October 29, 1991

I would say that after Ice Cube released Death Certificate rap history came to its highest point and its end. No other artist has a huge rap beef WITH a radical cultural event (Rodney King beating) to link to. 'No Vaseline' is the hardest real talk rap track ever created. It all went downhill after that.

Now I know you all will cry out that Nas vs Jay-Z. Nas is amazing but he doesn't have the powerful historical event to go alongside his victory over 'Gay-Z'. It was a simple victory.

Eminem is great on MMLP (Slim Shady LP was not a big event in rap music due to its mediocrity), BUT Eminem beefed with a bunchof lamers like NSYNC, Limp Biskit, Britney Spears, some other obscure nobody challenge rapper. And no massive historical event (Colombine a few kids die -- it is miniscule) to link to. Em is no great story teller like Cube.

50 Cent - just rapping the word 'nigga' tirelessly with no great message -- simple dance music for women. He's connected to a good story (overcoming poverty, getting shot 9 times, etc.), but he doesn't have a significant cultural event once again to link to.

Do you agree? If not please share your own where did rap music die essay.

Rap in general. I clearly do not mean it is not produced but that the overall movement is dead. (Like Ice Cube did release another good album The Predator, but like I said it doesn't have any big event to go along with the big message delivered in it.)

I find a lot of conscious rap to be incredibly boring; A subsequent downgrade from Ice Cube to the rest of non-event rappers. History is dead.

Kanye West is a simp sellout. He is a good producer and a mediocre rapper. "Yo Kanye stick to producin'". Kendrick Lamar's best known track is a diss rap which was a non-apology. It was so passive aggressive that I lost all respect for him. How the fuck you gonna shoutout love to a dumb piece of shit embarrassment like A$AP Rocky is beyond me. Rap is represented by non-threatening rappers now -- a complete change from the fight the power origins. Death Grips ("it goes it goes it goes ... guillotine!!!") I would have to listen to their album, but making an entire album good is something very improbable with taday's music. Regardless, they are small-time to the rap movement which was once a historical force.

Fighter_McWarrior wrote:

There are a number of amazing rap groups that are still operating out there on the underground. I highly recommend the Coup, or Run the Jewels (a duo made up of rappers El-P and Killer Mike, who are both fantastic and entirely worth checking out on their own merits). Even some more mainstream rap artists, like Lupe Fiasco and Kendrick Lamar, have put out some incredible work in recent years as well. I think your judgement of Lamar is overly harsh, especially since your entire gripe with him seems to revolve around one song. There's a large body of emotive, intelligent work he's done that I feel like you're ignoring with that critique.

Rap is clearly dead when people are dick riding a "diss track" that professes love for the targeted rappers and then hate as if the rapper is upset at his ex. I don't have time to waste on such stupid nonsense. And having a diss track featuring multiple people who were nowhere near as talented as Lamar was retarded.

Quote:

Your biggest problem, it seems, is that you need to dig more. All the artists you bring up in your first post are the most famous of the famous rappers, and your criticisms of others seem to grounded more in their hit work than the more nuanced material on their albums. Judging any genre based on the face value of its most popular artists and their most popular works will make any genre look vapid. It's like your using Blink 182 to judge punk, or Coldplay to define "alternative" music. Shit always rises to the top.

LOL. Maybe I should title this thread 'Recommend me underground rappers' as if I don't follow Memphis rap or anything other than mainstream rap. That isn't the point of this thread. The thread is about when the rap music, as in the founding ideology (the vision) and movement, died. (Just like the declaration of "Art is dead" when modern art killed art.) I am writing it died an honorable death with the release of the Death Certificate album. Shit will always be out there in the underground. That's a given. No one needs to write that.

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I already stated good rap, esp. mainstream rap did not disappear as soon as Ice Cube released Death Certificate. Here are some shifts in rap if we are to extend its life period.

Quote:

The Predator was the last great album that Ice Cube ever made, but even as it reached the top of the charts, hip-hop was changing. A month after its release, Dr. Dre (Cube's former N.W.A. colleague) released The Chronic, a monstrous commercial success that refashioned gangsta rap as party music to extraordinarily influential ends. And the following two years would see the release of titles such as Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), Ready to Die, and Illmatic that forcefully reclaimed the creative vanguard of rap for New York.

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So I'm still waiting for someone to come up with a timeline or simple date of when rap died. (Username could you possibly put a year on when the studio gangsters took over?) Because if it didn't die just write that and we can call it a day. No need to list off "rappers who still got it yo!".

Extra extra:

Langx wrote:

Biggie is the most overrated rapper of all time. His greatest gift was simplifying an art. Simplifying it made anyone think they can rap. Without Big, Puffy and Mase would have never made it in this game. Because they had no talent to rap. Biggies style was easily copied by many rappers till this day. Which just shows how easy he made it. Rick Ross, Jay and Jeezy come to mind. It fucked the rap game up. It allows rappers who have no talent just to talk over beats. The list is long. You can look at almost any southern rapper and see how it has been abused. Big was a genius for using the slow flow but it has destroyed rap. If you look at the greatest of rap their style could not be copied. That's what makes them and singles our their greatness of the art. Nas, Kool G, Pac, KRSI, Ice Cube, Snoop, LL, Em, Slick Rick. To groups like EPMD, De La Soul, PE. They are unique. Their styles are harder to copy. To consider Biggie great with one great album and a mediocre Double CD would be like calling TPain great. Because he made it easy for everyone to be a singer. Take boxing. There is only one Floyd Mayweather. Everyone can not do what he does. He was born to do it. When you watch Mayweather you know you are watching true gifts. Biggie had a gift. But his gift ruined the game. Now everyone and their mother thinks they can do it.

Yes fuck them. Kanye West can't rap. So whatever artistic vision he produces is compromised by that fact. Stuff people are doing on mixtapes and in their basements aren't a big deal. Nobody extremely talented is rapping with heavy emotional impact (i.e. speaking out against racist bullshit) on a powerful level ("went Platinum and didn't have to sellout") to influence society as Ice Cube did in the rap game today. The movement shifted away from political uprising to party crap to king shit. The times have changed and rap stagnated into the mess it is in today.

This 'rap is dead' is analysis of the big picture. Not the smaller ones.

Let's not make this thread about personal attacking me.

Vert1 wrote:

This 'rap is dead' is analysis of the big picture. Not the smaller ones. Let's not make this thread about personal attacking me.

Rap was dead before 50 Cent. Rap does not center around the most popular artist. Most genres of music are considered dead by a lot of devoted fans (i.e. techno, trance, rap, pop, punk, etc.). Many including myself view the rise of the mp3 and software as responsible for killing the quality of the music scene.

Fighter_McWarrior wrote:

The Coup isn't rapping "in somebody's basement". They're an internationally touring act. So is EL-P and Killer Mike. They all do lesser powerful, emotionally compelling music and much of it is centered on issues like racism, domestic surveillance and the moral conundrums of drone strikes. The Coup and El-P in particular are among the most aggressive, intellectual rap since superior group Public Enemy, and you're trivializing the impact their careers are having on the scene just because they're small-time.

Made some changes.

Quote:

The evolution of an artform can thus be divided into the following four stages: 1. It is created and taken to its zenith by the men of taste: the experts and connoisseurs. 2. It is led into decline by the masses, a decline that accelerates in proportion to the increasing size of the mass, in accordance with the mechanics of the lowest common denominator. 3. It is taken all the way down to its lowest point, that of absolute wretchedness, by the posers: the absurdly rich and the artfagots (the former of whom become involved only with primitive artforms, the latter in all of them). 4. And it is finally killed off by the scientists and engineers at the same time as they bring into being the tools required for the creation of a higher art, at which point the cycle begins anew.

Rap right now is in an experimental/abstract/parody stage (3rd stage) just like our times. There hasn't been a big innovative take on the genre after G-Funk (invented by Above The Law). Or horror-core. Or Techno Animal's take on rap. Dr Dre. probably will never release Detox because he knows that history now lacks the same weight it did when he was coming up.

Fighter_McWarrior wrote:

Artists like Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambatta were hugely influential, but not "popular" in the traditional sense

These artists are very popular. Afrika Bambatta even did a collaboration with James Brown... There is no one today even close to the same league talent-wise to set off and influence a movement like James Brown did with rap. And that is why it is dead.

I am not refusing to listen to anything (You know what have I listened to, Fighter?). Just writing that those artists are inferior to Ice Cube and Public Enemy and have done nothing new (style-wise, not content rapping-wise) and are a sign of decline in the movement. A sign of death.

Fighter_McWarrior wrote:

People have such easy access to new, old and foreign music now thanks to sites like Youtube and services like Spotify and Itunes that it's vastly expanding the influences that new artists are drawing from.

Influenced by people from the "Golden Age" when rap was alive.

So they invented a rap-sub genre/style? What is that subgenre/style called?

BTW, I have listened to this band's music before.

Fighter_McWarrior wrote:

the history of musical art.

Look up the word pleonasm.

The improvement on rap reached its zenith with Ice Cube's Death Certificate album. The only place to go from there was down or to the side (i.e. different types of style rap experimentations).

Vert1 wrote:

I would say that after Ice Cube released Death Certificate rap history came to its highest point and its end. No other artist has a huge rap beef WITH a radical cultural event (Rodney King beating) to link to. 'No Vaseline' is the hardest real talk rap track ever created. It all went downhill after that.

Read this over.

Because innovation does not equal better art.

Because history lacks a strong social catalyst to influence black art (rap).