feel like an old fogey when I think of how much I liked when I could understand what rappers were saying. 
Old school fun and even political stuff was great, and it had a beat you could dance to. This was mostly in the 80s but even in the 90s stuff like Hypnotize and others were fun jams to dance to in the bars and clubs. Partly for the samples, yes, but also for the lyrics.
As a former musician, it offends me when acts incapable of creating their own music (or even of playing an instrument) loot the recordings of real musicians for hooks, babble gibberish over the top of them, and basically profit from someone else’s art.
You say these producers are creative, but I don’t see cutting and pasting the work of other people as anything but thievery.
I think that while there are tons of examples where violence is a theme in all genres, it *seems * to be more prevalent in hip-hip. Or maybe, again, it’s just what mainstream audiences are hearing, but if that’s all that people are hearing, that’s all they’re going to form their perception on. As far as a lack of artistry, I agree that this may not be a fair assesment, but maybe because it is so different from what people usually consider artistry (or have in the past) , i.e. playing an instrument or an appealing singing voice, they don’t see the beauty or artistic nature of it.
For the record, I don’t have anything against sex or violence as lyrical subject matter, but it was be nice to hear something else once in a while and it would also be nice to hear some level of genuine artistry or poetry in it. Rap music is set up to place an emphasis on the spoken word. It would seem to be a great vehicle for somebody to actually say something once in a while, but no, all we ever get is people talking about their “humps” or exhorting us to “do it to it.” How urgent. How important. How meaningful. :rolleyes:
I’m currently a musician (with a day job) and have no problem with sampling. I play jazz (among other things) and would have gotten no where without emulating other musicians; even to the point of taking lines note for note from other artists. It has been my experience that all musicians cannibalize one another to certain extent. I’ve seen rap DJ’s that have more talent than most rock drummers. As for the babble, this could be said of Operah (not by me) or any other form of music that one doesn’t understand.
Well, it isn’t like it’s compulsory: I don’t have much time for hip-hop, apart from Public Enemy and De La Soul, so I tend not to listen to it, just as I don’t listen to New Age pan-flutes and whale farts either. Problem solved.
Probably the same reason you couldn’t just say you didn’t like Jet and leave it at that. Opinions about art don’t have to just be a visceral “like it or don’t like it” reaction, they can and do have reasoning behind them.
Well, it isn’t like it’s compulsory: I don’t have much time for hip-hop, apart from Public Enemy and De La Soul, so I tend not to listen to it, just as I don’t listen to New Age pan-flutes and whale farts either. Problem solved.
Blackalicious, Blazing Arrow. You can get it on iTunes for $10.
Just as a starting point.