rolling rap thread

young l's were like a notch above beat tape (i still have to hear the new one )

im unsure whether or not young l's young l music is worth listening to: does the initial awesome reaction to the beat propel you through the next 3 minutes of grating, repetitive rapping? i rarely make it through an entire song & just end up sampling each beat on his tapes

this is prob a big challop but i prefer clams casino

okay that's retarded

also young l's rapping is fine! it's rarely great but it's often kinda fun

i put that too harshly, i like young l i'm just often reluctant to listen to him for that reason. i think the knowledge of "what could have been" plays into it, too. its not like he has some big hilarious idiot persona like soulja boy, just a guy whos always rapping on his beats

im just really tired of production-driven rapping. if you can't make a good song out of it i dont care how next level the beats are

i don't even mean the rapper has to be 'skilled' or charismatic, i just mean that the song needs to be dope & so far I've heard a lot more dope beats than dope songs from L

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c0U5zLnefQ

jamming this out

the rest of the tape isnt my thing sans 2-3 tracks but this jams

im just really tired of production-driven rapping. if you can't make a good song out of it i dont care how next level the beats are

― joey joe joe junior shabadoo, Monday, December 26, 2011 12:13 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah, well i'm a total beat nerd so

some of his songs are dope as fuck tho

and even if his rapping's improved, it's still not like it's the attraction and it never will be for him, so maybe it's just not for you/ i love it tho.

this is cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVgCJ98yiGo

pastor troy vibe

this is a great read : http://thequietus.com/articles/07634-nice-and-smooth

what do you all think of the touré NYT piece?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/arts/music/white-female-rappers-challenging-hip-hops-masculine-ideal.html

it's...there's just a lot wrong there, surely. it's very simplistic. tying hip-hop so essentially to masculinity seems totally wrong.

and i don't think slapping the label "white" on a white australian and a russian jew is that helpful (why are people so reluctant to address kreayshawn's race?)

k.flay is not awful but kinda boring btw and i'm surprised people are taking notice of her

hmm yeah definitely some wrong in that piece. I don't think emphasizing hip-hop's masculinity-obsession is the main problem tho. The writing is just sort of sub-standard and not insightful imho. The Beyonce line is very wtf, and I don't agree re: Kreayshawn at all, and then there's this paragraph, which is just embarassing:

More skilled and perhaps more interesting is K.Flay, 26, a Stanford graduate and a talented vocalist who uses rhyming as a sonic technique. Culturally she is not trying to push her way into hip-hop; she’s more of an indie rock chick. Her rapping is melodic and semi-sung, and on her most recent mixtape, “I Stopped Caring in ’96,” she samples indie groups like the xx and the Vines and talks about alienation

"rhyming as a sonic technique" I mean come on now

I did dig that N&C article tho, thx for the link sil

i mean i don't think anyone would deny that hip-hop is male-coded, has been male-dominated, and it won't stop being weighted towards dudes any time soon, but to say that it's essentially about masculinity is what seems o_0

failing to address the history of white female rappers who haven't come across as paltrow-style jokes (which i think even paltrow was aware of!) is a bit of an oversight too.

also i think kreayshawn has worked very hard at establishing hip-hop cred!

the paragraph about labelism is half a good point but i'm not sure that labelism is a thing that needs to be defended in such strong terms. the history of hip-hop is as peppered with anti-labelism as brands brands brands.

class unaddressed too?! like, isn't a reason that eminem and yelawolf are accepted their poor backgrounds (cf the obviously privileged middle-class fratboyisms of asher roth and mac miller). kreayshawn and v-nasty don't actually seem particularly privileged to me.

also i think kreayshawn has worked very hard at establishing hip-hop cred!

yeah - agree about this and about the class aspect too. like part of the reason Paltrow et al look ridiculous is due to class, it's not just gender and race.

failing to address the history of white female rappers who haven't come across as paltrow-style jokes (which i think even paltrow was aware of!) is a bit of an oversight too.

who are you thinking of here, Luscious Jackson?

i wasn't but yeah! luscious jackson, tairrie b, princess superstar, lady sovereign, there are probably more.

(i don't know much about tairrie b myself, only read about her)

I think it's still a pretty narrow sample size... Princess Superstar and Lady Sovereign are non-entities over here (and Toure didn't seem interested in engaging with UK hip hop or how it would figure in at all - probably just would have muddied the waters since class/race issues are so different between the US & UK)

the earliest example I can think of ESG but they weren't exactly rapping

haha i think my basic criticism of the piece is that the waters are muddier than what he describes

all the names i mentioned (except luscious jackson?) had the active patronage of some pretty heavyweight black male american rappers though

also none of the white female rappers he discusses are exactly megastars - they're all at or around the level that princess superstar and lady sov were when their whiteness and femaleness got them written about in the mainstream press

cher lloyd!!

i like toure but i'm not reading this -- enough w/ the nyt and kreayshawn

fwiw I doubt LJ would've gone anywhere without their connection to the Beasties.

I will rep for this track tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoK1Sdie_0g

and i don't think slapping the label "white" on a white australian and a russian jew is that helpful (why are people so reluctant to address kreayshawn's race?)

― degas-dirty monet (lex pretend), Tuesday, December 27, 2011 1:07 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Permalink

pro tip, they're both white

This week in Slate Hitchens on why women aren't rappy.

ok heritage, whatever, stop playing dumb unless you wanna argue kreayshawn and gwyneth paltrow are coming from the same cultural place here

well they're both Jews

both with parents in the entertainment industry

huh and Bruce Paltrow was Russian, I had no idea...

haha neither did i!

coming from the same cultural place has nothing to do w/ whether or not someone is white

well, i dont mean to go that far. but they're overlapping ideas, not completely reflective ones

for all intents & purposes, in the u.s., both artists are white

the caption "Kreayshawn has a slow and cutesy approach to rapping." >>>> the article

guys northern state

discuss: princess superstar is hands down the best white female rapper who ever lived and that's an indisputable fucking fact

on the evidence of this mixtape it's certainly not iggy azalea, at any rate

lol northern state

i still like the sarai single more than pretty much anything by anyone mentioned in this convo

how good is this ?

http://lilt601.bandcamp.com/track/n-as-in-the-trap-ft-ab-2

disappointed that wasn't "nas in the trap"

I just can't read "she samples indie groups like the xx and the Vines and talks about alienation" without wanting to peel my eyes with a salt-coated potato peeler.

ayo, deej, thanks for posting about nht boyz today

life changed and shit