rolling rap thread

i think it's just a distillation of all that shit being called "futuristic"

k3v goons have been feeling that way for like the past 5 years

idk I remember deej and/or j0rd starting a 'state of the rap union address' thread like clockwork every 6 months

yeah i've definitely been feeling more 'out of it' w/ each passing year but i've kinda made peace with it and appreciate that the climate right now is at least kind of allowing for more plurality in the rap world than at other times in the past. there's always gonna be a lane for whatever you like, whether it's the biggest lane at the moment or not.

there's always gonna be a lane for "whatever you like"

yeah i mean i think at this point it's esp weird because the things that i thought would be constants aren't due to the internet, so things are def a lot more unpredictable in some ways than in the past.

messy marv needs to blow up...fast

im pretty excited about where things are going from a production standpoint atm, less thrilled about most of the rapping but somehow that feels less dire than being stuck living through bad production trends. great new rappers are always forthcoming, its inevitable

the yayodancing top list is terrible

looking forward to seeing your list, sisi

messy marv needs to blow up...fast

― if you ain't gonna wash it, i ain't gonna eat it, Saturday, December 3, 2011 8:48 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

whats that about messy marv and blow

there has been plenty of good rap music released this year but i kind of feel like rap as a whole is kind of stagnant atm, it makes me depressed

I feel like this goes hand in hand with there being no obv thread title for next year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9xflk6o7U0

Love how they flipped that Outkast song '13th Floor/Growing Old'

I feel like this goes hand in hand with there being no obv thread title for next year

― furnace mane, Sunday, December 4, 2011 12:46 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink

what weird about this is more that there's just no single sound for "lowest" common denominator rap right now. like, no snap/ringtone/'swag surfin' type shit that didnt exist at those times either. tony montana trick is ... rap cliche + autotune, which we've already done.

the white rapper things comes closest but i feel like that wont continue for a full year

i dunno, the weird thing about that is that being a white rapper now isn't really very novel at all. this isn't to say a white rapper can't be novel or even have a novel spin on being a white rapper, but it feels like being a white rapper is no longer something notable in and of itself.

well, i just mean in the past year they've been really crawling all over the place. it just feels like a particular trend of the moment, w/ crass commercializing operators like Diddy & Master P finding their "own white guy" rappers it feels kinda like its reached some kind of new saturation point

i mean, back when houston was bubbling there was no way tow down AND paul wall were both gonna make it ...

it was pretty hilarious when asher roth got signed to def jam to do a 2nd major label album within DAYS of mac miller's album doing big numbers

i dunno if it is the white rappers thing being notable as much as it is white rappers doing something other than sizzurp-south-rap

i thought people would have got over the whole white rappers thing a decade ago, with eminem?

can't really fathom how much of a moron you'd have to be to think it's a notable thing now

i guess in ten years we'll still be talking about female rappers as a thing! good fucking god

http://i693.photobucket.com/albums/vv300/Superintenddent/Oh-Boy-here-we-go-again.jpg

wow, lex, it's almost as if you make an exercise of not listening to things and then sound like a horse's ass when you open your mouth in front of people who do

rolling solo cup thread would be pretty hilar

howzaboutthis lex -- white rappers as a thing obv ain't new, but the majority of white rappers were people like Lil Wyte, Haystak, or Paul Wall, doing Houston or midwest regioned south-sizzurp rap that was mostly only heard by the hardcore hip hop head community....(ok lol Bubba Sparxx but there are still people I know who didn't know he was white, despite the numerous pics of him on the interwebs)

but in the mainstream, there are more of them with higher commercial profiles now than in recent years, ie Yelawolf, Mac Miller, Asher Roth, etc...two of whom dropped major label releases within a month of each other.

when Eminem first dropped, it was kinda like there was an unwritten edict that only one white rapper could occupy the mainstream at a time.

that's still not what we're talking abt!

(ok ok Mac Miller's wasn't 'major label', but dude's cd fills up the majority of the racks in the rap section at Best Buy right now, other than the gazillion copies of Carter IV that didn't sell)

well, i just mean in the past year they've been really crawling all over the place. it just feels like a particular trend of the moment, w/ crass commercializing operators like Diddy & Master P finding their "own white guy" rappers it feels kinda like its reached some kind of new saturation point

― joey joe joe junior shabadoo, Sunday, December 4, 2011 11:19 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink

i mean, back when houston was bubbling there was no way tow down AND paul wall were both gonna make it ...

― joey joe joe junior shabadoo, Sunday, December 4, 2011 11:19 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink

xpost

White rap in the 00s was basically people painting struggles and underdocumented lives the same way as black rappers has been doing for years, just through their own lens, whether it was white trash Michigan (Eminem), rural country ish (Bubba Sparxxx, Haystak) or Houston hoods (Paul Wall). Yelawolf is actually a throwback to this and is not what we're talking about

The Mac Miller/Asher Roth thing is dorky white guys bragging about college and privelege (like 90s non-starters like Jesse Jaymes and Big Men On Campus) and their lyrics are about beerbongs and solo cups. When ILXors say "white" about these guys, it's meant to be spoken with the same derogatory tone as "Stuff White People Like" not just the color of their skin

sooooo you find this kinda-sorta-marketing trend on the part of major labels interesting? there have always been a few white rappers floating aroud. (uk perspective) none of the current lot even come close to bubba sparxxx's success.

whiney what can i say, i listen to stuff all the time, but i just don't find things interesting just because i'm told they are by major labels.

xpost that was for you Lex, because everyone else on here knows that. read it.

i was gonna say, fratboy rap as an aesthetic is probably more on point as a thing to talk about (except what is there to talk about at this point beyond "it sucks"?)

mac miller is one i haven't heard, i've assumed that if i dislike asher roth i'll have no use for him.

yeah, when people on ILX say "the white rapper thing in 2011" we mean "fratboy rap."

lol @ whiney coming over didactic! dude i am not gonna pay attention to shit i don't find interesting just cuz you think all music critics should be talking about the same things

and it's not as if y'all are actually TALKING about fratboy rap, you're just posting about it because it's easy to lol at bad trends (cf childish gambino) and indeed means you DON'T have to have thoughts about it

we've been over this before, but I just want to reaffirm that I think that stance falls somewhere between lazy and irresponsible, especially considering how easy it is to type "Mac Miller" or "Drake" into YouTube.

did you click play on any of the youtubes i posted in this thread?

no one's talking about stack$

like...don't even try to front like there are vast swathes of music you haven't heard, much of which is because you have no interest in it. which is totally fine!

ah so lots of people have to be talking about an artist before you'll deign to listen. great journalism!

there's a difference between not having heard every French Montana mixtape and not having heard major label releases that chart and are covered in most music industry mags

lex shows up to the Italian food club meeting bragging about how he's never tasted a calzone

i'm not even a critic/journalist and I've heard this stuff!

also, lex, i've probably heard more records in 2011 than you've heard in the last half decade, doggie

look the music crit conversation, and the music industry generally, is driven by very specific voices, which means that certain values are inherently privileged when it comes to deciding what gets talked about (and this conversation, this buzz, affords artists really valuable publicity even if it's not a direct stamp of approval). if we want to talk about my responsibility as a journalist, i consider it my professional duty to look beyond those voices, to unearth or boost artists who may be getting overlooked because of the inherent biases in the structure of the industry. deciding what to talk about, where to bestow your conversation, is a political act, and i absolutely refuse to let a hivemind propel me in that.

of course it's fun to get yr pop culture thinkpieces on when someone gets as massive as lady gaga, and even better if the artists i find interesting are the ones people are talking about, but isn't it just massively LIFE-SAPPING to permanently have to be thinking about boring shit like mac miller just because other people tell you that you should?

also, lex, i've probably heard more records in 2011 than you've heard in the last half decade, doggie

lollllllllllll at music journalists trying to pull rank on me

it has never ever worked son, so don't try it

also fyi from the uk perspective mac miller is no more or less relevant than shawnna (though it's not like i'm going to devote extra thought to, idk, mann or flo rida just cuz they get hits here)