HIP HOP

The only hip-hop I'll listen to is The Roots, Lupe Fiasco and a few others. The reason is this

The money/women/cars/Gangsta thing has been beaten to death. I don't care about those things, I care about drumming/running/cooking/reading. Obviously, I'm not the target audience. Conversely, I hate, and I want to absorb all that the word hate can encompess here, heavy metal music like Slipknot. It's not fair to mention just them, but they're all I know of off the top of my head. I hate music that is just bitching and moaning about everything from "mom and dad were mean to me" or "I'm weird and nobody understands me" and so on.
But! I do like my aforementioned artists because they're just that. Artists. Using clever word play and phrasing, they also speak about modern politics and sociological climate. I can dig that.
 
music speaks to who it speaks to.

I personally LOVE hip hop. Also, rimsky korsakov, strauss, slayer, and bjork.

I dont expect people to automatically like it.

it doesnt bother me if they dont.
there is musical merit there, it does have the essential elements of music, rhythmn, meldoy and harmony.

it isnt for everybody. fine. steppenwolf wasnt for everybody in there day.

neither was cab calloway
 
music speaks to who it speaks to.

I personally LOVE hip hop. Also, rimsky korsakov, strauss, slayer, and bjork.

I dont expect people to automatically like it.

it doesnt bother me if they dont.
there is musical merit there, it does have the essential elements of music, rhythmn, meldoy and harmony.

it isnt for everybody. fine. steppenwolf wasnt for everybody in there day.

neither was cab calloway

waynes_world_1.jpg


"I mean Led Zeppelin didn't write tunes everybody liked. They left that to the Bee Gees."
 
Although I like the old school guys more than the current batch, I still find it interesting that so many continue to diss this stuff with the same 30 year old insults. Sure you can like ot hate anything you want, but I think it's silly to continue to wear out the illiteracy angle when a lot of these guys are some of the most literate people I know.

I have no rouble with the literacy part. I'm sure they can sit down and write or collaborate with others to write lyrics, but when they sing it I can't understand it. Call it ebonics or whatever but they are not pronouncing the words they have written down. There are the hand gestures that are just comical. Left hand out if front with the fingers all curled but the thumb and little finger, or grabbing the crotch. Micorphone in the right hand holding it parallel to the ground. Everyone of them does this same thing. there is no variety. How am I supposed to like something I can't stand to watch or listen to. The original question was dyu all like it or ????? My answer is no.
Fair enoungh GRUNTERSDAD. You're right, that was the OP's question. Like Larry inferred...different strokes for different folks.
 
I know there is a talent amongst hip hop artists, and many of them are a lot deeper then they seem on face value (Die Antwoord pops to mind), the actual lack of music behind most of it is what bothers me.

I like poetry, and I admit that a lot of rap can be quite poetic, especially when taken in context. Some of it however is plain retarded; I've heard more intelligent slurring and cussing in the local pub, and I live in a blue collar part of Melbourne.

The last thing I'd consider hip hop I enjoyed was One Day As A Lion, largely due to the fact there are a lot of drum leads.
 
There's some great hip-hop music. But unless you seek it out, you've probably not heard a lot of it. Hip-hop is like any other musical genre in that you can't judge it by only listening to the hits. The stuff that gets airplay doesn't represent the best of hip-hop any more than top-40 represents the best of rock music.

I do think it's kind of funny when drummers cite the absence of melody as the reason they don't like hip-hop. :)
 
I think that is a main reason to play the drums. To play along with the melody. To interpret the melody and and make drum parts that fit. None of us, I dare say, would play drums very long, if all we did was sit and play beats while someone read poetry. That goes back to the silly days of beatniks playing the bongos while someone read poetry. A hollywood stereotype for sure, but a very boring method of playing the drums. That is how I see Rap. If the best stuff is not the most popular stuff or the stuff getting air, time then the genre is failing in promoting itself.
 
Not all metal is melodic, I think there is a difference between a simple beat and doing something fun. Jon Theodores drumming in One Day As A Lion is energetic and captivating, even though there is no real melody to the music, only rhythmic synths with rap vocals.

I think that is a main reason to play the drums. To play along with the melody. To interpret the melody and and make drum parts that fit. None of us, I dare say, would play drums very long, if all we did was sit and play beats while someone read poetry. That goes back to the silly days of beatniks playing the bongos while someone read poetry. A hollywood stereotype for sure, but a very boring method of playing the drums. That is how I see Rap. If the best stuff is not the most popular stuff or the stuff getting air, time then the genre is failing in promoting itself.
 
The thing that bothers me the most about people hating hip hop is that they think it's "repetitive"
I know a lot of people that think this, but they seem to think that genres like classic rock aren't repetitive. Playing four chords over someone screaming about nothing and then playing a guitar riff is pretty "repetitive" as well.

Here's an interesting interview with Christian McBride about Hip Hop.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyvg0Ze0P2M
 
Last edited:
The only hip-hop I'll listen to is The Roots, Lupe Fiasco and a few others. The reason is this

The money/women/cars/Gangsta thing has been beaten to death. I don't care about those things, I care about drumming/running/cooking/reading. Obviously, I'm not the target audience. Conversely, I hate, and I want to absorb all that the word hate can encompess here, heavy metal music like Slipknot. It's not fair to mention just them, but they're all I know of off the top of my head. I hate music that is just bitching and moaning about everything from "mom and dad were mean to me" or "I'm weird and nobody understands me" and so on.
But! I do like my aforementioned artists because they're just that. Artists. Using clever word play and phrasing, they also speak about modern politics and sociological climate. I can dig that.

I completely agree with you. The Roots were the reason I got into hip hop when their "How I Got Over" album came out this past June and I really started searching for it.
I'm 16 (going on 17) and started playing the drums at 11 years old. I was in concert band. I grew up around rap music but I was never able to be like,"Oh, that track is hot". I just thought mainstream was tolerable but didn't care for it. I was never really into music besides playing it.

So for people who don't like rap or didn't grow up around it, I understand where you're coming from. The stuff you are hearing is mainstream rap. As a musician, I can honestly say that the chances of you finding something that you like in the mainstream is very slim if you already don't like the genre. You have to look for it.

The best comparison I can make of this is if, for example, someone came on this forum and said Travis Barker was the best drummer he'd ever seen and then you show him a Tony Royster video. Royster plays for Jay Z but that guy can play any style of drumming out there. Travis Barker isn't the worst drummer alive but to a forum like us, he's not even in our top 100 (or 500 personally for me).

Jay Electronica, Mos Def and Talib Kweli (BlackStar), Lupe Fiasco, Blu, Black Thought and the Roots, Immortal Technique, Cunninglinguists (their instrumental in "Mic Like A Memory" appeals to people who want a good melody), NaS, and J Cole are all good rappers that use clever lyrics, metaphors, etc in their music. They are all (except for J Cole who is more mainstream) very socially conscious and more intellectual with their music.

A lot of people say that they just want to listen to something catchy with a nice beat and that's fine. But for people looking at Rap from the outside, they haven't seen the real art of rap. Just like how I didn't know any good drummers before coming to this site, you seek out people who are familiar with every facet of Rap. Those guys can give you an honest answer/recomendation of someone who you could at least appreciate.
If anybody needs recommendations for some goods songs by any of these rappers, just ask or PM me.

Some of the most intelligent and literate people that I've listened to are comedians and rappers.

Edit: OrangeAgent27, to you specifically since you seem to like the same rappers I do, I suggest checking out the list of rappers I mentioned. I'm a hardcore Roots and Lupe Fiasco fan. Listened to all of Lupe's albums, including his mixtapes. I especially think that you would like Blu. I think that he is actually better than Lupe when it comes to the storytelling in his rapping. And in some of his better songs, his flow is almost as good as Lupe's.
 
Hip-hop is like any other musical genre in that you can't judge it by only listening to the hits.
Ice T never got in the charts
NWA didn't get on Top Of The Pops
Public Enemy couldn't get on prime time TV.



All the hip hop I learnt about, I got from my cousin and it was old-school.


RollingStone000 said:
@Hellwyck: How dare you good sir! I'm dry shavin' ya young, ain't no thing.
No, no idea whatchyoo sayin', jive turkey!
 
And for me metal is put in the same bin as rap.

I can't even begin to understand that view when it is the broadest genre in existence.

There are metal bands without drums, bands that don't use guitars, tons of music without vocals, every vocal style under the sun, orchestral music, music with violins, with brass or woodwind leads, sub 10 bpm, over 300bpm.... it goes on and on.

I know commercial rock music heavier then a lot of metal and most of the heaviest music I've ever heard tends to be more dark ambiance/noise/ebm, such as cold meat industries, which is certainly not metal, so that can't even be used as an argument against all metal.
 
Industrial is heavier than metal, it's designed to be.


I haven't heard any mainstream rock that's heavier than Morbid Angel, Vader, Berzerker... tho'
 
Industrial is heavier than metal, it's designed to be.


I haven't heard any mainstream rock that's heavier than Morbid Angel, Vader, Berzerker... tho'

Neither have I, but not all metal is death metal.
 
If the best stuff is not the most popular stuff or the stuff getting air, time then the genre is failing in promoting itself.

I don't think promotion has much to do with it. Marketing a pop star has to do with a lot more than talent and quality. How many of us would say the best rock songs are the ones that get the most airplay?
 
Yesterday I was hanging out with a young rello, who is getting interested in doing mixes. He's very keen on hip hop and referred to a particular style he likes best but I forgot the name (I can't keep up with all the micro genres these days).

It was fascinating watching him with his laptop, trying different ways mixing and matching things around in Traktor and trying to make sense of FL Studio. In the late 80s I did a some home recording with sequencers and drum machines on a Portastudio. Watching him do that stuff (and our engineer with Protools for that matter) made me think of how much I would have loved that level of control in the old days.

Digital is amazing and I can understand the attraction. Personally, I'd like equal emphasis put on the compositional side but *shrugs*. In spirit I see a lot of hip hop and techno as a continuation of the garage band ethos where traditional musical skills are largely replaced by sheer desire to create and express (and in the case of new music, tech smarts). I think there will always be a side to the musical scene that moves in that direction, just as another side will push the boundaries towards greater mastery. And you get a masterful player like Jojo with his "reverse engineering" ... the hip hop drummers I've seen have all been skilled players, even if the style isn't for me.

Grandmaster Flash's The Message blew me away with its freshness and passion when it first came out. But when it comes to hip hop I kind of stopped there :) ... although I like the passion and catchiness of Loose Yourself.

In the end, if we don't enjoy certain styles it's easy enough to change the channel or just put on something that floats your boat. I certainly wouldn't expect youth culture to be catering for my retro tastes and I'd be a bit disappointed in them if they did.
 
Yesterday I was hanging out with a young rello, who is getting interested in doing mixes. He's very keen on hip hop and referred to a particular style he likes best but I forgot the name (I can't keep up with all the micro genres these days).

It was fascinating watching him with his laptop, trying different ways mixing and matching things around in Traktor and trying to make sense of FL Studio. In the late 80s I did a some home recording with sequencers and drum machines on a Portastudio. Watching him do that stuff (and our engineer with Protools for that matter) made me think of how much I would have loved that level of control in the old days.

Digital is amazing and I can understand the attraction. Personally, I'd like equal emphasis put on the compositional side but *shrugs*. In spirit I see a lot of hip hop and techno as a continuation of the garage band ethos where traditional musical skills are largely replaced by sheer desire to create and express (and in the case of new music, tech smarts). I think there will always be a side to the musical scene that moves in that direction, just as another side will push the boundaries towards greater mastery. And you get a masterful player like Jojo with his "reverse engineering" ... the hip hop drummers I've seen have all been skilled players, even if the style isn't for me.

Grandmaster Flash's The Message blew me away with its freshness and passion when it first came out. But when it comes to hip hop I kind of stopped there :) ... although I like the passion and catchiness of Loose Yourself.

In the end, if we don't enjoy certain styles it's easy enough to change the channel or just put on something that floats your boat. I certainly wouldn't expect youth culture to be catering for my retro tastes and I'd be a bit disappointed in them if they did.

I respect a lot of these newer technologies but I've never been able to get my arms around doing the mixes this way. When I first started out with this in 2007 /with my old Stanton turntables/ I just felt there was something cool about holding the LPs, scratching and doing it all by hand. As a drummer there was a certain physicality to all that I felt was missing with the digital way. I put these out on youtube back then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30d_CR52jhQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dOi_4Gebnc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUdJq9-gsd8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oSmSwZzERY&feature=related

This thread has got me thinking about how I need to get serious about this again. I don't think I've moved forward with this for at least a couple of years. It's like my mallet playing. It just sits there.
 
I respect a lot of these newer technologies but I've never been able to get my arms around doing the mixes this way. When I first started out with this in 2007 /with my old Stanton turntables/ I just felt there was something cool about holding the LPs, scratching and doing it all by hand. As a drummer there was a certain physicality to all that I felt was missing with the digital way. I put these out on youtube back then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30d_CR52jhQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dOi_4Gebnc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUdJq9-gsd8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oSmSwZzERY&feature=related

This thread has got me thinking about how I need to get serious about this again. I don't think I've moved forward with this for at least a couple of years. It's like my mallet playing. It just sits there.

I get that. Your roots are in the physical act of playing music and you follow your inclinations. My young bud doesn't have those roots, apart from a year of piano lessons years ago (which he sadly dropped) so he's gravitated to other ways that suit him ... and it fits in his small room. I saw him scratching in time using the laptop's finger pad so there's a little bit of physicality.

Just curious about an aspect of scratching. I used to have hundreds of vinyl records so when I first saw people scratching I was horrified, thinking about the pops and crackles it must cause. How long do the records last? The worst thing I ever did to a record was one time I was playing and hit a cymbal clumsily, and it was kind of like Darth Vader in Revenge of the Sith - [slow motion] noooooooooo! - as I watched the cymbal stand topple over on to a record (Night at the Opera) that I'd not put away ... put a big crack in it :(

Great scratching BTW, especially the last one. I like the inventiveness in choosing the snippets and placing them.
 
Just curious about an aspect of scratching. I used to have hundreds of vinyl records so when I first saw people scratching I was horrified, thinking about the pops and crackles it must cause. How long do the records last? The worst thing I ever did to a record was one time I was playing and hit a cymbal clumsily, and it was kind of like Darth Vader in Revenge of the Sith - [slow motion] noooooooooo! - as I watched the cymbal stand topple over on to a record (Night at the Opera) that I'd not put away ... put a big crack in it :(
Most of the LPs I buy for hip hop mixes are made special meaning they're 99% scratch proof and they're made especially for Djs. You pay a little more for them. But yeah I caused quite an uproar when my first mix got a lot of hits and all those jazz guys saw me butchering that Love Supreme album which WAS NOT scratch proof. It was also my Dad's record, and he knew nothing of it until he saw the youtube track a month or so later. Needless to say I had to go to Detroit to one of those LP collectibles places and spend really good money to replace the LP with another BRAND NEW LP. He wasn't accepting a CD. He wanted his LP. After that I left Dad's records alone lol.
 
Back
Top