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[BonsaiK]

Are rappers complete tryhards in reality or is it all an act to attract consumers?

I was wondering when rap would make an appearance here.

If everything that rappers talked about was real, they'd all be either dead, in jail or in the STD clinic. Of course, a few are in these places, but most aren't. What does that tell you.

The lyrics in rap are deliberately exaggerated, and always have been. This can be traced back to the movement's roots in the Jamaican dancehall scene. The original rappers were more like spruikers, they'd be guys who would get on the mic and try to attract you into a club or party, by telling you how great the DJ is, or how hot the girls are, or whatever. No different to the guys who get on the mic in the shopping mall and try and get you to buy suits or handbags or whatever. Gradually this MCing meshed with the DJing that was happening at the club/party itself, as different MCs would try and compete with each other for more attention. They gradually incorporated rhyming, talking the DJ up, talking themselves up (while simultaneously shit-talking the opposition), very broad humour, storytelling, controversial statements, innuendo and several other things into the speeches - just whatever it took to grab attention, get someone into their club and not someone else's... modern rap has retained all of these original elements (and collected a few more along the way, such as the political stuff, which came later, and more sophisticated wordplay). It's actually very intentionally funny, lighthearted music, even when discussing serious topics or including a lot of profanity, violence etc, it's not meant to be taken quite as seriously as a lot of people take it. Rap can be serious too of course, but even in the most serious raps there is still humour embedded in the worldplay. All the really good practitioners of the style understand this concept innately. Unfortunately, many others (performers and fans alike) miss the point completely, and that's why you have all these dickheads running around thinking they have to be "hardcore" or whatever. You can't really blame rap for that though, I've listened to the most violent, misogynist, distasteful rap I could get my hands on ever since I was 13, I'm now 36 and yet I've managed to resist the temptation to act like a shocking douchebag. The bottom line is that rap is exaggerated entertainment like like metal is exaggerated entertainment and Eminem and 50 Cent probably aren't going to fuck your mother just like Dragonforce probably really aren't going to carry on "through the fire and flames".

Oh, I understand that not all rappers are the morons they portray themselves to be. I've listened to quite a bit of rap and I just honestly can't tell whether they support the stuff they say. I listen to metal myself, so I can't exactly claim highground on maturity.

I'm not talking about the fans either.

I guess what my poorly worded question was meant to say, Do new rappers really support the crap they talk (in the majority)?

I realise that the genre started out differently, as do most things and I can see the skill in quite a lot of the music. Plus most the rappers most have some ability/charisma to get where they are. My issue is with their socio-political views. Are they just reflections of a consumer base whos views are not appealed to by other genres?

Which particular socio-political views are you referring to? Because there's a lot of different rappers out there and they certainly don't all see eye-to-eye on that front, that's for sure...

Oh, I mean the stereotypical, punk was anarchy, rock was social reform, grunge was disillusionment and rap seems to be crime worship.

Rock was about social reform?!? That one's news to me!

Rap doesn't really "worship" crime, but what it does do is try and give a voice to the mind of a criminal. The rappers themselves usually aren't criminals, but often they will have friends who are, or they'll be growing up in a community where they see crime all around them. Let's look at what is probably the most anti-law song I can think up off the top of my head:


Pro-crime, right? Not really. What the song was really trying to say is that police in LA were instantly stereotyping kids in ghetto areas as criminals. In other words, they're targetted by cops, taken in on spurious or no charges just because they live in a certain area, fingerprinted, fed into the law enforcement machine, and once you get treated like a criminal enough times... you start to feel like you've got nothing to lose and might as well act like one. The argument (whether you agree with it or not) is that young kids in this situation don't even have a chance to be anything but criminals from the beginning and that the police system was breeding whole neighbourhoods of criminals deliberately - in essence that's an anti-crime message, it's saying "give kids a chance or they'll never change". Before songs like this came out, people didn't know about the situation in LA, where there was widespread police brutality, or any of the related problems in these areas. What this song really was, was a chance for kids to vent their frustrations about the situation, and also a warning. The warning wasn't heeded, and a few years later, LA burned, and then everybody knew. Of course, then people tried to blame it on the music, specifically this song, which wasn't even a rap song, but a popular rapper made it (Ice-T was as big as Eminem in his day), so it became a target:


I'll let Ice-T talk about the real meaning behind his music, he does it better than I can do it for him.


Ice-T also had plenty of songs like this (forgive the cheesiness, this one's a bit old-school):


If you listen to it all the way through, the message is plainly obvious - being in a gang sucks, but in that environment, it's just about all that a lot of kids feel they have to turn to. Ice-T isn't trying to promote the gangster lifestyle, he's trying to open people's eyes to why a lot of people in poor communities might consider to choose that lifestyle, so then maybe people can try to tackle the real underlying problems in those communities.

There's a deep moralism that hides under the surface of rap music's supposed amorality. But sometimes music is just for fun. Let's listen to something very unashamedly "gangster", far less overtly moralistic and in a more modern style:


People who purchased an original copy of Doom II back in the day will notice the deliberate similarity in the artwork, and the Doom II computer game was even subtitled "Hell On Earth" originally, too. So what's going on in this track? Well it sounds like they're talking about violence and organised crime or something, but what they're really talking about is their superiority as a rap group. Rap music blurs the line between these two things all the time, and this stems back to the original roots of rap where MCs would compete verbally. That's why the violent computer game analogy works so well. This isn't a glorification of gangsterism, it's the first shot in an FPS with a microphone and beats. Let's listen to another song from the same album:


Put the lyrics in the context of the gangster lifestyle and it sounds amoral, scary if you believe it, straight-up stupid if you don't. Put the lyrics in the context of Mobb Deep competing against other rappers instead and it suddenly makes perfect sense. This is a "dis rap" directed at the group's enemies (remember what I said earlier about the Jamaican scene) and all the bloodplay is metaphorical - the group are shooting the opposition with poetry, not bullets. The real message of that song is "I heard you on your album talking some stupid shit about us, you're a fucking poser". The violent metaphors are just there to drive home the point and give the song a graphic edge.

Hope this is making sense...

 

[BonsaiK]

le snip

I haven't forgotten about this post. I feel rude not replying to such an in depth and well thought out post. Just don't have the time at the moment. Hopefully I will remember to reply.

All good, take your time. This thread isn't going anywhere and I have it bookmarked, so I know straight away if people post in it, even if I'm not quoted.

 

[sh0tgunenclave]

If you were presented the option of recording your own album in a rented recording studio and mixing/packaging/distributing it on your own, would it be better to go forward with the whole process mentioned, or try to get a deal with a label?

 

[BonsaiK]

If you were presented the option of recording your own album in a rented recording studio and mixing/packaging/distributing it on your own, would it be better to go forward with the whole process mentioned, or try to get a deal with a label?

Doing everything yourself is cheaper, you get complete artistic control, get to do things on your own clock, work where and with who you want, make all the decisions etc... on the surface, it seems like the only option that makes any sense. That is, until you've got a house with boxloads of CDs in it and you're thinking "how the fuck am I going to convert these into money?". Making an album isn't that hard - getting people to buy it is a prick though (especially nowadays with spoiled Gen-Y nerds across the globe acting like they're morally entitled to your hard work for free ahem). If you don't care about money, that's fine. Just keep making CDs and make sure you pick up a job somewhere else so you can also afford to eat and have a roof over your head. On the other hand, if you're actually trying to make some semblance of a living from your musical output, you need to find a way to have those little plastic discs that you invested all that money on make some sort of return, or at least recoup what you spent. That's where a label can help.

There's different types of label deals. There's the "distribution deal", where all the label does is take your CD and put it on a shelf, or in a catalog somewhere, and they take a cut for doing so. They don't promote, organise gigs, nothing - that's all up to you. Then there's the actual "record deal" in the traditional sense where the label puts a great deal of investment into promoting your product and getting you some exposure in the marketplace, even to the point of hiring staff who work for you such as managers, roadies, tour managers, etc. However, if the label is going to be making investments like that, they damn sure want to make sure that they're not throwing money down the drain, so they'll want you to do things the way that they want you to do them. If you're going to start doing things that might be "unpopular" in the marketplace (like change your music style to something less marketable, for instance, but that's just one example of potentially hundreds of things) they're going to start questioning whether having a continued business relationship with you is in their best interests. Many deals also fall somewhere between the "record deal" and the "distro deal". All of that kind of stuff is negotiated when the deal is drawn up, and it depends what you (and the record company) both want to get out of the situation. It also depends on how honest everyone is being.

So there's no fixed answer to this question, because there's so many factors involved. Hope that gives you some insight into just a few of them...

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

(especially nowadays with spoiled Gen-Y nerds across the globe acting like they're morally entitled to your hard work for free ahem)

Hey now, it wasn't morals holding X'ers back from copying the fuck out of everything it was lower tech for copying stuff and lack of a global, annonymous distro network.

 

[Nouw]

Just how many people sample other songs?

 

[BonsaiK]

(especially nowadays with spoiled Gen-Y nerds across the globe acting like they're morally entitled to your hard work for free ahem)

Hey now, it wasn't morals holding X'ers back from copying the fuck out of everything it was lower tech for copying stuff and lack of a global, annonymous distro network.

Well I never said that wasn't true.

 

[BonsaiK]

Just how many people sample other songs?

Not as many now as you might think. Overt sampling of other people's songs has definitely decreased since it started.

In the late 80s and early 90s, sampling was the Auto-tune of the day - it was the new technology that studios had latched onto as the "it" sound, and it was also the thing that traditionalists were saying would destroy music. Of course, that didn't happen. So what did happen?

There's two reasons why there's less sampling now - the first reason is that back in the late 80s there were no laws to deal with copyright as it specifically pertains to sampling - all the copyright law at the time was about prosecuting people for stealing whole works, no-one cared about little snippets until Public Enemy looped James Brown's "Funky Drummer" a ton of times and made half an album out of it. Then everyone went ballistic and the law scrambled to play catch-up. After a while the law did indeed catch up and now if you want to sample something and it's any more than a "reasonable portion" (and what that terminology really means is a "recognisable portion" - which is another way of saying that if you get busted, it's illegal, and if you don't, it's not) then you need to get permission to do it. You may also need to pay royalties and so forth to the original artist if you take a big enough slice. That's why (for instance) rap music moved away from sampled drum loops to synthesiser and MIDI-generated drum loops in the early 90s.

The other reason why there's less sampling now, is that sampling is just less hip now. It's been done. Where we're at now with sampling is that it's technology that people have gotten used to. When Ministry started mixing samples and metal guitar in 1987, everyone shit their pants at how innovative it was, just like when Cher used Auto-tune on "Believe", people were like "what is that fucking robot voice thing?!?". Now it's no big deal because that sound has been heard before. Sampling is still there in the mix but it's not such an overt feature of music like it once was. The same thing will happen with Auto-tune eventually - it'll still be there, but it won't be quite as in-your-face as it is at the moment.

(Keep in mind for this answer I'm referring to "sampling" as someone snatching a recognisable portion of someone else's song - I'm not talking about stuff like someone taking a solitary drum hit or guitar note and playing it back through a MIDI device and building up a song from it, that's a slightly different kettle of fish.)

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Just how many people sample other songs?

Not as many now as you might think. Overt sampling of other people's songs has definitely decreased since it started.

Especially since Goldie started throwing people down staircases.

 

[Nouw]

What is your opinion on the Viva La Vida plagiarism claims?

 

[BonsaiK]

What is your opinion on the Viva La Vida plagiarism claims?

Coincidence. Coldplay wouldn't have done it deliberately, they just used a very cliched melody and chord progression that have been used before several times. The fact that not one but three different artists have all said "I wrote something like that before" goes to show just how common it is, and in fact they wouldn't be the only three... I swear there's a Belle & Sebastian song that sounds almost identical too, I just can't remember which one it is. My opinion is that Satriani and that other band have both seen a legal opportunity and were just trying to make a buck out of Coldplay's success - because if not, why didn't they sue each other instead? No, they went after the bigger fish, because there's more money in it...

 

[Nouw]

What is your opinion on the Viva La Vida plagiarism claims?

Coincidence. Coldplay wouldn't have done it deliberately, they just used a very cliched melody and chord progression that have been used before several times. The fact that not one but three different artists have all said "I wrote something like that before" goes to show just how common it is, and in fact they wouldn't be the only three... I swear there's a Belle & Sebastian song that sounds almost identical too, I just can't remember which one it is. My opinion is that Satriani and that other band have both seen a legal opportunity and were just trying to make a buck out of Coldplay's success - because if not, why didn't they sue each other instead? No, they went after the bigger fish, because there's more money in it...

Ah thank you, you never fail to answer fully. +100 Respect! Also another question if you can be bothered, what is your opinion on music reality T.V. shows like American Idol and the X Factor.

 

[BonsaiK]

what is your opinion on music reality T.V. shows

From the industry side, I can see why such shows have developed - it's a really good way for them to monetize something which lately has been on a major, major downturn, and it's also a good way for them to tap into social networks and so forth. If the topic of office conversation is "who won Idol" then that's some serious marketing power right there, and probably the first time in decades that music has entered the realm of mainstream popular idle-time thought. Also giving people an emotional investment in the artists through the heavily inflated drama and shenanigans of a TV show is probably going to make them feel more attached to the finished product when it comes out...

For performers entertaining the idea of entering into such a competition, I have one word of advice - don't. The problem with competition shows from a performer's perspective is that the record contract you get at the end is something that you win as opposed to something that you negotiate, and in that kind of position your bargaining power is zero. If you've just beaten out thousands of other people and won some show, and you don't like what's in your contract, because it says that other people are going to be hired to write all your songs and therefore you won't get paid any royalties, or that they're going to spend x amount of promotional money on you that you haven't got a hope in hell of recouping through album sales, or that you don't have control over your image, or whatever, and you say "hey wait a minute, can we negotiate this", do you think they will? Hell no - they'll just tell you to fuck off and then they'll sign whoever got to second place in the competition, who will no doubt be more than delighted to sign their life away. After all, most singers who go through that process are fairly interchangeable because they're generally singers, not singer/songwriters with an actual distinctive style that you can't get elsewhere (those guys either get carefully weeded out before the finals begin, or they notice how much they'll have to butcher their songs to fit into the format of the show and are savvy enough to not even enter). Most people are so excited about winning that they'll sign any damn thing someone shoves in their face - after being through that ordeal, why make a fuss over a bit of paper at the end, which probably doesn't even look all that different to the untrained eye to the dozens of others that they've probably had to sign just to get to that point?

The first reality TV music show was actually made in New Zealand, and it was a bunch of girls competing to be part of a Spice Girls-style "girl group". The girls who won, won, an album was rush-released, it was a massive hit in NZ, going double-platinum, and guess how much money the girls saw? Well, let's do some slightly hypothetical math.

The album that group made sold 40,000 copies approximately (that's right folks, a "platinum record" in New Zealand is only 15,000 sales - those gold and silver framed records don't look so impressive now, do they?). Times that by CD retail price which I'll very generously estimate at $40NZ. 40000 x 40 = $1,600,000. Ka-ching, right? Well, no. Firstly, divide by 5, because there's five girls in the group, now we're down to $320,000 per girl. Then deduct production costs which might be $1NZ per unit and divide the result again by 5 which means 8000 so now we're at $312,000 per girl. Still fairly respectable - but wait. That promotional video, that cost quite a bit of money. So did those TV ads the record label took out. Then there's stylists, wardrobe managers and all that bullshit that pop artists at that level absolutely must have or they'll die screaming in a pool of acetate. And we haven't even got to the cost of the TV show, all the people who need to be paid for that, not just judges and stars but those behind the scenes doing unglamourous work like making sure the mechanical lights move properly, arranging the cheese dip backstage etc. All those people have to be factored into the budget for this thing, then if there's money left over the girls might see it... if they wrote their own songs, that is. Oops. Someone else wrote them, so guess who gets the royalties? Anyway, the thing ran out of steam eventually as the idea went cold in the marketplace as such things inevitably do, and the girls didn't see much more money than what they would have seen if they'd been working behind the checkout in a supermarket the whole time. $1,600,000 really isn't much, the TV station would have probably made more money selling the advertising time in the commercial breaks.

Anyway this business model was a huge success for everyone else ahem so the idea was quickly repeated in Australia with another group who had slightly more longevity before suffering a similar fate, and then other places in the world, and then the Idol thing spawned a bit later, basically inspired by the same concept. Out of all the girls who entered a few did go onto bigger careers, but those ones were generally the girls who were smart enough to jump ship before it started sinking. It's a model designed to make money for the people running it, and it does. It doesn't do much else, because it's not designed to.

 

[The Salty Vulcan]

Whats your opinion regarding some of the more outrageous of todays music stars such as Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Rihanna?

Also. Just what has become of the concept album?

 

[BonsaiK]

Whats your opinion regarding some of the more outrageous of todays music stars such as Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Rihanna?

Also. Just what has become of the concept album?

Firstly, go to page 4 of this thread and read post 134.

Now, in addition to that - anyone who thinks Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Rihanna are "outrageous" has just failed music history class. Not only is their music pretty commercial and radio-friendly, but their antics have been done before and far more daringly in previous generations. What's the most extreme thing these people ever did - wear a few weird clothes? So fucking what, David Bowie wore a granny's dress on the front cover of some album he did in about 1970. Freddy Mercury was always wearing weird shit too (and no doubt the Queen-obsessed Lady Gaga is taking some of her fashion cues directly from him), and countless others too. None of them look anywhere near as bizarre as Gene Simmons in makeup... oh but wait, these people are all male, that's the real reason why nobody complains. Men looking weird is acceptable, women looking weird is not, because armchair Internet music critics are as sexist as ever. And don't get me started on wild, partying lifestyles or lyrical content, none of the artists you've mentioned has done anything that hasn't been done before in that arena. They're just women doing it. That's the real issue, I think. As soon as Amy Winehouse is spotted doing a bump of cocaine it's like "oh, disgusting", but on the other hand everyone feels sorry for Keith Urban and hopes that Nicole Kidman's cuddles will make him better. It seems that in this day and age it's still only acceptable for men to ruin their lives with substance abuse.

As for concept albums, well, they're still being made, but you're missing the larger point here that the album itself is probably going to become a dying format. People these days don't tend to listen to albums in their entirety as much as they used to - nowadays people just load their favourites into their MP3 player or onto a big list in their computer and hit "shuffle". If the concept album is dying it's because people are starting to realise that not many people listen to an album all the way through anymore. Some still do, of course, and there will always be a small amount of concept albums being made just to cater to those types of people, but the days of the concept album as a mainstream phenomenon are over, probably forever.

 

[Doog0AD]

Double question. First, what do you think the future of the album is with the internet and free downloading being all the rage? Second, I'm sure this has probably been answered before, and if anyone else could just direct me in the direction of the right post, it'd be just fine, but how does the IP law actually work, and how does the industry enforce it?

 

[DanielSPG]

What pieces of hardware and software do you lean on the most in composition and production?

Anything you would recommend adding to my kit?

What sort of stuff are you recording, or intending to record?

I've written hundreds of tracks of experimental electronic stuff and after a decade of work decided that my stuff was decent enough to self publish 3 albums (and growing) of really caustic IDM / Industrial / Experimental / Soundtrack -ish material under my solo "band" handle. Skinny Puppy meets Venetian Snares meets Aphex Twin meets Einsturzende Neubauten kinda noise.

I was deeply interested in sound synthesis and digital signal processing, so I sought out hardware I felt would allow me the biggest canvas to work on and learn (like NI Reaktor or Clavia's Nord Modular synths).

I'm pretty good with what I've been pursuing in that regard. What I was wondering from you, specifically, would be what hardware and software you would employ towards more ambitious Foley work and programs to score to video... I heard Nuendo is a popular platform, but I've never tried it...

Just fishing for any hints or general advice on bits of equipment you really liked or expedited your workflow as pertains to your experience with dealing with Microphones / Rack Units for Foley work, or any software platforms you've worked with in video production.

Did u ever look into Max/MSP? As "canvas" goes, u can't get much bigger. It's great for the more experimental noisey tracks. I use it all the time for algorithmic composition, soundscapes, sound design. It's also great for interactive installations, video generation.. well basicly.. evrything multimedia related. It's not easy to learn though

 

[DanielSPG]

I recently grauduated as audio designer. Got a job for me? Here's my portfolio http://www.mass-ad.com (hope you read dutch hehe)

 

[BonsaiK]

Double question. First, what do you think the future of the album is with the internet and free downloading being all the rage? Second, I'm sure this has probably been answered before, and if anyone else could just direct me in the direction of the right post, it'd be just fine, but how does the IP law actually work, and how does the industry enforce it?

First part of the question - see the last bit of the post directly above yours. Albums will probably still exist, but they won't be the big deal that they once were. I'm just guessing of course but that certainly seems to be the way that things are currently travelling - the single is gaining far more importance in the marketplace.

How does intellectual property work? Well, in regards to music, if you write something yourself, you're the "copyright owner" of that work. That means that other people can't do shit with your work without permission. It gets a lot more deep-rooted and complicated than that of course, you could wiki "intellectual property" and get a more in-depth overview and save me some typing because I'm just going to tell you the same stuff anyway. As for how the industry enforces it, whenever we notice someone breaching copyright we sue their ass to the best of our ability... and that's basically it.