Rap music

While I was stoned I figured out that >90% of English rap is trash because most of the listeners are not native speakers of English so the lyrics have to be easy for them to understand, making it impossible for rappers to unlock their full potential. The only rap that you should be listening to is rap made in your native language because that way you will be able to enjoy rap the most.

>>9172 It's trash because its audience is trash. I can't understand most English rap because it's hard, but because most rappers think that fast=good, and therefore the majority of rap, even in other languages, is mumbled at a speed faster than drunk person whose company I enjoy speeding through a small town. Even good lyrics suffer from this. What the heck would you do, if you didn't have the internet to look up lyrics? If someone wastes a good song text with mumble soykaf and high speed speech, it becomes absolutely useless, as no one gets what he's saying. Big shaqs "ting goes skraa" is better that that soykaf, because at least it's coherent and can be understood.

>>9173 Oh nice, another word to add to my replacement dictionary. "W!gger". Fvcking w0rd f!lter.

>>9172 >their full potential No it literally is their full potential, because almost all rappers are talentless and musically illiterate. They cant sing, compose music, play instruments, or write meaningful lyrics, so they "speak" dumb edgy nonsense over a generic beat they bought on a stock music site. It is the laziest form of music. >most of the listeners are not native speakers of English so the lyrics have to be easy for them to understand Pretty sure most listeners are english speakers, but even then, what a sad excuse to cope with the fact that most rap is written by simple minded talentless hacks.

There is native rap and its terrible, sure there are some exceptions, but all in all its terrible in both sound and lyrics. I totally agree there is lots of room for lyrics in rap other than the generic overused gangster crap, it was good in the 90s when soykaf was original and had a message, now its just there to sell.

English rap whose audience is primarily English speakers is also mostly soykaf. Rap can be good, just that with a few exceptions making good rap music doesn't bring in the dough. It's commercialized as fuarrrk now and that means the lyrics have to be about dumb bullshit and the beat has to be as generic as possible.

The entire genre is gollywog garbage, the only album I've ever found that was "passable" is The Low End, by A Tribe Called Quest. And it's clearly a fluke, considering the previous and next album.

You all sound like Ben Shapiro. Sure, mainstream rap is garbage, granted. In fact, a lot of modern rap is terrible, mainstream or not. However, the same can be said for literally every music genre. There is definitely good rap out there, you just need to look for it.

>>9181 That's what I thought until I actually searched. There's rap that's better than the rest, but it's only relatively better, it's still garbage by any sane standards. By the way, music is only harmony + melody + rhythm, lyrics shouldn't be considered when evaluating it; it's a completely separate matter.

>>9185 >By the way, music is only harmony + melody + rhythm, lyrics shouldn't be considered when evaluating it how does this relate to this discussion though? does this mean you think that rap is bad both musically and lyrically? i don't see how you can say lyrics are a completely separate matter when you need to consider both the music and the lyrics when judging a song

I feel like outside of the US rap is basically on its way out.

>>9186 >how does this relate to this discussion though? It relates to the thread. >i don't see how you can say lyrics are a completely separate matter when you need to consider both the music and the lyrics when judging a song >need Songs are music + "poetry", I don't see the problem in considering only the musical part; only pretentious intellectuals and idiots parroting them would remove the quotes. In fact, even the pleb has sided on this, as one of the most successful single's (September by Earth, Wind & Fire) lyrics show: Willis was initially bothered by the gibberish "ba-dee-ya" lyric White used through the song, and begged him to rewrite it: "I just said, 'What the fuarrrk does 'ba-dee-ya' mean?' And he essentially said, 'Who the fuarrrk cares?', and indeed, nobody cared. (A bit unrelated, but I contend that the success of this track is primarly because of the sound engineering rather than the pretty mundane composition. It's a triumph of the better-than-real quality of optimal close micing and multi-tracking with tasteful reverb applied selectively.) Or you could take genres like extreme metal where lyrics are very often undecipherable.

>>9172 >so the lyrics have to be easy for them to understand No idea where you got this from it's completely untrue. Besides, I don't listen to rap because of the lyrics so I don't care unless it's a mega cringe gangster soykaf. Do you actually listen to it because of the meaning of the songs? That's weird to me I focus on the instrumentals and the rhytms they create with words but the meaning doesn't have to be super deep.

Retarded opinions ITT. Rap isn't even my favorite genres, but it's got undisputed masterpieces rivalling rock masterpieces. Still nothing at the level of the top of jazz, but that's an unfair comparison.

>>9172 You have it backwards. >90% of rappers aren't, in a sense, native speakers of English, Standard English at least. Ebonics is often unintelligible to Standard English speakers. It's shaped by a lack of intellect among its progenitors, resulting in a small vocabulary. This same collective stupidity also results in limited lyrical themes in their music. That's why English language rap is soykaf. Of course, rappers can transcend this, but that doesn't happen too often.

>>9205 I would even argue that there are an equal amount of rappers that transcend it to rock and other genres.

there is literally no good music at all.

I like the beats the most. A lot of MCs are mixed too loud and their words don't match the mood. I enjoy Rap too

and i thought i listened to every wutang song there is and i find these two gems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T17YRtYcvIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taaUY8A4FHI

>>9208 I agree there has to be a good balance its also the type of culture aswell. in the dnb culture they basically have there own version of rap but from a edm culture that largely is influenced by reggae music which the first mc was so good at putting out that vibe and at great speed too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNFledxk2-I

>>9210 Yo that ain't from "EDM Culture" I reckon you'd get smacked for saying that round some people. But yea that clip is just the live UK dance stuff. Grime/DnB/hardcore all that. Funnily enough closer to the hip-hop spirit than what people call hip-hop. Though you can't call these UK dance sounds hip-hop it's like calling It EDM. Don't do that.

this guy is kinda cool https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=tkPwja8MyW0

>>9207 not sure if you mean it but i agree

>>9172 German rap is its own niche culture. One of the more popular artists is Bushido, who actually has biographical a movie about his life and music. German rap goes from german renditions of soykafty american mumble rap or songs from things all about weed by people dressed like spongebob all the way to commentary on society like government surveillance like FLER - Guten Morgen NSA (Good Morning NSA) https://genius.com/2174997 German rap also draws its roots from early American rap, where the songs were about society, instead of the bitches and hoes and drugs and clothes. Though such songs may exist, they do not encompass the majority of music. Bushido's songs like Theorie und Praxis discusses how in theory someone could be successful in life, but reality gets in the way, and practically, life becomes difficult to succeed at. Another one of his songs Hass Describes the life of a young disenfranchised youth who turns to neo-nazi skinhead and white supremacy because he felt alone and thought he would find belonging by joining a gang. One aspect of german rap I like is how they sometimes sample slightly obscure cultural hits. Some of the rappers with immigrant roots will sample french-arab music, while other rappers do collaborative pieces with famous german or european singers. Imagine Tupac doing a colab with Sinatra.

>>9207 There isn't even any good youth culture at all. Youth "culture" wasn't even a thing until last century. But by now kids are the biggest spenders in an average family and most advertisements are aimed at tweens. Its the reason why our culture is so infantile now, why pop music is so awful and why nintendo soyboys exist. https://www.globalissues.org/article/237/children-as-consumers http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/savers-spenders-how-children-became-consumer-market

>>9281 is true. With respect to rap though, which has broader age appeal, we can distinguish the subgenre of ganster rap, trap, drill, grime etc from the genre at large - which includes such artists as Noname, Billy Woods, Aesop Rock, clipping, (and I could go on) which push the genre forward artistically and politically. I would suggest looking at where rap started, with acts like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron. There is lots of good rap if you look further than the youtube trending page. Which is not to disparage so-called gangster rap, in so far as it fills a persistent and not uniquely-western or immigrant cultural niche. Criminality in folksong (e.g. the western outlaw folk music consumed by white americans and now a hollow simulacrum of its former potency, russian chanson). It is telling that gangster rap was originally known as 'reality rap', living conditions in projects and such were very bad. With the collapse of the black panthers and the civil rights movement the power vacuum was filled by gangs. It seems obvious that the "cultural vaccum" left by radical politics would be occupied by a anti-authoritarian subculture - which overt criminality clearly is. The ostentatious displays of illicit wealth project independence from the legal systems of power. Also why are some people so anal about the separation between poetry, rap, music? Art transcends these rigid disciplinary categories, so many great artists were extremely multidisciplinary. compulsive and rigid classification is suggestive of some type of dysfunction... that's my required ad homiem.

>>9215 what im saying its related ofc there seperate subcultures. they borrowed heavily from early 80s hiphop and created a new subgenre. really you can track all this stuff back to jazz and R&B records.

>>9310 >Which is not to disparage so-called gangster rap, in so far as it fills a persistent and not uniquely-western or immigrant cultural niche. Criminality in folksong (e.g. the western outlaw folk music consumed by white americans and now a hollow simulacrum of its former potency, russian chanson). The thing I don't like about most of the gangsta rap that is actually popular is that it's very commercialized and marketing-driven, which takes out quite a bit of its teeth. Then people who really are from the projects try to imitate this commercialized version, rather than the other way around. It's like if gutter punks started trying to imitate Green Day. That's what it looks like is happening from someone who doesn't really participate/listen to rap music frequently, though.

>>9172 Doesn't the 10% rule apply to media in general though? It's only because you have a bias against the genre that you feel the need to come up with some flimsy excuse for an answer. Stop being a bitch, and actually explore the genre.

>>9172 >native speakers of English so the lyrics have to be easy for them to understand This is very puzzling conjecture. It's very clear that if you look to the country of rap's origin, the United States, the majority of people there speak and rap in English. There's not a significant language gap unless you are talking about its international dissemination. That is, unless you are reaching like >>9205 is. Say what you want about "ebonics", but asides from its deviation in vocabulary and grammar, it's mutually intelligible with standard English. Its deviation is not the mark of "by a lack of intellect among its progenitors", but by a distinct regional, cultural, and even class difference. Like the upper class disdain for Cockney accents in Britain, the disdain against ebonics is primarily prejudice. It's not dumbspeak; it's immediate-and-relevant speak. Language is for ease of use. You aren't considered retarded for using "lol". However, given that, the claim that rap necessitates readability because of a crutch is flimsy whence you read some lyrics. Not only does it take skill to replicate rap lyrics, but it's also hard to see a foreigner exactly get them immediately. I mean, I challenge you to try understanding a rap song in a language you partly understand. >>9185 Vocals are sung in a key, so, no, they aren't a separate matter. >>9357 To be fair, the gangster era of rap mostly ended when Kanye West overtook 50 Cent in sells. The rap landscape now is mostly pop, conceptual rap, and a mix of regional scenes. >>9310 >reality rap This kind of sounds similar to "conscious rap", however that movement was more of protest against the excesses criminal rap encouraged.

>Say what you want about "ebonics", but asides from its deviation in vocabulary and grammar, it's mutually intelligible with standard English. I disagree, although most black people don't speak ebonics and most rap music isn't spoken in ebonics so it's a moot point.

>>9360 If you look at the post I am replying to, ebonics is being used to refer generally to black people slang.

Native english speaker here, I dont listen to much rap but half the time I hear an english rap I can barely comprehend it. Some performers are more clear than others but a lot of it is very difficult to follow at least on the first listen. This goes for a lot of modern lyric music, not just rap, though rap may be on the worse side.

>>9360 Ebonics is really common spoken and in rap. For example haven't you noticed how many black people pronounce "ask" like "axe" and how many say "we was" not "we were"?

>>9364 that's not the same as the completely other dialect that some people speak in the deep south. It's unintelligeble unless you're used to it.

It's a little sad that is the only rap thread. Should we start dropping recommandations, or start a new thread?

>>9364 I find the percentage of people who speak nonstandard dialects of English doesn't deviate much between whites and blacks but also I'm from the south so everyone talks like they've got a dick in their throat. furthermore the dialects of the African Americans are rather motley, not a single mode of speech. you have people who sound like a white Californian, people who sound like biggie, people who sound like savage, and everything in between. the only reason we separate whites from blacks linguistically is because of a minor pronunciation difference that stuck across all dialects due to the race's genesis of the language being a learning of it as a second language from which their first was pronounced vastly differently by poor teachers who didn't want them to get too clever.

While you were stoned you based massive, sweeping assumptions across a genre you clearly don't understand. Rap & Hip Hop is a big world. There's a lot of pretty incredible talent. This full potential thing is bullshit. Sorry anon, it was just another stoned thought. That said, to anyone talking this much soykaf about the genre, I want you to try 32 bars of poetry, with literary techniques and the whole shebang, to a 85bpm tempo, timing your syllables so they syncopate with the drum line. Now do it again, but as an improv. Eventually, you'll realize it's an instrument like any other. Basing yourself on the mass-appeal artists to soykaf on rap and hip hop is literally 1:1 like basing yourself off Nickleback to make a case for Rock, and everything under it's umbrella, being soykaf. It's a ridiculous line of thought, whatever the labels peddle has always unconditionally been dogass. This is a music board, how the fuarrrk does this have to be pointed out?

>>9397 clipping is absolute dogshit so not sure why you posted it when talking about good rap.

>>9398 Clipping is a cool experimental group that has some absolutely incredible production ideas and interesting horror stories, you don't have to like it though. /mu/ users afoot in this thread.

>>9205 you are fuarrrking braindead. i'd say never breed but i probably don't have to worry about that for obvious reasons

If you want something that you probably won't like on the first try, this is it. I promise it sounds like soykaf at first but it grows on you heavily. I'm a 46 year old dad of 2 and my 18 year old son got me into this record.

>>9472 sorry I forgot image

>>9473 the tip here is to get into carti through die lit instead of listening to this instantly. die lit is more poppy but is still a great record, and this is different but has some similarities.

>>9172 I mostly listen to rap because there are some talented producers like Dilla and such. It's how I discover a lot of niche music I would otherwise never listen to. As for lyrics, I've never really found something that I've really appreciated for artistry besides some of the more well known artists like De La Soul, Mos Def, and Slick Rick. The underground scene is almost all soykaf. May as well post my favorite. It amuses me since it's the opposite of a diss track.

>>9497 >didn't post I guess mp3 isn't allowed. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=QRlYQdh30Ak

>>9172 wu-tang. public enemy.

>>9172 Literally don't care about lyrics in rap, I don't understand how people listen to music to enjoy the meaning of the lyrics.

Lyrics are the only reason I listen to rap. The genre simply hosts the most complex rhyme schemes, and I find that very appealing. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ueg6u6M9Ys&t=140

lil b the greatest rapper of all time and he the most greatest man in tha scene right now GO CHECK HIM OUT https://youtu.be/OeLQOfb6IBU https://youtu.be/MzRv5Ybwtac https://youtu.be/H_60vmiiaHY

>>9172 >90% of English rap is trash because most of the listeners are not native speakers of English It's trash because the creators are black.

>>9868 actually not their fault, popular rap is propaganda. biggie &co sold out to money and transformed rap from meaningful songs to hoes,blingbling and drug dealing according to biggie himself. Probably got motivated not only by money but by pac getting shot too so they liked the idea of having big backers. My personal suspicion is its connected to cia drug dealing in us, they needed more dealers so they bought rappers trough labels to advertise drug dealing to blacks as a recruitment drive same as they advertise joining military by funding movies&games that make it look cool.

>>9876 This is true, it's also population domestication, where people inclined to violence are justified by the popular culture, and kill each other at young ages. Memes in full swing.