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Posts tagged Rap Music

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It's Alive: Did Nicki fail pop, or did pop fail Nicki?

jordansargent:

This isn’t a rhetorical question; I’ve been thinking about it for a bit and still am not sure of the answer, if there even is one. But, now that the fervor over Roman Reloadedhas died down, I think it’s interesting to think about what the album means to pop. Is Nicki currently unable, or maybe unwilling, to navigate the waters of pop without resorting to the lowest common denominator, or is she a woman out of time?

My lasting thought reRoman Reloaded has switched from, “Wouldn’t it be great if she made a whole rap album?” to, “How would this album have turned out if Nicki had people like Timbaland and the Neptunes at her disposal?” My hope would be that if Nicki could work with peak-era Tim or the Neptunes, that the pop that she would create would be much more adventurous, something that bridged the gap between “Beez in the Trap” and the Billboard Top 10. (Or maybe “Beez in the Trap”will do that.) But maybe that wouldn’t happen, or wouldn’t even be possible considering the market.

Nicki is a singular voice in pop, but she’s come up in a time where basically no producers and/or writers are consistently bridging the gap between rap/r&b and pop in a way that doesn’t seemingly make massive concessions. Forget Tim and Neptunes, there isn’t really anyone out there right now that could even hit Nicki with a “London Bridge.” Wouldn’t it be great to hear what Nicki and Pharrell and Chad would’ve done with the “I’m a Slave 4 U” beat?

Whether listeners have pushed what would be (or could be) the next Pharrell out of pop or whether a lack of Pharrells has allowed pop to submit itself to Europe is something I also don’t really know the answer to. Would Nicki over the “Southern Hospitality” or “Gossip Folks” beats be top 20 hits right now? If not, would that be Nicki’s fault? Or would it be the marketplace’s fault? 

I realize I’m sort of creating an alternate universe here that contains an irreconcilable number of variables, but Roman Reloaded leaves me with a lot of questions about pop music in 2012, and a much smaller number that I can answer. At some point, I think the back-and-forth contrarian arguing over whether the pop parts ofRoman Reloaded are “right” or “good” will look silly to us in retrospect, as the next few years of Nicki’s career should help us answer a lot of the questions that we — or at least I — have right now.

Maybe here’s a better way of putting it (or maybe not): despite what you heard on Watch the Throne, it’s really Nicki that’s the LeBron James of pop.

I don’t think there’s anyone at fault with how this album ended up turning out and certainly no pointed blame could be made of the marketplace it was released into. While, it would be great to hear Nicki work with early 2000 Timbaland or Neptunes, I would also love to hear another Outkast album and well we know how likely that is to happen. The music climate is constantly changing, and maybe “Beez in the Trap” could become a Top 10 hit—I certain didn’t hear a Top 10 single the first time I heard “Niggas in Paris” or “Rack City”—but if it doesn’t no one would be surprised. 

The separation of Pop and Rap in 2012 is kind of interesting. A hit Pop song in 2012 is so by the numbers at this point that if Guetta, Dr. Luke, or RedOne on a track one can assume that it is already a Top 40 hit, but who are those producers in the rap world? At least in terms of Top 40 hits, the era of the rap producer reigning supreme has been over for a few years now, and while there are those occational hit cross-over songs, no one producer dominates the rap and pop charts the way someone like Lil Jon was doing nearly a decade ago. Yet, if one did, who knows if they would have produced more than a song or two for this album, because while “I’m a Slave 4 U” is a classic single, it was Clipse and Kelis were getting fully produced Neptunes albums not Britney. 

And to question of whether those previous Neptunes produced single would be hits today: No, they wouldn’t be. Most songs don’t get second lives for a reason, because at least for the general public songs exist in certain period and are popular for a specific circumstance that just cannot be replicated no matter how great or timeless a song might seem. Would “Yeah” by a #1 hit again in 2012, probably not, and I doubt it would even crack the Top 20. 

Filed under Nicki Minaj The Neptunes Timbaland Pop Music Rap Music

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Rockism makes it hard to hear the glorious, incoherent, corporate-financed, audience-tested mess that passes for popular music these days. To glorify only performers who write their own songs and play their own guitars is to ignore the marketplace that helps create the music we hear in the first place, with its checkbook-chasing superproducers, its audience-obsessed executives and its cred-hungry performers. To obsess over old-fashioned stand-alone geniuses is to forget that lots of the most memorable music is created despite multimillion-dollar deals and spur-of-the-moment collaborations and murky commercial forces. In fact, a lot of great music is created because of those things.
Kelefa Sanneh, from his 2004 New York Times Times article “The Rap Against Rockism”. When I am not checking out books, shelving books, checking out headphones or telling someone that I need more information than a “History book” if they want me to help them find a book at the library; I have been going through Kelefa Sannaeh’s pieces in the New York Times and I went with an obvious piece, but it is still too true. 

Filed under Kelefa Sanneh New York Times Rockism Pop Music Rap Music Library Times

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Red flag over my face brah,

Trash bag round that AK„

I come up out that window,

and handle you in the worst way,

Don’t make me let my plugs loose,

YGs just wanna murk somethin,

they burnin’ like some good gas,

they just wanna hurt somethin

Zilla, on “What You Doin”. 

Filed under Huntsville Zilla Rap Music

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So in the mainland States, as we slip deeper into our own troubles with gas and oil, I wonder what’s gonna happen to, say, all those big Houston rap tracks about driving cars (aka, like, 99% of them). Will they start to sound frivolous? Do they sound frivolous now? Do we love them so much right now because of their purveyors— most of them kids from meager means who made an honest living selling mixtapes or diamond grilles— kids who breathed hope into the “manifest destiny” idea by rising to the top and repping for the oil state? I mean, shit. The simplest answer is usually the right one: Maybe we just like the way those Swishahouse and Carnival Beatz boys make the bass swang. But this stuff cuts deeper when Mr. Societal Tumult revs up the old pale horse, and here we are entwined. Globalization to the max.
Juilanne Escobedo Shephard, from her September 2005 Interrobang (?!) column. 

Filed under Gas Rap Music Interrobang Question Mark Exclamation Point

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Bumpin UGK, talking bout a ‘Murder’”
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“Automatic leave them dead in the living room…get it leave them dead in the living room.

Lil Wayne, from “Gucci Gucci (Freestyle)” and “9 Piece (Remix)” respectively. 

UGK besides being a huge influential on plenty of southern rappers, but they also exists as an easy way for rapper to say something about “ridin dirty” in a car with drugs or guns. Lil Wayne does not do that and goes for a somewhat left field mention of the song “Murder” from the album Ridin Dirty. Avoiding a clichéd couplet about UGK, Lil Wayne goes for the unobvious, but even more obvious, by just name checking them to say he’s “talking bout a Murder”. 

The next line could be threat, but Lil Wayne places himself in the position of a comic having to explain their own joke. But, the deconstruction does not make the original lackluster line any worse, but rescues a subpar rhyme by shining a light on it again. As if of all the nonsense and steam-of-thought rhymes Lil Wayne has written over the years, he finally needed to take a breath to make sure his listener understood what that particular line meant just in case they missed the obvious contradiction. 

At this point that Lil Wayne is not claiming or striving to be the best rapper alive—that is not to say he isn’t, but it does not seem to be his sole reason to rap. Now his rapping has become more personal as if he was only rapping for his own amusement. Subject matter and style have not changed too much, but he sounds more aware he is just a mortal rapper and not some star eating monster. When he says “My homies got that white girl call her Lady Gaga”, there is a feeling that Lil Wayne think this line is good and hoping the listener does as well, instead of just continuing to rattle off crazier and crazier metaphors and thoughts. Lil Wayne in these moments is self aware to no longer believing every word that comes out of his mouth is from the world’s greatest rapper. 

Filed under Lil Wayne Leave Them Dead in the Living Room 2011 Rap Music

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This album is a private show, a sullen CD designed to be heard through headphones, and guaranteed to appeal to zoned-out white kids who start “talking black” when they get mad. Most hip-hop, though, is social music, not headphone music—rappers like to imagine their songs shaking night-club floors or booming out of cars. The doctrine of hip-hop triumphalism is inherently inclusive; it proceeds from the assumption that everyone already loves the music.
Kefela Sanneh, from The New Yorker review of Eminem’s The Eminem Show. 

Filed under Eminem Kefela Sanneh Rap Music Social Music

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Rappers cannot do the Dubstep

Just as “Dubstep” is becoming the new word young people are associating with electronic music (a dubstep Southpark episode, not really but close enough), so rappers and their producers are branching out trying to appropriate the sound. The bass heavy and mood filled genre known as dubstep in the last decade has changed and expanded from its UK dark Garage origins. The last couple years have seen producers taking the music into more party and rave directions, where there is a focus more on extremely wobbly bass sounds and a harsh meshing of electronic sounds. This has been jokingly referred to as “brostep”, but for rap producers approaching dubstep this sound nor the genre’s originators seem to be key touchstones. Some rap producers may sample a dubstep song, but as producers are feeling their way around the sound most stick to that bass wobble; which might upset genre purists, as for rap producers it is just another sound to work with not unlike rap’s awkward tango with techno the last few years.

The last track on K.E. on the Track’s latest mixtape Best Beats in the World 2 is called “Dubstep Nation”, but even familiarity with the dubstep genre—or any of it variations—”Dubstep Nation” could be unrecognizable. The song is a couple minutes of slowed up Dr. Luke glitter-filled Ke$ha production—pretty far removed from anything having to do with dubstep. K.E is most known for his production of Roscoe Dash (“All The Way Turnt Up” & “Show Out”), so maybe it is better he is not attempting a direct copy of Skrillex or Skream. But, the title of the song is not a misnomer: what dubstep means to K.E. on the Tracks is different than Skrillex today or Skream of 2004—which is even different than Skream of 2011—but the feeling of working with new exciting music is shared between them.  

Other rap producers who are a little bit more experienced in varied production styles have song that have started to approach the bass wobbles of dubstep: Young L and Droop-E. Young L of the rap group the Pack (best known for the minimalist minor hit “Vans”) has been making strange rap beats for years now, and while they might be odd for the rap world they are not too far removed from other electronic music acts. Young L’s recent mixtapes and songs (“Beating up the Block” and “Pound”), show that he is not afraid to show his non-rap influences, so dubstep seeping into his tracks is not too surprising as it is continuing to grow in popularity. Droop-E’s “Tonight” might be the best song in this entire piece (spoilers), and it was not produced by him but by UK producer Silkie, but the sample and bass while not Droop-E’s own are not too far from his own production on BLVCK Diamond Life (“Like a Tattoo”). 

 

While rap producers have been filtering with these new sounds, other producers have not been afraid to start mixing up rap vocal onto of dubstep tracks to mixed results. “Run This”, which mashes up Birdman and Lil Wayne’s “I Run This” with Bassnectar’s “Timestrech”: the result is a song that sounds far more epic than it really should as Birdman’s boasts are sitting atop of bass warbling and oscillating with little regard to the rap verses. This problem starts to appear with dubstep remixes of rap songs where the instrumental seem to be fighting against the vocal track with neither side conceding any ground.    

 

Andrew Noz raised this problem with rap over dubstep when giving praise to Bricksquad producer Southside on the Track. Whose production features a similar gloom and doom mood of darker dubstep tracks, but sticks with a rap template so rapper do not sound out of place, when they are trying to rap over the track. The overstuffed bass of Southside on the Track and his producer twin Lex Luger is closer to Skream or even Digital Mystikz than anything currently being done by Skrillex. 

 

Will any of these variations of rap and dubstep catch on in a wider way than they already have? Maybe. “Gucci Gucci” from hated on mostly white woman rapper Kreayshawn produced by DJtwostacks has bass wobbles throughout the song; and its over 2 million views in only a few weeks, points towards it not being too soon to say someone found the harmony between the two styles. Still when a rap producer says they are trying to create a dubstep song that should raise alarms, because rap music has done pretty well for itself when it adds sounds to it template instead of following tracks of another genre.

Filed under Dubstep Rap Music Kreayshawn K.E. on the Track Skrillex Southside on the Track False Ionic