I don’t see the value of using a rapper known for using the “N” word in a half time show. Cleaning up his act for the show doesn’t absolve the choice the NFL made. There are plenty of inspirational performers that would have done a better job.
No. The Superbowl halftime show is not designed for the usual NFL viewing audience. It’s for people who wouldn’t tune in, but for the show. Kendrick Lamar is a headliner.
~Max
Cite? And why would bringing non-viewers in at HALF TIME help this? “Hey everybody, lets gather around the TV for 13 minutes to watch Kendrick Lamar”. We’ve never heard of NFL football, we’ll watch that afterwards.
The most expensive ads are slotted during halftime. Some people do tune in just for the halftime show,
“We’ve broken the record again! The most watched Apple Music Halftime show EVER, with 133.5 Million viewers,” the companies wrote on Instagram. Lamar’s halftime show performance drew a larger audience than the Big Game itself, which Fox Sports reported had an average of 126 million viewers.
which is remarkable because you would expect a significant percentage of viewers drop off during the break:
But more importantly the halftime show is a big part of the draw for non-football people to go to watch parties (the other draw being the party), possibly a fifth or sixth of the viewership I would guess.
~Max
I would disagree with that pretty strongly. Other people are talking about the use of language, but here is a very popular rap song that has just a ton of melody. Maybe not where you expect, but it’s got huge amounts of it. Like, I can absolutely hum this and it is going to be stuck in my head now that I looked it up to get the link.
J Dilla is the most influential artist on modern Jazz that exists. He is 100% pure hip hop. Hard to say that Jazz is being influenced by an artist devoid of melody. Also, note the lack of the N word.
Lupe Fiasco another crazy stupid popular artist with just crap loads of melody all over the track (also earwormy as heck) Also, note the lack of N word.
There is melody in the lyrics too not just in the background music. Though that’s usually secondary, note that in both songs with lyrics the lyrical melody, while limited, is clearly intentional and repeated.
Anyway, I actually came back to link to The Rap Critic’s video about the Kendrick/Drake beef.
That would be an epic understatement. If that’s your idea of a melody then we are at a musical impass.
Odd choice from NAF but here’s the aforementioned Salt-N-Pepa with no N-word, no misogyny and lots of music & melody.
Here’s another good example. Chance The Rapper’s melodic rap about his grandma
Not as melodic as I was expecting, especially given Run the Jewels + ZdlR, but props to Shea Whigham.
Misogyny, sure, fuck that shit - but what is wrong with AVE speakers using a non-pejorative word that is part of their own vernacular?
I probably placed the wrong song at the top of the list. But, I was going for a song that had the melody being carried outside of the vocal. Maybe not the right place to start in retrospect. I was going to go with Legend Has It originally but figured that a brag rap song sort of undermined some of the other points.
It isn’t following the rules of traditional western music. But it’s not like what hip hop does is entirely unheard of even within the western tradition, and it’s reasonably common outside of it.
Another link to Open Mike Eagle breaking down the meta commentary in the performance.
This is, I think, a direct answer to the OP.
Open Mike Eagle is an underground rapper, youtube personality, and teacher (because underground rap doesn’t pay the bills) and he’s super smart and tied in to “the culture” and well respected.
Putting the lyrics aside, it’s completely monotone. It’s poetry performed on a single note. Remove the words and it’s closer to Morse code. Great if you like it.
It’s not though. It’s repetitive but so is Philip Glass, Woody Guthrie and Aphex Twin. It’s a repeated 4 note descending motif. You can hear monotone in the “and the crowd goes RTJ” bit. The decending motif is repeated after that but (around 2:45) in the keyboard “marimba” bit.
And before you say a repeated 4 note motif isn’t anything, it’s different from what was in the other RTJ song, so clearly a choice. And it’s as much variation as something like early Bob Dylan has.
And, keeping in mind that vocals are a percussion instrument in hip hop it’s much more exciting than say, Thus Spoke Zarithustra(2001 a Space Odyssey) where the drums just play perfect 4ths.(and the rest of the Orchestra isn’t doing a ton more honestly. At least in that opening. (5 note accending motif plus a couple of chords no one really thinks about.)
I’m not a huge folkie, nor a student of Woody, and I acknowledge that some fiddle/oldtime tunes are repetitive, but please explain/give examples of Woody Guthrie being “repetitive.” (Other than a possible isolated few examples from a prolific writer.)
I mean, I went to the official Woody Guthrie Lyrics Page and clicked on the first song and here ya go.
Any song with a chorus is typically repetitive.
Thank you for this banger! I’m loving it!
I sat with my son a couple times over the last few days and he personally led me on a deep dive into hip hop occasioned by Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show. He filled me in on many of the arcane references. Discussing the line “but it was A minor,” he knew the Drake diss, and then I pointed out that the key of A minor uses all white keys on the piano, and he went “Whoa…! Wow, yeah!”
Then he called up some free beats online and freestyle rapped for me. His flow, rhyming, and conscious lyrics were so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes. Then he showed me a friend of his who I had only known as a little kid, now grown up, who is a noted battle rapper in Richmond, Virginia.
My son keyed me in that the key to it all—“it all” being hip hop authenticity—is the Cipher.
The Cipher is a circle (cipher is a synonym for zero; it holds symbolic meaning in the Five Percenter movement also known as the Nation of Gods and Earths, which is a whole other topic). Battle rappers stand in a circle and take turns rapping to each other. A coin toss awards one of the contestants the option to go first or second. They freestyle at each other’s faces up close and personal. This is the true heart of hip hop rap. It’s real and real-time and focused on the human beings facing you.
The most crucial point taken from this is that Kendrick Lamar came up in the Cipher on the streets of Compton, a world center of hip hop where the best competed, and this bestows ironclad authenticity on him, especially because his lyrics are conscious about keeping it real. That Drake from Toronto never did the Cipher and is an “industry plant,” utterly lacking any authenticity at all. Never mind ephebophilia, that’s just trash talk. The Cipher is the real key to it all.
I assume you missed this part?
How many more out of that quite long list? Just going alpphabetically, I’ll give you Against the Law. But I would wager it is a small minority.
That is a curious - and I think silly, interpretation.