May 11, 2016

well ofc i want something like that but not what i meant by this thread

 

May 11, 2016

You haven't heard MKL yet?

 

May 11, 2016

Have you heard layers? or Special effects, good rap is still being made, just not in the mainstream

 

May 11, 2016

Lmao

 

May 11, 2016

:pukeemoji:

 

May 11, 2016

Future Classics..have a listen

 

May 11, 2016

?

 

May 11, 2016

not the point of this thread, i am talking about the mainstream front runners rappers that dont release classic rap albums anymore

 

May 11, 2016

It was just funny how you said now we're stuck with f---ing experimental albums

 

May 11, 2016

oh

 

May 11, 2016

oh i know... I just want you to listen to these..lol

 

May 11, 2016

i still love thugger and i want him to keep doing what he does...but its silly that all big rappers make these type of weird rap albums nowdays

and i grew tired of future tbh

 

May 11, 2016

talking about phropet's son

 

May 11, 2016

Yessir, Preacher's Son.

 

May 11, 2016

There is gonna be time when you feel the same for thugger too. I was saying those things like months ago. I as a fan of rap, don't listen to rap like I used to do these days...

 

May 11, 2016

That's the one, my bad tbh I just heard it yday, deffo need a few more listens on it

 

May 11, 2016

Okay, before we get into any of the finer points, this...

...is a totally reasonable opinion, and shouldn't be controversial. I assume, Koolo, that you're using "classic" here to describe a style, rather than to measure quality? And I totally get that. I love Pluto, doesn't mean I don't love Quelle Chris too. It's great to have diversity. But now into the weeds:

The first issue with this is that you're presupposing that an album that's more accessible has less artistic merit. Sure, Kendrick is a better rapper making more ambitious music than Drake (and in this example, I, a card-carrying TPAB hater, would agree that it's better than Views), but being more complex and tougher to get does not necessarily mean something is better. Homeboy Sandman takes a lot more careful listening than Biggie. Who's a better rapper?

Listenability is important, and listenability isn't synonymous with dumbing down. There are phenomenal, classic albums that are very difficult to parse, but there are also masterpieces that are easy listens. Conversely, you have bad albums that are tough to get through and bad albums that are lazy. I would hesitate before conflating "complexity" with quality.

This is a minor bone to pick in the broader scope of this thread, but Future doesn't belong here. It took a long time for some people to wrap their heads around Pluto.

When Madvillainy came out, not many people cared. It blew up a bit in the year following its release, due to Doom moving back into the public sphere and online word-of-mouth. But I have older friends who were in L.A. and actively engaged in rap in 04 who didn't hear it until much later. Which brings me to a point that I've seen other people make in this thread, just from a quick skim: hip-hop, and more specifically hip-hop fans, aren't trending any direction when it comes to what kind, or what complexity of music they enjoy. These divides have always been there. In hindsight, we imagine Wu-Tang and Naughty By Nature coexisting ("look how much rap had to offer!") but these myopic genre wars were always going on.

Again, you mean classic sounding as in it sounds like a certain group of '90s classics? I just think that's narrow, and a little unrealistic: Bizarre Ride didn't sound like Cuban Linx; In a Major Way didn't sound like Soul Food.

I guess I don't understand what exactly you're looking for--at least one album better than 2001 has come out almost every year since 1999 imo. Sounds change, artists move on. I can promise you that if the most talented rappers in the world were out here trying to replicate old sounds, we'd be a lot worse off, not better. Look at guys like Joey Badass--they're making utterly disposable music because they're trying to recreate something that can't be stripped from its original context.

Yeah don't f---ing listen to this guy.

I don't see how you could possibly argue this. There are great albums coming out from every angle, exploring a bunch of different sounds.

lol, f---ing what? Rap is more divorced from pop music today than it has been since 1997.

I'm sure HHTG and I will never agree on which rappers are worth listening to, but he's completely right: like I said, this divide--a perceived divide, I'd argue--has existed in every era and will continue to exist in the future.

See, I think this is a misreading of the current state of the genre. Look at some of the most popular rappers today: Kendrick, J. Cole, Earl, Vince. Even someone like Cole, who everyone knows I think can't rap, fits the bill of guys who are all about bars, man. He has a song on the radio--that's been on the radio for eight months, mind you--where he whines that he's not in the era where you could go platinum without singing on your hooks. (Even though he did that.)

Where are you hiding them?

That last sentence is such a ridiculous leap I'm not even sure it's addressing.

It's not, though? Earl is like a god to high school kids.

lol @ acting like Views needs a million lessons to be properly dissected

The irony here is that Compton was tailored to sound unmistakably like an album that came out in 2015.

I'm meeting up w/ YG today to hear this in full, mastered & sequenced.









@Koolo: To sum all this up, if you're looking for a list of albums that A. came out since 2010, B. are great, and C. sound like they could have come out in the '90s, I can give you that. But if you're wishing the genre writ large would revert back to that sound, I strongly disagree, as I said above. So far, we haven't seen classic albums released with the frequency we did in 93-96, but there are always going to be eras like that in a genres (late-60s with rock, early-70s with soul, mid-70s with funk).

 

May 11, 2016

People didn't think Wu-Tang did when they came out. Or Pac when he came out of jail. Or Outkast when they made ATLiens. Or Doom. Or Eminem, for that matter. Great artists redefine the genre, if only to accommodate their own work.