I suppose my point that is D12 is particularly bad about this- more so than others. So, I just found that an odd juxtaposition of ideas.
My son has a huge rap/hop collection which I plan on digesting (I am bogged down a bit in Persian and Indian classical just now), so I will give his comment second hand.
Most good artists are producing 1 or 2 commercial garbage cuts along side (or as part of) their current release. They know it’s crap, it’s only to get paid. The rest of the CD has nothing to do with that and is filled with edgy, good stuff. Or they release mixtapes for free and can do as they please, not bound by commercial influences.
So, yeah, it’s not on the radio. But, the good stuff never was. The radio stuff is unlistenable.
There are songs dime a dozen…
As stated, I don’t see it as overly difficult task. What I would hope for is for someone to provide also widely accepted GOOD song, not just any song on a topic. Following is a set for which I’d be curious to find out comparative rap songs:
About relationship (e.g. Radiohead: Jigsaw falling into place)
About follies of bragging (e.g. Arctic Monkeys: Fake tales of San Francisco)
About invasiveness of media into private life (e.g. Nirvana: Rape me)
About negative impact of drugs (e.g. RHCP: Under the bridge)
I’m assuming, of course, that rap knowledgable crowd is at least aware of the significance attributed to the songs above in terms of lyrical value (both, intentional and not when the song takes a life on it’s own), compositional elements, vocal performance, song impact, etc.
While on the subject, can someone also point to an album in it’s completeness as a significant collection or a concept rather than one or two songs with fillers. In other words what rap album might qualify for the series Classic Albums.
I don’t really think Nzinga meant any individual song that’s ever been recorded (since I don’t think there’s any rap about, for instance, Snoopy and the Red Baron saving Christmas together), and this is the opposite of exhaustively researched, but what the hell…
- Lost Boys - Renee
- Brand Nubian - Punks Jump Up to get Beat Down. Third Bass- Pop Goes the Weasel. Mos Def - Thug is a Drug.
- I don’t think Rape Me is a particularly good example to begin with. Anyway, Gang Starr - JFK to LAX.
- Public Enemy - Night of the Living Baseheads. Outkast - Get Up Get Out. Grandmaster Melle Mel - White Lines Don’t Don’t Do It. De La Soul - My Brother’s A Basehead. Etc.
There are just as many of these in hip hop as in any genre. Some personal favorites:
Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back
De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising
Beastie Boys - Paul’s Boutique
DJ Shadow - Endtroducing…
The Coup - Steal This Album (or Pick A Bigger Weapon)
Handsome Boy Modeling School - So…How’s Your Girl?
Outkast - Stankonia
Adding to the classics:
Boogie Down Productions - Criminal Minded
This is pretty much where hardcore rap starts.
I should also add, for some “progressive” rap, or whatever the hell they call it, Blackalicious has always been one of my favorites. Check out their 2002 release Blazing Arrow. The track Make You Feel That Way is particularly cool.
British hip-hop artists The Streets (basically, Mike Skinner) are also worth checking out for a change of pace and a completely different perspective. Try “Let’s Push Things Forward” for an idea. It’s quite a different take on rap than anything I’ve heard going on the US, and the “flow” is quite different than American hip-hop, but the quirkiness is charming.
You forgot the granddaddy of them all.
Slick Rick - Children’s Story
Daaaaave!!! The dopefiend shooting dope who don’t know the meaning of water nor soap!
Jimmy’s selections have me youtubing over here. I haven’t even thought about White Lines in years. Good music.
ETA: Jimmy, I really did like your rap in the other thread. Made me smile, it did.
In addition to the aforementioned, I’d add:
Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
Beastie Boys - Paul’s Boutique, and to a slightly lesser extent Check Your Head and Ill Communication
Dr. Dre - The Chronic
Snoop Doggy Dogg - Doggystyle
The Roots - Things Fall Apart
Kanye West - The College Dropout and Late Registration
That’s off the top of my head. I’d have a hard time thinking of that many well-known albums in any other genre over the past couple of decades that are that consistently good. Mainstream pop, rock, country, and just about everything else are worse about the “one or two good songs plus filler” syndrome than hip-hop.
One of my all-time favorite rap songs actually came out in 2007. I give you Baloji:
It is everything but stale. The youtube cut is over 9 minutes long, but it’s never boring! It has plenty of cool riffs, nice production, a very unique sound… And this from a rapper from Belgium!
This is the stuff that you won’t hear on radio.
Shit Brother, it went stale a long time ago… it’s got no melody, no tune, just the bass lines reused. It’s a dead end form of art.
This is, of course, just my opinion, but these are some hip-hop albums that I love from start to finish and would consider absolute classics (skewed towards the past decade or so because that’s the era I’ve grown to love the genre, I do listen to older hip-hop but haven’t properly explored the studio albums with enough authority to label any “classics”).
Jay-Z - The Blueprint, my favourite hip-hop album of all time, and also The Black Album
Kanye West - The College Dropout, and though it is only maybe half-rap, 808s & Heartbreak
Eminem - The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP
Nas - Illmatic
OutKast - Stankonia, and perhaps also Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Missy Elliott - Under Construction
Cannot express clearly enough how perfect these albums are to me.
Looking through my hip-hop collection I see a lot of albums built on maybe half amazing songs and half filler, but if I looked through my collection of CDs any other genre, I’d say the exact same thing. I also explore music through greatest hits collections, so with a few artists I know their work this way but haven’t yet gotten into their studio albums, so couldn’t say which ones are classics even though I know the artists themselves are important and talented. 2Pac, Public Enemy, Run-D.M.C. and NWA are particular favourites who I would name if we were talking about “classic rappers” rather than “classic albums”, as I don’t have quite enough knowledge to pinpoint their best albums.
As a fan of hip-hop, I think that the genre has been becoming progressively more stale since the beginning of the 2000’s to the point that I rarely listen to it anymore.
It’s way too late to edit now but I should point out that I messed up that quote in my last post - newcomer said the quote, not Nzinga, Seated. Sorry.
Three things bother me about rap today.
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Samples tend to be lifted from bona fide known songs, so the artist is really getting a free ride on the established riff. They don’t seem to be sampling from songs that no one ever heard of, or that were unpopular to begin with. I think this is the thing that really bugs Dio.
It’s like putting together your own tapes/playlists for working out and claiming you’re a musician - you’re not, you’re at best a good DJ, or a producer. -
Samples taken without permission of the author: Witness Kanye, who was about to get his ass legally handed to him recently over his unauthorized sampling from King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man”. Luckily Kanye and the suits came to their senses and paid the original author Robert Fripp, so it is now “authorized”. Fripp was getting his lawyers ready to have the song pulled.
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The seemingly perverse habit of taking what starts off as a standard pop tune and dropping a rap segment in the middle. The songs quite often can stand on their own; it comes off like the rap is added in for “street cred”. I had a great example of this but I’m blanking on the song. But sometimes it’s the reverse; like the current Eminem hit with Rihanna, where it’s a rap song with a token “standard” riff dropped in. Rihanna could have made a hit on just the riff embedded in that track. Eminem’s rap could survive on its own too.
Fixed.
Run DMC “Raisin Hell”… that album is start to finish a serious classic… “We can’t be stopped” by the Geto Boys… “Mind Playin tricks on me” is one of the greatest songs in my opinion of ANY genre… I put that shit up with “Let it be”… “Sounds of Silence”… “Stairway…”… “Rhiannon” anything…
As for the sampling… man please… You think I gave a shit when George Harrison got sued by Phil Spector? It didn’t change my attitude about George (underrated guitar player…less than average vocalist)
I didn’t care about Zep lifting a ton of shit on their first three albums… that’s what music is about… snippin a chord… a phrase… a solo whatever. I find it interesting that rappers get held to this ironically high standards… last i checked none of those guys are representing themselves as virtuosos…
Ahhh!! I even called my brother about that one; for some reason I didn’t think it was Slick Rick and I couldn’t come up with the title. I was saying “Gangster’s Story? Ganger’s Tale? Crime Story?” and he couldn’t help me. In retrospect I don’t know how I didn’t hear it in his voice.
God, thank you.
And thanks, Nzinga.
Not a huge fan of rap here. I’m not saying it’s inherently bad, but most that I’ve encountered has let’s say, just not spoken to me personally. The few bits that I have enjoyed have had some kind of out the ordinary hook. Actually, the rap songs that I really most enjoyed have been ones that were covered by other genres, thereby enhancing the tune to make it enjoyable and putting the rough and nasty lyrics into an ironic perspective.
As an outsider, it seems like there was the more flamboyant rap of the 80s with MC Hammer and Will Smith and Vanilla Ice, and the fun rap of the Beastie Boys. And then it gradually turned into predominantly rich-thug-playah-ganja-bling-bouncing cars rap. With a side of some interestingly slightly different flavored Eminem, and a bit of the ridiculous In The Closet / Gay Fish guy…
At least early rap had a somewhat upbeat vibe, like about dancing and stuff 
I think we have to consider what the OP really means. Obviously, rap, as it’s barest most technical definition, will not ever go away. It’s just another way of saying spoken word. I mean, technically speaking, Ani DiFranco is rap. And do we consider stuff where the main part is rap like, but it segues into a power ballad chorus to still be rap? Can cheery dancy flamboyant 80s rap really be considered the same musical genre as today’s gangsta stuff?
The answer then, is it will evolve, as it already has. Rap barely resembles the rap of olde. And the rap of the future will barely resemble the stuff of today. But there will always be rap in some form or another.
As far as hip hop, I’m an outsider for that too, but my outsider’s impression is that it’s a fairly vague label as musical labels go, and not actually all that useful as a descriptive genre. It seems to mean ‘all current black people music that is fairly trendy and not already confined to another genre’…