Parklife is very much where you should start. I’m also fond of Modern Life is Rubbish if you decide to look at additional albums. The Great Escape and Blur are good too. After that it drops off. (Blur has song 2 on it, which you have likely heard. It was in a lot of TV commercials and whatnot.)
If you are going to listen to Stapleton and Isbell, you might as well complete the trifecta with Sturgill Simpson (he’s my favorite of the bunch).
Country is down my list at this point. As foreign/unknown as hip-hop and rap are, I can not picture country music being good. I mean…it’s going to take quite the album to make me budge. I’m sure country is at the bottom of my list.
What’s the distinction you’re drawing there, out of curiosity?
I’m not a huge rap listener, but there are a good number of albums that I really enjoy, but I’ll concentrate on the somewhat earlier stuff (late 80s, early 90s). I first started getting into hip-hop with the Beastie Boys “Check Your Head.” I think that’s a good transitional album for folks coming from a rock background. It’s mostly rap, but they’ve got a punk number on there, they have some jazzy-loungy interludes, in addition to straight-up rap. It’s fun, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Easy entry-point.
After that, Public Enemy’s “Fear of a Black Planet” for its very heavy and dense beats and samples and explosive lyrical content. Once again, coming from a rock background, while it wasn’t rock, I didn’t find it difficult at all to get into the heaviness of the sound, and the anti-establishmentarianism of the album.
De La Soul’s “3 Feet High and Rising” is essential, too, one of my favorite albums of the 80s. Uplifting, positive, clever wordplay, great use of rhythms and eclectic samples. No overview of hip-hop is complete without this album.
Then you might want to try something like Boogie Down Productions/KRS-One (Criminal Minded would be the album I’d recommend), to round out early-to-mid-era rap history.
There is one Beastie Boys album I always return to: Paul’s Boutique. I am still amazed at that album.
That’s the other one I would recommend from their catalogue. And arguably their best. But I personally got into them through Check Your Head, which had a “fuller” sound to it and coming from my background, was a little easier to ease myself into sonically.
Ill communication too. Those three together are enough to make them legendary. The fact that License to Ill and Hello Nasty were also good is a bonus.
And if you listen to this and like the backing music/samples, take a listen to Odelay by Beck since both featured help from the Dust Brothers and contain lots of 70s ish eclectic sampling much of which is country-twinged, the difference being that Odelay is more pop and rock than rap.
I would keep him away from serious boom bap rap like KRS One, Eric B and Rakim or Public Enemy right now. It’s why I’m not suggesting Nas either. Get him used to the style with a poppier sound first.
Given the rest of this likes, this does make sense. I was just going by my own rap journey, which started with Check Your Head and Fear of a Black Planet, probably because in terms of rock, I tended to like the more aggressive sounds, too. But for middle-of-the-road, I think it’s really difficult to go wrong with De La Soul and 3 Feet High and Rising.
Agreed!
Country - old-fashioned country from before the 1950s - is something different. You might like it, you might not, but it’s there. Country since at least the 1970s has musically been completely merged with pop, though not necessarily merged socially with it. What I mean is they have the same general kinds of bands and the same shared main stream of how to write and perform a good song. Liking or not liking current country music is IMO not nearly as relevant as liking or not liking the individuals or bands, same as the rest of pop music. Different people may gravitate to one or the other socially, but musically the differences are superficial.
Listen to Hank Williams greatest hits: https://www.amazon.com/Hank-Williams-40-Greatest-Hits/dp/B000001F76/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_15_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=BH5DRX6JGTJJRRSE63Q4
If you don’t get the perfect, elegant simplicity of these songs, then Country isn’t for you as a genre. I grew up HATING country music (as a matter of principle, because I was young and stupid). But if you hear Movin’ on Over or I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry and don’t like them, you have your answer.
Listened to DAMN by Kendrick Lamar. What follows are just thoughts, not a final review in any way. I need more time.
I’m not sure what to think. It’s rap, not hip-hop. Uh, hip-hop is different from rap, right? I know, I’m that dense and out of touch. I had zero idea what to expect.
Anyway, I hesitate to share thoughts until I listen to it again through. Keep in mind my sheltered musical upbringing and my total lack of listening to any rap before. I know what it sounds like in principle. I mean…movies, tv, various things I’ve been exposed to. I just didn’t know what to expect. I’m actually kind of embarrassed. I’m literally the last guy to be writing about a rap album.
For one, I expected that DAMN would sound like greatly evolved rap and that I would come away impressed how the genre has grown/changed since the 1990’s, an era I associate with the mainstreaming of rap.
But…DAMN sounded like what I thought rap sounded like 15-20 years ago. Some of the raps were pretty neat, but a lot of it sounded like whining to me. Or at least generic rap complaining. And it even had the classic “I’ll beat your ass” type stuff that I kind of figured rap moved past or at least didn’t do so often. Despite that, I’m about to list the three standout songs that I liked:
I loved Feel, the song I found to be the [second] best on the album. “I feel like ain’t nobody prayin’ for me” is a great line and a lot of the lyrics in that one sounded less complainy to me than other songs. I read the lyrics now and they seem pretty great.
I laughed/smiled at the song where he complained about his financial advisers trying to leave him in debt. I just appreciate a song about a dude who got rich and is now worried about losing his money. A few years ago hew as worried about losing welfare and how he looked(his image). Now, he’s worried about getting screwed over by stuffy accountants. Always something, isn’t it?
Duckworth is also a really good song. I’m impressed and he did a great job with the lyrics. Powerful stuff. I might just be a sap. It’s the best song and the best set of lyrics.
The only line I will be singing or repeating from my one listen through is “it feels like ain’t nobody prayin’ for me”, which is a great way to express a thought everyone has felt.
I did not enjoy any of the vulgar or violent stuff. And mind you, I saw Cannibal Corpse in concert once. I just thought Kendrick Lamar did better when he wrote about his feelings. Again, sappy, but I think he’s better when contemplative than when he’s angry or shallow.
I’m not sure what to think overall. I’m going to listen to it again and see if anything else rises to the surface for me.
I don’t know what you mean. Happy to answer, but please re-ask.
Rap vs. Hip hop.
Hip hop is a genre of music. Rap is a way of delivering lyrics. Blondie used rap in the song Rapture (I literally just got that pun) but it is not a hip hop song. Rage Against the Machine uses Rap in their music but are not hip hop. Hip hop does not always have rapping or even lyrics, but if it has lyrics they are primarily rap.
Make sense? “Rap” music as a genre description is kind of like saying “electric guitar music.” It’s accurate but not specific. Hip hop is more specific and implies elements of music beyond the lyrics.
So, remember how I told you I would not start with DAMN if you have little exposure to Hip Hop? Much of DAMN is a personal reflection on the issues Kendrick raised about society on his previous album To Pimp A Butterfly. It is also a commentary on current commercial hip hop and the music industry. Note also, the songs build on each other with intention. There is a reason for the opening skit and the interludes that keep coming back around over and over. There is a reason why it starts very angry and gets more introspective as the album progresses. There is a reason why he kills himself in the opening and then ends the song with Duckworth a story about how he almost grew up fatherless like so many of his contemporaries. It’s it particularly groundbreaking musically, that was his last album. This was, by design, intended to sound like mainstream pop.
Some of the other stuff is going to go over your head until/unless you understand hip hop culture. You can’t really get a song like Humble or element, you don’t have the necessary context.
Come back to it in a few months
Also the “I beat yo ass” bit… Are you talking about Fear?
Go back and listen to that one again with the lyrics in front of you. I think you are missing the point.
I will definitely wait a bit and try again. My main feeling is that outside a few cool moments, it just sounded like what I figure a rap album sounds like. I mean, I felt like if I grabbed 10 random rap albums from artists I know nothing about, this would have just been another one of them. Good, he’s talented, some cool stuff here and there, but I expected it to be better and a more noticeably exceptional to even a guy like me.
I’ll try a** Blur** album soon, and even though I think Kanye West is a huge idiot, I have to eventually try some of his stuff to find out why he’s (originally) so famous.
College Dropout is what launched him? I guess I’ll end up trying that.
Yes, and that is part of the point. You are looking for it to be more like what his previous album actually was, that’s understandable. Circle back and maybe check out some of his other stuff before you do. It’s worth it. Promise.
College Dropout is the concensus best place to start with Kanye. It’s not his most progressive work, but it fundamentally changed pop music in ways that are still obvious today. Before you listen to it Google the story of his car crash, it’s also important context and while you will get it if you listen to the album alone, knowing about it before hand will short cut some stuff. And yes, Kanye is an idiot. He’s also probably going to be remembered as the John Lennon of the millennial generation. He makes good art. He just also is a dumbass.
I’d go further and say that hip hop is a culture. It includes deejaying and beat production in addition to other things like graffiti, breakdancing, beatboxing, fashion and bling. The Five Pillars of Hip Hop were originally DJing, MCing, Breakdancing, Graffiti, and Street Knowledge. But when you mention it in a musical context, it’s mostly about deejaying, emceeing and beats. Rap is a style of singing (the MC pillar).
In the common vernacular though, most people use “hip hop” and “rap” as synonyms for the musical genre. Not always though. I was laughed at when I was younger for saying my favorite rapper was Dr. Dre when what I really meant was that my favorite hip hop albums were by Dr. Dre. He’s a pretty good rapper, but that’s not his main claim to fame.
Kanye is one of those strange people whose work is incredibly introspective and vulnerable and who constantly chides himself for the crap that he’s done, but he can’t let that introspection or thoughfulness actually enter any of his (non-performing) public life.