Official Hip-Hop Re-education Thread
 

Starang and Stan got into this territory in another thread - so let's start it up anew . . .

Drop in your thoughts on rap here - think Nelly is the be-all/end-all of rap music? Hate Puffy? Haven't been exposed to anything other than Ja Rule's latest 23 tracks with J-Lo and/or Ashanti? Want to prop your cousin's new backpack/bleepbip fusion side-project? Drop it in -

I'll start:

First of all, "Intelligent Rap" is not an oxymoron - sure, most of what you hear on the radio entails shooting people or doing drugs or shooting people while doing drugs, but there is an entire underground rap culture most people don't even hear of - mostly dedicated to eradicating the "bling bling" atmosphere.

Essentially, I'm going to break it down into three classifications of 'intellectual rap' in a generic sense, each straying farther from the 'mainstream' - I know I'm oversimplifying, but consider it a 100-level course (for now) in hiphop.

level 1 - "Conscience-Hop"

This would be the "Mainstream Rap With Conscience"-type stuff. Nas is a classic example, if you look at stuff like "One Mic" or "New York State Of Mind" - not so much with "Take it to da house" or whatever. Others in this catagory would be Jay-Z at times (see: "Can I Live"), Tupac and Biggie.

These guys do the 'bling bling' but come back with an actual message at times, separating themselves from the empty "bubblegum and hoodlum" acts.


Level 2 - "Boheme"

Here you find the fringe stuff, but still relatively well-known - guys like Common, Talib Kweli/Mos Def, Jurassic 5, etc. This is "Rap With A Message" - very little "blingin" and a whole lot more emotion/insight/social awareness.

The beats here tend to be more experimental, often using many samples, and shifting wildly from mellow ("Put It In The Air", Kweli) to harder ("Speed Law", Mos Def). However, the real unifying factor is social/intellectual insight, rather than dubs on the escalade.

Level 3 - "Nerd Rap"

The least mainstream, these guys are basically whipping out the 20 dollar words rather than poppin the Cris. Guys like the anticon collective out of Minneapolis and the NYC Underground movement serve up hip-hop strongly influenced by jazz, beat poetry and the beatnik movement in general, among other things. A lot of times, they'll employ 'fusion' beats, combining styles then rapping over the top of it. Artists like Sage Francis, El-P, etc tend to take very VERY radical political stances, while others, like Atmosphere, perform almost "emo"-rap. This is the place to look for some really novel soundscapes, and the lyrical complexity tops pretty much anything else being put out, regardless of genre.


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Anyway, There's the start, kids - flame away with your hatred of all things rap, and maybe hit up your local illegal filesharing software to download some stuff you never even heard of - you'll like it.

Fire away with questions/comments, and maybe people will have answers for ya

since when did jennifer lopez count as hip hop music :confused: :confused: :confused: ?

Re: Official Hip-Hop Re-education Thread
 

i don't think i'd pop ish to company flow calling them nerd-hip hop. i think el-p isn't a small cat. plus you can pretty much throw level 2 and 3 into a common ground. and while jay may say something conscious once in a very long while, don't put him into the same category as nas on that level. it's not even close. conscious hip hop is different from music that occasionally has a message. conscious is more level 2 stuff.

Re: Re: Official Hip-Hop Re-education Thread
 

You don't think Definitive Jux stands slightly outside the realm of "cult of Blackstar"?

The term "nerd-rap" isn't meant as a cut on those guys, either - in fact, most of my personal favorites I would place in that catagory.

I agree with what you're saying about Jay-Z, but he does have some songs in the vein of "Can I live" and the 2nd disc on Blueprint II that carry some actual depth, so I threw him in conditionally - just like "Take it 2 da house" doesn't fly for Nas, neither does "Big Pimpin" and etc.

Nas is definitely the pre-eminent mainstream rapper w/ a message, to my mind - at least, that's still alive.

As for combining levels 2 and 3 - I can see where you're coming from, I just find it useful to delineate what I see as two major realms of "underground". Among those who actively seek it out, Company Flow and Aesop Rock are household names - but for most people, Mos Def carries infinitely more weight than Mr Lif, so that's why I split them up - it's a matter of degrees, though, I definitely agree with that.

Re: Re: Re: Official Hip-Hop Re-education Thread
 

k, first, when did Nas do a song called "Take it 2 da House"? I really hope you are not confusing Nas with Trick Daddy. *horror*

Nas has always been a lyricist, see the entire Illmatic album for reference. Unfortunately he started seeing dollar signs and morphed into Nas Escobar (barf). Then he came back to his senses with Stillmatic and God's Son (both awesome records). Jay Z can NOT touch Nas lyrically, and I have never heard anyone accuse Jay of making conscious music. Reasonable Doubt was a great album, but I still wouldn't put him near real lyricists like the other names thrown around on this thread.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Official Hip-Hop Re-education Thread
 

yeah, i was playing around a little bit - I guess I should have explained better, it's more of a running joke that his post-Illmatic "releases" were more Trick than Slick, until the recent 'recovery'.

Again though - I'm going to agree tentatively with you on Jay-Z . . . he has definitely had flashes of "actually mattering", and while he has yet to reach the social commentary of most of the others, the fact that he even has records in his catalogue that approach this is better than most. For me, the bottom line becomes "anything is better than nothing."

As far as being a lyricist on par with the other names dropped in this thread - well, that's fairly subjective, but I'd rather take Jay-Z's couple of tracks over zero, in terms of content above and beyond the "bling bling" culture.

Hip hop is not the type of music I listen to, but when a song does catch my ear, it's in the "Boheme" category, as you have named it. The "rapper" or hip hop artist I respect the most is Q-Tip. I usually end up liking his material a lot.

Just to add another category, I think "trip-hop" is a valid "category" is you are creating them. I would think an artist like Tricky would fall into this category: ambient flows, deep bass lines, with a techno vibe. I like trip hop.

Opinionally, I think rap died with Tupac. I mean, he used to send a message in all of his songs. Before I heard him, I never even listened to rap music because I thought it was pointless and dumb. But I heard 'Dear Mama' and that song hit home. I grew up partially in a single parent home and my mom was the strongest person. She's my Superman. And I swear anybody that could relay that into a rap had to be talented.

As for the other rappers out there, I don't know what's going on. I THINK of Eminem as more of an entertainer than a rapper. His lyrics are too off-base to even 'white' America since he lived in a predominantly black neighborhood. So, he's ghetto and could only relate to those one or two white kids who grew up on the edge of the projects. . .getting beat up by black kids just because he was around. The rest of these kids are just listening to his music because he's cool. I used to have his first cd. Today, if you ask some kid to name a song besides the most popular ones on his first album, they couldn't tell you. So, I think it's distinctively known as fad music.

Common is great. A message.

As far as underground, there are a lot of people holding it down. They'll never get recognition but they are still 'doing their thing'. In my area, there's the Get Down Clique and Code Red(this group is banging. . .they opened for 50 Cents' Louisville concert about a month ago). Then, there's Ghostface and the Shadow. 812 Soldiers. All kinds of people who hail from here. Just trying to make a name but really just doing it because they love it.


But some of it's hardly rap.

That's like JT Money, Juvenile. . .

OK, that is totally not what I'm thinking then....ECH!

What would you define someone like Tricky as? Ambient? Techno?

I like Atmos but can't find his CD. Or Dialated Peoples. They rock.

No, sigma. .. if you like to the one song by JT Money it has a techno-based beat. . .

and juvenile's back that ass up. . .totally techno beat. . .in fact, probably because they were done on drum machines and not actually drums. . .


tricky could be techno too

Whoa...JT Money and Juvenile are neither techno nor hip hop.

JT Money makes dance music. Juvenile makes bounce music. And neither of them are lyrical genuises by any stretch of the imagination.

Tricky, is trip hop, I would say.

you cannot dance to JT Money. . .or maybe we don't have the same song in mind. . .

i would think that juvenile is more dance music anyway. . .


but why am i arguing? everyone has their own opinion.

JT Money, the rapper from Poison Clan, right? He makes straight Miami dance music. I guess it depends on where you are from whether you can dance to it or not. As far as Juvenile, yeah, you can dance to his stuff too, but for the most part, New Orleans is known for their bounce.

You can dance to pretty much anything. But JT Money and Poison Clan made lots of booty music. Later JT Money stuff is more like Trick Daddy (which is still Miami-ish, but not booty music).