Yeah, all that repetition and heavy rhythm, and the lyrics that demean women and celebrate violent behavior . . .uhhhh, gee, that kind of sounds like blues.
Hip Hop, Rap, are bullshit... Glorification of the free violence, glorification of porn industry (as if there is there's anything glorious to know how to fuck someone), treating the women as whores, and a complete absence of intelligence.
It reminds me of a documentary very well done by the BBC, showing the relationship between the collective rapes in suburbs, the use of fire weapons AND the Rap and Hip Hop
Sorry but the blues NEVER TRIGGERED this kind of behaviours
All what I've said is valid for roughly 95% of this kind of music _________________________________________
Daughter of Hannibal Lecter, also known as "Christelle Berthon"
Blues music is just lowdown, filthy, hip-grinding music that disrespects women ("If you don't want my peaches, please don't shake my tree" Puh-leeze!) and traffics in profanity ("Shave 'Em Dry" by Lucille Bogan: the filthiest unreleased recording of all time). It's sacrilege! "Shake 'Em On Down"? Everybody knows that's a song in which men are encouraging a chick to "show us your tits!" Blues is filthy stuff. "Sweet Little Angel!" You THINK that B. B. King is talking about "wings" when he says "I love the way she spreads her wings," but he's actually talking about his girl's LEGS! FILTH! FILTH FILTH FILTH!!!!!!!!!! Stuff like that not only takes our minds off higher things, like Jesus, but actually dares to MIX Christian imagery with sordid sexual metaphors. That's evil.
We forces of Christian prudery are delighted that Christelle Berthon agrees with us. Please ban all lowdown music, starting with blues and moving on to hip-hop!!
Oh, wait a minute. Queen Latifah is a hip-hop artist. She thinks she's speaking truth on behalf of women.
I'm confused. Things seemed so simple before Cristal cast a blanket indictment against a contemporary form of black music and Kudzurunner enlarged the critique to make it clear that blues, too, faced that sort of blanket slander.
I'm so confused!
Maybe it would be better if we just....avoided easy blanket condemnations of musical idioms that don't give us pleasure?
Last Edited by on Feb 05, 2012 7:43 PM
Was this supposed to be a thread no one could post on, lol?
The themes prominent in Hip Hop and Rap are identical to those found in traditional blues. The only difference is the vernacular and what is accepted by modern society. Whiskey, Beer and Reefer...Her Funeral My Trial...Born in Chicago...
I am calling BS on Rap and Hip Hop having a causational relationship with rape, weapons, etc. While I don't doubt there to be a relational piece, saying one causes the other ignores everything from socio-economic class to past history...I doubt anyone could prove if it actually was causational or not.
This reminds me of the witch hunt surrounding metal music having satanic messages when played backwards.
I don't care for 99% of Hip Hop or Rap...I barely like the water downed for hippsters stuff. I am not defending the music because I like it, lol.
Ok Dear Adam, putting me in the same bag as Christians (btw I thought it was not allowed to talk about religion) for the atheist activist that I'm, is just like an insult
I think this post has its positive side, understanding that I had nothing to do on your forum, and as I'm a polite, since I'm a guest on your house, I thank you for this time on your forum, and take the exit door....
You've never really liked me anyway...
Bye Mr Gussow, bye to the others including the ones that like me
PS: delete me from your forum, you'll be better off without me
_________________________________________
Daughter of Hannibal Lecter, also known as "Christelle Berthon"
Last Edited by on Feb 05, 2012 7:47 PM
Christelle, why you can't take even the slightest of critiziging?? Stand up and defend your points, your ideas!
You always end up as the victim of this "mean old world" that never understands you and mistreats you really bad.
Why do you always threaten to leave as if you where wounded by a lethal arrow? Why do you want people to feel petty for you? Sorry but it's disrepectful to everyone in this forum.
BTW, I guess there is no player in this forum that doesn't admire in some degree your playing, but with your comments you are only throwing away what you do with your harp.
We are YOUR community, we play too this instrument, some worse than you, some better or equal than you. You don't need to prove anything here!!
But please, No more threatens, we deserve better. In that sense, sorry, but I agree with you, we will be better without you...
---------- With some latin flavour for you, chico!! :P
I was gonna post a long response to validate rap, I'll just post this song:
The way I see it, you have to actually know something about a genre of music before you criticize it. Christelle, for a musician, you have an unbelievably small amount of patience for music. Go write songs, instead of talking shit about them.
Awww damn, son! MVLUN, looks like they done done it to us again!
I'll let Mos Def do it for me...
Off Black on Both Sides
(Lyrics) You say one for the trebble two for the time Come on y'all let's rock this! You say one for the trebble two for the time Come on!
Speech is my hammer bang the world into shape Now let it fall... (Hungh!!) My restlessness is my nemesis It's hard to really chill and sit still Committed to page I write rhymes Sometimes won't finish for days Scrutinize my literature from the large to the miniature I mathematically add-minister Subtract the wack Selector, wheel it back, I'm feeling that (Ha ha ha) From the core to the perimeter black, You know the motto Stay fluid even in staccato (Mos Def) Full blooded, full throttle Breathe deep inside the trunk hollow There's the hum, young man where you from Brooklyn number one Native son, speaking in the native tongue I got my eyes on tomorrow (there it is) While you still try to follow where it is I'm on the Ave where it lives and dies Violently, silently Shine so vibrantly that eyes squint to catch a glimpse Embrace the bass with my dark ink fingertips Used to speak the king's English But caught a rash on my lips So now my chat just like dis Long range from the base-line (switch) Move like an apparition Float to the ground with ammuntion (chi-chi-chi-POW) Move from the gate, voice cued on your tape Putting food on your plate Many crews can relate Who choosing your fate (yo) We went from picking cotton To chain gang line chopping To Be-Bopping To Hip-Hopping Blues people got the blue chip stock option Invisible man, got the whole world watching (where ya at) I'm high, low, east, west, All over your map I'm getting big props, with this thing called hip hop Where you can either get paid or get shot When your product in stock The fair-weather friends flock When your chart position drop Then the phone calls.... Chill for a minute Let's see whoelse tops Snatch your shelf spot Don't gas yourself ock The industry just a better built cell block A long way from the shell tops And the bells that L rocked (rock, rock, rock, rock...)
*scratching*
Hip Hop is prosecution evidence The out of court settlement Ad space for liquor Sick without benefits (hungh!) Luxury tenements choking the skyline It's low life getting tree-top high Here there's a back water remedy Bitter intent to memory A class E felony Facing the death penalty (hungh!) Stimulant and sedative, original repetitive Violently competitive, a school unacredited The break beats you get broken with on time and inappropriate Hip Hop went from selling crack to smoking it Medicine for loneliness Remind me of Thelonius and Dizzy Propers to B-Boys getting busy The war-time snap shot The working man's jack-pot A two dollar snack box Sold beneath the crack spot Olympic spnosor of the black glock Gold medalist in the back shot From the sovereign state of the have-nots Where farmers have trouble with cash crops (woooo) It's all city like phase two Hip Hop will simply amaze you Craze you, pay you Do whatever you say do But black, it can't save you
PS. Props to tf10music. ---------- == I S A A C ==
I believe in what I'll call pendulum theory. When the pendulum swings too far in any direction, right/left, up/down, in/out, back/forward, you end up with problems. It seems to apply to everything I can find and conceive of. There is terrible music in every genre. Personally, I'm not a fan of, for instance, country music. I find the twang in there voices is sort of a weird affectation that bugs me. There are country artists I like. I like some Johnny Cash. Lucinda Williams is great. It took me years of writing all country music off before I discovered that.
I had a similar experience with metal. I was (please don't hold this against me) a glam rock type person. I loved Guns and Roses and screaming guitar. There were 4 camps of metal at the time... the Megadeth camp, the Metalica camp, the Guns and Roses camp and, for a lack of a better term, the 'Poser' bands. I liked high pitched guitar. I hated rumbling bass. I liked some other weird stuff though. I listened to Tori Amos. I heard her cover Nirvana and it was the first time I ever 'really' listened to them. Now, if you look at my music collection I have probably 10 Nirvana CD's, as well as tons of other grunge. Life is funny that way. In fact, I have more Nirvana that GNR (although that could be because Chinese Democracy took so long to come out!) Lots of Tori Amos and Beatles too (and please, don't hold this against me, but I have a lot of Journey, although I don't really listen to it anymore!) There is a fair amount of stuff that I'm embarrassed to say I own, but some stuff that I really enjoy that I would have been embarrassed to own at one point in my life.
I was fortunate to have a great music theory teacher in college who taught us to appreciate all music forms even if we did not like them on first hearing. I also remember him pointing out that the tritone was considered the Devil’s interval in the middle ages and that a diminished 7th cord has two tritones and was therefore considered doubly evil. Can you imagine music without the versatile diminished 7th cord? (I know that just because it is now common doesn’t mean it is not evil ;-)>)
Given my inclinations, I was disappointed when I suffered through a diatribe similar to the ones at the start of this post about rap music. I was very pleased and gained some respect for the person that gave the diatribe, when we were later in the Gibson Guitar museum in Memphis and read an article, written in the 50's, about Elvis. It contained so much of the language this person had used in their previous ranting against rap, that they recognized themselves as similar to the writer of the article. Because this person loved Elvis' music, seeing such invectives against it made them reconsider their previous position on rap.
Through the many decades that I have experienced (in mainly listening) to music there were outcries of 'obscenity' 'our next generation will be doomed' & so on. The Beatles & Elvis came on the scene at a time when Bing Crosby was the pop artist of the day. Every new generation pushes boundaries. It's not all bad though. Sure I really don't like Rap, Hip Hop & I love country music but not a lot of what is currently coming from Nashville. There are exceptions in all & having an open mind is what it is all about. Didn't Brendan Power post a Rap piece he composed about an Irish Pub on here not long ago? I liked it.
It's good that we are all a bit different in our tastes in music. Pushing some boundaries is ok and needs to happen for music to grow. ---------- HARPOLDIE’S YOUTUBE
Er yeah. I was just smacking a BIG hornet's nest with a little stick while noone could reply. Never mind.
I guess even the smiley didn't convey my tongue in cheek wickedness
Art reflects life.
Gangs and gang culture have existed for centuries. To say that hiphop causes people to form gangs and shoot their fellow human beings is a ludicrous oversimplification which manages to conveniently avoid all other socio-economic factors. It is a complex mess with lots of chickens and lots of eggs. Rap - like Black Sabbath or Marilyn Manson is just an easy scapegoat.
There's mysogynism in elements of just about every musical genre I can think of, but there's a HUGE number of female MCs out there who will challenge made up statistics like "roughly 95%" of rap glorifies the objectification of women and causes rape.
I won't engage in long debates on this, life's too short - IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A F*****N' JOKE - it's all been said before. Jeez, listen to what the hell you want, leave the forum, stay on the forum. I don't give a monkey's.
This is literally the third time(at least) that Christelle has made a public show of her quiting the forum due to some sort of percieved persecution. And everytime she's demanded that she be deleted from the forum, which makes no sense, as all she needs to do is stop posting. But she wants everyone to know she's quiting (part of her need for attention I suppose).
And now apparently she thinks that Adam has never liked her. I'm guessing it's because he doesn't constantly praise her and tell her she's the greatest thing to happen to the harmonica since Little Walter, so clearly he must hate her. Sorry to be so harsh(I'm sure Christelle just thinks I'm one of those horrible people that hate her), but these games she likes to play have gotten really old.
Seriously, all Adam did was point out the fact that stereotyping an entire genre of music is ridiculous and hypocritical.
Last Edited by on Feb 06, 2012 1:49 AM
Let me be clear: I don't buy or spend much time listening to rap. It doesn't grab me; it doesn't move me. Or at least 99% of it doesn't grab me or move me. But I love DO THE RIGHT THING, and the old-school NWA raps on that film have an undeniable power. I use a couple of rap/blues dialogues (Olu Dar & Nas; Guy Davis and his kid) in my blues class. I was talking with a professor of Af-Am studies here at Ole Miss the other day and his work is all about the way in which dirty-south hip-hop was a pointed response to the "cleaning up" of Atlanta by the powers-that-be in the year before the 1996 olympics. In fact, last spring I took the lyrics of "Jump Jim Crow" and rapped them over a track that I purchased from iTunes as a way of showing the undergrads how much power the rhyming and posturing of that black-flavored early minstrel tune exerted over its audience.
Point is, I may not enjoy the music, but I value it as a form of cultural expression. It's not really my thing--I prefer vocal melodies to blunt-force talk--but I understand that it is, and has made itself, a part of the long tapestry of African American musical expression and, beyond that, a part of the world's musical expression. It's no longer just a black thing. It's a music that many peoples--many of them brown & black, but many Asian and white as well--have embraced and transformed. In particular, it's a way that many subject peoples, many who feel themselves to be held down in some way, have spoken back to the powers-that-be. I respect that.
So while I don't particularly like rap, I respect it. I don't just write it all off. Doing that is as silly as writing off all classical music. I'm not particularly moved by classical music, European orchestral music, but I wouldn't just say, "It all sucks." Y'all would laugh at me and think me ignorant if I put it that way.
I would have nothing to say if Christelle and others here simply said, "Rap doesn't do anything for me" or "Rap doesn't move me." That's fine. I'd tend to agree with them. But when people enlarge their personal response into a dismissive insult of a whole form of music, then I'm forced to use wit and critical intelligence to try and reframe things in the hope of broadening the dialogue.
I pushed back in this case with a little more sarcasm in than I usually do because Christelle's dismissal of rap struck me as particularly short-sighted and unfortunate. The truth is, rap has been an extremely effective way for some strong women, such as Queen Latifah, to push back AGAINST the disrespect of men; an effective way of saying "Here I am. This is what I do. Take it or leave it." I can't blame Christelle for not enjoying Queen Latifah's music, but I do think that a little respect for the Queen, and her sisters-in-arms, would be nice.
My strong pushback against Christelle's expressed opinion in this thread should not be taken as a judgment on her own musical journey. Christelle, like me, is a fan of melody. Melodies are good.
Last Edited by on Feb 06, 2012 4:58 AM
"all Adam did was point out the fact that stereotyping an entire genre of music is ridiculous and hypocritical"
No he didn't. He posted a facetious, sarcastic, gratuitous reply. Condemning music that gives you no pleasure is one thing: being offended by music that actively sets out to provoke offence is another. And irony is no defence, as Adam ought to know.
Hiphop isn't about music anyway, is it. It's about the lyrics. And isn't that 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' groove getting just a bit OLD by now?
You're doing the same thing as Christelle, stereotyping an entire genre based on the small sample of hip hop that you're (somewhat) familiar with.
"music that actively sets out to provoke offence is another." As Adam pointed out, there is a whole lot of blues music that fits this description. Should we condemn all blues music as well? If not, you're being a bit hypocritical.
Last Edited by on Feb 06, 2012 5:55 AM
Kudzurunner: "In fact, last spring I took the lyrics of "Jump Jim Crow" and rapped them over a track that I purchased from iTunes as a way of showing the undergrads how much power the rhyming and posturing of that black-flavored early minstrel tune exerted over its audience."
That's interesting. Here's something I read a few months ago from a Paul Oscher interview:
"Yeah rap and blues, I can see the connection poetically not necessarily musically, although it probably could work if you added a little more blues to the mix. I could see Muddys "I’m ready" being set to Rap music, as a matter of fact I was sitting in a little restaurant in Brooklyn at the counter and this kid came in and he was rapping along with his walkman he had the phones in his ears. So I said to him you getting your rhymes together and he said yeah, I said what do you think of this, then I rapped.
'I got an axe -handled pistol on a graveyard frame, that shoots tombstone bullets wearing balls and chains, Im drinking TNT ; I’m smokin' dynamite , I hope some screw ball start a fight, 'Cause im ready , ready as a man can be. Im ready for you , I hope you ready for me.'
The kid backed off a little and said Wow! did you write that?, I said hell no, that was written by Willie Dixon and sung by Muddy Waters in the fifties. the kid said 'Word , I didn’t know those artists were like that then.' "
On a side, I find the mental picture of Paul Oscher rapping this to be kind of funny (but I'm sure he pulled it off, he is Paul Oscher after all, he's a total bad ass).
Last Edited by on Feb 06, 2012 5:58 AM
Cristelle: "Hip Hop, Rap, are bullshit... Glorification of the free violence"
Of course cristelle didn't mind playing harp over this already recorded tune in one of her vids:
"He had a left Like henry's hammer A right like betty bamalam Rode with the muggers In the dark and dread And all them sluggers Went down like lead
Well he hung with the hoods He wouldn't stroke the fans But he had dynamite In both his hands Boom bam Like the slammer door The bell and the can And the bodies on the floor"
To the mods: just leave the account active, I GUARANTEE she'll be posting again.
BTW: The tune? Song for Sonny Liston... one of Mark Knopfler's finest.
The problem with the lyrics in this modern music is that it promotes things like stalking school-age girls and convincing them to lie to their parents. For instance this line, which you would NEVER have heard in a blues tune:
"Can I go home with, can I go home with you? Tell your mama and your papa, I'm a school boy too."
youse folks still can t play nice. how to start a fight ? post an opinion. you se should all be practicing instead soo liitle time soo much to learn......
"Instead of whining, what bluesmen (and blueswomen) do is make the best of a bad situation. [the forum being busted]
It's time for many, many unanswerable one-post threads. Be all you can be! Preach from the rafters. We can't answer you. (We can delete you, of course.)"
I wouldn't say rap is musically bankrupt. There were several really ingenious techniques developed by hip hop. Sampling, scratching, beat boxing, looping. I've heard all of those used in other genres to great effect, but they really got their feet under them in hip hop. There are also usually a lot of clever allusions buried in the lyrics that fly over your head if you don't know the rap culture. There are rappers with full bands behind them. There are rappers with backing vocalists behind them. There are rappers that switch vocalists from verse to verse, even rappers who make up new rhymes live! If you don't think that takes some talent, look around at the forum and see how many people hear can do it well. I can only think of one person off the top of my head. ---------- Nate Facebook Thread Organizer (A list of all sorts of useful threads)
"Straw man argument. I'm pointing out that hiphop often provokes extreme offence deliberately. Ironically or not, BECAUSE it is musically bankrupt, and because that is the way to attract attention. I also remarked that Adam's 1st reply was facetious. Answer those points, not the one you pretend I was making."
Yeah, because the argument you're putting forward is logically sound in every way...
Did you even listen to either of the songs posted in this thread?
Hip-hop has proven it has valuable contributions to offer to modern blues music. I’m thinking in particular of R.L. Burnside’s recordings that have incorporated elements of hip-hop as well as techno beats. It’s worth noting that these albums have not surprisingly caused division among their audiences, and I think these reactions largely stem from the same modernists vs. traditionalists tensions that give rise to arguments over certain harmonica techniques, such as overblows.
I also think a parallel can be drawn to the late-60s Chess experiments with psychedelia (Electric Mud and The Howlin’ Wolf Album). I wonder why these albums were generally considered to be failures while R.L.’s cross-genre work has been received more positively. It’s not as if psychedelia has no business interacting with blues; Hendrix was undeniably successful at fusing the two genres.
Steady as ye go, gentlemen. (And Cristal.) The full moon is nearly upon us. (24 hours from this moment, as I post.)
"We forces of Christian prudery" was me ventriloquizing a narrowly righteous voice not my own in an effort--believe it or not--to provoke a chuckle from Ms. Lecter. I had assumed, perhaps wrongly, that someone who had chosen as her stage-name the last name of a mass murderer would have a sense of humor, since she clearly expects that we will see through that name to the bright and shining artistic talent that lurks beneath.
Rap isn't one kind of thing. It isn't all violent and misogynistic. Some of it is assertively feminist. Some of it is playful, weird, and decidedly non-confrontational. Some of it is just really smart cultural critique, as in "Television, the Drug of the Nation" by the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy:
I use David Banner's "Mississippi" when I teach Southern Studies 101. The white Mississippi kids who make up most of that class aren't particularly pleased, I suspect, when he thunders that "Mississippi....where the [Confederate] flag still means more than me," but in the last third of the song, when a second voice comes in and sings, "601...601," they all know that area code--it's the downstate Mississippi area code, their area code--and they realize that he, too, is laying a claim on "their" state.
Then there's Chris Thomas King's "Mississippi KKKrossroads," from his 2001 album, 21ST CENTURY BLUES...IN DA HOOD. It's not a great rap--at least not according to rap aficionados--but it's a really interesting attempt to fuse the central concerns of rap and blues: it's about Mississippi lawmen, lynching, being "bad to the bone," fear at the crossroads, stuff that the blues people on this forum claim to care about:
Finally, if none of this is enough to convince Christelle that she might want to retract her blanket claims, here's Jenro, an out lesbian rapper from the San Francisco Bay area talking about what she does. I challenge every man on this forum--and the women, too--to watch this entire video and then tell me that rap can't empower women but must inevitably demean them:
I'll repeat myself one more time: you don't have to like rap. I don't particularly enjoy it. But if you simply write it off in advance as trash--as Christelle and several others here have done--then you're making a big mistake: as big a mistake as the "good" Christian folk who have, through the years, slandered blues as trashy music.
Last Edited by on Feb 06, 2012 3:58 PM
I've been a Christian for many years, and I've made a habit of trying not let potentially offensive lyrics in many genres keep me from gettin' to the music part of the songs. Rap & Hip Hop have tested my "sensitivities" the most, but that genre comes from different zip codes than the ones I grew up in, and I think I understand. I feel like it's obvious that it doesn't take much of a backseat to some blues lyrics, as has been pointed out. Many of my Christian friends would say I shouldn't let that stuff in my head, and I shouldn't support "people like that", but it is a true expression of what's out there. My faith is strong and listening to blues hasn't caused me to adopt any other lifestyle.
I grew up on country, and quickly turned towards hip hop and R&B... inundated with country music until I was old enough to get a stereo in my room (at 12) then marvin gaye, smokey, Earth wind and fire, luther, and beastie boys, nwa, boys II men, all of it. every single drop. from 1985 to right now...go ahead quiz me. i took ALL KINDS OF SHIT in the 80's because I never liked the hair bands. First off, Hip hop is NOT RAP! There are many more numerous talents in that genre that DONT fit the mold. Hip Hop is all about the beat and the power that emits from the music. I dont give a shit what it's about. I cant understand half of what theyre saying anyway.... I feel like it is a personification of how I want to feel. The preparedness before a fight or raising your heart rate...steadying yourself for a great challenge.
If I am mad, I listen to Eminem If I am happy, I listen to The B-52's Etc, Etc
AND IF IM HAPPY AND HEAR EMINEM, I START TO GET A LITTLE MAD. See how it works? well... maybe its just me ---------- Kyzer's Travels Kyzer's Artwork "Music in the soul can be heard by the universe." - Lao Tzu
What blows my mind is the people who do live looping (not just in hip-hop, but it's got it's roots in sampling.) There are two types of loop builders. The more common loopers build the loops and you sit there and listen until they get interesting. It's cool, but there is a lot of down time. The best loopers build the loops while they are already really in the song. Dub FX with Mr. Woodnote in 'Flow' is a great example and a good example of mixing more bluesy/jazzy instruments like Sax into the mix. Emily Wells also is amazing. I've posted them both in previous threads so I won't post them again.
I'm in the 'not really into it much, but it's yet another genre' camp but..you can't deny it's made it's way into the VERY broad arena of contemporary music. Like Nate says many techniques and sounds in various styles of music were born in hip hop, and if you listen really hard to a lot of the stuff you actually like, you might begin to notice the influences. It looks like it's here to stay guys, variety IS the spice of life don't they say?
Anyone here speak Italian? If so, keep your kids away from opera, pretty risque stuff!
As for hip hop and rap, it hurts my ears, I have no interest in listening to it. But I'm 59 years old, they aren't making it for me, I'm not the target audience.
Last Edited by on Feb 07, 2012 4:47 AM
Just like blues, hip hop has some great stuff some OK stuff and some not so good stuff. I don't think you can deny the artistry of A Tribe Called Quest, Common, Talib Kwali, DJ Shadow, the Beastie Boys, Danger Mouse, etc.
Hip Hop is a child of the blues, ask Chuck D (see "Godfathers and Sons" from Scorsese's "The Blues" doc series). There's also good music and bad music. Here's an example of what I think is hip hop with a blues sensibility (although I have to say hip hop in general is not my thing, I get this):
