[Terez]

worry, on 25 July 2015 - 11:44 PM, said:

There's also the matter of this just being on the borderline of being a music thread.

We are keeping it DB-level though, aren't we? Music and the Intersection of Race, Social Class, and Various Other High-Blown Disciplines.

polishgenius, on 26 July 2015 - 12:05 AM, said:

I found this study interesting and potentially relevant to this topic. I suspect it's not a coincidence that a genre with an aforementioned relative lack of musical variation smashes all the others hollow in terms of lyrical variation.

For the record, I think Bob Dylan is a terrible singer from a purely musical perspective. And who really knows what he's singing anyway?

The real takeaway is that most of us don't have diverse talents. It takes some effort to get together the best lyricists with the best musicians (not that it doesn't happen). And also, when you're trying to rhyme twice as fast as the average tune, or faster, it calls for a great deal of variation. The variation doesn't necessarily make for good lyrics.

[worry]

We are, it's just that if everyone started making top ten lists then it'd probably cross the line. Then again, maybe I'm just too lazy to annotate a list, and someone else would do fine.

[polishgenius]

Terez, on 26 July 2015 - 01:24 AM, said:

For the record, I think Bob Dylan is a terrible singer from a purely musical perspective. And who really knows what he's singing anyway?

Oh, absolutely. He's a dreadful singer on any logical level, though it works for him. Excellent songwriter though.

And yeah, I'm not saying the variation necessarily means better quality. But the same is true of, well, anything.


As for the Fugees: Fu-Gee-La might be a candidate. You will almost certainly have heard their cover of Killing Me Softly, but that's more soul than hip-hop.

[Terez]

polishgenius, on 26 July 2015 - 08:19 AM, said:

As for the Fugees: Fu-Gee-La might be a candidate.

Yeah, nope. After your earlier post I just started at the beginning of that album, and that didn't work, so I figured I'd ask you for something specific.

polishgenius, on 26 July 2015 - 08:19 AM, said:

You will almost certainly have heard their cover of Killing Me Softly, but that's more soul than hip-hop.

This one is pretty consistently genre-crossing, enough to make a contrast with the significantly more poppish Electric Lady linked by phib earlier. This is solidly in the hip-hop remix style. It works for me, partly because the music survives and even becomes more interesting than the original in a lot of ways (partly because it is recomposed and sung rather than sampled and remixed). The one thing that I was able to recall about it before I listened to it again (it's been a while) was the Latin-style twist on the word "song". (Parallel 5ths from tonic-dominant, up a half step, back down and again in a sort of mock-vibrato style, speeding up at the end in measured time.) But overall it was done well.

This might be the thing I remember liking by them. Not sure.

[amphibian]

Terez, you would probably like marching through Outkast's discography album by album. The same goes for The Roots.

[Terez]

amphibian, on 26 July 2015 - 06:46 PM, said:

Terez, you would probably like marching through Outkast's discography album by album. The same goes for The Roots.

I tried flipping through related videos for Pharcyde but that didn't go anywhere. Of the two you mention here I suspect I would enjoy The Roots best. I'm in for another busy week; hopefully I will have time for that soon.

[amphibian]

Go album by album. Songs are listed in wikipedia or Rap Genius.

Flipping through youtube videos is a great way to run across singles from disparate artists - which almost all skew poppy due to being singles - and some of them may be pitched up to avoid copyright claims.

[Gorefest]

I cannot believe you all still haven't managed to turn Terez into a hip-hop fan. I really think you're not trying hard enough.

[Maark Abbott]

I

polishgenius, on 25 July 2015 - 02:42 PM, said:

Hey-ya isn't really a hip-hop song but they're certainly a hip-hop act overall, although André 3000 likes to mix it up (which is why Hey-ya is like it is, as that was from a double album that was essentially one solo album from each, and it was from his half).

Incidentally, I still have a .wmv / mp3 of some form with an acoustic cover of that song that our studio group did at uni about five and a half years back. I could bob it up if anyone wanted a listen.

[Studlock]

Drive-by recommendation:



Another Lupe Fiasco song--one that is a bit repetitive but changes more so than the other one I left by him, plus Jill Scott




And this is just a general one--Amph, Worry--if you haven't heard of Black Milk I highly recommend--he's not lyrically gifted but he's a great storyteller and makes pretty good music (to me).

[Studlock]

Also I'm curious what Terez thinks about something like this:




Which is extremely minimalist in terms of both sound and lyrics--yet for me is successful in creating a mood I could mosh to.

This post has been edited by Studlock: 27 July 2015 - 12:46 PM

[amphibian]

Gorefest, on 27 July 2015 - 09:25 AM, said:

I cannot believe you all still haven't managed to turn Terez into a hip-hop fan. I really think you're not trying hard enough.

I think she's pretty open to finding good music - it's that her process of consuming music seems to be unusual.

I'm done poking around to find the general shape of Terez's Musical Process and it's up to her to go farther, should she choose to. Otherwise, things are ok as they are.

[Macros]

[Itwæs Nom]

Hey guys, I dont really read this thread and dont know what exactly are you talking about.
Im a rap fan and Im wondering why nobody has mentioned Watsky yet (or I just didnt notice it), hes no kind of legend but hes great and his lyrics actually mean something. https://www.youtube....h?v=VCEsveSK5to
Also from the stuff I like I only noticed here P.O.S and just wanted to add that his whole Doomtree crew ( https://www.youtube....h?v=5PTHFL63sTQ ) is amazing and under Rhymesayers you can find a bunch of various awesome artists too. My favorite there are Atmosphere ( https://www.youtube....h?v=gbEwHJX95QE ) , Grieves ( https://www.youtube....h?v=XIQNngEnKU0 ) and Eydea ( https://www.youtube....h?v=z9-eKhCukW8 ) (R.EYE.P).
Then I noticed OutKast that I only know cause of Spose, good rapper too. https://www.youtube....h?v=RHqiATVuxnA
Next I want to mention K.Flay, its not 100% hip-hop but its nice too. https://www.youtube....h?v=LC9qgBNQ2kM
Ever heard about Bones? Its rap, but totally different from whatever you ever heard, its just great. Then theres also his seshollowaterboyz. https://www.youtube....h?v=0IYght7FGdg
Adding Sadistik, Kristoff Krane, Here both together(The choice of previous two songs is due to trying to show the contrast between them, but they're close friends in reality, had been close with Eyedea too), Astronautalis, Ecid


(I think I will use this as history of what I(have) listened to )

This post has been edited by Itwæs Nom: 14 September 2016 - 06:03 PM

[Terez]

Studlock, on 27 July 2015 - 12:45 PM, said:

Also I'm curious what Terez thinks about something like this:




Which is extremely minimalist in terms of both sound and lyrics--yet for me is successful in creating a mood I could mosh to.

Musically and otherwise-artistically it does a few interesting things despite the minimalism, but overall it does not do much for me, and the lyrics are obnoxious.

Macros, on 18 August 2015 - 06:01 PM, said:

This is exactly what I was talking about earlier when I mentioned the minimalistic tendencies in modern pop and the fascination with the perfect 5th. I have no idea if Kanye's music actually sounds like this, but I have lately been thinking about listening through today's Top 40 and seeing how prevalent this melodic pattern is in the top music. But I can think of other top pop songs (e.g. Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off") which don't follow the pattern but are still minimalistic. They just use different patterns than that one.

Have you ever seen cover bands that do a medley of several pop tunes (at least a dozen) as if they were all the same song? The phenomenon itself is not new...it's the prevalence of the pattern-copying, and the increasing extension of the pattern-copying to the actual melodic line rather than just the harmony.

I hear these songs with this melodic pattern all the time, whenever I walk through a place with the radio on a pop station, and in all sorts of other contexts. I honestly have no idea how often I'm listening to the same song, because the specifics aren't memorable when I hear them in that fashion. But if I could sit down and go through the Top 40 I could map the similarities pretty easily (though it might be time-consuming).

Charlie Nom, on 18 August 2015 - 10:11 PM, said:

Hey guys, I dont really read this thread and dont know what exactly are you talking about.
Im a rap fan and Im wondering why nobody has mentioned Watsky yet (or I just didnt notice it), hes no kind of legend but hes great and his lyrics actually mean something. https://www.youtube....h?v=VCEsveSK5to
Also from the stuff I like I only noticed here P.O.S and just wanted to add that his whole Doomtree crew ( https://www.youtube....h?v=5PTHFL63sTQ ) is amazing and under Rhymesayers you can find a bunch of various awesome artists too. My favorite there are Atmosphere ( https://www.youtube....h?v=gbEwHJX95QE ) , Grieves ( https://www.youtube....h?v=XIQNngEnKU0 ) and Eydea ( https://www.youtube....h?v=z9-eKhCukW8 ) (RIP).
Then I noticed OutKast that I only know cause of Spose, good rapper too. https://www.youtube....h?v=RHqiATVuxnA
Next I want to mention K.Flay, its not 100% hip-hop but its nice too. https://www.youtube....h?v=LC9qgBNQ2kM
Ever heard about Bones? Its rap, but totally different from whatever you ever heard, its just great. Then theres also his seshollowaterboyz. https://www.youtube....h?v=0IYght7FGdg

You seem to be partial to white rap. I didn't listen to any of it all the way through; none of it interested me particularly much. But that's just me.

[worry]

Speaking of medleys, you might be interested in/tickled by this video. It's country, but you mentioned the "everything but rap and country" phenomenon amongst your classmates:

[worry]

Specifically it's "bro country" which is a major trend right now that openly (and cynically) borrows from the shallow end of hip-hop.

[Terez]

I was going to ask if it was all modern country, because the particular pop melodic pattern I mentioned earlier is present here, too. What you call the shallow end of hip-hop, I might call pop, because it's centered around singing rather than rap. But I had already considered (based on the Kanye Southpark gag Maccy posted) that I would need to scan Top 40 hip-hop for the pattern, too.

I could actually show you guys this pattern, because it boils down to numbered scale degrees, and I'm sure everyone here can recognize number patterns.

PS: Trey Parker is a very gifted musician. I noticed this the first time I watched Southpark, some time during the first season, back when Craig Kilborne was the face of the Daily Show. Even the small musical elements in the show are well-crafted, and the theme song is a satire on country and 20th century "classical" music at the same time. It's great.

This post has been edited by Terez: 29 August 2015 - 06:40 AM

[Itwæs Nom]

So this whole thread, 7 pages, is just about trying to find a hip-hop song/artist that would Terez like?

[Terez]

For me it was about trying to demonstrate that my dislike for hip-hop has nothing to do with race per se. I don't like it because it is, in general, a musically bereft genre. I tried to explain this in more-or-less academic terms. People insisted that I must not have heard the right rap, and hadn't I heard this and this and this? And that is how it became a thread about what Terez might like.