I hate rap music. I find it to be one of the most annoying form of music since Blue Grass Country and Western from the 1950s. I hate the videos where the singers ‘pooch’ their lips out like they’re trying to smell what is on the upper one, start slinging gangsta signs around and no one looks happy or like they are enjoying themselves. When did singing groups decide that they had to look pissed off with their music? I dislike the free verse rhymes, ain’t real happy with the ‘minority’ faux ‘ghetto’ faux ‘hand-me down’ faux ‘big sneaker’ faux ‘expensively casual’ faux ‘homey’ look they like to affect either.
Am I the only one? I REALLY, REALLY hate rap at 2:00 in the morning when some bugger drives by with his $2000 stereo system blasting it out of his $500 car and I can hear it a block before he drives by.
Anyone else feel this way? Gimme that good old rock’n roll! (Even disco.)
That is the MOST annoying thing…ugh. Course, I feel that way, no matter what kind of music is playing. What the hell makes you think I want to hear YOUR music?? Even if it’s music I like, I still find it rude…after all, just because I like it doesn’t mean that the person in the next car does, too.
“Excrement. That is what I think of J. Evans Pritchard, PhD.” --Robin Williams, Dead Poets Society
I don’t really get it, either. What I really don’t get, though, is why every single rap song that comes out today is “featuring” a half-dozen other rappers. You know what I’m talking about, “…and now, the latest song from Snoop Dogg, featuring Method Man and Lil’ Kim”, or whatever. Whazzup wid dat?
God is dead. -Nietzsche
Nietzsche is dead. -God
Neitzsche is God. -Dead
Who ever said RAP was music is either tone deaf or one of Jerry’s fucking kids!
I don’t know who said it but I agree. I really don’t mind what other people want to listen to but please, don’t FORCE me to hear it! I get that here in my neighborhood, the BOOM BOX cars. And I’m sorry, I never hear the 1812 Overture or Heavy Metal or R&B blaring like I do RAP.
One time my neighbors were blaring this shit in their driveway and I had my windows open. I asked them to turn it down. They didn’t. In fact, they turned it up. I waited until around 3 a.m. and then set the speakers up to the wall that’s closest to their house and blasted the 1812. Guess what? They haven’t done that shit to me since!
Listen to what you want but have some respect for others.
Cabbage – yeah, but I would have hit the folks across the street and I love them and their kids! I actually got to hear that particular piece performed in Denver with the cannons. It was AWESOME! I guess I could have angled the cannons almost straight up… hey! Stop giving me ideas like that!
As a proud member of the Hollis Crew, I would love to stick up for rap music. Unfortunately, I would have to erase most of the last decade in order to do so.
I cannot stand most of today’s rap music. It is creatively in a holding pattern where you have to fit into one of only a handful of categories to get any attention. The genre has not grown lyrically or musically in some time.
Now, that said, there are some amazing rap groups mostly from the '80s!) that need to be heard. A few suggestions:
Sugarhill Gang - They started it all. The bass player in the live band went on to play in Tackhead and Living Colour.
Slick Rick & Doug E. Fresh - The best hip-hop single of all time, “La Di Da Di” b/w “The Show.” You will notice a slew of sounds sampled elsewhere, and the human beatbox they do still sounds perfect today.
Run-DMC - Man oh man, they sampled rock riffs, rapped about funny things like sneakers, and were creative, setting the table with rules that undfortunately others would fear breaking.
The Beastie Boys are NOT a rap group. But Licenced To Ill was a rap album. And a great one at that. Whereas Paul’s Boutique is a great album, period.
Boogie Down Productions featuring KRS-One - Check “The Message,” the first hip-hop tune to get political and social. Took you to the inner city, where music had yet to go at that point.
Public Enemy - Thanks to Rick Rubin and Chuck D’s amazing powerful voice, PE forged an identity by being intelligent AND rough.
N.W.A. - Straight Outta Compton is one of the best statements made by any musician in the last 20 years, as far as commenting on how things really were. I will not blame them for the many insipid gangsta records that have subsequently came out (even though some of them were by members or direct protigees of the band), but this album, as a friend put it, “can’t be rap, because it’s too good.”
Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy - My favorite rap group. Too intelligent for mainstream success. Get their one album now. Leader Michael Franti is in Spearhead now.
The Goats - First album is the first concept album in rap. Great group whose live band put them off from rap fans, showing their intolerance.
De La Soul - Imaginative, very creative and exploring melodies, over a long career, De La Soul has never gotten old in my book.
Now, if anyone who is not closed minded wants to check out the above groups, I think you would be surprised at the musical and/or lyrical quality within.
I find rap to be annoying, irritating, caucauphanous, atonal, dissonant (where’s that thesaurus when you need it…)
That being said, it scares me that I am sounding just like my parents (Alice Cooper!?!?; that’s not a man’s name!). The other night, I was listening to a Janis Joplin retrospective; now we all know that Janis was one of the greatest modern blues vocalists in the genre, but, listening to her singing a a live cut, after she has consumed God knows how much Southern Comfort and an AA meeting’s worth of Marlboros, to the uneducated ear of my folks, I could see how they might not appreciate her unique sound.
Consider that the intended result is to alienate people outside the urban social strata where it is popular; Us against Them, They don’t understand, We are Cool; it’s the same as the rock-a-billy days of the fifties (“the devil’s music”, “the black man’s music”), Haight-Ashbury hippified threats of the sixties (“communist influenced propaganda”), or the Heavy Metal abominations that shocked Tipper Gore in the eighties ("Will someone please think of the childdren?!?!?!)
Now, if you’re under the age of, say, 25, I don’t know what your excuse is; maybe you’re really a dork. Me? I guess I’m just slip-sliding into fogeydom…
TT
“Believe those who seek the truth.
Doubt those who find it.” --Andre Gide
Janis Joplin RULES! I still like a lot of the 60’s and 70s music. Like the one - I forget the name - where that boss chick starts out singing ‘I think it’s so cool now that people have started getting to gether’ in those clear, crystal tones.
Stevie Nicks – the young version – who steamed me up every time I saw her, was great! Cyndi Lauper was cool too. (Love her face and eyes and that bell-like voice of hers and the way she dressed.)
Rap bites, blows, sux and isn’t very good. Now all the Black chicks have taken it a step further and are harmonizing - but all of the music has the same friggin’ sound! (Kinda like some of the disco stuff. Remember when someone took a bunch of different disco tunes and ran them all into a medly on one record because they all had basically the same beat?) PLEEEEZ bring back rock 'n roll! History has a tendency to repeat itself and so do fads (styles of the 60’s are coming back) so gimme that old time rock 'n roll with the music that moves my soul!
Dump rap! Start an anti-rap movement! Give us some groups that actually SMILE on stage like they’re enjoying earning their millions. Find us an Otis Redding! Dig up a Chuck Barry! Little Richard! Creedence Clearwater Revival, (Please – no Grateful Dead though), another Cher - BEFORE she became a bitch, and something like the Eagles. Groups with wild and colorful costumes, big smiles, Black singers who act like normal people and not ‘homeys’, and some songs that might not make much sense but are great to listen to. (I’ll even take some of those cool punk rock chicks with the cool, blue spiked Moehawk strip and wild eye make-up.)
Ah, yes. The good old days! My midi files over floweth. Some early Madonna would be great also, when she was cool and hot and wacky and wild.
[TANGENT] Have you heard Bonnie Raitt do a duet with her dad John? For those who don’t know, she’s a blues singer and he does Broadway musicals. Usually, they’ll sing some number from something like Oklahoma. He’ll sing the notes of the first verse, then, she will sing over, under and all around the notes of the next verse, but rarely hit a one!!! On the other hand, she’s a pretty good blues singer. [/TANGENT]
As far as rap goes, I have to agree with Satan (so does this make me in league with you???) 10-15 years ago, I hated the tens of thousands of hardcore punk bands that sounded like someone copying Minor Threat (and that would be the early D.R.I., for any of you willing to remember them.) I like the early rap, and like what De La Soul and… (!@#$!!! The guy who did “Don’t Do Crack”!!) Most of the rest sound like they were punched out of the same mold.
What about Chris Rock’s line about Kid Rock looking like he slept in Run DMC’s closet?
(By the way, I’m 34. I have a perfectly good reason for sounding like my father.)
Well, Rap had its peak, and was really good at that time. Vintage Run DMC, Sugar Hill Gang, LL Cool J, NWA, and EPMD are very talented, creative, and all around great groups. Dr. Dre and Snoop were very talented, and if you remove the bad PR they really are classics. The difference betwen good rap and bad rap are creative and understandable lyrics. I haven’t heard a good rap song in 5 years, and I really try and like it. The only inspired song in recent memory is Hard Knock Life by Jay-Z, and he sampled the Annie song to perfection, and made a video that featured some cute kids, and generally had a positive attitude.
I know that lots of rap centers around the worst things about society, but I think the animosity you people feel is very ignorant, and uneducated. You can not like it, you can not get it, but to show such a malice for everything about it, and anyone who enjoys it is tacky, and doesn’t engender much respect.
I won’t get into the hidden racism that most rap haters exhibit. I’m not saying any of you feel that way (I don’t know you), but those feelings are very common.
I agree with Satan. I really love the old school stuff from the early 80’s. I MUST give the Sugarhill Gang props though. I don’t really like the modern stuff at all, and I’m more into House, Freestyle, Salsa, and Oldies R&B.
some of my favorites are:
Afrikaa Bambataa (planet rock inspired my one of my favorite genres, freestyle)
Run DMC - been a favorite since a kid
A Tribe Called Quest - only heard a few songs, but I like what I hear.
De La Soul - again a fave since I was a kid (i’m showing my age :))
Digital Underground (I dont care what anyone says, I still love “The Humpty Dance” :)).
The newer stuff all sounds the same to me. My twin brother loves it and subjects me to it whenever he comes home from his AFB, and i’m in the car with him. He used to have some really hardcore, horrible stuff (talked only about his rapping skills, how many ‘hoes’ he’s had in bed, and all the weed he smokes). Incidentally I erased a few of those horrible tapes (he doesnt know, and besides, I told him anything he left behind when he went to basic training became mine unless he packed it up and put it in the garage).
I asked my brother why he likes it and he said “for the beat, not the lyrics”. I then asked him "then “Why are all of your written raps the same style?”. He couldn’t give a good answer.
I do think that the spirit of rap however is alive and well. You can hear it in Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, Korn, and definately some other groups I haven’t heard yet. These guys just rap over instruments, and rock beats without the heavy sampling of current rap. Its the hybrid of rock and rap that I think will be the next big thing, and eventually create its own genre.
And just to throw fuel on the fire. Janis Joplin is the most overrated rock star I’ve heard. She is glorified because of her death, and political visibilty in a turbulent time. From a musical stand point she doesn’t stand out in any aspect, bad voice, average guitar, and solid song writing. Her main attribute was being a woman in a male dominated period, and having a voice so bad that it made her truly unique.
To me, 90 to 95% of the rap out there is excrement, but I feel that way about most genres of music. You can find diamonds in the rough, if you’re willing to look.
Whenever people ask me what kind of music I listen to, I always tell them “good music”. That’s as good a way to put it as any; in my CD cabinet, the rap and bluegrass sit next to the jazz and punk. I can’t say “rap sucks” any more than I can say “jazz sucks” or “rock sucks”, because most of what you’ll find in any of them just doesn’t appeal to me.
Yes, Puff Daddy is a blight on the landscape, and in my world would have been executed for his bastardization of “Every Breath You Take”. But you can’t listen to It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy and tell me it isn’t a seriously powerful album.
The main reason for the decline of rap is the Turtles lawsuit against De La Soul for their use of an unauthorized sample from “You Showed Me”. Since then, you have to get approval for most every sample in a song- prior to that rappers sampled pretty freely. So most artists started trying to find obscure samples (or, like the Beastie Boys, creating their own samples) with some, like Puff Daddy, getting approval for one sample and then overusing it, Vanilla Ice-style,
Since that decision, I can’t think of a rap album that’s solid from start to finish with the exception of the Pharcyde or Cypress Hill’s first record.
Neuro trash Grrrl- check out the Dr. Dre album coming out later this week. EVERY track has someone being featured, most of 'em sound like they were pulled off the street.
So to address the OP, I like rap, but the relationship is getting strained.
I would like to defend rap music–it is a very time-honored style.
For example:
Lorne Greene’s “Ringo”
CW McCall’s “Convoy”
Commano Cody’s “Hot Rod Lincoln”
Any song by Johnny Cash.
And so on. . . .
Where I do agree with the OP is the “gansta rap” style that started evolving in the late '80’s. Up to that time, rap (by Black artists) was fun stuff–Run DMC, Fat Boys, Sugarhill Gang, Gap Band, MC Hammer.
Somewhere along the line, though, Black rap started becoming the style that we’re more familiar with, now–shooting people, beating women, drug deals, etc.
What’s more troubling to me than the style of the musice, though, is the fact that there is a very active market for it.
Yes, SOO much of the shit being played out today in rap music is WORTHLESS. (puff daddy, jay-z, juvenile, master p (or any of his crew)…but there is some rap (past and present) that is intelligent, and enjoyable.
echoing previous posts, de la soul is one of the best. (when’s that new double album coming out, anyway)
a tribe called quest…their first three albums are unbelievable (although their last 2 are forgettable)
Mojo, I agree…the first pharcyde album is IT!
and 87-91 public enemy…wow.
also, the black eyed peas put an debut album out last year that i thought was pretty damn good.
Yes, I concede the point that booming cars are annoying. But loud cars have no bearing on whether or not rap music is valid and enjoyable.
