Letters to the Editor
-
What, no mention of Cupid Shuffle??
People here have been obsessed with that since about last August. While the Soulja Boy dance takes a few attempts to get right, the Cupid Shuffle's "to da lef to da lef to da right to da right" can be done even by the drunkest of my friends after about a thirty second observation of all the other drunks out on the dance floor.
I originally heard about it from my friends from Louisiana, where apparently it had become endemic sometime in 2006, but it has since metastaized and gone pandemic across the South.
-
Seriously?
You're going to claim that Luda's rhymes are more clever than Wayne's? On what planet? Some of the things said in this article are true, but that places major strain on your credibility as a reviewer.
-
How could this have happened?
There is an interesting conspiracy theory circulating that might answer that question for you: The theory goes that sometime in the late nineties or early 2000s, record executives started pushing up and coming talent to back off of more topical issues (like say, fucking tha' police), to make the albums more sellable to the rest of the population. Thus not rocking the boat or questioning things like how blacks are treated in America. Matt Tiabi touched on this in one of his Rolling Stone articles.
-
"Its dances are silly, its beats infantile, its rhymes lazy"
It was always like that. A disgrace to the genius of black culture. Compare its best to anything by Gil Scott Heron and the Last Poets, its chief inspirations. And that's the 70s, not a great decade for anybody's art. Go farther back, say to the second Miles Davis Quintet, John Coltrane or Ornette Coleman, and you'll really feel sad. Want decent rhymes? There are generations of great black writers and poets. For great songwriting, check out the R&B movement of the 40s.
You're just growing up. Go hang out with Rebecca Traister. She's having the same problems.
-
If stupid stuff sells well, why bother creating something better?
As Chris Rock said some years ago, "I love rap but it's getting hard to defend it." If you thought it bottomed out with K-Fed, you are in for a rude surprise.
-
Who's "Fall Out Boy"..
(Get off my lawn you damn kids!)..
Gimme a break. People have been proclaiming the death of Hip Hop since 1986. It will, like every other new form of entertainment embraced by the 13-30 demographic (and more importantly, still loved by the now car, home and investments buying 30-50 set) be co-opted, adulterated and burlesqued by the very same institutions Hip Hop set out to liberate art from in the first place.
Is Hip-Hop dead? Nonsense. Is "rap" dead? Not as long as Hennessey or Grey Goose have enough money to pay off young performers who don't know any better. I think if you asked Common or Kanye or Adam Yauch or John Legend or Mos Def if Hip Hop was dead they would look at you like a crazy person.
Ask Keith Jarrett if jazz is dead, or Tchaikovsky if Classical were dead (or Christoph Von Dohnanyi, Michael Tilson Thomas, Loren Maazel or the Kronos Quartet, to name some people who are, unlike brother Tchaikovsy are very much alive).
Hip hop is hear to stay.
PS - if more American's danced, maybe we'd spend less time at war. And we'd be in better shape. Think about that!
-
hating is a solid tradition in hip hop
I think you are continuing one of the single most persistent traditions of hip hop: hating. The truth is of course that hip hop allows some of the most variety of sounds, ideas, musical concepts of all the musical genres. Rock is stuck with a guitar sound from the 70's, indie has this mournful mid tempo sound that makes it all sound like they are trying to be belle & sebastian, but not quite making it, jazz is likewise looking backwards, right at the time when it's possible to bring up a jazz trio with a bass player, a saxophone and a push button drum machine, jazz players are turning their back on electronica, dance music is obsessed by sub-dividing the amen break into a hundred different pieces, creating nothing new except for names.
Hip hop is still fresh, it's still the genre that lets new ideas in, it's the genre that allows you to wail and sing, to create incredible beats, to use all the new electronic equipment to the fullest, and still bring the simple energy of the human voice.
And I really do like that single soulja boy, it's a great song. That song connects with people, of all kinds, remember this is not a song that was pushed out by the music industry it started out word of mouth. Just because you don't have the lyrical abilities of eminem doesn't mean you can't write a fantastic song. The Ramones could only play 3 chords, but they wrote some of the best punk songs in the entire genre of punk music.
I can't say exactly what it is about soulja boy that makes it a really good hip hop song, but the simple evidence that hip hop aficionados despise it is evidence not that it is bad, but that it is good, because every hating on someone else's success is part of the hip hop tradition.
-
ice ice baby
The commercial success of a song that sucks does not doom the genre.
-
Hip Hop is cooler than anyone who can't name one independant Hip Hop Artist
Dear Farmboy turned Boston Magazine Editor. There are these entities called independant record labels. Some of them put out Hip Hop with good lyrics and catchy beats. See Rhymesayers, Weightless and Def Jux for starters.
You talk about Houston Hip Hop, but can't work in Devin The Dude, the best MC in the game? Do you actually own any rap records? Or did you do your research via radio playlists and wikipedia?
PS - Silly Dances have always been part of pop culture. My dear friend King Coleman sang (do the) Mashed Potatoes for "Nat Kendrick & The Swans" aka James Brown and The Famous Flames. It was a silly dance, but it didn't stop the checks from being cashed and King from influencing the real roots of MCing: Jamaican Toasters and Blowfly.
-
@Helltrout
You have a point... But Mr. Kix also has one. Yeah, there is a lot of good indie hip-hop. But the stuff that gets the airplay, both on the radio and cable, is utter crap. It didn't used to be that way. Even the grotesqueries of the late 90's Puff Daddy era were better than the current crop of "bling and bitches".
A poster above referred to Matt Taibbi's piece on this subject in Rolling Stone, and I agree with Taibbi's assessment 100%. Modern "Pop" rap and hip-hop is a minstrel show: white music executives hawking a nasty, debased parody of black culture to white kids in the burbs.
Of course, similar arguments could be made about all the popular music of this era... But somehow the degradation of hip=hop seems much sadder. Well, we still have The Beastie Boys...