Saturday, October 24, 2009
Hip Hop
I want to preface this by saying that I'm listening to Charles Ives this morning and I don't listen to that much hip hop altogether these days. But I'm a fan, The Roots "Things Fall Apart" is one of the big albums in my past for me, and at times I've listened to a lot of hip hop. But I've been meaning to post to see if others think that hip hop is just generally lame these days, and more broadly whether anyone agrees that black culture has lost its mojo. I haven't heard much in the way of decent mainstream hip hop for a while now, with likes of Lil Waye, Ludacris and others just leaving me uninterested, and irritated if I actually listen. Kayne West is okay, even if he seems like an idiot, and Jay Z I guess is pretty cool, but I never got that fired up about his music. The hip hop I do listen to these days is Madlib, MF Doom, generally the stuff off the Stones Throw label, and that is frequently remix stuff, with live instruments, elements of jazz, and it often veers out of the straight rap category; with a nod to a recent post on here, that first Lupe Fiasco record is also cool and I'ma throw that on the iphone today. But even the Roots are kind of boring these days. Most hip hop is dumb, empty bragging, pompous and unoriginal, with that silly pitch-shifting effect everywhere. This article in the New Yorker on MF Doom (unfortunately only an abstract available online) actually summed up a lot of what I've been feeling. The writer calls the current moment in hip hop "glam hop" and I think he's got that right, it reminds me of what rock music was going through in the late 80s/early 90s before grunge kicked its ass, changed everything, and made rock music vital again. But will hip hop have a similar revolution? I am a bit skeptical, partly because I think live hip hop is generally bad and that hip hop is a studio phenomenon. But I do think it's a cool and vital art form that might be able to come back and be relevant again. But I think it's part of a general malaise in black culture. For decades mainstream culture took a nod from black culture on so many things, like fashion and music. But with hip hop stuck in a funk, black fashion is pretty ridiculous too--does anyone want to wear their pants below their ass? Am I missing something? Like I said, I'm sitting here listening to classical music right now, and I'm a white dude, so I'd be hesitant to put this out there if I was writing for a magazine or a newspaper, it's just kind of a general feeling, and I was wondering what others thought.
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11 comments:
i feel you, Hurra. mainstream hip hop is just a totally uninspired genre that has tapped the well dry. There are people (who I feel are mostly over at Stones Throw!) who are keeping it alive and exciting, but the thing I'd like to really comment on is The Roots. They are a band that I used to look up to, a band that I thought really captured the essence of hip hop. They are an example of why I disagree with your statement about hip hop not being a "live performance" genre. Hip hop's roots are live: parties rockin to the breaka dawn in the Bronx. No studios involved; just kids djing, rapping, and dancing together. But I have to say, I'm so disillusioned by The Roots being the house band on Jimmy Fallon's crap ass late night show. This hasn't seemed to bother anybody else, but for a band that for so many years prided themselves on "keeping it real," for me it just got a lot more fake.
I don't have an issue with them doing that late night gig. I know that hip hop has had its live moments, but most of my experience with it live has been bad, bombastic, bad acoustics, all theater and very little musicality, something gets lost; I hated that live Roots album, I feel like they (mainly Black Thought) butchered all the good tracks by changing up how he rhymed.
Well, here are my two cents:
It's a pretty broad generalization, Rootless, to say "hip hop is just generally lame these days". "Hip Hop" meaning, in your post Lil Wayne, Ludacris "and others". Uh... can you name four more? I can't really. I think the "hip hop" you are experiencing randomly in car commercials or on the radio (shudder) is not so much a reflection of "hip hop", or "the black mojo" (i don't even want to go there. hahaha, really?), but rather a reflection on popular music.
Even saying "how music changed during early 90's, gruge kicked hair metals ass!" uh... kicked its ass on the pop charts, you mean? There was and are many many different kinds of music and musicians in each genre at every time in history.
To use language referring to rap as a "cool and vital art form". Dude, you are applying that language to top 40 radio? Would you say that about Creed? "Rock was once a vital art form, and we need a revolution before 'good' rock music rises again!" I'm sure there is "good" hip hop that exists today, you got to seek it out. But that leads to the real argument.
What is "good" hip hop? The Roots are great but they are an anomally... live instrumentation, they throw in a hardcore song on the last album, etc. Frankly, they fall into "rap that white people listen to" category. That guy says himself on one rhyme "everytime I play a coffee shop gig it's college kids and white dudes" or something like that?
I think in the universe of the dudes on this blog the Roots are epic, but like, my brother-in-law who just graduated high school, I bet he would be like "Who the fuck are the Roots? Oh, Jimmy Kimmels house band?" or whatever the fuck. He listens to hardcore rap shit that you would find "boastful", but to him that's rap! He'd say "what the fuck do you mean this isn't good?" And if you read him this blog post, i'm afraid it comes off as "When i was your age music was good! Not like this crap on the radio these days! HIp hop hit the peak in '92-'93 (when we graduated high school, btw) and it's been downhill ever since!" You are holding music to standards of that era, but society and music and another generation has moved on.
Let me guess some of the other ones on the list of "good" rap: Madlib, MF Doom, Jurassic Five, Tribe Called Quest, Beastie Boys, Digiable Planets, Dr. Octagon, Def Jux crew, etc... Again, i think people can say that's "good" because it appeals to them specifically and, again don't really want to go there, and no offense to any of those dudes, but you go to a Madlib show it is 80% white dudes, dig?
Only other two guys you referenced by name were Kayne West and Jay Z. That's like referring to Beatles and Stones and ignoring all other music from 60's and saying it is not "vital art form".
Lastly, re: "does anyone want to wear their pants below their ass?" I don't care about the kids today with there skinny jeans! I still rock a little sag a la 1992 desert rat style.
D-Styles
P.s. Personally, I'm feeling that old school late 70's disco rap shit these days. Spoonie Gee type shit. That's real hip hop!
I used to love hip hop back when I was in High School in the late 80s (Yeah, I'm old) I kept liking it after but I felt it got tired around the mid-90s. I was still buying shit from the artists I liked but they seemed to be less creative. Maybe I was just less interested? I don't know.
I don't want to say hip hop is "dead", it's not. Hip hop is like some older woman. Plastic surgery, fake titties, brand name clothing, etc. However, you can still see that turkey gizzard neck, wrinkly, veiny hands. I was just waiting for this bitch to croak already.
Then all this Blogspot shit happened. I was mostly getting digital versions of shit I had when I was young. (I was a cassette head, still have boxes of 'em in my mothers basement) I think I may be starting to love H.E.R. again. I started looking up new shit.
Currently in rotation on my iPod: Audacity by Ugly Duckling. I'd recommend their other stuff too.
What you're saying about mainstream hip-hop can be said about mainstream INSERT GENRE HERE right? But, my guess is, if you're like me, there's something frustrating about the state of hip-hop. When I first discovered it, way way the hell back, it was like punk rock. Straight Outta Compton was Nevermind the Bollocks. Jay-Z calling himself a business isn't exactly the same thing huh? And while perhaps it once was the CNN of black experience, how often can you report the same damn story!?!?
In a delicate response to the "mojo" comment, I think there's much less cross-fertilization between so called "black" and so called "white" music than there used to be (especially 60s-70s). This has been bad for all involved. Maybe we can point to the balkanizaiton of radio formats as a cause. I don't know. I'm hopeful that the collapse of the label-based side of the industry may reverse this trend.
Damn, DC, you been working on that rebuttal since I told you I was gonna drop this post at the Dodos show?
All good points, in fact, can't argue with any of that. It's true what you say about rap white people listen to, but I don't think it makes any of our opinions any less valid. I don't think white people have to stand aside in a position of reverence for black culture and feel that we are totally unqualified to say anything thoughtful about it. Like I said, if I was writing for a publication I would be pretty damn careful about what I said before wading into a debate on black culture, but on a blog it is a forum to rant a bit, and that's what I was looking to do.
But yeah, I'm talking about top 40 radio to a large extent. Even with the demise of the record industry it is still something of a barometer of the cultural zeitgeist. My point with glam rock being pushed aside by grunge is that everyone got it! Nirvana was suddenly music for the masses and it was widely seen as a return to quality after a superficial era. Hip hop has had similar moments. You had Public Enemy's moral outrage leading into the anger of gangsta rap leading into consciousness rap and all of it was popular--with black people AND white people. My point is about mainstream hip hop and how awful it is. My brother in law works for SayNow, a way for fans to keep in touch with their favorite artists, and it is mainly mainstream acts that they work with. He plays me some of what's popular and I can take that for about 5 minutes before I want to slit my wrists. Yeah, to some extent it's getting older and saying "it's not like when I was young" or some shit, but A) I'm not that old (34) and B) the point is still worth making. And my point isn't coming entirely out of left field, there's the New Yorker story for one, and there is apparently generally a conversation going on within the black community about what it means for the movement of equality and other issues that we have a black president. I'm waiting, to some extent, to see if hip hop, as supposedly a means of black expression, will give light to anything thoughtful out of what really seems like a new era.
And BTW, that track you reference is Common guesting on "Act Too... the love of my life" and is my favorite rap song of all time, so deep, everything good about hip hop to me, I wish there was more of it today.
BTW, I'm listening to Bela Bartok this morning.....
Talking about authenticity ("hip hop white people listen to" as opposed to "real" hip hop) is a dicey proposition. Public Enemy always had a huge, perhaps even majority, white following (mostly punk rockers) not to mention that Chuck D freely admits his flow is profoundly influenced by Marv Albert (?!). Does that mean PE isn't black enough?
I end up going to a fair number of poetry readings. I have come to the conclusion that it would suck to be a black poet, because there is so much that you have to answer for if you are a BLACK POET - you HAVE to be a representative of your culture, and you have to do so in culturally prescripted ways (strictly first person, cleaving to programmatic rundowns of concerns such as racism, identity, black pride, urban living as warfare, and sexuality . . . all declaimed poetry-slam style with requisite references, both implicit and explicit, to jazz and sixties jazz poetry). Black poets who do not do this are generally decried as "not representing the black experience" . . . that is, not being black enough. As a white poet, I have no such restrictions. I believe black poets are working with a culturally imposed straight jacket.
So it can be with hip hop if we become overly concerned with questions of authenticity.
Is hip hop dying? I don't know. I haven't heard much good this year, with the notable exception of Mos Def's "The Ecstatic". I frankly don't have the patience to wade through it all to find the good stuff. And I don't expect to hear good hip hop on the radio, though it's more likely than hearing good new rock, pop, or country . . . it wasn't so long ago that Outkast was putting world class hip hop on the radio.
In the meantime, we count on blogs like this to tip us off to the good stuff.
If anybody is terminally bored, I wrote an article on authenticity for Bejeezus magazine (http://bejeezus.com/?p=920). Warning: this reads like a grad school reject paper.
Oh, and holla on the Ives and Bartok. Ives's 4th Symphony changed my life.
Me, Ej and Hurra saw each other yesterday and had another spirited discussion on this. Long story short, i'm right.
Seriously, I had another thought on this... i was getting lunch and some guy was bumping hip hop in his jeep. All i could here was the repetiive drum beat and some dude's monotone flow. And it had me nodding my head at the stop light. So, yo, that was "good" to me. That is fine for a type of music to be consumed.
Sometimes people read pulp fiction or trashy romance novels. you don't have to only read Pulitzer Prize material, dig? Sometimes stupid boastful generic hip hop is what you want to consume. I think people like that for what it is and would not necessarily think the Roots or whoever are "better".
If you are looking to main stream/Top 40 Radio for anything interesting, you may be waiting a long time. Try college radio. I've found a ton of good music on internet radio. I've also gone on myspace and clicked around and found some cool tracks. See what the kids are into.
I'm not a bomb thrower by any means, however I found some of these comments perplexing.
1.black culture has lost its mojo
based on what? Do your black friends agree with this?
2.Most hip hop is dumb, empty bragging, pompous and unoriginal
I can't question an opinion
3.with hip hop stuck in a funk, black fashion is pretty ridiculous too
4.I think live hip hop is generally bad and that hip hop is a studio phenomenon
5.I don't listen to that much hip hop altogether these days. But I'm a fan
????? These don't sound like statements of a fan to me.
Did I purposely highlight these statements out of the broader context of the post? I sure did. I am not a defender of auto tune, Jay Z, Russell Simmons, DMX or 50. I will say that sweeping generalizations about genre and culture won't take you where you'd like to go. BTW as a minority I am not offended and I actually like posts such as this that cause folks to explain and debate. Where's my main man with the Greatful Dead posts?
Hahaha, DC, re: "I'm right". My recollection of that conversation is that you heard my points and were feeling me. I definitely don't feel rap, or any art-form, mainstream or otherwise, has to be particularly "deep". I thought Gangsta rap was vital and vibrant and it was mainstream. And hip hop has always had a boastful angle, I don't have a problem with that, it just seems like it was more interesting.
Tons of other good comments, I'm feeling that shit from Clark about black poets, good points. And Shadow's, all good too. I don't have many black friends and I guess maybe I'm not that big a fan of hip hop ultimately. Like I said, I'm white, I was listening to classical music as I wrote that post, but just wanted to throw those thoughts out there.
If you need me I'ma be up in the club with all my bitches, some krystal, cold chillin'.
Where is Matthew Schwartz?!?!
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