[Gorefest]

Well, if it helps, I don't like it either? Music taste is music taste, don't see where race comes into it. I don't generally like rap, dance, R&B or house either, although I'm sure each genre will have a song or two that I can appreciate. Music taste is a personal thing; normally my stance is that if it hasn't got a guiter it isn't my thing.

[polishgenius]

Terez, on 29 August 2015 - 05:53 AM, said:

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.

That's not white rap. This is white rap.

[amphibian]

The purposes for which Terez uses music are often very different from what most people use music.

Lady, do you dance in a social setting?

[Terez]

Nope.

PG, are British white people more white than other white people?

PS: Just watched this interview with Matt Stone and Trey Parker, and Parker talks about how difficult it was to do the autotune thing for the Kanye gayfish thing. He says it doesn't sound right if you actually sing in tune; you have to sing out of tune to get that distinctive sound. Which is hilarious.

This post has been edited by Terez: 29 August 2015 - 09:00 PM

[Terez]

Is this where we talk about Kanye running for president?

[amphibian]

I would welcome him as a 2020 candidate, but I wouldn't vote for him.

He'd be a better mayor of Chicago than Rahm Emanuel tho.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Maark, on 16 July 2015 - 02:41 PM, said:

Terez, on 14 July 2015 - 07:14 AM, said:

worry, on 14 July 2015 - 07:05 AM, said:

Some racism, some ageism, some crankiness, some anti-hip-hopism (if you want to separate that from racism, which you probably shouldn't)...

Yes, you definitely should. I hate hip-hop as a genre. Rarely have I heard any with anything musically interesting going on, and the swagger of the lyrics is generally obnoxious.

Got to agree with Terez here. Maybe because it's a relatively minimalistic style and I need my music to be busy and chaotic. Not to say it's bad, but it's certainly not to my taste at all.

Going back to Kanye: His songs are dull, his voice is annoying and he's generally a cockcheese of the highest order.

QuickTidal, on 16 July 2015 - 03:23 PM, said:

Apologies, I was speaking specifically of Kanye. Those other artists you posted are a different ball of wax, and I'm fine with lots of it.

Kanye is exactly what Maark says he is. Dull songs, annoying voice, and seemingly a jerk in the real life we see him presented in (whether that's actually real or an act is up for debate). The kind of individual who goes up onstage at an awards show and tell the audience that the person who won (Swift) isn't better than the person he likes better (Beyonce)...which was about as highschool level of an act as one could pull. Which is only precursor to Kanye doing a similar thing to Beck, and then declaring to Glastonbury that he's the "greatest rock star on the planet". I don't care that he's technically not a "rock" star...what I DO care about is a stupid statement made by a delusional individual with nothing to back that up. He tweets in Caps Lock. Multiple, multiple non-show concerts or 2-3hour late concerts, non-event concerts where he doesn't really sing much, but rants. Mouths off to reviewers who give him a B+ (EW article about his show) and demands an A. Basically everything that is wrong with celebrity-mixed-with-music careers.

And just to show I'm not playing favourites in any way, I feel that people like Liam Gallagher (Oasis), and Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins) are totally on par with Kanye for believing they are the best ever and loudly shouting that...to disbelieving crowds who wonder what is going on in their heads to make them think that.

So we've got people like Dave Grohl busting his leg on stage and finishing the damned concert (AND keeping tour dates with a busted leg), or a Delain bassist having his nuts blasted from behind by a pyrotechnic explosion and finishing the show, or just the sheer energy and class that Janelle Monae brings to her stage shows, Tom Morello pouring everything he has into a guitar career, The Roots spending decades crafting important, progressive hip-hop tracks (to bring it back to the discussion at hand). These people LIVE their music. They don't use it to tell us how great they are...and then prove it by behaving like petulant, celebrity-hogging, constantly late children.

I'm with both of these. It's not my bag at all (for similar reasons to what Maark said) although that doesn't preclude finding the odd appealing track now and again. However, all I've ever seen of Kanye West (which may not be wholly representative) is the things QT is talking about. So, rather like Liam Gallagher, I don't see him as a particularly interesting person - and all of the crap QT posted which I wasn't aware of hasn't done anything to assuage that opinion. .

Also, I agree with the point Corey Taylor made (referenced in the Guardian article at the start of the thread) - if you were the greatest living "rock star", you surely wouldn't need to tell people. Greatness might not be easy to define, but it sure isn't usually the person who shouts that they are the greatest the loudest!

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 01 September 2015 - 06:17 AM

[worry]

Kanye doesn't exist in a vacuum. He's a hip-hop artist, and there's a culture of braggadocio and one-upmanship that is vital to MCing. KRS-ONE thinks he's the greatest too (and says so often), he just doesn't happen to be a pop star on top of being a hip hop star. But there's also a reason Kanye said "rock star" and not "rap star" that has to do with the long history of white appropriation of black art forms that leads to white lionization and black ghettoization in those forms. Kanye knows when it comes to rock stardom his name isn't even on the guest list, and he knows why. So why bother waiting? Why bother asking for permission? Bum rush the show. That seems to be his philosophy for all his interests: you're locked out, but the locks aren't real. He knows he's stepping on some toes, but those particular feet belong to people trying to hold the door shut.

I don't see the parallel with Liam Gallagher either, except in the broadest scope of obnoxiousness. In specifics they're nothing alike though. What exactly has Kanye done that is so bad? I've never even heard of him trashing a hotel room (something plenty of rock stars get away with, with an "oh, you!" hand wave) let alone hurting anyone. This "bad boy" persona thrust upon him has nothing to do with reality; it's a product of the very same powers he speaks out about. If he reminds me of anyone, it's Muhammad Ali. Part of a similarly competitive, ego-intensive sport culture, loud and brash that occasionally rises to foot-in-mouth level, and (rightfully) self-conscious about his place in history. I'm sure Corey Taylor would have had something to say about the self-proclaimed "greatest" back then too, with a similar blindness to context. I mean Kanye is the one who on live television said GWB doesn't care about black people, one of the only bright spots to America's worst modern tragedy. That might really be where the seed of the backlash began, now that I think of it, and the T.Swift thing was just a spark to the gunpowder trailing after him since then. Probably didn't help that he was right both times, in ways that lit up the racial lines in those moments people were happy to ignore.

[Terez]

TheRetiredBridgeburner, on 01 September 2015 - 06:13 AM, said:

QuickTidal, on 16 July 2015 - 03:23 PM, said:

[...] Multiple, multiple non-show concerts or 2-3 hour late concerts, non-event concerts where he doesn't really sing much, but rants. Mouths off to reviewers who give him a B+ (EW article about his show) and demands an A. Basically everything that is wrong with celebrity-mixed-with-music careers.

And just to show I'm not playing favourites in any way, I feel that people like Liam Gallagher (Oasis), and Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins) are totally on par with Kanye for believing they are the best ever and loudly shouting that...to disbelieving crowds who wonder what is going on in their heads to make them think that. [...]

[...] all I've ever seen of Kanye West (which may not be wholly representative) is the things QT is talking about. So, rather like Liam Gallagher, I don't see him as a particularly interesting person - and all of the crap QT posted which I wasn't aware of hasn't done anything to assuage that opinion. [...]

The bolded/underlined bit is probably the worst of all the transgressions listed in this thread. Again, I know very little of Kanye, and don't really care much, but I posted because what QT said reminds me very much of Axl Rose. Supposedly, Axl did the no-shows and late-shows as a protest against his bandmates who were profound substance abusers (if you care, read Duff McKagan's autobiography; it's actually well-written; I read Slash's to fill in the gaps but it was written more like you'd expect). But Axl also did the rants on stage, as if people paid money to hear him rant about his family that didn't love him or politics or whatever else he felt like getting off his chest. He was the greatest singer in rock; all the rock gods said so. (He is also the only singer in Billboard territory with a greater range than even Mariah Carey.) That voice was part of why people came to see GNR live, but this fact gave him a mad ego trip. He believed himself to be the most important person in the band, and it would still be GNR if everyone else was replaced (and that it wouldn't be GNR without him). Hence the state of affairs at present.

This post has been edited by Terez: 01 September 2015 - 07:51 AM

[worry]

Kanye barely has those issues. He's nowhere near Axl Rose level. He's not even at Lauryn Hill level in terms of late/no-shows. I'm sure he has a few, maybe a couple horror stories, but I've never heard of this being habitual with him. The rants exist of course, but they're a feature, not a bug. If anything, he strives for big bang-for-your bucks shows like U2 or Springsteen. Well, maybe not Springsteen. Taylor Swift?

I just read Axl and Slash buried the hatchet, btw: http://www.billboard...-reconciliation

Kanye actually works with a lot of the same collaborators pretty constantly too. There's friction occasionally, like "sibling rivalry" with Jay Z, but the closest thing to an actual "beef" was the 50 Cent publicity stunt when their album drop dates were the same. I'm not saying he gets along with everybody all the time, or that all his rivalries are friendly, but for a guy who gets around so much there really aren't that many controversies, let alone blowups.

[Terez]

worry, on 01 September 2015 - 08:18 AM, said:

I just read Axl and Slash buried the hatchet, btw: http://www.billboard...-reconciliation

Yeah, I read that the other day. I don't think there's too much there to get the hopes up, not that I care much any more. They're all old now, and Axl's voice isn't what it was.

[amphibian]

Some of you may have missed Worry cleverly using a Public Enemy album title in the longer post above.

Kanye very rarely cancels. He almost always over delivers in his concerts and even steps in on short notice (most recently switching in for Frank Ocean a week or so ago). He and Jay-Z had a tradition of doing Niggaz in Paris multiple times in a row to end the encore - this was done 13x in Paris or some number that ridiculously silly/dope.

Every member of Guns'n'Roses had mental illnesses and addictions during their hey day. Using them as an analogue only works when you're talking about the Rolling Stones or that level of dysfunction.

West has never displayed that level of dysfunction, but he gets more shit from people who give those like Guns'n'Roses a pass than is deserved.

I think the biggest problem Kanye actually has is that he doesn't take the time to research or figure out context in full before he throws on of his public relations lightning bolts. His courage and tenacity in claiming authorship and agency in his music career - something that most artists struggle with - is great. But that boldness and his less than ideal world choices lead to overstepping what's right along with the usual overstepping of what the majority white audience and media deem to be appropriate.

A deeply literate Kanye would be something like James Baldwin 2.0. The biting wit mixed in with context awareness, deep suspicion, and massive popularity would cause fear of a black planet on a new scale.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

I should probably clarify while we're on rock music more generally (which is much more my taste) - I've no respect for the vast majority of those involved as people either. And Axl Rose is a pretty good example of a more extreme version of the same problems - and is a first class asshole. My other half and I disagree on this fairly regularly, but that's mostly because I never really bought the "cool" of "sex drugs and rock n roll". I read one of the unauthorised biogs of GNR when I was a teenager and had first stumbled on the music (Band That Time Forgot, I think) and even bearing in mind it was unauthorised, I came away from it really disappointed because they're awful people, really.

I take Worry's point though, I don't know anything about hip hop really through basic disinterest, so I could be judging him unfairly.

The no-show thing though is unacceptable whoever does it. One of the main reasons even if GNR get back together there isn't a chance I'd pay to see them. It's too unreliable. Even when they did the last big tour in 2006 shows constantly started late - and Axl didn't have all his substance-abusing band mates to claim a protest for then.

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 01 September 2015 - 10:04 AM

[Terez]

I saw GNR twice when I was 12-13 years old, in 1992. The first show, in Biloxi, was good. The second, in New Orleans, they were at least an hour late coming on stage and they played terribly. But it was okay, because Metallica played first and they were good. I never liked Metallica's music much, and I still only have a limited appreciation for it, but they really impressed me with their professionalism that night, if only in contrast to GNR and Faith No More who opened. (FNM showed up on time but the performance was terrible.)

I don't know if it's quite accurate to say GNR gets a pass. Their own fans have started riots over this shit. The rock press gave them absolute hell over it. As for them being awful people....again, read Duff's book. He's a good guy who has completely recovered from his substance abuse issues. He went back to school after the band died, got a degree, writes professionally now, has a family, and invested his GNR money wisely. And he wrote a good book with a very proper amount of self-reflection.

This post has been edited by Terez: 01 September 2015 - 10:34 AM

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Terez, on 01 September 2015 - 10:31 AM, said:

I don't know if it's quite accurate to say GNR gets a pass. Their own fans have started riots over this shit. The rock press gave them absolute hell over it. As for them being awful people....again, read Duff's book. He's a good guy who has completely recovered from his substance abuse issues. He went back to school after the band died, got a degree, writes professionally now, has a family, and invested his GNR money wisely. And he wrote a good book with a very proper amount of self-reflection.

I'll give it a go, thanks (wasn't actually aware of it until you linked it further up the thread). That was possibly a bit extreme, I think it was just teenage me going in thinking these were the coolest people in the world and coming out "OK, they're substance abusing assholes" and it feeling like a kick in the teeth. Self inflicted by my own naivete at the time, I suspect!

[polishgenius]

I didn't know Terez is Keith Richards.

[Terez]

lol...not a Stones fan. Everything I know by them is boring (i.e. not musically interesting). I've had people tell me recently I just don't listen to the right stuff by them, but I haven't bothered to dig in.

What he said is, honestly, very uncontroversial among most musicians (i.e. people who sing or play instruments) above the age of 30. It gets more nuanced with black musicians because for many of them it's an important cultural expression. For example, Bobby McFerrin's son is a hip-hop artist, and he's done some beatboxing with his son, but while he has no apparent aversion to the genre he obviously prefers doing stuff with more notes in it.

[stone monkey]

Without wanting to derail the thread, and it has come up passim., it's probably impossible to talk about Rap/Hip-Hop without mentioning race, precisely because the genre was started, and remains dominated, by urban black males. For example, as rap became popular, especially amongst middle-class, white American kids, the search for the "Great White Hope" of hip-hop, who could make rap music that sells without being so gratuitously black, became more intense; see Vanilla Ice, Eminem, and recently Iggy Azalea. So I'd argue that it is a valid conversation to have.

That this search has yet to succeed, in a similar fashion to the way Rock n' Roll became completely assimilated (one might say appropriated) into mainstream American culture, is probably a very interesting topic in itself. Maybe rap is too black to become so divorced from its origins that white people could insist they invented it?

As far as the validity, musically, lyrically or otherwise, of any musical genre is concerned; they're all as valid as each other imo. At some point any of us may have to concede that a particular music genre is Not For Us, which is fine. The big BUT here is that such a concession is based purely on personal taste and not whether the genre is conceptually valid or barren or whatever.

As for Kanye... I can take him or leave him. He was interesting in the beginning, but he's become a caricature of himself imo and I think his music has probably suffered as a result.

But what do I know? I mean, I listen to Double Adaptor and Add N to (X) and Squarepusher for fun; most people I know wouldn't even count the stuff they make as music...

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 13 October 2015 - 10:22 PM

[Terez]

stone monkey, on 13 October 2015 - 10:14 PM, said:

Without wanting to derail the thread, and it has come up passim., it's probably impossible to talk about Rap/Hip-Hop without mentioning race, precisely because the genre was started, and remains dominated, by urban black males. For example, as rap became popular, especially amongst middle-class, white American kids, the search for the "Great White Hope" of hip-hop, who could make rap music that sells without being so gratuitously black, became more intense; see Vanilla Ice, Eminem, and recently Iggy Azalea. So I'd argue that it is a valid conversation to have.

I agree there is a valid conversation to have here. What's not valid is judging someone's character based solely on their taste in music. IMO this thread started because of a bit of intellectual laziness on worry's part; he could have worded his idea more eloquently and accurately. I respect worry's intellect, by the way, but intellectual people are capable of laziness (myself included).

stone monkey, on 13 October 2015 - 10:14 PM, said:

That this search has yet to succeed, in a similar fashion to the way Rock n' Roll became completely assimilated (one might say appropriated) into mainstream American culture, is probably a very interesting topic in itself. Maybe rap is too black to become so divorced from its origins that white people could insist they invented it?

I suspect it has more to do with the passage of time and the relative cultural saturation. This happened with jazz before it happened with rock. The interesting thing is that you can often tell the difference between white jazz and black jazz just by listening to it (up to the 60s, no vocals). White people adopted it and appropriated it into a mode more suitable to their cultural perspective, and the difference is musically significant, up to a point.

stone monkey, on 13 October 2015 - 10:14 PM, said:

As far as the validity, musically, lyrically or otherwise, of any musical genre is concerned; they're all as valid as each other imo. At some point any of us may have to concede that a particular music genre is Not For Us, which is fine. The big BUT here is that such a concession is based purely on personal taste and not whether the genre is conceptually valid or barren or whatever.

I don't know if it's possible for me to separate the two in the case of rap because one of the persistent conceptual rules of the genre is musical minimalism (in the sense previously described). From what I have seen, both in my own explorations and in the examples given on this thread, the exceptions are rare.

[worry]

For the record, I'm still comfortable with what I said. But again it was a response to a question about a specific article posed by the person who posted the article. I was referring specifically to David Crosby, the dork from Slipknot, and whoever else got quoted. I suppose "anti-hip-hopism" could be taken as a generalization, but still meant as a narrow one encompassing rockists and "they don't play real instruments"ists, not every person who doesn't like or listen to hip-hop. You lumped yourself in with them unnecessarily IMO, since (after a half-hearted "bitches and hoes" mention) you made it perfectly clear that it was largely a taste issue. The areas where hip-hop is generally minimal are the ones where complexity turns you on, and the areas where hip-hop is complex just aren't your bag as much. In other words, you were never who I was talking about. That it was a springboard to your own musical perspective and how hip-hop generally doesn't fit it was all still really interesting, so ultimately worth what I'd consider a misapprehension.