I try to stay culturally current, and my kid loves hip hop. And I still get at most 25% of the references in songs like “Not Like This”. I need an Internet study guide for the rest.
Apologies if it seemed like I was berating you. There’s no reason to read a bunch on it if you don’t have that level of interest. I was just trying to get across the message that this isn’t something you’re just going to get with a few paragraphs.
I thought this description/explanation had merit.
Like I said, I like bluegrass and especially oldtime. A LOT of people DETEST such music - or, at best, tolerate it. But if someone saw a scratchy recording of some old guy somewhere banging on a banjo or sawing on a fiddle and singing off tune, I could at least give some explanation of what they saw, where it fit in the history of music, and how it might be related to other types of music.
Way back in 1994, I ran into a dude who was incensed because a lot of people my age didn’t know who James Cagney was. A man who had died eight years earlier, whose heyday was in the 30s and 40s, and whose last work had been for television movies in the 80s. I only knew him because of caricatures on old Bugs Bunny cartoons. A few years back, Billie Eilish was criticized for not knowing who Van Halen was. She was born after 2000, and it’s not like Van Halen has been putting out a lot of hits during her lifetime.
I promised myself a long time ago I wouldn’t be a grumpy old man complaining about whatever music the yutes were listening to. While I don’t listen to Lamar, it’s obvious he’s very talented, and like Taylor Swift, I’m glad he’s found an audience that his work resonates with. In my old man moments, I get Lamar mixed up with Donald Glover.
The actual lyric was, “Say, Drake, I hear you like 'em young / Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor.” Given the texting stuff with underage girls that TroutMan mentioned, it doesn’t seem that out-of-bounds. It was also in response to a song from Drake, where he suggested Lamar was a domestic abuser, which seems to have even less evidence supporting it than Lamar’s diss.
(I got my info about the feud from this informative BBC article.)
I feel that you’re edging into gatekeeping. Like, you’re not learning fast enough for my tastes, so please stop asking for help.
Kendrick has had a spot on my list of top 10 all time rappers for a while now. I knew most of the songs that he performed so I didn’t really need lyrics, but I can understand why some people might. Rap performances don’t usually lend themselves to stadium style shows because of the lyrical focus. These performances usually fare better in smaller venues, at least IMHO. This was discussed at length in a few of my group texts before the show but the general consensus from my peer group was that he would be able to make up for it by adding some of the pageantry that he likes to use.
One of the reasons I thought that the Super Bowl LVI performance worked out well was because they mainly played Hip Hop party music. Meaning most of the songs from that show were in heavy rotation at parties and clubs that I went to in my teens and 20s (late 90s/early 2000s). They had some more current music as well but they mostly stayed with music you dance to.
I know you already corrected to the car to a Grand National (Buick), but I just wanted to say that was impressive because there is no chance that I would be able to tell the difference between those two vehicles from that distance if I wasn’t familiar with Kendrick’s work.
Personally, I thought the flag/America messaging was pretty clear at least on the surface levels. I noticed the flag motif as soon as the dancers started pouring out of the car. I didn’t notice all of the dancers were Black until they parted the flag for Kendrick the first time. I’m sure there was a ton of symbolism that someone will break down later this week but I always pay attention when Black artists incorporate patriotic symbols in their art. And speaking of patriotic symbolism…
I figured this part would be the most accessible for non-Black audiences, but I can see how some of the interludes may not have been as clear if you weren’t familiar with Kendrick’s catalog. Still I thought they were pretty obvious with the references to how Black people should behave around white people, talk around white people, and the proper way to entertain white audiences (to name a few).
I do appreciate that you seem to be coming from a position of genuine interest in learning. This is very different from the racists who love to say “that’s not music” or “I can NEVER understand what they’re saying” before complaining about being called racist for dismissing an entire genre of music that is overwhelmingly Black.
I like to use my mother (late 70s) as a baseline for people that don’t get rap/hip hop. She listens to jazz, R&B, and soul music with some classical and opera mixed in. If you asked her about rap in general then you’d probably get an explanation of its importance in Black culture with her concluding that it’s mostly not for her. However, my siblings I have introduced her to plenty of artists that she enjoys and she will happily listen to our playlists when she’s riding somewhere with us. I’ve found that most people who “don’t get” rap/hip hop end up coming to that conclusion after picking songs from a top 100 chart.
Did you listen to any of Kendrick’s Pulitzer winning album DAMN.?
Do you remember any of the rap and hip hop artists you listened to when you were trying to get a better sense of the genre?
There seems to be a lot to tease out here. I get the sense that authentic honest in-depth criticism of prominent artist/performers like Lamar or Drake from within the movement in question is a very rare thing, and that kind of gives me a bit of a cultish vibe. All that feud stuff seems more than a bit akin to the kind of angry posturing that professional wrestlers have long indulged in. I just get the sense that these performers are expected to sing and perform in certain predetermined ways, that there is a whole host of standards that they are to hew closely to. [note I’ve always found lyrics to be an indispensible facet of my musical enjoyment]
But as a 60-something white male I may be not even be wrong when it comes to my impression of said genre, but at the same time I recoil a bit against the accusation that those on the outside of a genre or movement cannot ever have any valid views and criticisms of it, that it isn’t all just knee-jerk yelling at condensating water vapors in the firmament. And sure, all that I just said above could apply just as well to many artists of past eras, tho they could just as easily have been engaging in kayfabe when expressing disdain towards a peer. Maybe they are sincere in their views, who knows for sure.
But for me the deepest praise I can give a musical artist is that they have managed to transcend the genre(s), conditions, and influences from which they arose, and I simply don’t get that sense when it comes to hip-hop.
I’m a 40 year old Black guy. We’re not a monolith but I don’t know a single person who would have described these two artists this way prior to this year. Drake mostly makes feel good club songs. Great to dance to but nothing that deep. And before this year Kendrick was praised for his talent but criticized for not making enough fun music.
Criticize away. Just know that if you can only form your criticisms by resorting to lazy racist stereotypes, then people are going to assume you’re a racist.
Hip-hop is older than I am. Are you saying that in 50 years no artists have ever transcended the genre?
[Moderating]
You would do well to apply the same tactic to threads you aren’t interested in, rather than threadshitting. The OP has chosen to learn about other cultures, and that is to be applauded.
Black culture site TheRoot has some explication of what the message Lamar (or K-Dot) was sending.
And of course, the black community is not a monolith, and the site was willing to say so.
In no universe do I expect reactions to be monolithic, but it’s genuinely funny that the article that shows that “some Black people didn’t like his performance” is just random tweets, some from accounts that only post a few times a year.
And one of them was repeated twice.
ngl, the site put that up either as pure clickbait or because they’re freelancers who get paid by the number of articles posted.
But the page’s mere existence points to both the idiocy of the modern Internet and the way that media sites scrape posts to find the most inflammatory extremes. Not just TheRoot but every site.
If you want funny, though, this page will leave you rolling on the floor.
Maybe they can book Twin Temple for next year.
I find it kinda strange that a genre that’s been around for 50 years and went mainstream in the early 80’s, a genre that has eclipsed r’n’r in sales and audiences world wide since at least the 90’s, still makes people confused. And I say that as a 63 y.o. white male, living in one of the whitest countries in the world.
With that said, I don’t like main stream country. I find the sentimentality to be saccharine and the lyrics trite. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate when I hear good musicianship or artistry that rises above the schmaltz., even if I don’t like it.
KL was the first artist outside classical/jazz to be awarded a Pulitzer. No artist from any other popular music genre has achieved that. None of the greats I grew up listening to [insert your favorite here] like LZ, Beatles, Genesis. Not even Frank Zappa who clearly stradled the line between art music and rock.
There’s been a lot of talk about Hip-Hops lyrics (or rhymes) in this thread, including KL’s texts. What I think is missing is how he excels musically. He is not writing melodies in the sense an old rocker might think of it, but he uses soundscapes, creates ambience and textures clearly inspired by jazz and classical, with some rock and pop mixed in. This is an artist not only with a message, but clearly someone who is extremely adept musically too. He clearly transcends average Hip-Hop which many times is just concerned with having a beat.
@Dinsdale
If you wan’t to learn more about KL and the album DAMN. which is what landed him a Pulitzer, here’s a very good analysis from the YT channel Digging the Greats. It’s long (45 min.) but if you do spend the time, I think you’ll garner an appreciation for Lamar’s artistry. Maybe not to the point where you actually like it (which is fine), but where you respect it.
Keep in mind that this is a risky thing to do, it may have gotten the show stopped. Black art often doesn’t have the luxury of being understandable in the moment, because it can get the artist silenced or killed. Sometimes it has to be about rallying the sympathetic and ignoring the hostile, leaving a message that can unfold fully in its own time.
I think one thing white people have a hard time understanding is how it feels to spend your whole life watching art that is not for you by people who are not like you. That’s just normal for Black people. White people should learn to be OK with experiencing this occasionally, that not everything in the world is for us, that an artistic performance can be complete and perfect even if white people don’t understand it well (or at all).
True! I told my wife during the show that subtitles would have helped enormously – for real. There’s true poetry in there, but if you can’t make out the words, there’s no point.
Sure, I’d love to see them perform their greatest hit “Let’s Have a Satanic Orgy”.
Ironically, MAGA-heads, if they didn’t listen closely to the lyrics and just enjoyed the 50s / 60s doo-wop sound, might think it’s a nice return to ‘American greatness’.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
How did you learn the lyrics? From repeated listening? Looking them up? Like I said, I never really looked up or tried to interpret the lyrics of - say - Bob Dylan. If a song was catchy enough that I listened it enough and sang along with it, I may have learned some/all of the lyrics. Buy not likely if they were not uttered intelligibly.
I am quite ignorant as to the divisions w/in rap/hip hop. I generally think it of limited value to overly parse broad genres. Was recently in a discussion WRT supposed subdivisions of psychobilly… And folk often ask my band what we play - but there is little answer other than to describe the instruments we play, list some covers, and say we play music we like.
Yeah - that was clear, but then when KL launched into another unintelligible mumble, I didn’t catch the connection.
For the past couple of years, it would likely be limited to performers on SNL or a few other mainstream shows. (Of course, in the past folk here have criticized me for calling something rap, which is actually hip hop or something.) So, Kendrick Lamar, Lizzo, Megan Thee Stallion, Bad Bunny, Chance the Rapper… So, basically 1-2 songs that left my wife and me saying, “Did you get that?” Having been interested in music since I was young, I was “aware of” rappers since the 80s or so. Once in a while a rap song has appealed to me - perhaps as background music in a movie. But it has never been anything I would just play for my enjoyment.
Here’s a tough topic to express - I’m not terribly sure “studying” it would help all that much because I’m not sure how much I respect the “culture” behind it. I look at those lyrics and with the n-words, aggressive and insulting language, non-standard grammar - it is quite foreign to what I generally like and respect. As I said, I have limited appreciation for poetry and, if this IS poetry, it does not seem to be a type of poetry I personally appreciate. The manner in which performers dress and move does not appeal to me. What is the cultural significance of Snoop and others grabbing their crotches? That section in the halftime when the young men were around the lamppost with silver teeth? They looked like nothing other than clowns. Maybe KL’s lyrics placed it in context, but I couldn’t understand them.
Fine - rappers and their fans are free to choose to express themselves how they wish. But I am free to not care for certain aspects of their expression.
Well, maybe. But 45 mins is quite a bit. And even if I perceive SOME merit to KL’s work, need I research other aspects of rap? How much am I supposed to give a shit about his feud w/ Drake? I recall a previous SB halftime that featured several rappers. Folk extolled the historical significance of it. But, not having lived it and loved the music, there is a limit as to how much I’m going to study something that doesn’t appeal to me.
And isn’t that a big part of it? Doesn’t music either grab you or not? Like I said, I detest opera. So I NEVER willingly listen to it. Doesn’t mean I don’t respect the ability reflected in the writing or singing of it, or feel others ought not listen to it if that is their wish.
I am no musicologist, but I missed such clear references. I admit, I’ve never really appreciated “sampling.”
Well stated. And something I fully empathize with. So I’m fine with KL or other rappers. performing at SBs or anywhere else. I guess I should just get more comfortable with saying, “I don’t care for it.”
“And this is about me and my personal taste, not the artist.”
Cool. Good qualification.