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
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
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)
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
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
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
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
like imo, this needs a video of dudes carousing in SF
rip no homo
haha
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
― joey joe joe junior shabadoo, Sunday, December 4, 2011 7:19 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink
― 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
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
yes he did
*rubs hands*
k3v go dl boldy james >>>> the mobb deep, kind of similar vibe to his rapping tho
― joey joe joe junior shabadoo, Monday, 5 December 2011 05:27 (1 hour ago) Permalink
ya thats my favourite thing about him
i kinda wanna see errybody’s (ie deej, flopson’s) top 10 before the official ilm lists get rolled out
ya thats my favourite thing about him
― wil smif, Monday, December 5, 2011 12:43 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink
his shit is scary real, the line on the record where the beat pauses & he ends this verse with “i once shot a n**** as a kid for a hundred bucks” and then it goes to the chorus & i’m like O_O
lol noz just posted abt Tree. are yall on board now
I’ve listened to it quite a bit since you posted it. “Harder” is my jam
Los’s new mixtape w/ DJ Drama is dropping at noon, i’m gonna try to liveblog it for a Baltimore site or something
“ro-lean regional white girl thuggin”
rolling rolling rolling we haven’t agreed in weeks
imo another vote for rolling lean thread
rxlling lxvn thrxvd