Not so crabbit now! [2]

Congratulations! How long were you out for?

No water for ten days.
I've got a booster pump haywired out 40 feet from the house on a long extension cord. Not elegant, but it'll get me a shower tonight!
I can re-engineer it tomorrow.

Ouch, that's brutal. The longest we were without water was about eight or nine days, but in the middle of that period I moved back to college so I wasn't there for the whole ordeal.

I'm glad you've got some water back, and I hope the whole system is fixed soon!

Eldorion wrote:

halfwise wrote:American music was in a slump from the 90's into the early part of the millenium, but seems to have recovered.  I'm tempted to include the 80's in the slump but it was nothing compared to the drek that followed.

The '90s was probably the most fruitful period in the history of hip hop.  It also saw the growth of grunge and alternative rock which, while I'm not the biggest fan of them, produced some memorable bands.  I'll concede that the '90s was definitely a down decade for rock music, but at least it didn't have hair metal.

Sorry to say I have to include hip-hop as the main driver of the the drek. I'm willing to concede there was and still is some good hip-hop made (you've posted some examples) but the overall influence of hip-hop on music has been very negative.

I'm curious as to why you say that. I can guess based on some of your previous posts but I don't want to put words into your mouth.

Anyway, I wouldn't claim to be a fan of all hip hop anymore than I would describe myself as a fan of all rock music. The latter category includes Nickelback, after all.

yey for you dave!    

the longest i've been out of water was an afternoon

Thanks Nora.
I told myself it was really no big deal. That for most of human history people had to carry their water from the river, or the well, or the fountain in buckets and flasks like I was doing. But that first hot shower last night felt incredibly good! (I guess I'm spoiled...)

yesterday my sister asked me for a glass of cold water and i sarcastically asked her “how cold" and she said “as frigid as your love life"

iceburn.gif

I think your sister needs a BUCKET of cold water.....

sneaking ice chips down the front and back of my dress to stay cool in the city

my sister also pours water on my car seats to punish me when she's not allowed to have it

although it is her car. but shes better @ cycling than me

 

Yogi Bear has upgraded from pic-a-nic baskets!



Filmed in Colorado Springs behind a German restaurant that the bear apparently hit up two nights in a row.

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_23776537/hungry-bear-caught-tape-at-colorado-springs-german

During a Wednesday morning visit to the back door of the Edelweiss Restaurant, 34. E. Ramona Ave., the bear pushed the garbage bin about 50 feet into the parking lot, flipped the container over and opened the lid to eat food tossed the night before.
The Edelweiss signature dish is rouladen — top round steak pounded and rolled, stuffed with bacon, mustard, onions and pickle; covered in a dark gravy and accompanied by red cabbage and fried potatoes.
"There's some fresh, really good food" attracting the bear, Edelweiss manager Dieter Schnakenberg. "She passes up the recycling bin and goes right for the good stuff."

Also, I thought of Dave when I saw this.

Eldorion wrote:

Also, I thought of Dave when I saw this.

Me???? I'd never do such a thing!  {{ }}

Eldorion wrote:I'm curious as to why you say that.  I can guess based on some of your previous posts but I don't want to put words into your mouth.

Anyway, I wouldn't claim to be a fan of all hip hop anymore than I would describe myself as a fan of all rock music.  The latter category includes Nickelback, after all.

Hip hop itself became dominated by gangster rap,  which can only be described as negative.  But the influence on music at large came not from that so much as the de-emphasis on melody and a move towards sampling.  I can't say I was ever a fan of britney spears, but her music showed the influence of hip-hop, going from something one could hum (if so inclined) to stuff that was not reproducible by the typical unaided human and hence easily forgettable.  Near the end of the hip-hop influenced era I think musicians began to rediscover melody, but felt they had to still include rap.  So you'd get great melodies like "My heart's a radio" embedded in forgettable rap.  Or "Empire State of Mind" which Alicia Keys finally separated her soaring melody from.  Seriously, does anyone listen to those songs looking forward to the rap segments?  Emphatically NO!  Music is about melody, NOT words.  Hip hop tried to deny that, with a decade and a half of banality the result.

Fortunately in the last decade musicians have recovered from their fascination with hip-hop and the likes of Train and Fun (and Pink and...oh the list goes on) are once again producing songs that you can't get out of your head.

listening to gangsta rap you would think Punk had never happened. All that emphasis on bling and flash cars, they seem to rebel against society whilst completely being consumed by the worst aspects of it. violence sexism homophobia pimps pursuit of money money money, bit pathetic really.

While I may agree about a lot of what's been said about rap, I think it's fair to point out that the primary purpose of young music is to antagonize your parents. All the different types of jazz, blues, and rock have at some time been accused of having offensive lyrics and being "just noise," which is the whole point to kids trying to differentiate themselves from their parents.

By this measure, hip-hop has been outrageously successful! 

I think it's also significant how many cultures around the world adopted the rap format as a voice of protest. I'm betting hip-hop will be studied by music historians when more melodic pop music is gathering dust.

I'm certainly not going to deny that gangsta rap brought a lot of negatives with it, but there were still incredibly talented producers and MCs working within that genre.  After a couple of years you started to see crossover between gangsta and "conscious" rap as well, which resulted in lyrics with more nuance and positive messages than someone would expect after their first listen to "Straight Outta Compton".  That said, gangsta rap started declining in prominence within hip hop itself well over a decade ago.  While you still have rappers who will talk about crime or drugs or pimping, you have a lot more talking about the pursuit of wealth through the rap game, or just partying and looking to score.  And while gangsta rappers were more open about crime in their lyrics, most of them did not actually come from the streets and did less illegal shit than a lot of hard rock legends from the '70s (Zeppelin, as much as I love their music, comes to mind here).

As for sampling, there's obviously a lot of lazy producers out there who are/were happy to just play an entire song and put a drum machine over it or say "yeah yeah" every now and then.  That's not creativity and I think it contributed to the legal backlash against sampling.  But there is a lot of room for creativity in sampling if you've got a producer who's willing to actually work at it (and can get legal clearance for all the samples they want).  Unfortunately, the songs that get the most radio play are more likely to be generic, watered down, and musically uninteresting, but that's no different than any other genre.  (It's no coincidence that Nirvana's all-time biggest radio hit was their attempt at parodying the conventions of pop music, though the joke was lost on a lot of people.)

I hear what you're saying about music not being about words, but the best hip hop combines poetry with music.  Again, this is not stuff you're likely to find in the Top 40, but it's out there if you want to find it.  Actually, listening to rap reminds me of country a little bit in that both genres have a lot of storytellers, which makes me more likely to pay attention to the lyrics than when I'm listening to rock or pop.  I think you're right that hip hop and pop are starting to go their separate ways and I think this is probably for the best for the future of both genres.

I'm not sure what my point is anymore so I'll just wrap this up by embedding a few YouTube videos that hopefully illustrate some of the points I'm trying to make.



Shake Your Rump, by the Beastie Boys from Paul's Boutique (1989).  A landmark album in the history of sampling, although one that couldn't be made today for legal reasons.



Ms. Jackson, by OutKast from Stankonia (2000).  OutKast started off very firmly in gangsta rap territory but spread out into many other genres since then and are also famous for including live instruments in their beats.



The Art of Peer Pressure, by Kendrick Lamar from good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012).  The album made a big splash when it came out last year and is notable for its storytelling and exploration of gangsta rap themes (by one of Compton's most prominent MCs in two decades) in a nuanced and meaningful way.

Adversity, povety and a sens eof injustice always seem to produce original and quality music- punk began that way too.
Im always slighty confused by the terminology, hip hop, rap ect they end to seem to be elements of both styles in the stuff Ive listened too.
But for me Tupac, Dr Dre and Eminem are shining examples of rap as modern poetry, and I honestly think some of their lyrics will be studied in schools in the future and not just for historical reasons but as art in and of themselves.


You know they got me trapped in this prison of seclusion
Happiness, living on tha streets is a delusion
Even a smooth criminal one day must get caught
Shot up or shot down with tha bullet that he bought
Nine millimeter kickin' thinking about what tha streets do
to me
Cause they never talk peace in tha black community
All we know is violence, do tha job in silence
Walk tha city streets like a rat pack of tyrants
Too many brothers daily heading for tha big penn
Niggas commin' out worse offthan when they went in.

-Trapped, Tupac

so this Will I Am chap is he good or overrated? cant say I am too impressed myself.

I've never been much of a will.i.am or Black Eyed Peas fan, but they do have a few fun dancey songs. Although "Pump It" is a perfect example of sampling a great song ("Misirlou" by Dick Dale) but adding nothing of value to it.

BTW, great post Petty, I'm glad to get your perspective on this. I agree with what you say.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Im always slighty confused by the terminology, hip hop, rap ect they end to seem to be elements of both styles in the stuff Ive listened too.

Hip hop as a culture is based on four pillars: MCing/rapping (different terms for the same thing), DJing, breaking (breakdancing), and graffiti. Hip hop music is usually composed of a beat made by a DJ and lyrics performed by an MC. "Rap music" and "Hip hop music" are often used synonymously, although sometimes you hear "instrumental hip hop" which is just beats, no words. You also sometimes seem crossovers with other genres (including pop) where artists might describe themselves as hip hop but do more singing than rapping. Not that there's anything wrong with blurring the lines between genres.

Is there a cultural reason the beats are so simple in terms of making them?
For example punk chords came about from an inability of the angry youth to play anything too tricky, so the basic sound of punk was in part due to musical illiteracy among the poor and working class expressing the sentiments of punk.
I was just wondering if part of raps growth was down to you only needing someone capable of creating a beat noise and someone to do the lyrics.
It strikes me as a poor mans necessity. So poor you dont even need instruments.