Let's talk Hip Hop

[ringsyde]

In a recent thread on JBL and John Cena, a hip hop discussion broke out:

cotg.proboards12.com/index.cgi?board=WWE&action=display&thread=1122654792&page=2

While I was immediately categorized as a biggot by some for being a black man who labeled John Cena a rap wannabe, others engaged in a great discussion of hip hop and top artists of the genre.

Because the discussion was so good and the thread was so NOT the place to have it, I'm picking up the discussion here. i hope Joe and other music fans will join in and also start discussions about other music here. The board was changed from Silver Screen to Multimedia so that those of us who want to discuss music can do so here, so let's take advantage.

Tupac's name came up during the discussion. While it is easy for some to list him amongst the all-time greats, I find it hard to include him in my top five because:
- He was one of the forces that turned rap away from the issues of the street that so greatly affected the urban community and towards the a$$, bling, guns and jeeps that mean nothing to the people who were(and still are) truly at the heart of the hip hop community.
- As a chief proponent of the East -vs- West duel (that I have previously explained had more to do with defining the industry in the mainstream to profit from a prima facia rivalry that ultimately became a self-fulfilling prophecy), he cose a side and stuck with it. Unfortunately, his actions, as well as those of other stars of the hip hop world, destroyed the unity and creative fusion that was being realized before this coastal war became the hip hop headline.
- I certainly can't argue with Tupac's flow, lyrics or style. I can say that the influences of Rakim and other greats are evident in his music.
- Before Tupac and the East Coast / West Coast thing, there were no thugs, b!tches and hoes. There were hustlers, historians and survivors who acted as lyrical griots to bring the hip hop world to the masses. A lot of what made hip hop and rap an important part of my peoples' history and heritage was lost in the sea of East / West controversy, and Tupac was the posterboy for the breakdown because he had one foot in the struggle and the other in the "thug life" that ruined what was once an art form.

Certainly, there were rivalries before West Coast rappers rose up to challenge the East. I can remember the days when Cool J. and Kool Moe Dee hurled insults back and forth every chance they got, and Doug E. Fresh called the Fat Boys out at every show.

Even in battle, these guys still knew what they were doing was engaging in the time honored street tradition that evolved from griotic chant to street sermon. Today's rappers have moved so far away from that tradition that it's almost shameful to acknowledge them as part of the tradition.

On his new album, BE, Common has a song title "The Corner". In it, he says, "I wish I could give you this feeling . . . I wish I could give you this feeling". There's a part of me that wishes I could also give you (all) the feeling of what it was like when Hip Hop mattered, lyrics mattered and experience mattered. What didn't matter was what coast you were on and how many people, places and things you could buy off.

[Darth Turkish]

Wow... just wow. What a great post.

I am not a rap fan by any means ( I like heavy metal) but I am a fan of music, and art, and people expressing themselves.

Back when I was in high school (early 90's) I listened to (on a limited basis) NWA, Public Enemy, and a few others. I recently listened to some of their stuff and found, in comparison, most of what I hear today very lacking.

In my opinion, the rap/ hip hop today is lacking in grit and substance. There is no heart in it.

What is put out today all seems to be about how great someone is, how many chicks they can bang in one night, how much pot they smoke, how much money they have.

What happened to addressing the social issues? The outcry against unfair treatment of a culture or neighboorhood? Pushing the envelope with intriguing questions?

Perhaps this is endemic of all pop music: it is simple, easy to grasp and stupid.

I asked a friend who is a DJ about this once. He said that most of the "true" rappers are active n the underground scene. This makes sense, as most of the better metal bands are not on the radio.

I think that most rappers today are missing the strength of their art. Rap in the late 80's and early 90's was immensely popular because it discussed issues that affected people that were falling under that radar of target groups and polls; people that were being ignored or whom were silent due to not knowing how to act or respond. It was a rallying point, a voice for frustration and against discrimination, and battle cry for a halt to injustice. These issues exit today, yet are largely ignored. Catchy tunes focusing on a miasma of insignificance are the focus now. The voice that was once so strong is being silenced by sugar coated nothing.

It is sad, but perhaps the cycle will change soon.

[LWPD]

RingsYde you sound very knowledgeable on the genre of Hip Hop and seem to have a genuine appreciation of it. You note the change that has occurred from it's origins to it's present day. Personally my appreciation for newer material in recent years has waned considerably.

Back in the day, I remember how deeply influenced rappers such as Rakim and Big Daddy Kane were with Nation of Gods and Earth lingo. So much of what is common parlance ('what's up G', 'word is bond', 'represent', 'drop science', etc) comes directly from this ideology. While I didn't agree with the message in it's entirety (particularly Yacub the 'evil scientist' jargon) I think overall it was a positive message in the face of alternative ideas.

I believe one of the factors that made 'hip hop' music so compelling to the masses as it exploded in the 1980's/early 1990's was that it had an underlying coherent 'reality based' message that used a rhythmic tone mixed with vivid imagery. As an added element making use of concepts such as the Supreme Alphabet and Supreme Mathematics made it different and unique. Yet I also suspect many of the consumers of the music had absolutely no clue as to the thinking and ideas _BEHIND_ the words. How many people truly understood the points performers such as Gang Starr or Brand Nubian were trying to get across? How much of it went in one ear and out the other? Perhaps it was expected that much of the audience was to forever remain part of the 85%

I know today that one will find rappers like Nas and Wu Tang Clan still conveying 5 Percent ideology, although it is often done so with images that conflict with much of the underlying original intent of the message (drug abuse, misogyny). To what extent would you say concepts like Nation of God's and Earth drive hip hop music today? Have these concepts waned or grown in influence with the performers and audience as compared to it's popularity 15 to 20 years ago when it began it's mainstream boom? In your first hand experience, how many listeners even grasped the underlying concepts being conveyed?


Like Watching Paint Dry (who noticed hearing the riff from Rakim's 'Don't Sweat the Technique' being used it in a recent commercial)

BTW: Using the tinyurl link below will help to clip your links so that they don't widen the text display throughout a thread:

tinyurl.com/#toolbar

[Chris Ingersoll]

lwpd said:

BTW: Using the tinyurl link below will help to clip your links so that they don't widen the text display throughout a thread:

tinyurl.com/#toolbar

Or you could use the tag itself to hide the URL. Using the following structure:

[url=www.sabbatjustice.net/stable/rcattack.html]Ringside Attack Chart[/url]

Gets you:

Ringside Attack Chart

And saves space.

[ringsyde]

LWPD, I'll answer your questions this way; hip hop has lost its soul because it is no longer the window to the rugged realities of urban life, nor is it the poetic expression of the black experience.

Instead, hip hop is now a marketing tool to get one's geographic location recognized in "the game", it is a promotion of the smaller self (one's self, one's boys and one's hood) that has little or nothing in common with a universal experience. Hip Hop is the new pop music; chock full of stars whose talent is suspect, material lacks substance but whose marketability and "diversity" make them ideal stars in a world in which the struggle has given way to the mendacity of materialism.

Interestingly, rap started to change right around the same time that African American businessmen, politicians, athletes, actors and other high-profile members of the race began to display feelings of animosity about being obligated to give back to the less successful of the race. A disconnect happened in which the successful began to accuse the "urban squatters" of playing crabs in the barrel of life, where any successful black person was dragged down by the weight of those who were not. From where I sit (an intelligent black man from "the hood" who worked his ass off so he can pay the bills but isn't exactly successful - yet), this changing of the black social strata had a contributing negative effect on black music. Especially hip hop.

It would seem that rap suddenly went from a poetic spreading of the word of faith and strength in the struggle, no matter how it ended, to a "F*ck you" to the new elite. Since rap music (and rock and even some country, to be fair) was about rebellion and defiance, this wasn't seen as a problem. What EPMD, Intelligent Hoodlum, Chuck D and others who rapped about never selling out to the mainstream didn't see coming was the turn from "F-U" to "I'm a street thug, and I"m better than you" that rap drifted into during the nineties.

Rap music went from the voice of the streets to the voice of the crews that either owned or beat the streets. And these guys were more concerned about telling the legends of hip hop to shut up and recognize than they were about challenging laws, politics and cultural standards that created and maintained the urban condition (something the legends did with great success -these challenges of the status quo gave black and urban cultures a voice and the music its realism and value).

The only message in today's rap is that the guy with the most toys and the most ass on-call is the winner. There's no news in rap. There's no empowerment in rap. There's certainly no unity in rap, unless of course you're down with East or West. Rap is a profit-maker first, an identifier secondly, and a means by which to deliver a message, last. Too bad the messages being delivered are fractious and completely opposite the messages of rap's early rise.

As long as this post is, I've actually cut it down quite a bit. There are several key factors in African American life that I feel have also contributted to the transformation of rap. Some of them have been hinted at here. However, to post freely and openly about each issue would get us completely off the topic at hand.

[Joe]

While I agree to a point with the notion that rap has "lost its soul," it has to be acknowledged that as soon as hip-hop left the block parties in NY, thugs, guns, b---hes and hoes became a part of hip-hop culture. Let us not forget, Born to Mack was released in, I believe, 1986. Actually, Too $hort is is one of only a handful of cats that came out during hip-hop's "Golden Age" and still manages to move records. It is also worth noting that he was one of the first rappers from another area of the country to gain success in the NY radio and video markets, which is surprising since he epitomizes what many hip-hop heads from that area see as having ruined rap.

I have never seen Tupac Shakur as the cause of the East Coast-West Coast beef. He may have been in the center of it, but he was far from its catalyst. The root of the East-West beef lied in the treatment of regions other than the upper East-Coast by the Hip-hop media, which was, and is, based in NY. Rappers from the West and South became irate over supporting artists from NY, but receiving next to none from the East. Straight Outta Compton went double-platinum with no radio or video spins, and damn near no coverage in the media. At the same time, Public Enemy was getting play in major markets and coverage hailing them as the political voice of Black youth. While N.W.A's lyrics were more profane, the message was there and there were edited versions of their songs available. "Express Yourself", their only single to receive serious airplay and video play, was didn't see play until the album had been certified platinum.

The media coverage of West Coast and Southern hip-hop has been reprehensible over the years. In 1993, "The Source" magazine reviewed The Chronic and gave it, if memory serves me, three-and-a-half mics. They even admitted years later that it was a five-mic classic. Even albums that are recognized as classics in the street, such as 2Pac's All Eyez on Me, Ice Cube's Death Certificate and Predator and Master P's Ice Cream Man received less than outstanding reviews from hip-hop's self-proclaimed "Bible." Many people do not believe it now, but "The Source," at one time, was very influential on sales thanks to its album reviews. It is also worh noting, the only album to come out of the West to be given 5 mics was Amerikkka's Most Wanted, which Cube went to New York to record with Hank Shocklee and the Bomb Squad. I could argue all day about why Death Certificate was a far superior album.

I agree with Ringsyde about missing the feeling hip-hop once gave me. I recall becoming insanely hype the first time I heard Chuck D spit the infamous final verse to "Fight The Power." I can still hear Kris Parker using what would become one of the most sampled lines in history (It's not about a salary, it's all about reality) and the theater going quiet when Ricky got shot in Boyz N the Hood. Those times are past, but I suspect that part of the reason folks such as Ringsyde and myself miss those times has little to do with a drop of in quality (let's face it, when Jay-Z picks up a mic and rolls, his glow is light years ahead of many of the old schoolers we so fondly remember) and more to do with a resentment of what once belonged to just us now is public property to anyone with a cable box.

[More Palpatine]

Interesting observations. Hip hop is alive and well in the underground. Breakers, DJs, Artists, and Emcees keep the culture moving and adapting. Notice I said emcees and *not* rappers. Emcees are passionate about the integrity and advancement of the artform and rapping is only a part of the package.

Unfortunately, the current formula for commercially successful rap music has rappers cranking out some very poor music. The factors that contribute to the determination of these formulas are what need to be "fixed". There is plenty of fixing to be done as others have alluded to in this thread.

Rap's "demise" didn't start with Pac. It started with silly McDonald's and Pepsi commercials. It started with rappers taking shortcuts for the cash instead of being original (where have we seen that before...). Think about how hungry emcees were in the 80's. They had so much to prove. The industry was convinced that hip hop was a fad and that it was inferior music. The pioneers proved them wrong with classic after classic until hip hop became a force.

The dilution of the music started once "the industry" figured out how to exploit it. Rappers are simply following the pre-fabs for playerism, thuggery, etc. and they sell records. Something can only be compromised for so long before it becomes a complete parody of itself.

I don't want to sound anti-commercial, but I think a balance can be found between maintaining the integrity of the artform and achieving commercial success (Mos Def, Common, etc.). The good music is there, you just have to work a little harder to find it...

On a lighter note, I liken it to the Hogan/Flair debate. Hogan represents commercial rap while Flair represents the pure, more credible rap. ;D