Esoteric

There's your answer right there. Stop listening to this over-commercialized, gangbanger bullshit. That song that was linked earlier in this thread by Soulja Boy is a good example of garbage. Seriously there is a plethora of underground hip hop out there that is way better than that. Check out De La Soul, Dilated Peoples, Mos Def, Atmosphere, Binary Star, Blackalicious, Jurassic 5, Eyedea & Abilities, Jedi Mind Tricks. There's tons more than just those I listed.

I don't really know if The Roots fall into the underground category, but check them out as well. They're one of my favorite hip hop groups.

__________________
From a head full of pressure rests the senses that I clutch
Made a date with Divinity, but she wouldn't let me fuck
I got touched by a hazy shaded, God help me change
Caught a rush on the floor from the life in my veins

Willravel

Strange Famous

I like most of the people youre quoting, but would also recomend people look at the UK scene

Dizzee, Sway, Mitchell Brothers, Kano, Lethal Bizzle, Wiley....

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for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
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without being uncovered."

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Manic_Skafe

And don't forget Jehst as he's easily one of the best lyricists to emerge from the UK hip-hop scene.

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Shauk

OK I think i'm starting to formulate a more solid position on my issue with "rap" then.

every single video up until "The Streets" had me ignoring the lyrics and focusing on what I was talking about in the OP, which was, rap MUSIC, not rap itself. There was the interesting point brought up of it becoming a music form from which it was not originally, it was simply spoken word with no music, that is a good point. I guess when you couple simplicity with simplicity it sounds like simplicity. For the record, I like The Streets, I've heard them before and I didn't really think of it as rap for some reason.

Although this is what becomes mainstream perhaps and why I hear these 1 hit wonders and shake my head in disdain at it all. So.. lets say I take in to account the lyrics. Crompsin quotes some simple lyrics from other genre's I understand, but there is a difference between singing as an expressive outlet and simply trying to sound tough and say stuff as quickly as possible to impress some witless idiot who thinks it's cool because he isn't over his fast and furious phase in life.

But there we have it, theres no way for me to be like "here's the black and white answer" to my question. Some people are going to think that simplicity in music and simplicity in lyricism is going to equate to good music, some of those people will be producers, execs, and PR types, followed by those who purchase said music.

Apparently I can either just accept that "different strokes for different folks" or I can be bitter about it and think that the majority of people just don't have a clue.

SO on a tangent, this thread has become about lyrics, something I was aiming to avoid simply because, again, I was talking about music and music alone, my point is, speaking/rapping or whatever doesn't carry any emotion to me, it's just emotionless in the interest of speedy delivery, or it reminds me of some middle schooler trying to sound tough.

I guess I have to hold rap up to a higher standard when it comes to picking the songs I can listen to and enjoy than some other genres for that reason.

Doesn't matter how good your lyrics are if your music is bland and your delivery is coming across like a cracked out kid entering puberty.

Derwood

all rap lyrics aren't going to be brilliant. there are more words in a four minute rap song than there are in most 10 song rock albums.

Manic_Skafe

Or as I said earlier, you can learn to appreciate it in it's own context.

But yet you can find emotion and meaning behind the various blips and blops of most electronic music?

It's the same reason why you wouldn't listen to the Ramones for incredible musicianship - you can't expect the music to serve a purpose that it wasn't intended to. I can guarantee that if you put in the effort and check out some of the artists mentioned in this thread then you'll find something you like.

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"Porn is a zoo of exotic animals that becomes boring upon ownership." -Nersesian

Willravel

You can't defend rap so you attack electronica? Classy.

BTW, you'd be lucky to hear some of Shauks stuff. He's a talented musician (electronica being music, not poetry), and he's a way better electronica composer than I am.

Baraka_Guru

This is an excellent parody of gansta rap videos. By parody, I don't necessarily mean Weird Al style, but more of the classic uses of parody, which isn't necessarily comical (though it is), but is essentially critical.

There is a lot to read in this video.

Aphex Twin "Windowlicker" (Over 10 min.) Big download (96.8 mb), but worth it for the context of this discussion. (Try right clicking, and "Save As")

Also available on YouTube, but their service isn't working currently. Be sure to watch the long version.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Shauk

again skafe, you're failing to separate music from lyrics.

I'm not going to defend the fact that I can find emotion in sounds without lyrics. Because that's absurd to say that you can't. Ever hear a whistle? and alarm clock? an air raid siren? all of these elicit different initial base instinct reactions in a person before your brain kicks in and regulates the reaction you have.

I mean for fucks sake man, entire movie soundtracks are there to add emotion to scenes and don't have to have a freaking word. Just listen to the music in "The Fountain" or hell, "Saw" and they use the music so well in those movies (god bless charlie clouser, the fucking magnificent bastard) that it adds an emotional layer and doesn't need a single word to convey what emotion that is.

Electronic music is such a broad term and it is hard to figure out what it means to most people. Will is giving me far too much credit on the whole musician front. I'm completely self taught and it's mostly hours of trail and error, but I keep at it because I like it and I want to be good at what I like doing. (taking self taught piano lessons and such for now)

so again, to flip back to the lyrical side of things, you act like I'm still of the mind set that "all rap sucks" and I believe I stated above that I realize it isn't the case, but that rap "music" sucks, and needs to become a more complex vessel for delivering their expression of choice. Compare "The Streets" video that was linked above musically vs the others and you'll see why I picked that one as my acceptable entry.

and P.S. That aphex twin video is funny, but you haven't seen anything till you've seen "monkeydrummer" lol Richard D. James is a weird fellow, all of his music is pretty difficult to get your head around.... well, not all of it but, a lot of it.

Manic_Skafe

What's most comical is that I'm responding to this post while listening to "I'm Hungry" by Sports. Good electronica/breakbeat if you ask me.

When did I attack shauk? I chose not to expound upon my point simply becuase I made it more than clear enough in my first post.

Classy indeed.

And while it's not my cup of tea, I've heard what he has up on his myspace.

Stop being Shauk's bodyguard and explain how rap isn't music.

Well myself and a few others have cited some artists that'd be up your alley. Message me here or on aim - I'd be more than happy to share my entire collection with you.

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"Porn is a zoo of exotic animals that becomes boring upon ownership." -Nersesian

Willravel

Spoken poetry has no melody or harmony. Music requires at least some melodic content. You don't sing rap. There can be music in rap, but rap itself is not music.

Manic_Skafe

Do you split hairs for a living or do those non-arguments come standard with the Apple stock?

__________________
"Porn is a zoo of exotic animals that becomes boring upon ownership." -Nersesian

Baraka_Guru

It can be argued that the way the lyrics are presented in rap is the melody, and that the beats, samples, and other components in the background make up the harmony. Just because rap isn't sung, it doesn't mean a rap performance isn't music. Also, you left out the rhythmic component that also is a characteristic of music.

"Spoken poetry has no melody." Say that to a room full of poets, and you'll have a bunch of angry people with vast sense of diction.... You want to have an earful?

Homer is rolling in his grave.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

ring

Yes, I believe in lyricals

Willravel

It's not splitting hairs at all. Or are you one of those people that thinks that 3 minutes of the sound of New York traffic constitutes music?

aberkok

I don't think you'll discover anything by doing this. You can't take a form, remove an essential element, then evaluate it. It's so arbitrary and it turns this whole discussion into a debate over mere materials. An example might be to pose the question: "Would Walt Whitman have been as good of a poet if we removed all the letter "A"s from his work?"

The problem I see with this discussion is that it's a battle of which form's materials are better. It's obsessed with the artifact of the music. Proving why rap doesn't suck ultimately doesn't matter because there are a multitude that clearly love it. That's really all it takes to prove it doesn't suck - that there are tons of people out there who love it. It exists in its cultural context and perhaps you need to understand that context before "getting it" (though I don't think I really understand the context...and I like a lot of rap). But - even if it requires this background knowledge to enjoy, doesn't lessen it's merit. No music stands on its own, independent of its social, cultural, or even market context (except maybe in analysis class).

Another reason I feel this sort of thing leads nowhere, is because we can't categorize artists under an umbrella like "rap," and expect to have anything in common between them. I'm probably not the best person to do this, so I won't, but it's probably simple for an enthusiast to take two artists both lumped under "rap" who have almost nothing in common.

Also, where does turntablism fit in to all this?

Will...when we try to define music beyond what the dictionary says, we enter completely subjective territory, so basically, stop trying to define music. Even by very strict definitions, music does not require melody - what about solo drum repertoire?

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Willravel

No, the dictionary is actually very specific, not subjective at all. I'm trying to head away from subjective because, just like I said above, there are people out there that litterally think that any sound or even possibly silence constitutes music. It's in that subjectivity that the word music losses all meaning. I'm not interested in music losing meaning, thus my position that spoken word isn't music.

Maybe I should put it this way. Who is called a 'rapper', the one that rhymes or the pasty white guy in the studio that puts together the beats and melody?
Someone has to.
I'm not a very good percussionist when it comes to a set, but correct me if I'm wrong: drums have different tones. These tones, when combined with beat and often measure, surely constitute music. Even by the most strict definition.

Baraka_Guru

Now replace "drums" with "spoken word."

Have you ever deconstructed language? Here's an exercise for you: Spend a day at work, but whenever you speak, don't use any high vowels. Recast all of them as low vowels.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Charlatan

Wow will... you are really going to try and tell a professional musician what music is?

If anyone really knows I would say it's someone who spends nearly all of his time playing, thinking about and living music.

I am just saying...



As for the rap question, are we talking about hip hop or the actual act of rapping? If you are just talking about the act of rapping, what's the point of looking at it isolation?

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Manic_Skafe

In the traditional sense of music, no. But noise can and often is considered musical.

Nonsense. Exactly how much is your definition of music, in it's most traditional sense, truly worth when that definition is completely irrelevant to many if not most of those that create and appreciate music?

Your entire argument boils down to nothing more than a matter of semantics.

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Baraka_Guru

For the purposes of the OP, we should be talking about the "musical" accompaniment to rap, as opposed to "rap music," the tracks we spin when we want to roll with our hommies. Kinda like when aberkok and I roll up and down Yonge St., lookin' for some play.

But, seriously, Shauk's complaint is what we hear in the background, not the rapping per se. I think the problem here, is that we are pulling apart the whole to reveal how "sucky" rap's "musical" accompaniment really is. True enough, it isn't something to compare to other genres, but that's not the point. Rap music (the whole) is concerned with lyrics and their delivery. It would be like criticizing electronica for not being capable of existing in an entirely acoustic context...and using that to deny its status as music. What would be the point?

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Willravel

So because he plays he's right and Webster is wrong? I play, too. I've played piano since I was in diapers, many times professionally. I mean that doesn't really have anything to do with semantics, but there it is.

The word "music" means what it means.

I'm not arguing that all rap is bad or anything like that, and rappers are "artists" by trade, but speaking for a while—in beat or not—isn't music. "Rap music" is a contradiction in terms or at the very least a miscategorization.

The thread is semantics. "Is rap music?" is one of the primary questions of the thread. That question is essentially "what does music mean, and does rap fall under that meaning?" The strict answer is no.

Baraka_Guru

Have you not been reading my posts carefully? Please ask me if you need any clarifications.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Willravel

That's not rap, it's instrumentals. I doubt anyone could argue that the instrumentals aren't music. They're absolutely music. That's not the rap, though, which was what I was trying to illustrate with:

Derwood

from dictionary.com:

6. any sweet, pleasing, or harmonious sounds or sound: the music of the waves.

Baraka_Guru

Will, I'm still not sure what you're saying. I can argue semantically that rap is music, but you say it isn't. You've called drums music. Would Gregorian chant be music too? You're misinterpreting the dictionary definitions, I think. Either that, or you don't quite understand what happens when we utter language, and you don't quite understand what is happening when someone raps.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Willravel

Fine. Rap can use the same definition of 'music' that I can assign to my own farts, which are a pleasing sound. Is that really the winning argument you want to make?

Edit: I don't know why people are up in arms about this. A child's laughter isn't really music either, not in the same sense as a concerto or guitar solo, but that doesn't make it bad or less in any way. Rap is what it is. Applying a correct label to it does not redefine it.

Baraka_Guru

I don't know. If the Oxford University Press will call it music, I don't know why you won't. Rap isn't an "accidental" sound, nor is it an incidental sound such as laughter. It is pieced together purposefully, and often in an improvised fashion. It is a music of the voice, that is either solo or accompanied by an instrumental backing. No, it's not singing, but it isn't farting either.

If you simply don't like rap, then please say so. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to take what you're writing seriously.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Charlatan

You are right, Will. Rap on its own is not neccessarily music. The problem, will, is that you are isolating the spoken word from the sounds that accompany it.

When I speak of rap, I am speaking about the whole package, or as Baraka puts it, the tracks we spin when we want to roll with our hommies when we are looking for some play...

What purpose does it serve to do this other than to win a semantic argument?

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

Baraka_Guru

Charlatan, I'm not convinced he's won that argument, but your point still stands. Rap isn't quite the same without the beats, etc. But the ones who benefit the most from that are those who can't keep time very well.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Willravel

I was only talking about rap by itself.
I agree with the idea that the instrumentation is music. Rap can be a capella, though. Mos Def did an acapella version of one of his pieces that was on MTV once upon a time. Was that not rap because it lacked an instrumental?

There's no winning or losing, there's the truth.

Charlatan

Can we continue the discussion under the definition of rap being the whole package?

Otherwise I am going to have to pull out some spoken word songs by dead white guys and start waving them around...


As I see it there are a number of reasons why some people don't respect rap.

1) the music in rap is largely sampled from somewhere else and then reconstructed. It is the first music of the information age. Some traditionalists, like Phil Spector, would say that rap arists should go and learn to write their own songs. Others, like Pete Townshend, would say that the traditionalists should just shut up and get out of the way as a new form of music has been born.

2) Subject matter. Much of what passes for mainstream rap is all about bling and guns and bitches. In answer of that, I point to what passes for mainstream pop music which, as far as I can tell, is all about people expressing soppy love sentiments at each other. Neither is really all that good when it comes down to it. It should be noted that this has more to do with content than the form.


Interestingly, many of the comments I see that complain about rap music "sucking" are not all that different from the kinds of complaints that were once made about Rock 'n' Roll.

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

Derwood

if you're at a rock concert and the drummer does a drum solo, does that portion of the concert suddenly cease to be music (as it lacks melody and harmony)?

How about African tribal drumming?

Also, to pull the rapping away from the whole package isn't fair. How often do rappers rap without a backing track? I'd say less than 1% of the time. Less than 0.1% on records.

aberkok

Don't misrepresent me, Will. My point was that I was against trying to define music at all...and so it's not "me vs. Webster."

My personal (and of course this changes and deepens as time goes on) definition of music, which I'd like to share but not impose, is: organized sound. To speak up for "those who think three minutes of traffic sounds" is music, well, I do... sort of. To me a lot has to do with the way it's presented. Standing at an intersection isn't music to me. Every once in a while there are events which could be described as musical, but for me, to really be music, it has to be presented that way, i.e. at a concert or on a recording. At that point, someone has decided to organize the sound.

Doesn't mean I like it or that it's pleasing. Music doesn't have to be pleasing. It's not that simple.

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Willravel

If music means organized sound, then rap is music. If music means a melodic and/or percussive sounds of different pitches organized into structural pieces, then rap probably isn't music. Beat boxing is. I like beat boxing.

...back to the thread...

Does rap suck? Basically, yes, imho. I'd say that most rap, the rap you might hear on Clear Channel stations or on MTV, is pretty disrespectful, petty, childish, and shallow. Occasionally, there will be good rap and it's usually underground or non-mainstream.

Plan9

Most of the "music" on MTV is disrespectful, petty, childish, and shallow... regardless of genre.

They only show what sells. Nobody is confusing Britney Spears, Nickelback, and My Chemical Romance with being earth-shaking artists. But you knew that already.

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Baraka_Guru

Do you know what's true? I know your standpoint, but I don't know your belief. You haven't expounded why you think rap isn't music. There are encyclopedias, university courses, books, social programs, etc. that all support and develop a culture of rap (aka hip-hop) as a legitimate and enriching musical genre that was derived from African American communities.

I will now ask you what I should have a while ago: If rap isn't music, then what would you call it? Talking? Poetry? Noise? Nonsense? Whatever you choose to call it, please support your answer with an explanation.

aberkok is right; much of the discussion of music is subjective. But at the root of it: semantically, scientifically, and aesthetically, rap (even without accompaniment) can be defined as a form of music. How is this not true? Please explain to me, if I am wrong.

And what Crompsin just said, too.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Willravel

That's how I see it, yes.

Plan9

Foshizzle my Walt Wizzle.

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."