Chuck D Says "Rap Is Not Music"

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Yeah, but you don't like anyone but Brian Wilson and the Doors.

 

Incorrect, but carry on anyway.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeah, I know. Just playin', boyo.

[Ripper 0]

Kanye West makes about 50,000 to 100,000 per beat he makes. Since it takes no musical talent whatsoever, why are you wasting your time on boards talking about how rap isn't music and go make some money?

[Red Baron 0]

Wow you sound like me of four years ago.

 

Open your mind up. Its not the fact that the beats are repetitive (somewhat depends on the artist) or they sample riffs. Its how well you can use that riff to fit in the flow of the lyrics, and it works well from Public Enemy taking a riff from Anthrax to do the remix of Bring Tha Noise or something cheesy like Vanilla Ice using Under Pressure by Queen.

 

Anyone can make simple beats, but you can't use a hook like No More Tears and take that riff and misused it. It only takes talent to come up with the mood and flow with the riff.

 

And if you actually cared about the lyrics which plays a huge part of rap, that what makes a good song. Listen to GZA, Kanye, Jay-Z, Public Enemy, Aesop Rock, Dr. Dre and even Eminem to look for some great samples and beats.

[Nighthawk 0]

No, they demonstrate that hip hop is a verbal artform and not a musical one.  Strip away the vocals and what do we have?  Trash.

 

Only one of those is a hip hop song, and only two of them have vocals. I suspected you might not know that, but coming out and saying it is better. You've now (aside from showing us all that you're talking out of your ass) said that sound is trash if it's not music, which was the crux of why you were wrong.

 

The MF Doom song is the one hip hop song, and I'm betting you haven't heard it because it plays right into your hands and you probably would have made a bigger deal out of it. The "beat" is about three seconds from the theme of Scooby Doo Where Are You?, looped over and over again. An 11 year old could literally produce this beat in a few minutes, an example you've used, but in your case it was an exageration. And I'm showing you that it just doesn't matter. Strip away the vocals? Why, it was made for the vocals. That's like holding up a Picasso and saying "Strip away the paint and what do we have? Trash."

 

Why should anyone bother to learn their craft if randomized, imbecilic manure can be called "music" ? FOR CHRISTS SAKE THERE ISN'T ANY ACTUAL COMPOSITION GOING ON WITH RAP, they turn on the sequencer and record 3 second SNAPSHOTS of themselves.

 

There are 11 year olds on soundclick creating hip hop beats on the level of "How We Do," what does that tell you? If it tells you anything except rap is crap, you're not being honest.

 

You missed my point. Rap is a verbal artform, not a musical one. But you've then turned around and said it was crap. If rap is a verbal artform, why would the beat have any relevance to the statement "rap is crap"? If it is, in fact, not music, you shouldn't be comparing it to music, you should be comparing it to other hip hop beats (which everyone here agrees is fair). Thus:

 

Why do people attend Juliard? That's right, to develop actual, tangible talent. Theory is explained so that in the absence of audio, music can still be enjoyed. Technique is taught so that the instrument becomes more than just a simple drum machine, easily understood and effective in the hands of the brainless. Hip hop producers with actual talent I can count on one hand, and hip hop instrumentals which were made with actual musical understanding are fewer than that.

 

becomes a pointless and ignorant statement. Out of curiosity, who are the hip hop producers with talent you can count on one hand?

 

I have now demonstrated that you, personally, are a fool, and don't understand your own argument. Feel free to continue the discussion, but I've shown it for what it is: you saying that rap sucks because you don't like it. That's fine, but wrapping it up with talk of musical theory doesn't lend it any credibility. Being pedantic won't hide the fact that you're wrong.

[Carnival 0]

Since you've been murdered by Milky, Edwin, and Ripper, there really is no need for my comment, but i'll add my 2 cents.

 

Rock music is also mixed on boards...and by your logic usually only contains a certain number of layers. A few drums, lead guitar, bass, vocals, some samples maybe.

 

Thus rock music is almost as bad, they just actually make the music with intruments in most cases, which is not that different than rap that contains a rif and live drums.

 

So classical or orchestra music would be the only true music that exists.

[snuffbox 0]

Kanye West makes about 50,000 to 100,000 per beat he makes.  Since it takes no musical talent whatsoever, why are you wasting your time on boards talking about how rap isn't music and go make some money?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

And Dre gets about 250 grand per song. Since this shits so easy, the kid that started this thread should bathing in cash.

[Guest Angora Jellyfish]

I don't fucking care what it is or where it comes from. 

 

Oh, it's apathy then. I was wondering why you had so little respect for actual hard work or for the amount of creative energy put into music. Even if it's only an facsimile of an older song, the layers of which took the creator hours uponhours to create - you don't care.

 

  The knowledge of a good hook and how to use it you deride is as much musicianship as "engineering a synth from a flat waveform"

50 Cent and Nate Dogg are two of the most pricey and contagious hooks in the industry. Saying either one is just as much of a musician as Prince is a notion so insane that it may break a hole in time.

 

The product is.  And when it's as good as the first big hits of g-funk, it's great.

 

No, that's silly. In the case of G thang, we've established it's little more than a sample with vocals. To say that pleasing your ears is the one and only hurdle for achieving musical greatness is just ignorant.

[Guest Angora Jellyfish]

Kanye West makes about 50,000 to 100,000 per beat he makes.  Since it takes no musical talent whatsoever, why are you wasting your time on boards talking about how rap isn't music and go make some money?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yeah, because success in the music industry is based wholly on the music, isn't it? What a thoroughly childish analogy.

 

I can go to soundclick right now and pick 3 beats selling for $150 or less, probably composed by some wigger entirely by software, which are superior to "The Corner." The end.

[Guest Angora Jellyfish]

And if you actually cared about the lyrics which plays a huge part of rap, that what makes a good song.

 

I agree entirely. I only hold the production in contempt. Although most of the lyrics lately I'd also dismiss as shite.

[Special K 0]

The human voice is essentially an instrument, so why hold it separate from everything else? Is Bjork's new album trash because it's all a capella?

 

Guess it doesn't matter since you won't even listen to the music you deride. I think the only point to be made here is that it's marginally easier to make really bad rap than it is most other types of music, but who cares about really bad rap anyway?

[Guest Angora Jellyfish]

Guess it doesn't matter since you won't even listen to the music you deride. I think the only point to be made here is that it's marginally easier to make really bad rap than it is most other types of music, but who cares about really bad rap anyway?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Watch the video I posted of Rick Rock composing Fabolous' hit record in 8 minutes. It's more than just marginally easy to make a smash hit than it is to make really bad music in any other genre.

[snuffbox 0]

I think the only point to be made here is that it's marginally easier to make really bad rap than it is most other types of music, but who cares about really bad rap anyway?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Unfortunately, the mainstream record buying public....

 

who are people I hold to the same esteem as folks who wont give a certain kind of music even a chance. People who dont like rap based on borrowed opinions and a lack of knowledge on artists off radio/mtv.

 

MTV rap like Chingy etc is terrible...but intelligent rap like Kanye, Roots, Saul Williams, Lyrics Born, etc is definitly music and a very important artistic part of our generations culture.

[Guest Angora Jellyfish]

Only one of those is a hip hop song, and only two of them have vocals. I suspected you might not know that, but coming out and saying it is better. You've now (aside from showing us all that you're talking out of your ass) said that sound is trash if it's not music, which was the crux of why you were wrong.

 

Wrong. I listened to Hey, and dismissed it. I didn't bother to download the other two, but as long as you agree that the instrumental tracks were trash, that's all that matters.

 

Strip away the vocals? Why, it was made for the vocals.

So you concede that the average downes syndrome sufferer would have an easier time composing a hip hop beat than composing in any other genre. Fine by me.

 

Rap is a verbal artform,

 

Yes.

 

"rap is crap"?

 

Listening to good music and listening to crap aren't mutually exclusive. Wesley Willis makes his way into my playlists too. I appreciate the hip hop albums I have for what they are - harmless tripe, so long as I never forget they're tripe.

 

If it is, in fact, not music, you shouldn't be comparing it to music, you should be comparing it to other hip hop beats (which everyone here agrees is fair).

Because hip hop sounds like dogshit compared to actual music, agreed.

 

becomes a pointless and ignorant statement. Out of curiosity, who are the hip hop producers with talent you can count on one hand?

 

DJ Quik, Dr. Dre, Timbaland, and Mike Dean.

 

but I've shown it for what it is: you saying that rap sucks because you don't like it.

 

::pops in new Geto Boys::

[Guest Angora Jellyfish]

MTV rap like Chingy etc is terrible...but intelligent rap like Kanye, Roots, Saul Williams, Lyrics Born, etc is definitly music and a very important artistic part of our generations culture.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Nope. The same tired "conscious" subject matter is just as cliche as bankroll raps. Babies crying cuz they hungry, why we mistreat our women, why the presadent got money fa war but aint got money to feed us. Song after song of fucking whining, and when solutions are mentioned it's usually about some knee jerk socialism. Then, more often than not, there's always the one commercial single off the album which contradicts every single other song.

 

I'd rather listen to chingy, at least he's not egregiously self righteous.

[Annabelle 0]

dan the automator's projects (dr octagon & deltron) sells plenty of instrumental versions of his rap projects.

 

roll deep is another rap or grime or whatever group that has beats that would work as instrumentals as well as rhyming over.

 

its fairly lazy to denounce all rap beats as meaningless which lack complexity. i'd agree rap isn't necessarily original music, but its ability to manipulate previously released work into a workable track which is completely different than its original source is art. beautiful art. they set the atmospherics for the album, enhance the concept or whichever. the rza's wu tang beats from 93-96 turned him into a revered producer outside of rap. liam howlett jacked their style on a few fat of the land tracks. further, he applied his "electronica beats" into a rap track for kool keith...something which was done on the aformentioned dr octagon album.

 

i look at rap beats in the same ilk as house or whichever form of dance music an artist is. is dj shadow garbage?

 

and we don't even need to get started on the roots, who are sorta overated, but they certainly do not further this youngsters viewpoint on rap.

 

edit: i just read some more of this dudes argument.

 

julliard? fuck julliard. miles davis went to julliard for a year & quit - deciding instead to learn from the master's charlie parker & diz. none of those guys ever had professional teachings. music that is natural without the pretense of having "musical teaching" & expectations of what music IS usually yields much more successful results. miles davis QUIT julliard - did not have any teaching - and he understood music perhaps better than anyone. lyrically, without lyrics, he had the ability to convey a sense of emotion or feeling that allowed the listener to make its own interpretations. rap music beats, however they are made, are generally made to profess a sense of emotion. who cares if they are manipulated or engineered in a falsfied manner? miles davis, who is a musical genius, cut & pasted all of his electric albums from different sessions or tracks into a studio album track. is he less of a genius? miles davis looped beats into 1972 with on the corner? does he no longer have musical talent? miles davis is music.

[ant_7000 0]

Good interview with Chuck D on sampling.

[snuffbox 0]

MTV rap like Chingy etc is terrible...but intelligent rap like Kanye, Roots, Saul Williams, Lyrics Born, etc is definitly music and a very important artistic part of our generations culture.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Nope. The same tired "conscious" subject matter is just as cliche as bankroll raps. Babies crying cuz they hungry, why we mistreat our women, why the presadent got money fa war but aint got money to feed us. Song after song of fucking whining, and when solutions are mentioned it's usually about some knee jerk socialism. Then, more often than not, there's always the one commercial single off the album which contradicts every single other song.

 

I'd rather listen to chingy, at least he's not egregiously self righteous.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Again, dont get all your rap from mtv/radio.

[Guest Derek Bailey]

Great deals of repetition in pop music isn't limited to rap, you know. The more elaborate popular rap productions of late blow most radio-rock away in terms of the volume of musical content. If you listen to the first single from Weezer's latest album, you'll hear that it has about twenty seconds of music (and an awful solo that anyone could have come up with), and there are worse offenders than that around.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I don't fucking care what it is or where it comes from. 

 

Oh, it's apathy then. I was wondering why you had so little respect for actual hard work or for the amount of creative energy put into music. Even if it's only an facsimile of an older song, the layers of which took the creator hours uponhours to create - you don't care.

Wanna talk about Prince some more? "When Doves Cry" was written, recorded, and completed in a morning. Does that make it less of a song? And the entirety of The Velvet Underground & Nico was recorded in two days. Sure, they already had most of the songs the songs written, but that's a phenomenally short period of production and performance for an incredible album.

 

As several people have pointed out, the same arguments you're making about time and process can be applied to all manner of music. They don't detract there; why do they detract from rap?

 

And Chevy's post says a lot of stuff I was going to bring up, but does so much more clearly than I would have. Good show.

[Guest Angora Jellyfish]

the rza's wu tang beats from 93-96 turned him into a revered producer outside of rap

 

That invalidates your entire argument. I'm going to try to post an article from RZA in 1999, where he talks about how he was trying to move into synthesis, and how much he resented his old style of production and anyone who liked it. He even went so far as to say that if people didn't appreciate the direction he was going to take, he would "Piece together some samples, throw the shit together real quick, and say 'here, is this what you wanted?"

 

This was RZA himself

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Who cares if the RZA decides he doesn't like his old production style? The artist's opinion doesn't invalidate his earlier work. It's still great, regardless of what he now thinks. By 1970, Lennon was bored with A Hard Day's Night. By the time Picasso was older, he thought a lot of his early cubist work was elementary and trash. It doesn't change the fact that "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" is a striking-ass painting.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Why are people still talking to Angora Jellyfish. What an embarassment.

[Henry Spencer 0]

pleasing your ears is the one and only hurdle for achieving musical greatness

 

This is correct.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Why are people still talking to Angora Jellyfish. What an embarassment.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm a glutton for punishment. I'll stop now, Dad.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I admire what you, Milky and Banky have done in this thread, but I don't have the energy to deal with such willfully ignorant people. Not anymore, anyway; the one time I went off on that kid here about Radiohead was an anomaly.

[Red Baron 0]

Banky?

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

He posted in this thread.

[B. Brian Brunzell 0]

I admire what you, Milky and Banky have done in this thread, but I don't have the energy to deal with such willfully ignorant people. Not anymore, anyway; the one time I went off on that kid here about Radiohead was an anomaly.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I remember that thread. You entertained me for several days.

 

And back to how quickness OBVIOUSLY makes music worse, Led Zeppelin's debut was done in less than two days, same for Black Sabbath's debut.

[AboveAverage484 0]

the rza's wu tang beats from 93-96 turned him into a revered producer outside of rap

 

That invalidates your entire argument. I'm going to try to post an article from RZA in 1999, where he talks about how he was trying to move into synthesis, and how much he resented his old style of production and anyone who liked it. He even went so far as to say that if people didn't appreciate the direction he was going to take, he would "Piece together some samples, throw the shit together real quick, and say 'here, is this what you wanted?"

 

This was RZA himself

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well, I was about to say "At least he hasn't badmouthed the RZA yet." and then I read this. Don't fuck with the RZA or I'll stomp a mudhole in your ass cuz I'm straight out the swamp!

[snuffbox 0]

I admire what you, Milky and Banky have done in this thread, but I don't have the energy to deal with such willfully ignorant people. Not anymore, anyway; the one time I went off on that kid here about Radiohead was an anomaly.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I remember that thread. You entertained me for several days.

 

And back to how quickness OBVIOUSLY makes music worse, Led Zeppelin's debut was done in less than two days, same for Black Sabbath's debut.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Neil Young wrote "Cinnamon Girl", "Cowgirl in the Sand", and "Down by the River" from Everybody Knows this is Nowhere in one afternoon...in bed with a hundred and three degree fever.

 

My former guitarist and I wrote a 15 minute 8-part suite in one night.

 

I think Bob Dylan recorded "Like a Rolling Stone" in a day but Im not sure.

 

Not musical, but Jack Kerouac wrote 'On The Road' in 3 weeks.

 

Its really a matter of inspiration, classic material doesnt have to take time. Oh well, angora is clearly 12 and hasnt branched away from mtv, radio and what a couple websites tell him.