Hip-Hop

[ed...]

anyone?

I'm not talking about this terrible commercial stuff doing the rounds at the moment (50 cent etc), by the way

I realise that a smith's fan forum might not be the best place for this thread but...worth a shot

[elko]

Worth a shot indeed! I like a lot of hip-hop, and love some of it as well. Hip-hop production can be AMAZING. It's a shame so many people judge it by what is in the mainstream. If people did that with 'indie' then they'd probably find it all pretty crap as well. (I realise mainstream indie isn't as DOWNRIGHT OFFENSIVE as mainstream rap and hip-hop, but hopefully it's still a kind of valid point.)

I love early hip-hop, like everyone - Run DMC, Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy, etc. I think Del tha Funkee Homosapien is amazing - if you like Parliament then it's near impossible not to like Del's first album. I like rap that tells stories, Aesop Rock is a good example of that - so much lyrical detail. Not many rappers actually make use of the amount of words they can fit in a song.

Bit tired to go into too much detail I think. What stuff do you listen to, Ed?

[ed...]

early hip-hop is excellent, but I tend to listen to mid 90's NYC stuff, pretty much Wu-tang Clan and the Notorious B.I.G.

as far as more recent stuff goes, MF Doom is an incredible rapper.

but yep, the first wu album and most of the solo debuts from the members of the wu-tang clan are some of my favourite records ever made.

[Truman Capote]

I like the Beastie Boys, I think their music is pretty interesting, they have a very good DJ now and those three surreal voices are so funny. It's not that I love them... but they are pretty entertaining.




and one more...

[Cracked Pleasures]

Beastie Boys hiphop?! Aren't you confusing with TRIPhop? I could be wrong, but I hear little or no hiphop sounds in Beastie Boys.

As for the original topic... Not a hiphop fan myself at all, but some songs are OK. I however have this weird coincidence that almost all hiphop I like comes from Europe. The American hiphop scene seems largely corrupted and polluted to me, any American hiphop reaching Europe is... well, not my cup of tea at all, to say the least. But Europe itself has a few very decent hiphop bands. My native country Belgium for example has "nederhop" (hiphop with Dutch lyrics, often in dialect) and the bands Hof Van Commerce and ABN are both really good. Actually, Hof Van Commerce are a lot better IMO than any hiphop I ever heard from American rappers. Of course you need to understand Dutch to be able to appreciate Hof Van Commerce. Also, France has some good rappers but that is not surprising I'd say, because the French language leans itself to rap music very well, a lot of French translations (compared to English) bring you a lot longer sentences than the English varient, but the words all can be pronounced very smoothly. Therefor French is a really good language for rap music. Starflam and Manau are some very popular French-language rappers.

When it comes to the mainstream hiphop... Not my cup of tea really apart from a few songs. A friend of mine is a huge Eminem fan and let me hear some of his records. While I enjoyed his first two albums and found some songs quite original and creative, the third album sounded so much like his earlier work so I completely lost interest in his music then. Dr Dre has a few good songs, although I would not spontaneously play an entire album.

A hiphop act I definitely want to hear more from is the Nuuk Posse. They are from Greenland (hence the band name, Nuuk is the capital of Greenland) and they rap about life in the arctic. Their raps are in English but sometimes also in Danish and authentic Greenlandic. They're quite a unique band, the very concept of hiphop music from Greenland is very interesting. I only heard a couple of songs yet as their records are very hard to get outside Greenland, but I definitely would like to hear more of them.

I also hear from my Israeli friends that hiphop is quite big there, but unlike the Israeli metal and rock I never really made efford to check any records myself. But Israel apparently does have some famous rappers, including a guy named Subliminal or so... maybe well-know to the real hiphop fans.

[ed...]

I'm quite drunk right now but I've decided that this thread shou,ld be about sll hipshop and not worry about denominatiopns within that particular genre, I'm talking, rap, hiphop triphop whatever you want t talk about, i don't mind.

Tonight i rapped to biggy and wu-tang clan in the town centre and it was very good.

U apologise for drunken psoeting, and promise i won't do it agin because it sucks, really lots

i hope tyhat this even makes sense because i tried to make it make sense but it didnt.

anyway, i like hiphop, you like hipsop, we all scream for hiphop, cash rules everything around me, cream get the money, dolla dolla bill yall

xxx

[Boxguy]

Eh, don't worry about drunk posting; it's actually quite fun to read. In fact, I kind of miss getting to read Helen's drunk posts on the weekends.

CP: I agree with you wholly about the French language lending itself extremely well to rap. A few months after the whole Iraq mess was initiated by Bush, I began listening to a number of French rap artists' responses to the invasion. I must say that they were able to pack more meaning into their political raps than any US English rap artist I heard...and I say this with even with my limited knowledge of French! Essentially, it consists of what I can pick up from my knowledge of Spanish and Latin.

I know this is a bit off topic, but a site that I read occasionally did a Photoshop/GIMP deal with the theme of "No Limit Album Covers", i.e. the cheap-looking, bling-filled album covers that graced bad hip-hop albums during the 90s. They took well-known folk, pop, rock, and indie albums and produced blinged-out covers for them. Well, The Smiths were no exception to the Photoshopping/GIMPing:

[Cracked Pleasures]

This thread is hilarious Both the drunk post and the "gangsta rapper Morrissey" are brilliant!

French is an excellent language for rap, Spanish also ain't bad. Romanic languages tend to have a wider vocabulary, by that I mean that when you translate any sentence from English to French or Spanish, the translated version will have a lot more words and longer sentences. This leans itself very well for hiphop. Romanic languages are just very good for that style of music, while they tend to not be very good for harder or heavier music (not sure why but there is very few hardrock in French or Spanish that sounds well, although Noir Desir and Brujeria are exceptions somewhat)



This is some "Nederhop", hiphop in my native language Dutch. Note that the band Hof Van Commerce raps in a local dialect, while the others rap in proper "official" Dutch. All videos are official promo videos, apart from the "Zonder niet" video which is fan-made.

ABN - "Toxx" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sGU3XufkSM
Brainpower - "Dansplaat" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYaZdPqty5E
Raymzter - "Kut Marokkanen" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7R1oiPcK2w
't Hof van Commerce - "Kom mor ip!" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDHuF3OXFTs
't Hof van Commerce - "Zonder niet" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umPEl3OCulo

PS: sorry for the naked breasts in the Toxx video. Blame it on the rappers who made the video!
PS II: the Raymzter video translates as "Damn Moroccans", however it is not intend to be racist, it is a complaint against racism in Dutch society.

[Still Ill]

[elko]

I know what you mean Esther - it's just so boring talking about money and girls all the time, even when it isn't particularly sexist. But that doesn't mean there aren't rappers who are constantly working against that stereotype. Maybe I'll maybe you a mixtape!

I have to agree with CP - French hip-hop works really well. My friend is taking French at uni and has sent me a few tracks. Even though I can barely understand a word, the flow and the sound of it is really brilliant.

[ed...]

I have no burning capability at the moment, but I love mixtapes, might sort something out sometime soon.

Esther, a lot of rap music, particularly the commercially successful stuff, is dull, repetitive and about as creative as a chair leg. But, there's a whole lot of talent and originality behind the face of hiphop.

Has anyone heard the Grey Album? It's a mix of The Beatles White Album and Jay-z's black album. I'm not a fan of Jay-z, and the album isn't particularly brilliant, but it's quite interesting, worth a listen at any rate.

In other news, I quoted the Notorious BIG in an exam last week...

[Still Ill]

Well, willing to keep this thread alive.
I've heard about the Grey album, just never was interested enough to want to check it out. I suppose you're right about the mundane commercial stuff, I can at least equate it with the commercially mundane pop stuff on air these days. (I guess I have become a bit of a music snob, so I've been told.)
For me, given the right time and place (party, moment, with friends, at a club, etc. etc) could make the difference between just hearing it and really enjoying it. But it might stop there, I'm afraid.

I challenge a good mix of worthwhile hip-hop, you two! I won't hold my breath for you, Ed , but ellis, well, hold on. I never got the Laura's ep, eithe!

[Pashernate_Lover]

My brother grew up in Oakland (he is 12 years older than me) and I grew up with a ton of hip hop and rap around, I don't hate it, I hear it all the time and I think it makes great club music and can make some great statements. Like all pop, when rap and hip hop go pop they can be just as vapid, but that doesn't mean the whole genre is.

I also think it is earier to rap in languages like Spanish and French with common word endings, as opposed to English in which you can just buy a rhyming dictionary

I like rap that comes from near me more than that that doesn't because I understand it more, there is more significance in something I can understand. Do I seek it out to listen to? No. But I am amused by rap that comes from other countries because it is something common to me that sounds completely uncommon, for example I have some great Aussie rap about how Australia is a racist country.

[Cracked Pleasures]

That is how hiphop should be really: rapping about the cancers in our society such as racism, intolerance, poverty, criminality, ...

The original hiphop founded in the US was a very ideological style of music, mainly aimed to raise attention at the miserable life in the ghetto for black people. Hiphop had a meaning and a social message, unlike many mainstream hiphop these days.

I am quite a fan of Israel as a country and I know there is a lot of hiphop bands that rap about the situation of the Middle East. I never really bothered to check the music though, I guess I really should give it a go. I am not sure where to start looking as I don't have any named, I only focussed on the metal and rock scene in Israel. I believe Subliminal is an Israeli rapper though, right? May be a good starting point to check the Israeli hiphop...

Also, I mentionned some Belgian hiphop bands rapping in Dutch, but there is also a really famous one rapping in French. Starflam, from the city of Liege in the south of Belgium, are really worth a listen.

[rorschach]

I love Rap music. West coast gangster rap is actually the first music that I really got into. I know its considered naff but I don't really care, the music is actually fantastic. Some classic albums came out of that era (Tupac - 7 Day Theory, DPG - Dog Food, Dr. Dre - The Chronic, Doggystyle by Snoop). I suppose some people consider rap inferior but thats just your typical indie elitism in action.