Blame one thing for Hip Hop/Rap's decline.
- Thread starter TrEmEnDo InDo
- Start date
For me autotune copying trends and not trying to be original. To me its an issue when an established artist like r kelly is autotuning in songs. It makes me shake my head and confused me when I hear autotune on his hooks on twista newest album.
My other big complaint is the lyrics. Now all the radio cuts are talking about money, fucking bitches, and wheel sizes. Its funny here in dallas the radio station 94.5 just got launched and they are playing old school jams. The newest song I heard might be something like juvenile back that ass up or mystikal shake ya ass. When im listening I dont hear autotune, riding rims older then the rapper. You hear a nice laid back track like it was a good day or maybe some dougie fresh the show or 2pac.
My other big complaint is the lyrics. Now all the radio cuts are talking about money, fucking bitches, and wheel sizes. Its funny here in dallas the radio station 94.5 just got launched and they are playing old school jams. The newest song I heard might be something like juvenile back that ass up or mystikal shake ya ass. When im listening I dont hear autotune, riding rims older then the rapper. You hear a nice laid back track like it was a good day or maybe some dougie fresh the show or 2pac.
Good points. The Internet changed the fans, and the fans changed the artists would you say? It would seem that the Internet and social media makes it easy for a rapper with little talent to have a following and get some momentum in the game, where as before they would've never made it past a shitty freestyle or performance.
The internet did several things:
1) Shortened everyone's attention spans - both those of the artists who no longer spend the same time perfecting tracks as they did in the past, and those of the listeners, who no longer listen to the music expecting it to be something deep that you should immerse yourself into. These things feed into each other in a positive feedback loop - once there is no longer demand for that kind of music, it does not get made.
2) Piracy played a major role too - if you paid $15 for an album you expected it to be worth that money and to listen to it many times over and over. So that placed certain requirements albums had to conform to to be commercially successful, and also limited the number of albums that could be released. Those constraints no longer exist. Of course, piracy has helped people discover music in a way that was impossible in the past, but that negative effect remains.
3) The internet changed the way music is made. I have no first hand observations on the process, but I read comments about it here and there in the present and stories about how the masterpieces of the past were made. And it seems that in the past the music was made with both all the MCs and the producers being present in the same studio. After the verses were laid, the engineers and producers kept working on the track until it's finished; the producer usually had some beats already made but that was not the final version of the song and there was a lot of interaction between everyone involved until everything was completed. Nowadays both beats and verses are traded on the internet as if they are commodities, and whole albums can be made without the artists, let alone the producers, ever being present in the same studio. No wonder the final product sounds like the musical equivalent of TV dinners.
4) Music can be made much more easily and with less resources and investment, and it can be distributed much more easily. This can be a good thing but it has two negative effects - it lowered the entry barriers so that where in the past only those sufficiently committed to their craft could put out albums, now everyone can put out a bunch of tracks and call it an album/mixtape, and it ballooned the amount of music available out there, thus devaluing it. Record labels could be really evil and do great harm to individual artists in the past, but one day we might end up looking back at history and appreciating the role they played as a filter that ensured most of the garbage never got a chance to flood the market. The quality of the average major label rap album in the early 90s was higher than that of the local tape sold out the trunk. There are a few regions with really vibrant underground scenes where we might have an argument over that assessment but if you take the US as a whole, it's true.
5) The internet killed the local scenes and homogenized the style. People developing their own styles in the relative isolation of some city away from the current major center(s) of rap used to a major source of creativity and new ideas, no longer.
1) Shortened everyone's attention spans - both those of the artists who no longer spend the same time perfecting tracks as they did in the past, and those of the listeners, who no longer listen to the music expecting it to be something deep that you should immerse yourself into. These things feed into each other in a positive feedback loop - once there is no longer demand for that kind of music, it does not get made.
2) Piracy played a major role too - if you paid $15 for an album you expected it to be worth that money and to listen to it many times over and over. So that placed certain requirements albums had to conform to to be commercially successful, and also limited the number of albums that could be released. Those constraints no longer exist. Of course, piracy has helped people discover music in a way that was impossible in the past, but that negative effect remains.
3) The internet changed the way music is made. I have no first hand observations on the process, but I read comments about it here and there in the present and stories about how the masterpieces of the past were made. And it seems that in the past the music was made with both all the MCs and the producers being present in the same studio. After the verses were laid, the engineers and producers kept working on the track until it's finished; the producer usually had some beats already made but that was not the final version of the song and there was a lot of interaction between everyone involved until everything was completed. Nowadays both beats and verses are traded on the internet as if they are commodities, and whole albums can be made without the artists, let alone the producers, ever being present in the same studio. No wonder the final product sounds like the musical equivalent of TV dinners.
4) Music can be made much more easily and with less resources and investment, and it can be distributed much more easily. This can be a good thing but it has two negative effects - it lowered the entry barriers so that where in the past only those sufficiently committed to their craft could put out albums, now everyone can put out a bunch of tracks and call it an album/mixtape, and it ballooned the amount of music available out there, thus devaluing it. Record labels could be really evil and do great harm to individual artists in the past, but one day we might end up looking back at history and appreciating the role they played as a filter that ensured most of the garbage never got a chance to flood the market. The quality of the average major label rap album in the early 90s was higher than that of the local tape sold out the trunk. There are a few regions with really vibrant underground scenes where we might have an argument over that assessment but if you take the US as a whole, it's true.
5) The internet killed the local scenes and homogenized the style. People developing their own styles in the relative isolation of some city away from the current major center(s) of rap used to a major source of creativity and new ideas, no longer.
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Well damn, the Internet-- to me that sounds like the number one thing right there, and all the poll options are mainly by products of that. Fuckin technology is the end of everything precious.
And hip hop will never be the same.
And hip hop will never be the same.
Props:
NotAllThere and NotAllThere
we just getting old breh. if you are like me, and think anyone rocking jeggings is out there damn mind, can't take drake seriously trying to be something he's not, feel lil thug is just a lil wayne spinoff, think everyone in the bay lost their direction years back, think the south needs to get off atl's dick and someone needs to release something that's not "trap", feel the east needs to stop trying to rerelease all the classics from 94-97, then it's time to tune into sports radio. i find so few artists releasing new shit release anything satisfying or worth any serious listens these days.
new shit i'll always check is few and far between, the list is:
new shit i'll always check is few and far between, the list is:
- a few boston rappers you guys have never heard, some you may have.....krumbsnatcha, tangg (for the people that don't know who he is, his first verse was on the classic "summer knights" by almighty rso) slaine, the rare edo shit, badnewz, even though he has done nothing in years, but this track is still a classic IMO right HERE and for my money one of the best to drop in the 00's. triple threat, and some edo shit, but most his shit doesn't catch me like it used to
- A-Wax
- People rapping over Premier (i'm still a sucker for primo, that dude could make the worst mc's sound like they were the next in line
- J-Diggs, even the I find most of his shit disappoints. guilty pleasure really
- the PSD shit sucks so bad, because I was a BIG fan of his, but find his shit so hard to take now because it's so filled with lies. he's got the ability to drop some fantastic tracks though, his singing on "God Bless the Child" w/ diggs and keak still makes the hair on my arms stand up
- I liked the Jacka but he just dropped so much shit it was kinda quantity of quality so for the older person, it's hards hard to find the slapper in the in the haystak
- Rydah J Klyde (tons of shit that just doesn't do it for me though)
- Mozzy
- Scarface
- and a few others.....but mainly, i just crush sports talk radio and my old cd's, tapes, records and mpfrees.
Well yes, but if it wasn't for the internet you probably most people here would have never even heard of their favorite artists.
It has had its positives too.
It's just that as with all transformative changes of that kind, for the negative effects to be avoided, conscious effort on the part of the individuals is needed, effort to act against one's immediate self-interests, But few have that kind of foresight, and almost nobody can afford to act in such a way, so eventually entropy wins
It has had its positives too.
It's just that as with all transformative changes of that kind, for the negative effects to be avoided, conscious effort on the part of the individuals is needed, effort to act against one's immediate self-interests, But few have that kind of foresight, and almost nobody can afford to act in such a way, so eventually entropy wins
