Hip Hop

[mue 26]

Let's get a proper thread started up in hurr.

This has got me excited today: http://www.spin.com/articles/el-p-kille ... -duo-album

YES!

[Brothaman]

^ I'm not too familiar with El-P, but I like Killer Mike. If Killer Mike wanted to do an LP with him, then he must be good. I'll be looking for it when it's released.

[mue 26]

Yeah, it sounds like this album will be a proper duo thing with them both spitting, but he's already done the RAP Music lp which was entirely produced by el-p. Easily one of the best albums of last year.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze1_vkSyPDY[/youtube]

Don't sleep on El-p though, he's great. Check out I'll Sleep When Your Dead.

[beedle]

i do like hip hop but i'm pretty ignorant of it...

[Brothaman]

^ Don't feel too bad, I don't listen to it much anymore myself. I don't know most of the new rappers from past three years. Most rap songs suck pretty bad now days anyways. I just mostly listen to old Jazz, like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, etc.

Yeah, it sounds like this album will be a proper duo thing with them both spitting, but he's already done the RAP Music lp which was entirely produced by el-p. Easily one of the best albums of last year.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze1_vkSyPDY[/youtube]

Don't sleep on El-p though, he's great. Check out I'll Sleep When Your Dead.

Yeah I just checked a few of his songs, they sounds pretty good. I really hate how the radio won't play the best MC's.

[MiTT3NZ]

It'll take a lot to get me to listen to any Hip-Hop nowadays. All the love I had for it has gradually diminished over the years. The divide between mainstream and underground has become too great. On the one hand you've got a handful of talentless cunts who either wanna sing instead or spit some wank 8-bar verse over a dance track, on the other you've got a bunch of guys who don't know the meaning of the word personality. Even Royce has disappointed me since he decided he'd put on a 2pac voice post-Bar Exam. Then there's the likes of Em[u]o[u]nem, Snoop, Jay, etc. who've pretty much just gone "fuck it, I'm gettin old, time to do something nobody actually wants". And don't get me started on Nas. The best emcee that's ever been... drops an album with tracks that wouldn't even make it onto a mixtape.

I'm afraid that the genre is almost beyond repair now, and I've spent many months over the last couple of years depressed over the realisation. Hip-Hop is Dead indeed.

[Bluecast]

I like some 90's stuff but what little I have heard since the 2000's started I just don't like it. Been 1 or 2 songs I have liked. Maybe my tastes are just to different but it seems to have gotten really lazy and ignorant sounding. It's gotten the point I won't even click on a video or the second I hear a rap song come on tv or radio or whatever I just turn it off.

[Sailors?]

I've been known to hippity hop on occasion.

Yeah, I'm quite ignorant on the genre too but I like old Snoop, Jay, Cypress Hill and the like. These days I'm mainly listening to 6 hour long Mr Scruff mixes, some decent hip hop tunes appear on there occasionally.

[mue 26]

i do like hip hop but i'm pretty ignorant of it...

It's never too late to get into it a bit, it just means you have REAMS and reams of amazing stuff to listen to that will be new to you. Although that can put some people who are new to the music off it quite easily, especially as there is also a ton or crap hip hop that needs to be filtered out too.

You like some De la, right? So I'd say the most obvious album to get you onto next would probably be Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest, if you haven't already checked that. It's a bonafide classic and always seems to go down well with most people just getting into the music.

Another album I often recommend as an intro to Hip Hop is Illmatic by Nas. The lyrical content is different from stuff like Tribe and De La as it's more "hardcore" or whatever, but the main reason I recommend Illmatic is because of the beats. you have a load of the best producers on that album, so it makes it a perfect springboard. For example you have some DJ Premier and so can go on to Gang Starr albums like Daily Operation or Hard to Earn, you have Q tip on there too and so can go on to some of the ATCQ stuff I mentioned earlier, there Pete Rock on there too, so you can get into Mecca and the Soul Brother from there, or you might try Breaking Atoms (which I think you might like beeds) from the Large Pro connection. And after all that you also might want to move onto some darker Boombap like Wu Tang or Boot Camp Clik or whatever. So it's like the key link into all different strains of brilliant 90's east coast Hip Hop. And if your feeling like a bit of old school flavour you can check out some classic Cold Chillin stuff from Juice Crew, G Rap, Masta Ace and so on.

Of course there's a chance you might not into any of that stuff and might prefer to jump into some more recent whimsical kind of stuff from the likes of Doom, Quisimoto or Edan or whatever. But that stuff can also really put off new comers, and chances are you'll find something you love in that first paragraph. Or you might also like checking out some of the more funky alternative types hip hop from the 90's like Pharcyde and stuff, actually I think you'd really like Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, beeds.

I just mostly listen to old Jazz, like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, etc.

I love Jazz too. But that's the great thing, much like how an album can be a springboard to different albums and artists of the same genre (in the way I've described to beeds), Hip Hop can also work as a springboard into other genres. I actually initially got into Jazz from hip hop when I was about 12 years old, and then I got into soul music and so on.

Hip-Hop is Dead indeed

Nonsense. There might be more rubbish to filter out, and less variety in the mainstream but hip hop never died. Your just like many a generation of Hip Hop fan who grow to see their favourite rappers fall off and become irrelevant (hip hop artists tend to have some of the shortest shelf lives of musicians, unfortunately) and decide that the music died and stop listening or just listen to the stuff they grew up with. But you just gotta keep it moving man.

[MiTT3NZ]

No, Mue, not at all. Quite the opposite, actually. I've forced myself to listen to a lot in order to remain on the opposite side of the fence to ignorance. Thing is, when you hear talented guys like Diabolic spit without soul, see TheSaurus and IllMaculate mere shells of their former selves, and the likes of Jay-Z constantly striving to stay relevant in some form or another, it just becomes abundantly clear that Hip-Hop has taken many a step too far in an attempt to fix what was never broken.

Arriving on the internet in the early-to-mid-00s saw a sudden surge of emcees screaming from the rooftops that the glory days would return, and indeed at one point it seemed as thought they would. Problem is, as we all know, the web has become overcrowded, and sites such as MySpace - once thought to be revolutionary for the industry - self-destructed, taking all the good it once did with it (let's face it, at one point, it was good for some shit)

Even Diddy tried helping. Hiring the likes of Royce Da 5'9" and Pharoahe Monch to ghostwrite as he attempted to re-ignite interest in Hip-Hop (actual Hip-Hop, not some guy talking words over a beat with the odd rhyme here or there), but the whole Dirty Money shit just goes to show that he's given up now too.

Look at the number of rappers who are trying to sing rather than spit. Look at all the emcees that would rather flow over a dance beat than a Premo production. Try and find any ounce of soul or personality in these underground dick eds who reckon they're "keepin it real" just coz they've nailed the technical aspects of the trade.

Hip-Hop may not be dead, but it's definitely not alive. It's cashed in on the whole zombie craze that's been going on for the last five years or so. Like the thing in Sailors' sig, tt's a decaying corpse reaching out to grab anything it can hold on to in order to feel as if it isn't being ignored, as if there's something or someone there that still gives a shit.

Sure, there's a handful of guys out there that you can label "good" or "decent", but there's fucking no one who's killin it. No one. And as far as Hip-Hop's concerned, it's a sorry state of affairs indeed.

[mue 26]

I dunno man, that definitely sounds like "old and jaded hip hop head" talk to me. That's why most guys who grew up on 80's stuff stick to 80's stuff and guys who grew up on 90's stuff tend to stick to 90's stuff and so on. Seriously, talk to many old school heads and they'll tell you hip hop "died" many years before you probably would say it did. Also, I don't know why your looking to guys like Diddy and Jay Z to re-spark your interest, both of them have humongous "teen girl" audiences now, and of course they want to cater to those audiences (for the most part anyway. Jay z will occasionally name drop dudes like Rakim and so on). But that's just because the market for hip hop has continued to expand to the point where there's now much more rubbish to filter out to get to the good stuff than there might have been before. I really think your just looking in the wrong places.

Yeah the internet means that there's so much stuff coming out now on an almost daily basis that it's almost impossible for me to actually even attempt to keep up with it all these days. But I don't even bother, and I'm always able to find new an interesting Hip Hop of all types that I'm feeling. If you want that hardcore ignorant gangsta shit, you've guys like Roc Marciano, Freddie Gibbs or Ka (though I'd say Ka is more reflective gangsta shit than ignorant) that are all killing it right now in what they are doing. You could also chuck Action Bronson into the mix on some foodie ish. You have wild dudes like Danny Brown (though I can't personally listen to him as his voice actually hurts my ears) and Mr MF eXquire that are doing their thing. If want some really good experimental stuff you have Shabazz Palaces that are doing it in a big way right now. If you want some serious grown up rap you have guys like Murs or Phonte (whose 2011 solo debut was fantastic!). And even in the mainstream you have Kendrick Lamar who is pretty damn good for someone who is probably the biggest new rap star in the world right now. And you even have those new youts who trying to bring back that 90's boom bap sound, Joey badass or whatever, which is commendable at the least. So what are you looking for?

We had a fair few quality albums last year. RAP music, Cancer 4 Cure, Reloaded, Grief Pedigree to name but a few. And surely someone with your taste must have been all over those Apollo Brown produced joints? Have you listened to those Guilty Simpson and OC one's?

[beedle]

i do like hip hop but i'm pretty ignorant of it...

It's never too late to get into it...

i'd already heard of a good few of these, but gonna check the others out anyway. cheers bud.

[Sailors?]

Immortal Technique is pretty good too imo. Rather someone was rapping about real shit instead of the gangsta shit but each to their own.

[Rakim]

Hip hop ain't dead its just past its prime. There's still a good number of above average releases out every year but its just not the same density as '94 and we should just acknowledge that and be proud we were at least part of its golden years. Hey, at least we have J.Cole.

The stuff we wanna hear isn't mainstream anymore, but thankfully it doesn't have to go away permanently like movements of the past. Psychedelia, Punk, Rockabilly, etc. Thanks to the internet and the rising indie culture people like Jay Electronica or the Arctic Monkeys have shown us what's possible without going major. Internet music culture hasn't realized its full potential yet IMO. That was just a preview.

I feel like we're just on the verge of a crazy new music renaissance like the '60s or something. We just have to wait out the current bad cycle. Music'll come around. It always does.

[mue 26]

Immortal Technique is pretty good too imo. Rather someone was rapping about real shit instead of the gangsta shit but each to their own.

I'm the same. Which is why we have guys like this this! [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJOp1CqzaSg[/youtube]

I love me a bit of preachy hip hop!

Thanks to the internet and the rising indie culture people like Jay Electronica

Has he even released an album yet?! Man, he had so much hype, talk about missing the boat. At least he provided us with some of the least likely Daily Mail headlines of all time with all that Kate Goldsmith stuff