rap, k33p it gang$ta Options

[baking]

I noticed there's a metal thread on here but no rap thread. maybe none of you listen to hip hop but I do. maybe this thread will sink into oblivion. but anyway

what rap are you 'feeling'. as the saying goes.

me:

Beastie boys (older stuff)
Ugly duckling
People under the stairs
a lot of US stuff from the 90's
Nas 'Illmatic'

I'm not talking about 50 Cent tbh, but add on...

[jem]

I dig the beastie boys too, mostly their eighties stuff. In that same vien I also like the early, early, RHCP rap stuff. But for the most part I like the 'rap with a message' stuff. My favorites are Sweatshop Union, Kyprios, K'naan. I also really like M.I.A., she counts as rap, right? Others that I like include Lauryn Hill and Zion I (although I have not heard alot of thier stuff, just a few tracks). I am also partial to Eminem. I know that he is homophobic and misogynistic, and i dislike this, but I think he has talent. As of late he has not quite shown this, but in the past...

Plus I really dig spoken word, which is not quite what you were getting at but still apart of the definition of rap.

This post has been edited by jem: Oct 2 2007, 05:35 AM

[Downsy]

Another thumbs up for the Beastie Boys here, I've got pretty much all their albums and it seems they go from strength to strength. Their earliest work hasn't dated well but you can still listen to it.
I also enjoy the Wu Tang Clan, some of their stuff is pretty amazing, some is a bit poor.

[m0r1arty]

I don't know much about rap. But as a product of my generation I was pretty into De La Soul, NWA, Public Enemy, Cypress Hill ands the Beasties at the beginning of the 90's.

Also I have to put Grandmaster Flash (who I saw on my 21st birthday) as the top guy in bringing samples to rap and Gill Scott Heron for being a great expressive poet (and Grandson of a Celtic FC player).

Peace. Out.

-m0r

[Starscream`s Gho...]

The Beasties for me, and that's about it.

The Gangster Rap stuff is vile in it's treatment of people, and especially women, and anyone who likes Snoop is a seriously misguided person. He's a pretty nasty piece of work.

[Hobbes]

i've long been a huge advocate of kanye west, although i was a little disappointed with graduation, the college dropout is one of my favourite albums ever. aside from him, i'm a big fan of madvilliany by madvillain, which was a collaborative album between madlib and mf doom. it's a really original album, with short tracks, great hooks and clever samples. mf doom himself is also great, as are danger doom, another collaborative effort, this time from doom and dangermouse. i've also recently been trying to get into black star, which was the album by mos def and talib kweli in the mid-90s. want to try and get some nas and mos def solo stuff. however, i'm much more intrigued by the earlier stuff like a tribe called quest, who i'm not at all familiar with, though i'd like to be.

[Rua]

Beastie boys
Ugly duckling
People under the stairs
Mos Def
MF Doom
Suger Hill Gang
Grandmaster Flash
Public Enemy
N.W.A.
Tribe Called Quest
De La Soul
Q Tip
Coldcut
Blackilicious

I could go on & on & on.... & a well it's on and a on and on on and on
the beat dont stop until the break of dawn....

This post has been edited by Rua: Oct 2 2007, 04:49 PM

[maian]

I'm more a fan early hip-hop, particularly Grandmaster Flash and that era, as well as the stuff that started to appear in the early 90s. 3 Feet High and Rising being one of my favourite albums ever, I am a huge fan of De La Soul, though much of their stuff after that album doesn't really impress me, then again it is a pretty perfect album, so everything after would always disappoint.

I used to like Eminem but on his last two 'proper' albums (The Eminem Show and Encore) the wit and humour seemed to be missing and the whole thing was swamped with dull beats and some really leaden production. I've not written him off completely, but his frequent guest appearances with Akon et al. just underline how poor his current work is.

As with many others, I adore the Beasties, particularly Paul's Boutique.

Of the more recent artists Kanye West and MF Doom (and his various guises) have been the ones I've been most drawn to, but aside from them Common always delivers the goods and I think that Lupe Fiasco has a bright career ahead of him if he can build on last year's Food and Liquor. Dangermouse has also delivered some great work as a producer, so anything he sticks his name on will always get5 me interested.

M.I.A.'s two albums so far (she blurs the boundaries a bit but there's enough hip-hop influence for her to qualify) have also been superb and she's a fantastic artist. Hopefully she won't pack it in too soon, as she has been saying she will in recent interviews.

The Black Star album is a great piece of work but I've been pretty disappointed with Mos Def's subsequent work. Black on Both Sides is wonderful but The New Danger was really weak. Talib has been more interesting, though.

Apart from NWA, gangster rap really doesn't appeal to me, particularly the more recent stuff. It's kind of hard to find even an ounce of credibility in a multi-million singing about ''the streets''.

And Public Enemy as well, but they go without saying.

There's many others but I'd be here for far too long writing about them.

Damn, forgot two:

Roots Manuva. Love everything the man has done and think he is one of our finest, most idiosyncratic rappers.

Dizzee Rascal. He's a divisive fellow but I personally can't help but love him.

This post has been edited by maian: Oct 2 2007, 08:17 PM

[Ade]

20 years ago I used to listen to old school stuff like the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy, but not any more. My tastes veered away from rap after that, until more recent years.

But generally, I listen to very few rap artists, the top of said list being Roots Manuva - intelligent and often very humourous lyrics, if a little dark at times. But exceptionally good.

Much like Ed said above, I really enjoyed Eminem's early material - his first album especially was the funniest thing I'd heard in music in years. His latest material has become so venomous now that there's very little to enjoy, frankly. I still listen to the Slim Shady LP every now and then.

One other rapper I quite like is Mos Def, whom I first discovered via his guesting on Scritti Politti's album Anomie & Bonhomie in 1999. His album Black On Both Sides is worth checking out.

[maian]

I'd also just like to mention Missy Elliott, who has managed to craft a particular niche for herself and give support for a number of other acts. She's also made a couple of albums that stand up amongst the best the genre has to offer, in my opinion.

[dandan]

prince paul.

[Ghost_862]

I'm not much into rap... I can deal with legitimate acts rapping like Prince, George Clinton, James Brown etc because at least they have a real band behind them.

What I dislike about rap is the music behind them, which is lazy, computerised wank. That or they just sample somebody else's music.

For instance, Kanye West - his method seems to be taking a good song by somebody else and then talking all over it - he is a systematic ruiner of other people's art.

I also don't really like the ideologies perpetuated by a lot of rap acts. I interviewed James Brown just under a year ago and he said;

"I don't wanna rag on rap because I was there at the start of that... but nowadays I won't rap, I only sing. We have children out there with guns because this music is giving them negative identity. We need to give kids positive identity. On the album we got a song... Gutbucket... to address the rappers. We gotta help these kids and music is the only way."

I didn't even ask him about rap But he told me anyway.

Later he told Rev Sharpton;

"When did we start celebrating being down? How did we get from 'Say It Loud, I'm Black and Proud' to calling each other niggers, hos and bitches? I sang people up and now they're singing them way back down again."

[gulfcoast_highwa...]

No love for UK rapping?

You should watch some Channel U once in a while. Some of it's good, NOX, a group from Sheffield are very good indeed, but most is hilariously bad. Try and catch one featuring the god-awful 'Ozmosys' of John Lennon's Imagine ruining infamy and The Firm, together with the tiny troll opera singer who appeared on the X Factor.

Although N-Dubz have become a real guilty pleasure for me as a consequence.

[Hobbes]

i've seen channel u before, some of it is horrific slash awesome.

I'm not much into rap... I can deal with legitimate acts rapping like Prince, George Clinton, James Brown etc because at least they have a real band behind them.

i don't think that's fair at all. you can't say that rap artists aren't legitimate musicians; in some cases, yes, you can criticise their originality and misogyny in many cases, but there are a host of brilliant rap artists, many of whom are mentioned above. for instance, many of the original rap groups sounded nothing like the 'bitches and ho's' of modern times. groups like de la soul, the beastie boys, grandmaster flash or a tribe called quest wouldn't be accused of not being legitimate groups. kanye west, jay-z, mf doom and madvillain are just a handful of recent artists and groups who shake off the stereotypes of rap.

i think you should listen to a lot more rap before making brash statements about the genre as a whole.

[maian]

It's also worth pointing out that some rap artists do perform with live bands, rather than just using electronics, though there's nothing wrong with electronic music at all. Kanye West, in particular, has toured numerous times with a full live band to accompany him and has used them on his last two albums.

On the question of sampling, it's all really down to a difference of opinion. I personally think that sampling is a wholly valid artform as long as the sample chosen is not the whole focus of the song and the use of it creates something which is wholly new, despite the fact that it is made up of a mix of new and old material. For example, De La Soul used dozens of samples from a wide range of artists and sources for their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising and the combination of these made for one of the thrillingly original and fresh sounding albums ever made. As with any form of music, the laziness of artists in choosing how they assemble their songs shows in their quality; when a rap artist uses a sample just for the sake of it, it's usually terrible, as can be heard on Kanye West's last single where he just stuck a Daft Punk sample in and did little else to it. When done well, sampling can transcend the technical limitations of the practice, as with any musician or musical style.

This post has been edited by maian: Oct 7 2007, 02:09 PM