Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - HipHop fans, are you embarrassed by rap? I am.

K-Wise · 01-31-2005, 05:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by uncle_el

i'm glad to see there are a lot of people on here with open minds.

ic3, that song you listed by immortal technique was pretty hot.

one could argue that the 1st cd is the best argument is the same regardless of genre. i think norah jones' 1st album is much better than her 2nd, though i still like it... she had passion on the first one that seems to be lacking on the first... jill scott's 1st album is better than her 2nd, again, it lacks the passion that was so evident on the 1st...

from the artistic sense, it somewhat makes sense. how can an artist not be changed by the success? his/her life is no longer the same, they no longer have the same vantage point, they may be going through different things that weren't occuring during the making of the 1st album... as such, it seems virtually impossible for the artist to have more of the same.

also, i think as consumers, we like what we heard the first time, and often find it difficult, or perhaps impossible, to accept the artist's newest release... i mean, if the artist talks/raps about the same subjects/content in the same exact manner... did the artist really grow? perhaps we want more of the same, but the artist wants to try something new musically. don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that this is every artist's intention, but perhaps it's the aim of some. :shrug:

interesting point.... i don't know if i necessarily agree though... i mean, what's wrong with trying to get paid?! true, being underground means not signed, but what mc out there doesn't want to get signed... what mc out there doesn't want to get paid for what they "love" to do. some could argue that every mc out there, regardless of huge commercial success or lack thereof, is "real". it just seems to me that many people feel that "real" artists are those you can't find in a large retailer...

i write poetry, and am unsigned, but my friends tell me i'm good and i get decent to good responses at poetry readings. am i more real than the cats on def poetry jam or other circuits because i'm unsigned? if a fellow poet gets paid for their work, and they do it first because they can get paid and they happen to be good at it, are they any less real?

don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to provoke an argument, just further the discussion... i think we romanticize late 70s, early 80s hip hop, as if it was all about the music, when i would argue that much of it was/is about selfish ego, getting women, and getting some money (albeit not as much money as today).

Knaw it's cool I prolly didn't make myself clear enough. I said there is NOTHING wrong with wanting to get paid...no one wants to live poor for the rest of their lives thats for sure but don't let it govern your content is what I'm saying. Cats that get rich and then write about how rich they are is redundant..We already know that. Write something that makes me think. When an emcee lets other people tell him what to write about or writes songs that he thinks are gonna make him a lot of money he is a sell out. Hip-hop is nothing more than a bank for him. The people who REALLY love hip-hop, and by this I mean all aspects of it, want to write something that will leave it's mark on hip-hop. Lyrics that YEARS later people will still go back and say "Yeah those were REALLY good. I felt those lyrics." Not the sell outs though. They're in there to cash in...drop as many bullshit albums as they can until they have enough money to live their life off of then open their own label and make money off of other people. They don't care if their music makes a difference to anyone they only care that people buy it. Thats not real...that is fake.

See you misunderstood my meaning of the word "real" for a minute there. You are no more real than the people of Def Poetry because you are unsigned because the poets at Def Poetry are real regardless. You can tell it in their writing. They're doing poetry because they love it and it just so happens that someone decided to pay them for that. Not the other way around....

See the reason why people romantisize 70's, early 80's, and even early 90's hip-hop because it was purer back then. Hip-hop had not blown up like it is now...It didn't have the greedy bastards behind all the pop acts endorsing it. They didn't think there was any money in it..they thought it was a phad. Then all of a sudden they realize it is big so now they wanna cash in on it. They corperatized it and turned into a money making tool rather than musical expression. They signed young acts who were looking to better their lives and told them what to write about. This guy raps like this and it's gotten him a lot of money..we're gonna make a song like that..get his producer on the phone..etc. Thats not real. He should rap how he wants to rap. Thats the way it SHOULD be. It's not that way anymore.

Now you have people getting in it solely for that purpose alone...we have emcees exactly like those same greedy bastards that took control of it in the first place. These same greed bastard go to every radio station in the area, and MTV and whoever else they can reach and PAY them to play their artist and to give him a certain ammount of rotation. This is why you have millions of music videos out there but for some reason it seems like you're always seeing the same handful of artists and video's over and over and over again. It's not necessarily the artists themselves that have sold out all the time though don't get me wrong. Eminem is one of the artists you see over and over but he writes what he wants to write about. The only selling out he's done is following a formula that works for him. Thats all. But hopefully I cleared things up as to what the difference between a real and fake emcee is.

Asta!!