Cheesebob said:
Rap has sucked since Eminem stopped producing albums regulary (although his new one kicks bottom) Also DMX and Obie Trice's new shit is well...not as good as their early stuff
50 cent was and always will be crap.
Punk has stopped existing, Prog rock seems to be coming back (Muse) and Alternative Rock has one of the biggest this century (Coldplay), Oasis has started making better music, but is slowly dieing...lots of pop needs to die quickly and R.E.M. has started to sort themselves out
So a mixed state of affairs in the music industry, but mainly positive
I figured I'd respond to this seperatly.
Rap and Hip Hop pretty much exist to promote a sub-culture, it's never really been about the music which is why you have so much drek being popular. It seems that like 99% of what revolves around Rap is who is the harder scumbag, which is why you have people feuding about who is more "Real", how many times people have really been shot, and how much hard prison time they have done. The sales for bands can be directly tied to these feuds, more so than the music.
Truthfully, it seems there have only been a few people who have been serious about Rap/Hip Hop as music. Eminem is one of them. Laugh if you want but Vanilla Ice is another. DMX, The Fat Boys, etc.. can also be good examples depending on when and what your talking about. There is more than I'm saying, I'm just listing what I feel are examples.
Punk died in the 1980s. See the ironic thing is that you can't try and BE Punk, you either are Punk or your not. This level of individuality pretty much exploded for a very brief amount of time, and attracted a lot of poseurs and hangers on. The thing is though that if you like get a pink mohawk and zebra striped leather pants, and perform music in that style to promote yourself as "punk" you can't be punk. The most your going to be is a poseur. Punk is pretty much a label applied by others, not something you can choose to be and have it be real. This is why the movement died. In trying to be punk, punks disappeared.
As far as not recognizing generes of music, well to be honest with you I think it is true nowadays that a lot of what people try and say is music is just noise. Honestly I know every generation has said this about the music of the younger generations, but I think it's actually becoming true to an extent.
Part of the problem of course is that when dealing with things like Rap a lot of it is just a bunch of self-declared thugs who the world would probably be a better place without, rhyming about what absolute wastes of human life they are to a beat. In some cases they don't even bother to rhyme or follow the meter of the music, they just talk.
Listening to rap for example nowadays you talk about how bad it is and someone will say "oh it's music, it's an art" and then by way of justification start talking about the person performing and much drugs they hustled on the streets of New York or whatever. Or "oh yeah, this guy is really a pimp. He got busted for it and did time in jail and everything".
Oh god yeah, that qualifies the genere as music.
Truthfully the best defenses of the genere AS music come from people like Eminem who also seem to be hated by the rest of the artists of the genere.
Then of course we've got things like "Insane Clown Posse" who I actually find interesting but simply because instead of being thugs, they claim to be murdering clowns who are agents of divine powers out to reap justice.... it's original at least.
>>>----Therumancer--->
