rolling rap thread

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)

I'm not asking you to engage/analyze/write an article about Mac Miller, I'm asking you to listen to like three minutes of a song so you can have an informed opinion, join the conversation, and bond with your goons.

Uh, let me get a turkey sandwich...
Uh, lettuce tomato...bitch

Like, I'm totally cool with you championing the underchampioned in articles. I think that's a noble pursuit. But like there may be valuable information gleaned on like why Drake is getting the attention that Me'shell Ndegocello isn't getting. And the only way to understand that is to suck it up and listen to a little Drake. Like, I'll write 16 articles about Big KRIT before i write one about Mac Miller, but that doesn't mean I get the luxury of pretending he doesnt exist.

Like just posting on ILX implies you want to be "part of the conversation," so why do pretend some people aren't speaking?

besides, you get to hear Mac's immortal line about how his money is green, but his socks will always be blue

here, you have no excuse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnAbszcy3bs

i have listened to both drake albums, for my sins. rushing to hear them when i'm not a fan would have been deeply weird though.

also another reason i get chippy about it in the goon thread is that this place is somewhere i come because, unlike everywhere else, it's somewhere where people do give a shit about shawnna or young bleed or whoever, where artists don't have to have buzz to get talked about!

except that you first got chippy about the Drake talk in a thread called "Simpin Ain't Easy -- Anticipate Drake's Take Care"

you could make the argument that mac miller is more popular than bubba sparxxx ever was -- prob wouldn't be that hard

my take on mac miller is that he should be engaged critically now bcuz he went #1 and is likely reaching the peak of his popularity BUT it also is easy to ignore him since he doesn't have a big single or anything

you could make the argument that mac miller is more popular than bubba sparxxx ever was -- prob wouldn't be that hard

― v-shasty, Sunday, December 4, 2011 1:02 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

Bubba did have an actual big single, but it was long after he stopped being "bubba"

i was talking about this with deej last night but it's interesting to me that it seems like mac miller seemingly has no interest in entering the popular rap universe. like he definitely aspires for fame and money and stuff, but he's not like asher roth or childish gambino or other outsiders who try and assimilate into popular rap. i mean, mac miller just had the number one rap album in the country and it literally has ZERO features on it! how weird is that? not even a stray taylor gang verse or anything. the only interaction w/ any music outside his camp comes from two clams casino beats and a young l co-production, so still pretty underground and outsider. meanwhile gambino bitches incessantly about how the "real" rap world doesn't take him seriously and asher roth had that drama tape early and had a debut album packed w/ typical guests.

prolly like comparing Edie Brickell vs 10,000 Maniacs in that sense

yeah i man all i know about mac miller is that he's 'down with wiz khalifa' but i have no idea what the nature of that affiliation is or what musical or business ties they have, it seems like he's done a lot without even trading on that very much.

although i mean in those years between "say yeah" and "black and yellow" wiz seemed to kind of build a huge following without much in the way of singles or engagement with the rap industry too

actually back when wiz was doing sold out tours and trending on twitter but it wasn't really clearly whether he was signing with anyone i thought HE was probably gonna be the first rapper to drop a #1 album with no major label or radio hit

i was talking about this with deej last night but it's interesting to me that it seems like mac miller seemingly has no interest in entering the popular rap universe.

the whole frat rap thing is intensely interesting to me like, ethnomusicologically.

a rap of one's own

fyi i wasn't just talking about frat rappers, its obvious to me that having a white rapper in 2011 is for a rap ceo what having an african baby was to angelina jolie

machine gun kelly is a wild & crazy rapper from cleveland and he's totally a part of what's going on here, but isn't frat rap or southern rap. kreayshawn and v-nasty too. there's just a bunch of people paying attention to white rappers this year

lex is also wrong because no, it is totally an observable trend within rap, and there's a difference between willfully following your own personal favorite performers down a rabbithole & paying attention to what's going on in the world of hip-hop, you're like in denial. you can't just will things to not be popular by refusing to cover them

http://edge-img.datpiff.com/m60c435a/Dmx_The_Demons_After_My_Soul-front-large.jpg

did you guys have any idea dmx released something this year

i wasn't just talking about frat rappers either. whiney needs to stop trying to put his insecurities about lol white people or whatever in other peoples' mouths.

xp whoa cover

it's almost a shame we don't have a sandbox drake thread because

http://cdn.rapdose.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/drake-jet-magazine-cover-495x711.jpg

man his hair looks awful

I ain't heard the DMX but after reading his latest interview (post-jail release) in XXL, I'm not sure I want to.

Not that he hasn't always been a little nuts (ok, a lot, like the time he tried to commandeer a vehicle by posing as an FBI agent), but it was clear from the interview that whatever little he had left of his mind is gone, and that even the few hangers-on he had are kinda peacing out on him.

Not that he was ever an extremely deep lyricist, but sometimes I'm amazed a dude with his level of crazy didn't have a Gucci-esque meltdown in the early part of his career.

(i say this as someone who thinks his first two are bonafide classics so)

I like a few of these songs off the San Quinn & Tuf Luv album. there's one w/ b-legit that samples 'i'm always drunk in san francisco' lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aTYNAnVltg

like imo, this needs a video of dudes carousing in SF

rip no homo

haha

http://i.imgur.com/BKv9N.gif

http://i.imgur.com/2wV17.jpg

new slick pulla mixtape sounds good on 1st listen

of course as soon as i said that i skipped to "jugg" which has future-esque autotune singing so

anyway this song is good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg9mkQvZUvU

http://i.imgur.com/BKv9N.gif

― joey joe joe junior shabadoo, Sunday, December 4, 2011 7:19 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink

http://i.imgur.com/2wV17.jpg

― dayo, Sunday, December 4, 2011 7:21 PM (4 hours ago)

a) lol
b) they are both so tall!

uh did ross ghostwrite "dead man shoes" on this mobb deep EP? this is not good

k3v go dl boldy james >>>> the mobb deep, kind of similar vibe to his rapping tho

will do

did everyone know juvenile has an album coming out next week? i really like the first single, "power", which i know some1 posted in gun sounds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUQ1gJcu9Dc

is it actually coming out next week? that doesn't sound right at all

supposedly it's 100% produced by mannie

oh idunno, that's what wikipedia says

did mannie do "power"? between that and that mystikal song earlier this year i could be...really anticipating this