Seriously, what's the appeal? And when I mean appeal...

Seriously, what's the appeal? And when I mean appeal, I don't necessarily mean in the context of liking hip-hop for what it is: fun, disposal music, but the near worship of it from journos and fans alike as the most groundbreaking thing to happen to music since cavemen banged rocks together.

>Innovation

Hip-Hop seems to perpetually lag 20 years behind rock in this regard. Rock musicians were rearranging samples of tape loops, (Beatles) of themselves (Mike Oldfield), and performing all varieties of studio trickery to warp and twist sound into "something new" before hip-hop was even conceived (Dub was also doing this in the 60s).

A praise for hip-hop that is often repeated is that it isn't bound by any genre limitation and can sound like anything. Well, so can rock, and it's already sounded like pretty much anything you can think of.

>Well, hip-hop is younger and still has territory to explore.

The territory it's exploring has already been done.

>The bass lines!

Funk bass lines from the 70's are more complex and better executed than anything some hack can come with up on a 808, which is why hip-hop has to sample them. And then throw in Jazz bassists like Jaco and Stanley Clarke and the Jamaican Dub pioneers, and hip-hop further fails to impress.

>The beats, the production.

Largely simplistic compared to Downtempo, Drum 'n Bass, (real) UK Dubstep, Acid Jazz, etc. And hip-hop artists even lose out on sampling creativity to plunderphonic acts.

>The lyrics

There's some creative lyricists out there, especially in the alt-hip hop scene, but most the acts who are celebrated as "innovative," have cookie cutter lyrical content: drugs, violence, the club, and they're all named Lil and Yung these days.

So what's the appeal? Is it because teens like offending their parents by listening to face tatted rappers who irresponsibly take Xanax? Going back to 80's and 90's gangsta rap, the offending the parents theme seems to be consistent.

Thoughts?

You’ve listened to like 5 hip hop albums retard shut up

hip hop isn't music

it sounds good

>So what's the appeal?

Hip hop doesn't have "dad baggage," like rock, soul, funk, and even jazz and classical.

Suburban dads (from any generation, boomer to older millennial dads) are unlikely to frequently listen to hip hop, so it doesn't quickly become as "uncool" as rock to young people.

>You mean all those Gen X dads who were probably huge Dre, Snoop, Pac, and Biggie fans when they were young don't listen to it anymore?

Pretty much. You out grow hip hop. It's an adolescent genre that speaks to adolescent rebellion and aggression.

In the urban community, black kids usually don't have their fathers in their lives, so there's no figure to make any one type of music uncool. I've read a lot of those same articles from music mags about hip hop, and they all love hip hop's "irreverence" for the past.

>Hip-hop fans don’t tolerate change—they expect it. Or else they’re too young to know the history that only old-school heads still obsess over. Lil Yachty can’t name five 2Pac or Biggie songs, and wouldn’t you know it, he’s getting along just fine.

It's not because hip hop artists are so forward thinking, it's because they didn't have exposure to past music via their fathers. (How about their mothers? Possibly, but most kids are introduced to music through their fathers. I think it's because mom usually lets you control the stereo while dad doesn't).

>They got youtube to expose themselves to past music.

They usually don't take the opportunity. Hip hop "heads" and artists follow trends pretty much in lockstep, which is why they are all indeed named Lil, have the same hair style, rap about the same shit with similar deliveries, etc.

Don't disrespect a genre until you give it a chance. I hate metal and you don't see me shit-posting about how fucking garbage metal and anything that has an electric guitar is. Anything other than "Stairway to Heaven" is fucking terrible, and I don't create threads about it, because I know that nobody would give a fuck.

Hip Hop is just the flavour of the month at the moment, just like pop was previously, and rock before that. The commercial mainstream appeal of Hip Hop is that its consumerist, formulaic, and easy to get multiple shit tier artists collaborating under a producer who actually knows what they're doing. If you've just scratched the amateur hour surface of radio play hip hop don't expect to be blown away by it, but if you dig and actually want to find good music instead of choosing to write it off, there are plenty of good acts out there.

>Don't disrespect a genre until you give it a chance.

Not him. But how is he "disrespecting" the genre?

I like hip hop, but he's right. Once you start exploring more music, many of it which directly influenced hip hop, you're no longer wowed by it from an innovation standpoint. (note: I don't really like the innovation tag as it applies to music, impossible to quantify, but hip hop critics and fans constantly use that definition).

When Guru created Jazzamatazz, he stated he actually wanted to get the musicians who created the stuff he was sampling to play live on the record. Point is, musicians were capable of creating complex rhythms and beats well before sampling became widespread practice, and much of the time, they did it better than a modern hip hop producer.

People are still making decent hip hop. No one makes decent rock music anymore.

Guru was ahead of his time. Live bands sound so much better for hiphop

When it first started up and you had actually clever lyrics and the rappers were proficient at what they did it was good. But now we're stuck with mumble rap and kanye dickriding. Rap and hip hop are now going through what rock went through in the 2000s.

I agree with your opinion. But, you can't just speak about Hip-Hop as a whole. It's almost impossible to map out the different subgenres in it, as well with every major genre.

On the rhythm part, I feel most Hip-Hop producers aren't trying to create new complex rhythms and beats, they're trying to find that perfect sample, from a track completely unrelated to the drum pattern they're using, and manipulate it to sound well put together. Though, some producers like J.Dilla especially just created beautiful melodies man. Can't take away the credibility of some of these great producers.

But, these new age producers are garbage IMO. Metro Boomin for example, great producer who creates great tracks, but hasn't really created that "complex rhythm" yet. Feel me?

>actually want to find good music instead of choosing to write it off, there are plenty of good acts out there.

It's not that hip hop isn't "good," a lot of it is. I just don't get this quasi-worship of it as the most innovative and trend setting genre in popular music.

Hip hop doesn't create trend (musically speaking). It follows them. Always has, and it's usually a decade or more behind in that regard.

>all rock music other than one song of a very specific genre is terrible
>dont disrespect a genre until you give it a chance

hip hop fans everyone

I gave rock its chance. I'll listen to it and vibe with some songs, but won't genuinely like it.

You can't say rock fans constantly talk about how shitty rap is.

>liking rap

Fair enough but rap fans do the same thing to rock. In the end it boils down to:

>people who like rock cant stand rap being all about rhythm and hype
>people who like rap cant stand rock being all about loud guitars

Neither situation is 100% true obviously but it does go both ways and its just par for the course for people who stay within the genre that they like.

True. I guess we can both agree to disagree, respectfully of course.

>they're trying to find that perfect sample,

Why not create the sample themselves?

>Question: You’ve also had a bunch of critical Tweets and blog essays about hip-hop and sampling. You wrote that “hip-hop is a predatory art form … a bastion of cannibalism. … If they’d had sampling back in the day (in Africa), motha… woulda never learned how to play the drums.”

>Answer from Nicholas Payton (Jazz trumpeter): I’ve talked about the flatness of beat-making — this idea now that we have these “beat makers” who are not musicians; they haven’t been musically trained. This is not me looking down at them. I do think some incredible people who have not been trained have done some wonderful things. But after a certain point it becomes limited or limiting. If everybody’s a sampler, then who is creating?

>Yes, there is an art to that. J Dilla — Jay Dee — represents the best of those who are able to do that, like Andy Warhol with collages, or Romare Bearden. But everybody is not him; everybody is not a Jay Dee. Everybody does not have the ears that he had.

>But even Jay Dee — if those earlier artists had not created the music that he then sampled, what would anyone have to sample? We’re kind of putting the cart before the horse when we glorify the sampling over the actual performers. It’s become backwards.

I think Guru came to that realization when he sought out actual performers for his work.

Now we can make the argument that Payton is being somewhat academically elitist (musicians need training to be good), but he's correct that sampling actually does constrain creative freedom in the sense that you're relying on other people's work. Yeah, you can shape it in a multitude of ways, but it's still only an interpretation.

Payton summed it up:

>Stop looking for great moments on other people’s records to steal and learn enough music to create your own great moments.

If you want the perfect sample, make it.

When I look at an ideal modern beat producer it would be Erick the Architect. Look at Flatbush Zombies and all his productions. Also, it does take some talent to use samples. I mean, Ye for example, nobody can do samples like he does.

But, I agree, it is backward. You gotta realize a lot of these producers aren't as musically inclined as great musicians. They don't know how to play instruments really other than a piano, and that's minuscule at most sometimes. You get a guy like Payton, of course he's going to critique Rap samples. I mean look at him, he's a walking sample haha. But, if you have a producer that knows how to play live instruments, of course it's going to sound great, but it's very limited in this current state of hip hop.

I think Payton is lamenting that the over reliance on samples will lead to the death of the musician. How many potential great drummers, bassists, guitarists, etc have been lost to the ease of the DAW?

>Well, DAWs offer unlimited freedom, which is why they're so enchanting to producers.

I don't think the suggestion is to forego sampling for instruments, but to learn an instrument to the point where you can sample yourself and also have the compositional skill to instruct session musicians in instruments you don't play to lay down the sound you need (Brian Wilson was basically a sampler, but he composed the sections himself for the instruments he couldn't play. Sampling is more like collage art. The composition is basically done, you just kind of puzzle piece things together).

Someone might say well DAWs will eventually make instruments obsolete, since you'll be able to program it to give you any sound you want. And that would be a great loss. There's aesthetic value in skill and performance. Knowing Charlie Parker blew those solos is a lot more inspiring than if he just "told" a DAW to do it. There's also aesthetic value in "mistakes" (i.e. soloist hitting a wrong note and then improvising it into something coherent) The composer Brian Ferneyhough recognizes this and intentionally makes his compositions so demanding as to induce mistakes, which become an organic part of the composition.