Ah, I loves me some Macklemore, cutest redheaded rapper ever. Thrift Shop is glorious. (wut, wut?). There’s also Drake, who works in many genres. The new song from Lil Jon and DJ Snake is tons of fun too. And as painful as this is to admit, I enjoy much of Kanye West’s work.
Yeah, there is a lot of tiresome repetitive stuff out there, but Sturgeon’s Law holds true here as much as anywhere else: 90% of everything is crud.
To me, Public Enemy reigns supreme. The glory days are over, but rap is far from dead.
:: wanders off singing Started From the Bottom…very very badly ::
When I was a teenager I listened exclusively to thrash metal. Of course, my parents hated it and it led to countless arguments between us. I remember thiking: “If I have kids one day, I’ll be a cool dad who likes whatever music they’ll listened to.” And then I thought: “But what if it’s rap?”. That’s when I realized that there was a very real possibility that I’d end up saying the sort of things that my parents used to say :D.
The mid-song guest rap is to 2000s pop what the mid-song guitar solo was to 1980s rock: a predictable and almost always yawn inducing ego trip. Its only concrete achievement is to make the song 30 seconds longer which is useful when you’ve run out of ideas after the second verse.
So far this year, out of the six songs to reach #1 on the Hot 100, three of them have been rap songs; Eminem’s “Monster”, Pitbull’s “Timber”, and Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy”. And one of the other three (Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse”) has a rap guest verse.
This is the kind of life support a genre would love to be on.
One thing the author of the article is being-let’s just be nice and call it-negligent about is that record sales don’t determine hits like they used to. I stream a lot of new music via Rhapsody and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Then there’s Youtube which doesn’t give album sales either. It’s myopic to look solely at album sales and said which art form is dead or not. Except polka. Polka is dead.
Although in all fairness, Eminem is in his 40s now making Call of Duty commercials and Monster had Rihanna as guest. Pitbull isn’t really “rap” (and has Ke$ha as guest) and it’s not like Juicy J makes Dark Horse a hit.
Look, I like rap and have been listening to it for years. But for the most part, the rap of Dre, Snoop, Biggy, Tu Pac, Wu-Tang and so on is a thing of the past. Rap, indeed pop music in general has evolved into a radio friendly amalgamation of dance, electronic music, rap and alternative/indie rock. Ergo, Pitbull featuring Ke$ha, Katy Perry featuring Juicy J, Eminem featuring Rihanna, so on and so forth.
I though the mentioning of of 50c recent failure of an album was telling of the authors viewpoint. Grantland had a piece this week discussing 50s career and its generally been terrible after his first big album so using an act with a single good album’s 5 album to say the genre is dead is like declaring rock dead since Everclear’s most recent album had no hits.
The incorporation of country and the emergence of glam rap like the Exorcism of Roman parallels the development of rock in the '70s. One can spin out all sorts of other overlaps: Eminem as Elvis, the white breakthrough artist who soared, went away for a few years, and then came back not quite the same (although instead of playing Vegas, he’s doing game commercials); Kanye as the genre-bending Bowie; Macklemore as James Taylor, the artist that you play in the car when you’re on a date, etc.
The next development ought to be the rise of “punk rap,” declaring a return to the propulsive energy of the genre’s roots. Rip rap rippety doo!
Oh, really? Last Saturday, I attended the 25th Annual Accordion Kings & Queens concert at Miller Outdoor Theater in Herman Park. Mark Halata & Texavia represented the Tex Czech sound–but most of the conjunto guys play polkas, too. And people danced! It was a blow when the Polka Grammy ended in 2009, but there are still polka shows on the radio (& internet) for those who care.
Just having my ears open here in H-Town reminds me that hip-hop is far from “dead.” (They play it slow down here.) Although some scenesters say “it ain’t what it used to be.” Which is what all scenesters have said since the beginning of time. (And Warner Cable’s music choice channels include several hip-hop/rap variations. And those sounds have influenced much of today’s pop.)
I may be an old fart with weird musical tastes, but the OP reminds me that* I* ain’t dead yet, either.
NWA only had one lyrically strong album because of Ice Cube, and their song topics were always crude and limited. I think one of their first songs was “A Bitch Iz A Bitch,” and a song from their last album in '91 before they disbanded was “One Less Bitch.”
Why not ask where are the new Wu-Tang Clan and Bone Thugz N Harmony since they came after, sold more and helped hip-hop to grow, even within the confining sub-genre of gangsta rap.
Since Dr. Dre we’ve had Kanye West who blew up in the mid 2000s and has been an incredibly prolific producer and released six great albums, his last one being successful and experimental. Dre on the other hand only managed to release two solo albums.
Then you have Drake, someone who is half Jewish and middle class who raps about “I avoided the coke game and went with Sprite.”
There’s Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj.
Good point but I think that it’s because Lady Gaga, electronic and alternative/indie rock has become so popular. That’s why rappers have been incorporating it into their own music.
Look at 2pac and Biggie. The mid 90s R&B was really popular so you had both those rappers getting Jodeci and Faith Evans to do their hooks. Mary J. Blige was on Wu-Tang records. Even in the early 2000s Ja-Rule alone made a highly successful career out of R&B duets.
And isn’t radio friendly whatever the radio plays and the masses like? Becuase I’m pretty sure all the rappers you mentioned got plenty of radio play.
Drake IS Jewish. His mother was Jewish, which makes him Jewish according to traditional beliefs. He had Jewish education and a bar mitzvah. Most importantly, he self-identifies as Jewish.
I like that he never pretends to be anything other than what he is, be it Jewish, bi-racial, or Canadian.
