Whatever happened to funk and, well, really, black music with instruments in general? It seems like they're incapable of making anything but thugbeatz nowadays.
Whatever happened to funk and, well, really, black music with instruments in general...
Anthony Morris
Nicholas Mitchell
Funk/soul is hip hop for fedoras
Caleb Lee
there's still plenty of it, it's just not popular, like rock music
Isaiah Jones
It still exists, just not mainstream. You gotta do some searching
Easton Murphy
IDK, but I live in a pretty heavily black neighborhood and the kids by and large have no interesting in playing an instrument, they want to rap and learn how to make beats. It may be because schools don't have enough music lessons anymore.
Jose King
funk was co-opted by smooth jazz and pop and fell out of style as anything but a flavor interpolated into other genres
and there are still tons of african american musicians still making music both in and out of hip hop with "real instruments": Matana Roberts, Benjamin Clementine, Young Fathers, Willis Earl Beale, and then acts like Shabazz Palaces and hell not to be a meme even TPAB-era Kendrick used a full on funk band as backup. Instruments in black music aren't gone, they're just not the vogue anymore
Anthony Miller
>Instruments in black music aren't gone, they're just not the vogue anymore
What you're saying is, major labels won't sign black artists who play instruments.
Camden Davis
charles bradley is good
William Parker
Black people used to play other genres of music even as early as the early 90's you would have prince, living color, bad brains, etc.
Now all of that has been phased out.
Black people only rap now.
I dont know why.
The only other genre they do do is r&b but even that is walking corpse
Henry Campbell
>Black people only rap now.
>I dont know why.
The other user already explained why, because the big record labels are only interested in hip-hop.
Josiah Johnson
If you think about it, the basic format of hip-hop (especially that sluggish sub-100 bpm tempo) is over a quarter century old and is pretty stale and played out by now, which makes it all the more puzzling at why record labels won't give anything new a chance.
Blake Johnson
lol
Zachary Bennett
I cited several artists signed to major and indie labels alike in my very post
I'm just saying songs like those don't hit the top 40, but the funk that did back in the day wasn't exactly music of much substance either
there's still lots of other music, from noisy odd punk like Oxbow to some of the jazz that's been coming out- Bad Brains weren't exactly mainstream, and let's not kid ourselves Prince was mainly RnB and dance-funk too
to say black people "only rap now" is sort of ridiculous
Hudson Powell
>I'm just saying songs like those don't hit the top 40, but the funk that did back in the day wasn't exactly music of much substance either
Lyl the one time when funk did go mainstream (in the 70s), you can see the horrible results.
Camden Parker
That's like asking why Fox won't let the Simpsons and Family Guy go. Companies are terrified to mess with some new, unproven thing because it might bomb. Never mind that the old media gets more tired and stale every year.
Jose Martinez
have you never listened to gospel music
Mason Campbell
When funk goes top 40, you end up with something like "Uptown Funk", which is fun to listen to, but ultimately leaves you feeling empty.
Jaxson Martin
*why don't Fantano and Pitchfork tell me about all the other music by black people being released constantly, including funk
FTFY
Jaxon Bailey
yeah basically
the point is that if you don't go seeking out techno, house, funk, gospel, soul, whatever, you won't find it because stuff like that has NEVER entered the mainstream in a distilled form. Maggot Brain didn't exactly light the charts up in its day either
Kayden Jenkins
Those big nine-piece funk bands of the 70s are too expensive to have today.
Kevin Phillips
Well thats not the same as saying they only make hip hop now.
Nothing wrong with having to make a bit of effort to find better music but even then there are exceptions to the rule.
Bentley Wilson
That shit was already gone by the 80s when funk switched to synthesizers and drum machines. And really, 80s funk like late Kool & The Gang and Prince was still pretty slick and commercial compared to the really raw stuff from the formative years in the 60s, when there was still a lot of blues sound in it.
Robert Allen
I guess the point that I was making was that while hip hop is of higher frequency and inundates the mainstream to 1. invalidate hip hop as a whole and 2. say it's the only music being made is sort of ridiculous
also nice pic, Bradley's a great guy
Justin Phillips
Still evolves though. Kendrick Lamar sounds nothing at all like circa 1994 Ice Cube.
William Lopez
Jack Brown
Yeah production evolves, but so did funk. Mid-80s Prince doesn't sound a lot like the late 60s Bar-Kays.
Blake Harris
Reminds me of how funk gets the short end of the stick. Prince was often praised for his guitar skills, but the Wikipedia page mentions nothing about the equipment he used (the page about Rick James says nothing about his guitars either) while if you loot at the article for Jimmy Page or Joe Perry or (insert your favorite dadrock guitarist), there's multiple paragraphs about their guitars, amps, playing style, influences, etc.
Levi Allen
dumbass
Dominic Morales
>thugbeatz
Any and every opinion you have on hip hop will be discarded from now on.
Evan Williams
I don't think there's really a black equivalent of the Rolling Stones desu.
Christopher Gray
RC and the Gritz
Corey Henry and The Funk Apostles
Funky Knuckles
Raché (Mike Mitchell)
Get hip you fucking faggots
Gabriel Phillips
LMFAO were kind of a modernized take on 70s funk.
Angel Bell
Wasn't one of them the grandson of the founder of Motown?