Posts tagged Charlotte
Question Mark Exclamation Point
North Carolina doesn’t have a sound, because they steal, copy and borrow style from so many other places. But little do they know man that if we get our own sound people will be able to identify my music and know that it’s from North Carolina.
When you hear a nigga from NC it’s hard to guess where he’s from. People don’t even know where the fuck I’m from. But I’m being true to the NC movement man. My whole slang is North Carolina. You come down to Charlotte everybody talk like me. I’m not trying to steal no fucking New Orleans slang with a little bit of Atlanta, with a little dab of fucking New York. No, it’s all North Carolina. It’s all Charlotte shit man.
Deniro Farrar, from an interview at Passion of the Weiss with Jimmy Ness, talking about the lack of distinct North Carolina rap.
He is correct about North Carolina rap, and he does sound like someone from Charlotte to me for whatever that’s worth.
Charlotte Forever - King Carter (feat. S-Dub, Revenue, Royal-Tee)
This has been sitting in my drafts for nearly a year, and the only reason was because it is about my hometown of Charlotte, NC. But, the shocking fact about the song was someone told me this song wasn’t too bad, and apparently that person was me, as the only note I have on this video was: “King Carter is not too bad”, which isn’t entirely untrue but the rest of the song would not get such kind words.
Honestly, I have suppressed ”Forever” from my memory, as it was an unwanted sequel to “Swagga Like Us”, which was an awful mash-up of ego and a cheesy way-too-of-the-moment sample from M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes. So, when I played the video for the first time in a year; the instrumental brought back all of those painful memories of lines about sprained ankles and one of Drake’s most lifeless hooks. Thankfully, Drake isn’t found on “Charlotte Forever”, but that’s the only positive I could say about this song. The hook is handled by someone that shouldn’t be singing in an elementary school choir and even more so with the auto-tune. Despite the number of rappers on the track, all of them delivered the type of generic street rap verses that stopped registering with me a while ago. I will note that I wasn’t all wrong in saying King Carter was not too bad, as his verse is by far the best, but even giving him that credit doesn’t mean it or the song crossed over into the realm of good.
“Ke$ha may be super untalented, but no one can deny the fact that her music is fun! haha”
-A Facebook friend, describing how plenty of people think about Pop stars.
blackbeans asked:
Is Texas-style vibe prominent in Charlotte rap?
Morning (EST)!
To answer the question no, not really. A lot Charlotte rappers I have heard usually fall into biting the style of Atlanta rappers (some self-admittedly, and some move to the city in hopes of striking it big there). I’ve talked about this before, and I guess this is largely informed by my view of Charlotte, but the lack of any real rap stars from Charlotte is not surprising:
1. Who is pushing music here? I mean Huntsville, AL has had rappers play in Europe, and featured in websites that feature readership all over the world. Charlotte, NC a larger/more well known city barely has any rappers that are known beyond the state lines. There is no Cody G (to my knowledge) finding lanes for these artists that will actually lead them somewhere.
2. What are they saying? Looking at rap from North Carolina as a whole, some of the bigger acts are J. Cole, Little Brother, 9th Wonder are not Dope Boy #231 with their own gang of unknowns and unwanted weed carries. Charlotte rap songs you run across online or on the radio, are usually generic southern rap song with nothing that says I AM FROM CHARLOTTE except for shouting out to the Carolina Panthers.
3. Production, Production, Production. The amount of quality producers that sitting on quality beats across the country and even further the world makes me wonder why I hear rappers ride on top of sub-sub-Mannie Fresh beats. Honestly, it is 2011, if you are rapping on generic/boring production and wonder why people beside your family does not listen to your music, you may want to consider if rapping is for you. Just because you know the producer does not mean you should stick with them. (Also, if you cannot tell you are rapping over some sub-Soulja Boy 2007 beat, then please expands what your ears are listening to)
4. Lastly. This is Charlotte, NC. Not NY, GA, CA. Unless a particular sound is established from this city; it will continue to have small local hits but nothing national, because a boring rapper from Atlanta will a lot more backing, support, and HISTORY, than an uninteresting Charlotte rapper. I mean even those Alabama rappers got Dirty as a reference for the history of their music, who do you go back and reference if you want to talk about Mr. 704. I mean watch “Crown Royal”, it is about the history of Charlotte rap, and it hits on most of what I said, but tell me if you recognize any of the song or rappers, I am young, but I do not think any of those artists or songs found an audience outside the queen city and the local clubs they were playing.
This is a lot longer answer for a simple question, but eh this is always in my mind when I actually hear about local rap artists.
Of all of the things I missed while still at college, Araabmuzik performing at Charlotte Bobcats Areana.
I love my local WPEG.
Anonymous asked:
where are you from
Charlotte, NC
Might as well give a quick blog update.
Not much to say except. I will be writing for http://nojumper.com/. Maybe doing weekly reviews for the site. Hopefully features, if I can actually get to writing down some longer form articles down.
Will this effect this blog…eh not really. I may link to my stuff, if I really want to but this blog is will still feature my writing and random rap related links probably with more grime and UK music, if only because I spend too much time listen to the stuff at this point to never talk about it. (Sorry about uninformed grime posts, that will happen in the future, even more sorry about posts about The Cataracs it will continue)
Lastly.
http://caroline24.tumblr.com/post/4100946504
It’s my Birthday, thanks Caroline.
Put On - Young Jeezy (feat. Kanye West)
I wish TM:103 would come out, so I could listen to The Last Laugh and not feel bad thinking that Young Jeezy is slowing becoming like his increasingly frequent collaborator Yo Gotti, in releasing good hard trap mixtapes, but having fans constantly waiting on that next album. I doubt Young Jeezy will become relegated to that type of position in the rap world (assuming TM:103 is eventually released), but adding “Lose My Mind” and a few tracks other tracks from Trap or Die II to The Last Laugh would have created a pretty great album. The Last Laugh is a fine mixtape, the best part of the tape is the production by Shawty Redd despite knowing what you are getting on the each track, and Young Jeezy’s rapping could be described similarily, as Young Jeezy sadly is still leaving me wonder what a ”Jizzle” is.
As, for this song I always thought the last word that Young Jeezy said was “Charlotte”, but lyrics websites are telling me that it is “Charlene’s” and that is makng me like the song slightly less. Drumma Boy’s production still sounds great and makes me wish that this song along with “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” could have been more popular in giving rise to large spacious rap songs, or at least could have had DJ Toomp continue to produce grand rap singles and not what he and T.I. have recently done. “Put On” also features the the first appearance of the short lived by still great Auto-Tuned Kanye West rapping. Not too dissimilar to “Monster”, which is based around Nicki Minaj’s verse, this song appears to be ending as you hear an auto-tuned “I put on…” in the background. Then the drums smash a few times and the song opens up to Kanye West rapping about, what he would be focusing on in his next two albums, the lost girl and his is perspective on fame and celebrity.
