Must admit I don't really like Jay-Z, I'd put him alongside 50 Cent and Eminem in the "guys I don't really care about" bracket.Je Hones said:
You've heard Anticon stuff so you know what I'm talking about. The beats just aren't there and it's often just trying to be too clever for its own good. I was expecting big things from CloudDead and it turned out to be more annoying and wanky than a prog rock album. Something called K-Os came into work the other day and boy, is it shit, we had a good laugh at that one. Another typical example of someone trying too hard. I feel the same way about stuff like Buck65 etc. It really is like prog rock bands who feel that they need to throw in the whole kitchen sink on every track, there's just no sense of musicality, structure, or even good sound development - everything sounds wishy-washy. It's not clearly defined enough to be good rap music, but it's not accomplished enough to cut it as some kind of electronica or rock alternative either. You can't just string together a bunch of unusual sounds and expect people to like it just because it's different, there has to be some intelligence and structure to it.
Necro is actually a highly underrated producer, who typically plays all his own instruments on his tracks. He understands music on a theoretical level, and it shows - a trait that very few beat-writers possess, and therefore is one of the few people in the US who can produce decent beats fairly consistently (although I wasn't that keen on "Death Rap" tbh). I quite like his raps actually, especially the sex stuff because I'm a deviant, but to be honest I couldn't care less if he was rapping about going to the store to shop for candy bars because he can write a beat and that excuses just about anything.GodKlown said:
Rap music has ALWAYS been about "getting attention in pursuit of money". Remember that the roots of rap actually lie in the Jamaican club scene, where the MC was just a spruiker - someone whos job was to entice people into the club and therefore make money. How do you entice Jamaican men into a club? "Hey, we got the best girls up in here, everyone is living large" - that type of thing. And because it's a competition, (because the club down the street also has a spruiker) the raps got more over-the-top, more and more crazy - whatever would hold someone's attention the longest. This is the roots of rap - pure materialism, a form of advertising! Stuff like Grandmaster Flash, Public Enemy and all the other "socially conscious" or "political" rap is actually a deviation from the form, and always has been the exception, not the rule. People forgot that when a couple of these bands got big, but "political rap" was, if anything a "trend" that has now died. I don't see that stuff as having value anyway, I don't think it changes anything or does anything constructive, it just makes people THINK they're doing something constructive when all they're really doing is talking a lot of hot air when they should really give up rap and get involved in politics if they care that much about it...
I get your point about typecasting rap by the actions of a few people though. This happens in ALL genres. Look at reggae. Most people just think of Bob Marley, right? If you ask me he's one of the most generic and boring exponents of the genre (albeit probably due to overexposure), I'd rather listen to just about any OTHER reggae artist... and there are hundreds...
