Baraka_Guru

Rapping is not meant for the page, and it isn't spoken word, as there is a distinct difference in the delivery. Rap has a much stronger rhythmic quality, and it is often distinguished from spoken word, specifically, as being more musical.

If you analyze rap tonally and using scansion, this is what you will find. Good rappers have a command over the rhythm, tone, and pitch of uttered language as a drummer does over the rhythm of various pitches of percussion. A common connection between the two is found in syncopation. But that's another discussion altogether.

__________________
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

albania

Well, if no one else is going to say it, "Leave Britney Spears ALONE!". Please return to your normally scheduled discussion.


Two add my two cents. I don't think rap music sucks. I would willingly submit the album Stillmatic by Nas as proof. This may or may not be to your liking, though, it is one of my favorites.

Charlatan

Rap per se, doesn't suck, rather what sucks is the more popular examples of this form of music.

Further, I posit that much of what passes for popular music is crap.

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

Esoteric

Yeah, it's called hip-pop or pop rap.

__________________
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

n0nsensical

Just because you don't like it doesn't make it any less legitimate of an art form.

Yeah, a lot of popular rap sucks, but pop music sucks in general. There is also tons of pop rock, jazz, country, R&B, any type of music that sucks.

Many people complain about the lyrical content of rap. Well that's life in the ghetto. I wouldn't expect most white people from the suburbs to get it but people are actually living that life, the music reflects it.

People also complain about the "simplistic" rhythmic elements of rap. Well, one guy banging on a drum can be music. So can one guy with a drum machine. Just because the recorded sounds aren't necessarily made by physical instruments doesn't mean A. it's any less musical or B. that it takes any less talent to make it well. Yes it's easy to crank out simple crap but the good stuff, believe it or not, really takes talent to produce, and not being able to tell the difference between good and bad doesn't make it any more reasonable to say it's all simple and crap.

To say that rap is not music or that it all just sucks is extremely narrow minded. To me the value of music has nothing to do with how it's made or what exactly it sounds like but it's the soul and expression that goes into it. Rap is very soulful music. Listen a little closer and you might start to find the message.

Shauk

well you've all managed to rip the subject away from what I'm talking about to turn it in to what you want to talk about so I give up on it.

Derwood

remind us what your point was

Charlatan

In other words, he doesn't care if rap is poetry or spoken word... he is asking about the musical tracks upon which the raps are laid.

As I said above:

I would add to this, some are better than others at constructing these musical beds. Some, do make new music upon which to lay their raps.

Like any form of music. It is only as good as the composer/artist and popularity does not always equal excellence.

__________________
"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

The real question is, can you dance to it? This is how rap developed into hip hop: It became a medium to accompany dance. It might not be as complex or melodic as most other genres, but guess what? It's not supposed to be. But does that make it "suck"? Not if people like it. Not if it gives them joy, or an outlet for their creativity, or, in many cases, for their anger and frustrations.

If it "sucks" or if it isn't musical enough for you, then that's too bad. It is a very legitimate musical genre, and its influence is far-reaching and is having a huge and often positive impact on communities around the world. If it can generate this much energy, all I can say is it isn't going away anytime soon:

__________________
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

A very good point Baraka.

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

Shauk

This isn't my question, it has no bearing on my stance, I could dance to a fucking washing machine if I so chose.

wait so you're seriously saying they invented music AFTER dancing?

Yes, I find simplicity to suck, hence why I don't dance to washing machines mentioned above.

People like cigarettes, doesn't mean it's good, people like fast food, doesn't mean it's good. People like different sports teams, doesn't mean they are good.

many things in this world give joy, an outlet for creativity, anger and frustrations, it still doesn't mean it's good. Some people find joy in molesting underage schoolboys, some people find it to be a valid outlet for their anger to curbstomp you or shoot you if they are angry at you. while sure, rap/hip hop of this vein may be a "healthier alternative" it still doesn't change my question which had nothing to do with this sub topic at all.

I don't care if it goes away or not, I'd just rather see the genre produce something a little more tangible in the way of memorable MUSIC, until then, well, I'm going to stand by my original question and demonstrate my ability to separate music from lyrics in this discussion.

Everyone saying "you can't separate them! it's part of the package are just proving my point that the music isn't good enough to stand on it's own.

Charlatan

a) I think you are generalizing.

b) Musical taste is extremely subjective.

__________________
"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

Wow, Shauk. While I would have a lot of fun pointing out your erroneous readings and fallacious responses, I won't. I'd rather just keep the discussion going. There is one point that sticks though: "...I find simplicity to suck...." This is where you get very subjective. Hip hop doesn't suck; you think hip hop sucks. There's a difference. Based on your comment on simplicity, you also think this sucks:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

If you don't recognize this, it is "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams. He penned it in a couple of minutes. It is also known as one of the most beautiful poems of the 20th century, and a exceptional example of imagist poetry. I'm sorry to know you think it sucks.

There is little that sucks about rhyming eloquently over a 4X4 beat. This is what many poets have been doing for centuries, and this is what hip hop artists do in a modernized, musical context.

I consider this thread to be over, Shauk, if you won't accept my arguments. Although, I'd be willing to recast them and step them up if you're willing to listen.

__________________
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

Jetée

It seems that the conversation here seems to keep looping. (somewhat indicative of the topic, stance, and ironic coupling)

What I am noticing, if at all, is that, you, Shauk, are trying to convey the point that rap MUSIC, the underlying beats and rhythm, without all that jazz and flow and lyrics, in essence strictly the instrumentals alone, is simply no good to your musical perception of what your definition of music happens to be. Is this the overall message you are putting forth? Yes, I see why you are receving the tangential responses you are getting, but as in every genre or of music, there are set standards that classify such stemmings. Rock has roots, as does classical, and electronica, blues, latin, and every other form must have some essential requirements to define its overall musical inclination and sound.

The topic here, "Rap", is simple to define if generalized, as you would have it: Rhythm & Poetry.

Without the latter, all you have is the "R". Unfair it is to uncouple the pair, but the instrumentals to rap can be quite extraordinary if you care to seek out the intracacies. Some would say the actual form of the synced lyrical content of the spoken delivery would be the centerpoint, but without a relevant and smooth beat to accompany, the entire form can fall flat.


If you are willing to expand your mind, you must try to see the artform in the way it was intended, as any other genre would have it done that way as well; complete. If not, I suppose I could compilate a replete list of rap instrumentals that may have you rethink your stance of "simplicity sucks; therefore, rap sucks" (or at least the sounds in the background of the song suck, and not the artist talking does).

__________________
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves.

—Mohandas K. Gandhi

Shauk

Good for you.

ok...



lol

aberkok

Well... you need to get past this "complexity is automatically better than simplicity" attitude. Things aren't that clear cut. What is "simple" for you might just be an element taken for granted by someone else.

Example: I enjoyed your mySpace tracks but will interested to hear what you can pull off in a meter other than 4/4. In other words, I like variety in my meter.

I don't feel, however, that just because all your tunes are in 4/4 (and maybe there's some we haven't heard yet), that they are too simple and therefore "suck." I am listening to it on its own terms. I can hear that you put some care and attention into what you were doing, but the bottom line is that I had a response to it. I don't and likely will never fully know why.

But to get back on topic...

I think one of two things is true:

1) Rap does suck without its lyrical component.

2) You are unwilling to accept that you just don't like something and are trying to nail down, in vain, some objective reasons why this is a lesser music and is not worthy of being enjoyed by an intelligent person.

3) You just haven't heard enough/the right stuff yet.

I hope the answer is #3.

If the answer is #1, then consider also that Lance Armstrong is a horrible cyclist without his bike.

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Baraka_Guru

I would prefer it if you wouldn't quote me out of context by hacking up my words. You don't want to play that game with me. You might layer together music with your electronics in your spare time, but I receive an annual salary to hack up words. (Nice touch, but you forgot to delete that comma after your name.)

Do you want to continue the discussion or not?


* * * * *


Well put, aberkok. Shauk's response to you will indicate his commitment to his own thread.

__________________
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

Plan9

Whoa. That was like when Bugs Bunny slaps someone with a gauntlet. Damn.

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

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

Charlatan

I like that...

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

Shauk

apples and oranges really.

Martian

Except that it's not. What you're doing is basically the same thing. Or, if you want to keep it in musical analogies, it'd be like taking, say, the third viola* out of Danse Macabre, listening to it separately and then declaring that it sucks based on the fact that it's simplistic. The beats are necessarily simplistic in most rap because that's not where the focus is; rap is all about the lyrics (and, by extension, lyricists).

Apart from that, I guess it just comes down to a matter of taste. I've always thought it a bit immature, though, to declare that 'music genre X sucks!' simply because you don't like it.

Just my opinion.

*I don't actually know if there is a third viola in Danse Macabre, having never seen a score for it. So if not, pick another piece or instrument; the analogy works for pretty much any orchestral arrangement.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

roachboy

geez, this almost makes me wish i had been around over the weekend so i could have got to this before it became a horse and then became a dead one at that.

on the op:
what you're making in the op shauk, is a version of the kind of idiot argument that you run into from folk who wander into a contemporary art gallery, look around and say "i could do that." to which the only answer is "then why didnt you?" from which follows the deeper argument "you couldnt have done that. it would never have occured to you."


in general, i agree with baraka and aberkok and the other comrades whose posts have lined up with theirs.


a short history lesson:

in the history of hip hop, the mc came second.
the form is not entirely about the lyrics.
never was.

the originators of hip-hop were dj who adapted some of the techniques used by jamacain and uk sound system selectors in the context of spinning dub tracks--kool dj herc was from ja, the soundsystem he developed an adaptation of the soundsystem his father brought with him from ja.
the story goes that initially kool herc tried to simply do selector moves using the same records, but folk in the neighborhood wouldnt dance to them--so he switched over to funk records and adapted the techniques.

aside: if the "logic" of the op held any water, you'd have to also conclude just from the above that dub is not music either.
that makes me laugh.


anyway, the center of dj activities early on was the isolation and extension of breaks--the reason to do this was so that people would dance.
hip hop was, then, from the outset, a dance music.
remember breaking?

initially, what the word associated with hip hop did was to provide continuity while the dj re-placed the needle on a break.
(before grandmaster flash developed faders that there weren't any.)
initially, the words were mostly little phrases and name-checks.
it wasnt obvious what to rap about.
it wasnt really until "the message" came out that folk started to assume hiphop was a recorded form that addressed an audience that was not present as the music was happening (hiphop was a live form in its early days) and so began to talk ABOUT the context rather than assuming the context. this switch is not obvious. think about it.

i'm not going to bother to defend what turntablists do.
it requires no defense on musical or any other grounds.
it is self-evidently a musical form---breaking the continuity of a pop recording is an interesting act--the basis for dj practice is collage building (which is the only coherent way to understand what djs did--when turntablism became a separate thing--by the middle 1990s---q-bert (for example) had already developed and catalogued something on the order of 200 techniques for manipulating records and it had already become something more and other than making sound collage--but to my mind, djs make sound collages.)

within early hip hop, the main force behind the flowering of this collage element was afrika bambaata. most electro spins out of his work--and you wouldn't be doing what you're doing in electronic music without afrika bamabaata hovering in the background.

so if hip hop is not music, what you do, shauk, is also not music.
it pays to learn the history of the form you work in, chum.


anyway, by the time you get to the "second wave" of hip hop, by the time you get to what the bomb squad was doing in the context of public enemy, you run into very sophisticated sound collage work---FAR more complex sonically than anything happening in mainstream electronic music that is geared around dance (this leaves aside the legion of folk doing more complex electronic music in various underground scenes....i could go on and on about these forms, but i'll resist the temptation at this point)

=========
on drops: you can add patterns in 4 to any rhythm pattern. sooner or later, all sequences resolve into 4--or into any other meter than you add in (3, 6, 13: it doesnt matter if the sequence is long enough) allowing the beats to be resolved by the drop (which is inevitably on the 1 largely because the source material for most hip hop is funk and funk is all about the 1) is only AN OPTION for listening.
you can flip it around and emphasize the stream of sound elements, which are sometimes assymetrical with reference to the drop, if you want. for a long time, i was fascinated with drum-and-bass because i understood this form as taking this potential within hiphop and running with it.
it is obvious that you can select the rhythm that you dance to in a drum-and-bass context and that keying on the drop is no more than an option..


===========

o yeah--one of the main reasons that commerical hip hop sucks in the main these days (so far as i am concerned anyway) is simply that the role of djs has become less prominent--they have been replaced by makers of beats, mot of whom work with a single sample source--this because of the fees required to use recorded materials--the fees were forced onto hip hop by asshat copyright lawsuits during the early 1990s. these lawsuits more than anything else explains why it is that contemporary commerical hip hop is so simple when compared to what was happening in the late 1980s-mid 1990s: most of what gets airplay is based on 1 or 2 samples and that's it.

bomb squad releases were based on hundreds of samples crushed together.
so there is a dicerct link between the state of contemporary commercial hip hop and the attitude outlined in the op:

i interviewed one of the people from the turtles about their suit against de la soul for a 3 bar chunk they bit on "3 feet high and rising"---his attitude toward hip hop was that it wasn't music.
he claimed that a "creative" use of turtles music would have required that de la hire a bunch of musicians to do exact copies of the songs.
using records as raw materials was not music--it was stealing.
i think that attitude incomprehensible--unjustifiable conceptually, appalling aesthetically.

to argue on that basis that hip hop is not music is to argue that collage is not an art, that making collage does not transform the original material by resituating it. a logical extension of this would be to say that max ernst (for example) was not an artist because he made collage.
i dont know how you'd make such an argument.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

vanblah

All popular music "passes off the lowest common denominator of creativity." That's how they sell music to the masses. With popular forms it's about "unique familiarity." The writer and producer (sometimes the performer) put together a song (or songs) that sound like "Band X" but with enough differences that the average buyer will pick it up.

Musical composition? Really? Let's examine MOST pop music and you'll find that the "composition" is simple and repetitive. Rock/Blues/Hip Hop/R&B ... most of it is 4/4--and 4 on the floor at that. You might get a little 3/4 (or 6/8) for ballads if you're lucky. They usally use ABABABB structure ... or ABABCBB structure if they're feeling daring. Lyrical content is laughable and secondary in most cases.

I have a pop band that I've been working with for a while now. None of us in the band have a pop background ... for the most part we don't listen to pop music beyond what we hear on the radio (when it's on). I do appreciate the craft of writing a pop song and making it sound different enough that people will actually buy it. The band has tried to stick with the pop format; but also breaking enough rules that we can stand out.

You say that "anyone who's serious about music can tell you [that] hiphop/rap should easily ... be winning [the title for being the most repetitious]" over your own genre: electronic. But they're both basically the same in my book. Both of these genres (hip-hop and electronic) use, almost exclusively, either found sound or purchased sample libraries of drums, bass-lines, lead-lines, pads and even vocal cues. Does that make it bad? Not in my book. I sometimes like to use sample libraries too ... in my other projects.

With regard to the countless other musicians and bands "not making it" that you mentioned ... I just attended a meeting that talked about hip-hop vs. rock. Hip-hop artists have a very strong community ... they are usually out there selling their asses off. Indie rock musicians usually sit around the bar and whine about why no one is falling down all over themselves trying to buy their CDs. In the end it's about who is a better salesman. It can't be "all about the music" when you are trying to sell yourself. That's why it's called "selling."

With regard to electronic music ... most of what I hear is exactly what you don't like: rap without lyrics. A beat, a bassline, a few synth pads and a maybe, maybe a lead; usually no lyrics. Of course, not all electronic music is like this ... some of it is amazingly good (and even sometimes complex). But there is certainly a glut of people who string together a few loops in a software program and then complain that no one will buy it. Why should someone buy yet another "song" that was put together out of samples with no soul? Complexity does not automatically equal good. The opposite is true in most cases.

Sidenote:

Don't believe anything you see on TV with regard to "bling." Yeah, it may look like they're making millions but for the most part it's all an act. A few ARE making a lot of money, that's true, but the vast majority are just the flavor of the moment and they will retire to relative obscurity and be broke within a few months or years. My favorite story is about a certain Rap/Metal band that had a spot on MTV cribs. On the show you see a mansion, pool, recording studio, nice cars, TVs and just a bunch of nice shit all over the house. In reality, MTV rented the mansion and had all of the amenities flown in. The guys in thiss band are broke as a joke and of course now they're struggling to pay the rent in a crappy little apartment in town. The image of bling is just a marketing ploy to sell more CDs ...

roachboy

just to piggyback on what vanblah said above:

pop forms--ESPECIALLY in the states--work within a very tight straightjacket in terms of--well--pretty much everything. but what you hear on the wasteland that is commercial radio (and the even more narrowly construed multiplex of wastelands that is netradio more often than not) is not representative of the genres, of the often huge range of people who make stuff, most of whom are very dedicated to what they are doing because they love it, and who work and perform for that reason.


most straighter forms are not difficult to do--but they can be very difficult indeed to do well.

i don't play these forms because they dont move me as a player, but i respect the musicianship and dedication of those who do work in them.
even those folk who work in forms i dont like.

for example: my brother is a bluegrass player. generally, i would rather drive tacks into my forehead than listen to bluegrass on record--but i enjoy the energy and pleasure of hanging around picking sessions, even if i have no interest at all in participating in them (i cant imagine anything cheesier than piano in that context---its a string player's music and is just fine that way)---i appreciate the care with which good players approach the form.

another note on bluegrass (one that curiously enough links to hiphop)--i find the form irritating to *hear* but not irritating to *listen to*. when all you are doing is hearing it, you can focus on the 1-4--5 progressions and the fact that bass players will only play root fifth root fifth passing tone...but if you listen to it, you can figure out pretty quick that the center of the music is getting the band to work as a seamless machine in terms of rhythm and that the players who take breaks work within severe constraints in terms of pitch selection and placement--and are often very skilled and do interesting things within these constraints. but you have to focus to notice.

it might be that folk who do not like hip hop only hear it.
what i've seen in this thread from those who dont like the form is really superficial stuff, the result of hearing at best.

most soundwork requires focus.
there is no reason why it should be otherwise.

1a.

it makes no sense to disparage the craft of musicians who work in areas that you do not personally enjoy consuming.

to do it is like telling someone that they love the wrong way.



2.

"complexity" is in many ways easier than simple. if you play an instrument with a certain degree of technical skill, "complexity" can mean "play alot of notes"--it's more difficult--and requires alot more attention--to generate clarity of structure. you often hear younger cats who are technically quite accomplished who will not shut up, like they are afraid that if they lay out they will disappear altogether. if they keep going and working, you might hear them a few years later and they do more with less. past a certain point, placement is as important as the fact you can generate a flurry of sound.

if you want to traffic in development and not in riffs, you are also trafficking in clarity of structure, in logic. this doesn't change because of what's around you--the problem is that same for someone playing off changes as it is for someone playing a solo piece in a post-serial context, nor does it matter whether you are playing a cover or doing free improvisation. clarity of line, no extra notes...not easy. not easy at all.


3.

on electronic music: there's *so* many folk out there working under this very general rubric that it makes little sense to lump it together.
it is far far far from a single form.
for example, people working with granular synthesis are not typically generating dance music. they aren't performing for the same audiences, arent working in the same contexts.
that you know more about dance-oriented electronic music speaks mostly to the preferences of those who do radio or club programming--what demands less sells more drinks--you dont sell alot of drinks to a crowd who is there to listen seriously.
go to a performance of technically advanced electronic music in a loft or small club and look around at what people are doing during the set, if you dont believe me.
you'll discover a simple fact of retail life.

so you have to dig a bit to find more demanding recordings, more demanding players.
but they're out there.
trust me on this one.

an epilogue, which arrived by email as i was writing this post:

I offer you no proper names
either from great cities
on the other side of civilization
which have only to be visited
to be got the hell out of, by bus
or motorcycle, simply because place
as a force is a lie,
or at most a small truth,
now that man has no oar to screw down into the earth, and say
here i'll plant, does not know
why he should cease
staying on the prowl


Charles Olson
from "To Gerhardt, There, Among Europe's
Things of Which He Has Written Us
in His 'Brief an Creeley und Olson'"

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Derwood

you must love this clip then:




totally old school

roachboy

mixmaster mike...nice.

lately, i've been kinda goofing to shapes of broad minds:



tho i'm not above watching a battle crew doing a bit of beat juggling:



tho when i feel like bouncing around, i go this way:



or dig out a primo production



or two



these are old school:





i never understood why the ultramagnetics were not the biggest thing in hip hop from the middle 1980s...

poppa large


ok enough of this

a little freestyle fellowship at the end

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

karna

Aesop Rock; not only is his sound unique, but his raps are moral fables told through complicated free-verse style rhymes. Aesop Rock has been rapping since the late 90s, but because he dosen't feed to the mainstream topics and sounds he has yet to reach stardom. His music is poetry about human nature rather than attacks on current events; it seems like now every rapper raps about bullshit party shit on one track and wonders where the game is going in the next, and it's this hipocrisy that has made rap both sell and slit its own throat. Last week I went to Best Buy with my friends to convince them to buy Aesop Rock's CDs, but out of 6 records only one was under his name. There is great rap out there, but you're more likely to find it surfing the web or walking through a cypher.

ring

Hey Shauk person!

I love the samples of your work.

With your understanding and sensibilities of what you like,
keep on creating, dude!

Music is always fluid.

Blend all the influences you are inspired by.
I do. I would love to hear hear an electronic- rap - opera!

You are the Genius of yourself.
Go kick ass with structural composition,

Whatever moves your muse.

abccrazy123

You have to reach pretty far back for good Rap/Hip-Hop. The only consistant artist I can think of was Q-Tip on the first few Tribe Called Quest albums. He had the ego just like everyone else, but he was so smooth you couldn't really hold it against him.

filtherton

I don't know if anyone can convince you why rap music doesn't suck. It seems like you've pretty much made your mind up. This thread seems more like a backfired attempt at being snarky.

World's King

I know this is late but can someone argue why country music suck?

Polka?

Rock?

Classical?

Jazz?

Blues?

Pick a type of music...


You have your good and you have your bad. You have your talented and you have your hacks. It's all a matter of opinion.

__________________
heavy is the head that wears the crown

Seer666

To tired to read all of this, but, let me start out saying I'm a metal/punk fan. But if you want a reason to say rap doesn't suck, well then, here/

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/l1llNYAlYrc&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/l1llNYAlYrc&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HerpGwbLSM8&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HerpGwbLSM8&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>


*edited to remove sexual abuse. lol

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Bad spellers of the world untie!!!

I am the one you warned me of

I seem to have misplaced the bullet with your name on it, but I have a whole box addressed to occupant.

Lak

Yea-heah Saul is the shit!
But Seer, you really must be tired, unless you meant to say "rape" doesn't suck...

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ignorance really is bliss.

Seer666

ROFL. Wow. Yeah, just a little out of it.

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Bad spellers of the world untie!!!

I am the one you warned me of

I seem to have misplaced the bullet with your name on it, but I have a whole box addressed to occupant.

Jetée

Attentive participants, please:


May it please the deciding audience, I'd like to present this pivotal focus-point to the argument, in the form of an .mp3:

This all-encompassing track is meant to definitively reason to all who have peered into this thread and given their bit of knowledge on the topic, why it is that "rap" music is so popular, but also as to why one cannot realistically portray the ill-conceived notion that the entire genre "sucks" due to misinformation. Venues become skewed when you become a part of the masses in-tune with the MTV and popular outlet media, and it can delude the general populus when what they see and hear is just accepted as how it goes. There is infinitely more that we have yet to unveal and discover, but to state that we have is all we are going to get, and as long as it is no good why even bother mentioning it, well, is a very contradictory point of reference.
So, I would insist with my sincerest graces, I'd like for all here to give a small listen to the topical nature of the song, its music key tonality, flowing lyrics, overall sound & message endorsed, and give a viable response as to your thoughts of this evidence in regards to the thread's main point of argument.
Thank you.


Presenting:
http://www.divshare.com/download/3179453-a8c--from the album "White People", by Handsome Boy Modeiing School

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As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves.

—Mohandas K. Gandhi