Honestly, one of my current favorite bands (The Dresden Dolls, for the record) have had burlesque artists on stage, and they’ve even done their own little strip routine. The boobage didn’t hurt my opinion of them as musicians at all. It’s just a show. Sex sells, because most people like it. Big whoop.
I’m not going to leap in and passionately defend hip-hop, because as has already been said, this is one of those topics that comes up over and over again, and I just don’t feel like repeating myself today. However, just because you don’t like the way something sounds doesn’t mean it sucks. I honestly cannot stand John Coltrane, and you’ll never hear me say he isn’t talented. I’m sure he’s fantastic. It just isn’t my kind of music, and that’s fine. There’s no need to be the arbiter of the world’s taste.
(Oh, and since no one else is telling you what to listen to, I recommend Robert Johnson, Chuck Berry, the Beatles, Bauhaus, and Liz Phair for starters. Am I allowed to diss Staind now?)
Who said I was basing my opinion soley on the three acts (more, actually) at the concert? I hear hip hop whenever I go out to clubs, whenever I’m at one one of my friends’ house, on TV, everywhere. The Academy Awards show had a hip hop act, for cryin’ out loud. (and what a cringe-inducing moment that was, although by all accounts it plays better in the movie).
Lessee, some of the music I like that I listened to today on my iPod :
Tantric
Skye
Isle of Q
Bob Marley
Tool
Wilco
RATM
Down and Above
Skywind
311
Santana
Collective Soul
David Gray
Weezer
Hey, I was about to recommend the same thing in response to the same post. Good ol’ Gift of Gab. He’s an excellently happy guy.
Not particularly similar, but have you heard of the Nextmen? Get Over It doesn’t seem to be available on the US Amazon site and I have no idea if it’s on iTunes, but it’s well worth checking out. “Listen to This” is all kinds of ace. That and Aural Pleasure are what I always play to people who whinge about rap being crap, and they pretty much always have to concede I have at least a bit of a point.
Yes, poverty life in the ghetto has always been a theme in African-American music. However, only in hip-hop has it become the dominant theme, and only in hip-hop has it been glorified so much.
If the “gangsta rap is just a reflection of the ghetto” meme was true, then the ghetto must be a recent incention, because the theme was selcom part of scat, early rock, R&B, Motown, disco, and early rap. Yeah, blues singlers cried about losing their woman, losing their jobs, and their broken mojos, but the theme was more like “this shit sucks” - it definitely did not glorify it, nor did masses of black kids in the 1920s and 1930s stream to Tunica or Clarksdale to live the good life as sharecroppers in shotgun shacks.
I’m sure someone will come along and point out some Motown song that mentions bitches, hos, blunts, semi-automatic pistols, malt liquor, and the desire to kill law enforcement officers and white people in general. How much of that, though, made up the genre? Probably very, very, very little.
The nature of analogies is that, by definition, they fail to achieve perfect equivalence.
But I think you get you my point. Maybe a half-hour of watching Fellini doesn’t qualilfy you to say jackshit. Maybe you have to see most of his films to be taken seriously in your scathing critique of his life’s work. Maybe you have to see every frame he shot, and all of Antonioni and Passolini and de Sica and every other Italian film director two or three times over before you are conceded by the Organization of italian Film Lovers to be qualified to offer an opinion, only then they’re going to claim that you didn’t view them in the right context, or with the full knowledge you really needed, or that you saw the films with subtitles and you didn’t like them not because they’re fucking bad boring films but because you didn’t understand the culture they were set in or some other stupid shit.
The point is, that no one can say that they hate some form of art without that art’s defenders declaring that person’s opinion to be invalid somehow. I don’t know how many hours or days or weeks of listening intently to people rant and curse and mumble and off-rhyme and complain about the same trivial fucken bullshit I need to invest before you’ll concede that I’ve given it a fair shot, and that my negative opinion is equally qualified to stand besides your rapturous praise, but I’m pretty sure it’s much more than I’m willing to devote to the end of earning your stamp of approval.
Jesus Christ on a Popsicle Stick, who said I listened to Hoobastank or Staind, or gag Nickelback? Go back and read my posts again for cryin’ out loud. I went to Hoobastank and Staind concerts with friends, certainly not because I listen to them on a regular basis. Go back and read my earlier post. Like I said, Hoobastank’s concert was actually a fun time. Staind sucked. Nickelback is crap, even if I do feel guilty about rather liking Photograph.
I’ve had a listen to Sage Francis - interesting. Aesop Rock - not my cup of tea. Tribe Called Quest - also interesting.
And - goddammit I hate to admit it - I rather like what I’ve heard from Blackalicious so far. It’s too bad these guys aren’t mainstream.
Not seen much then? Doesn’t seem like you’ve heard that much either. But don’t worry about it, everyone on this thread has been in the same angst-ridden, insecure place
Of course, when I turned 15* I discovered girls and dancing, and became considerably less precious about image and authenticity.
If you will take some advice from an old man of 38 years I’d like to recommend some old music that the bands you like have been influenced by and you should at least hear (and are not often played on radio);
Velvet Underground: VU+Nico, White Light/White Heat, VU
Stooges: Stooges, Fun House, Raw Power
MC5: Kick out the Jams
Ramones: Get the compilation Ramones Mania
Buzzcocks: Singles Going Steady
Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures, Closer
Husker Du: Land Speed Record, Flip Your Wig, New Day Rising, Candy Apple Grey
Talking Heads: 77, Remain in Light, Speaking in Tongues
Television: Marquee Moon
Kraftwerk: Radioactivity, Man Machine Music, Autobahn
Suicide: Suicide
There’s tons of other stuff (I’ve not included bands that sold loads in their time) before, during and after these records (1967-1981 ish), but given your quoted favourites I hope that you’ll agree that these are at least indirect influences.
Beware though! If you find yourself liking Kraftwerk it’s a very short slippery slope from the the Teutonic Kling-Klang meisters to - gulp! - hip-hop, and house and techno…
Some of you are coming across as I probably did when I was a student - “I’m so cool because I only listen to obscure bands and I hate main stream”. I admit that I don’t know much about hip hop at all, but I am exposed to it due to my job - I personally think it lacks merit when compared to other genres because I don’t see many skills being displayed. This ironically has probably helped to make it so popular - the idea that anyone can get up and join in.
I could get up on stage and talk in rhythm to a beat. I could make up some rhythmic words with social meaning. I could get bits of popular songs and put them in strategic places in between the lyrics. I couldn’t do the technical stuff and production side though - now that takes skill. So where does the skill of the performers come? I’m not saying what I could come up with would be brilliant, but it would be better than any other music genre that I could have a bash at producing.
I can’t stand modern jazz, but I do appreciate the skills needed to produce it.
I can’t stand heavy metal, but ditto.
The influence of the hos and the bad boy stuff is the scarey thing - those in low socioeconomic environments idolise hip hop bands and try to emulate. We have huge problems with 9/10/11 year olds dressing like the hos they see on the videos and having sex - then ofcourse we have one of the highest teenage pregancy rates and so on. If hip hop preached education in amongst the rest of the social commentary, I may be persuaded to think it wasn’t so bad.
My band does covers of Velvet Underground, MC5 and the Ramones. I’ve listened to Husker Du and the Talking Heads for years and years. I’m somewhat familiar with the Stooges, Joy Division, Buzzcocks, and Kraftwerk. I don’t really know some of the others, however, so will check them out.
So try listening to some damned music, you old coot. Get out of your damned rocking chair, put down your Geritol, and listen to some hip sop songs; if you actually tried you’d hear hip hop about subjects other than sex and violence in exactly the same ratio as you hear rock music that isn’t about sex and violence.
What is Lauryn Hill’s “Zion” about? Sex and violence? No. But that’s hip hop.
Rock music is never about sex and violence? Yeah, right. Shit, I can think of two famous rock bands actually named after spunk.
Yay! But man, c’mon, David Gray? Unless you are undergoing the breakup of your second marriage and the loss of your family home, there is no fucking excuse for your critical faculties to be so dulled.
/music snob
//perhaps you’d rather have a sit down and a nice cup of tea? INSTEAD OF ROCKING!!!
/// don’t fear the hip-hop though. There’s tons of great stuff. Start a thread in the Cafe Society
Oh, come on - David Gray is a fairly talented singer/songwriter; I enjoy doing some of his songs on just an acoustic. I agree White Ladder was a bit depressing.
Which is why they must be used carefully. This analogy does a particularly poor job at making the point you tried to make.
Or maybe you should simply be familiar with whatever it is you’re claiming to be crap. Since you’re trying to defend his drawing conclusions from a poor sample, you clearly feel that being moved by the spirit to secrete an opinion matters more than, say, actual familiarity with what you’re opining about. If you judge a film by watching half an hour of it, you’re certainly making an adequately-informed judgment; if half an hour of a film is so dull that you can’t stand to watch any more, than clearly the filmmaker failed. But, your analogy being “imperfect”, you manage to not even remotely capture the situation or offer any insight into it at all, as, you see, he’s judging thousands of artists by having heard a couple songs by six or seven, and it’s already been explained precisely why those six or seven are a particularly bad sample.
If you judge Fellini by half an hour of one of his films, you’re likely to make a poor judgment. If you judge Italian filmmakers as a whole by half an hour of one film, you’re a fucking moron. If you’ve decided that an entire, broad genre of music sucks based upon such poor knowledge of it, you’re a fucking moron too. Judging thousands of artists by having heard a few hours of their music is a lot closer to judging Italian cinema by half an hour of film than your analogy was. “Imperfect” doesn’t go quite far enough in describing how utterly awful an analogy it was.
They can’t? Huh. I’m not sure why that has any relevance, as DragonAsh didn’t actually just declare that he hated hip-hop, he declared that it “sucks” and described it in terms that are, as has been amply explained, indicative of his complete unfamiliarity with it. Call me crazy, but I’m not really sure that this is sufficient proof of the hypothetical you offer above.
I’m not any particular fan of hip-hop. There’s a couple artists I like, some stuff I’ve heard on the radio that I hate, and a whole pile of artists out there that I’m wholly unfamiliar with, never having been moved to investigate. I’m not exactly a defender of hip-hop; I’m only here to defend clear thinking and the principle of basing one’s views of the world on reason rather than preconceived notions. That’s precisely why I’ve been harping on the flawed process by which the OP came to his conclusion, rather than trying to disprove it empirically. He doesn’t seem to have much interest in improving himself, but hopefully his attitude on that will change one day. I like to hope people will abandon poor and lazy thinking.
At any rate, surely you must concede that there is a point at which someone’s judgment of an artist, or style of music, or school of filmmaking, is invalidated by their unfamiliarity. If I’ve only seen one of Lars von Trier’s films, and I hated it (as is indeed the case) I am far less likely to see others, and I’m comfortable saying that what I’ve seen by him isn’t impressive. Even at that point, it’s hard to justify condemning his entire body of work. Now what if I’ve only seen half of one of his films? A quarter? Five minutes? A single frame? At some point, judging Lars von Trier on the basis of very little information clearly becomes nonsense. In this case, he’s judging not just one artist but thousands of them, on the basis of information that has already been shown to be insufficient. So you can argue what you like about how irrationally people hypothetically might react if he claimed he didn’t like hip-hop, but the fact is that he’s displayed poor and downright confused thinking on the subject.
Where have I shown anything even approaching “rapturous praise”? Where have I even declared that I like hip-hop? I’m not knowledgeable about it and I’m not particularly fond of it. The difference between me and DragonAsh is that I’m not trying to claim that it’s something about hip-hop that I’m responding to - I’m quite capable of recognizing and admitting my own ignorance in a particular field. Oh! Wait! I get it! Instead of reading my posts, you read a few lines of them and decided what you think I would probably say, and responded to that!
At any rate, your defensiveness is pretty clear. Do you really want to make up “imperfect analogies” and generally defend this doofus just because you share an opinion with him? Come on, be reasonable. What he said was stupid. The fact that you agree with his conclusion doesn’t make the process any less moronic.
I don’t mean to take the thread in an entirely other pitpossible direction, but in my opinion that’s big fuckin’ elephant in this here room. Since this is the Pit, I feel comfortable saying I’m not at all interested in debating this, but it should be made known that there’s at least one person who feels this way.
Pearl Jam is not named after spunk. Neither is 10cc. I’m not sure about The Lovin’ Spoonful, but I don’t think so (it’s named after a Mississippi John Hurt song called “Coffee Blues” about Maxwell House coffee).
Thin White Rope is correct, though.
As to the OP: :rolleyes: Don’t we have this thread at least once a year? IMO, rap is a legitimate, vibrant, and exciting musical form. As much as I am a rock music listener, there’s no denying that the most innovative musical form of the past 2+ decades has been hip-hop.
Well, that’s emphatically not true for me. Almost all of my favorite musicians are black (Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, off the top of my head. Hendrix, in particular, is like a god to me). I just don’t like hip hop as a genre, largely because I prefer hearing people play instruments in general and in hearing virtuosos especially.
Rap/hip-hop isn’t even my least favorite genre. Rap just bores me. What I really actively HATE is fucking country.
