West Coast Connection Forum
Lifestyle => Tha G-Spot => Topic started by: NotoriousTDA on October 11, 2007, 03:32:56 PM
-
Im doing an essay in english class, and i chose 90's vs today's rap music as my topic. My arguement is that I feel music quality in the 90's was much better then todays.
Does anybody who feels the same as I do, list some possible directions I can go with this statement? Any ideas would help.
Cheers
-
"Why rap/hip-hop in the 90's was so much better than rap/hip-hop today"
I think the title would be good enough for an A.
-
^LOL
just compare shit. word up. like, make comparisons of not only song quality, but creativity of concepts/innovation, skills (flowing, writing, freestyling, shit... even beatboxing), passion, etc.
-
Compare the creative control of the artists and you'll pass this easily.
-
Im doing an essay in english class, and i chose 90's vs today's rap music as my topic. My arguement is that I feel music quality in the 90's was much better then todays.
Does anybody who feels the same as I do, list some possible directions I can go with this statement? Any ideas would help.
Cheers
Basically this. It's not that the 90's shit was better but the trajectory of hip hop/mainstream music was that so that the good shit was the popular shit.
There's hip hop as good now as it was then but that shit is not mainstream succesful like the good shit was back then.
Hip hop was so young in the 80s, so by the 90s it had not only blown up but many artists had sophisticated it. It blew up so fast so sophisticated that corporations didn't have a chance to water it down before it got to us. and upstart labels like ruthless and death row were able to cash the fuck in.
but because hip hop artists/community were not able to leave the gang roots out of it/work for and with each other they all split up to do their own labels instead of making a few really strong labels. daz had a label, nate had a label, warren g had a label, snoop had a label, dre had a label, etc. imagine if all those dudes STAYED on the SAME label and worked TOGETHER to make that ONE label STRONGER? But they didn't because of egos and money and corporate executives took advantage of the disarray of hip hop artists on the business side. They took the product, dumbed it down for the lowest common denominator and the genre reaches a wider and wider spectrum of people all the time.
The more people you want to spread a product to, the more you have to dumb it down to the lowest common denominator. you have to break it down to really simple concepts that anyone can understand.
in the 80s the mainstream was about many aspects of life from art, to sneakers, to food, to street life, gangs, drugs, dancing. 10 years later alot of it was simplified to women and gang life. 10 years later it's even more simplified: women/money. 10 years from now the mainstream will be even simpler to reach and get the money of an even wider audience.
our only hope is for the market to become so oversaturated(and trust, it is happening. look at record sales) with hip hop that the bubble pops and only the people who care about the art and not just those who care about the latest trend are the ones producing the product.
-T
-
there's your paper man^
give some historical context, add more references to east and west, take out the cuss words and bam.
done
-T
-
Tanj you always seem to impress me
-
+1 man
too bad the rest of these cats don't agree, thanks man
-T
-
Im doing an essay in english class, and i chose 90's vs today's rap music as my topic. My arguement is that I feel music quality in the 90's was much better then todays.
Does anybody who feels the same as I do, list some possible directions I can go with this statement? Any ideas would help.
Cheers
Basically this. It's not that the 90's shit was better but the trajectory of hip hop/mainstream music was that so that the good shit was the popular shit.
There's hip hop as good now as it was then but that shit is not mainstream succesful like the good shit was back then.
Hip hop was so young in the 80s, so by the 90s it had not only blown up but many artists had sophisticated it. It blew up so fast so sophisticated that corporations didn't have a chance to water it down before it got to us. and upstart labels like ruthless and death row were able to cash the fuck in.
but because hip hop artists/community were not able to leave the gang roots out of it/work for and with each other they all split up to do their own labels instead of making a few really strong labels. daz had a label, nate had a label, warren g had a label, snoop had a label, dre had a label, etc. imagine if all those dudes STAYED on the SAME label and worked TOGETHER to make that ONE label STRONGER? But they didn't because of egos and money and corporate executives took advantage of the disarray of hip hop artists on the business side. They took the product, dumbed it down for the lowest common denominator and the genre reaches a wider and wider spectrum of people all the time.
The more people you want to spread a product to, the more you have to dumb it down to the lowest common denominator. you have to break it down to really simple concepts that anyone can understand.
in the 80s the mainstream was about many aspects of life from art, to sneakers, to food, to street life, gangs, drugs, dancing. 10 years later alot of it was simplified to women and gang life. 10 years later it's even more simplified: women/money. 10 years from now the mainstream will be even simpler to reach and get the money of an even wider audience.
our only hope is for the market to become so oversaturated(and trust, it is happening. look at record sales) with hip hop that the bubble pops and only the people who care about the art and not just those who care about the latest trend are the ones producing the product.
-T
damn u did all the work pretty much for the kid lol
that's some real shit u spoke on though i argee with u
peace
-
+1
-T
-
maybe you should give a definition of what you consider "better quality" first. From that you can measure 90's and tday's rap music.
-
Sounds like a good paper
-
Im doing an essay in english class, and i chose 90's vs today's rap music as my topic. My arguement is that I feel music quality in the 90's was much better then todays.
Does anybody who feels the same as I do, list some possible directions I can go with this statement? Any ideas would help.
Cheers
Nice paper, can you post it here when your finished? I would like to see how it comes out.
1rst things 1rst, hip-hop is dead. And it died on September 13th, 1996. 2pac described himself as "the realest rapper out there". 2pac kept hiphop real in the 90's, and soon after he died the shiny suit, puffy and mase bubble gum pop era gained greater popularity. There was nobody left to step to fake artists in the game like Jay-Z and Bad Boy Records as Pac did in his last testament, Mackevelli the Don Kulluminati.
However, it wasn't a sudden death, but rather a slow decay. The 90's managed to finish strong, as Eminem brought hiphop lyricism back to its roots, by rising up through the underground and battle scene, and then connecting with the greatest producer and legend of the past, Dr. Dre.
The underground gained the spotlight in the late 90's piggybacking off Eminem's sucess, websites such as hiphopsite.com connected with Em's website and gave exposure to dozens of diverse underground artists. Also, just as in the late 80's you had the rise of Islamic consciousness, once more in the late 90's conscious artists were going gold. Dead Prez dropped the greatest hiphop album ever, "Lets get free" and Mos Def and Kweli put together a quality set of duo and solo albums.
The 90's also saw the rise of the West Coast and gangsta rap. But since the 90's, hiphop has lost its focus, intensity, and lost its way. Rappers like Eazy E and his protege's Bone were organic, the dressed in regular street clothes and acted like the brothers around the way.
In the new millineium everything is fake, every artists has to pretend they are a hustler, making millions off crack and rap and fucking 100's of women and makin bubble gum love pop rap tracks like Nelly and Ja Rule.
Also, digital media has wrecked hihop in the new millinieum. The most obvious example of this Rass Kass. He's an artist that in the 90's could manage to sell about 2 to 300,000, which is just enough for the label to recoup and turn a profit. Rass Kass was not a popular artist with 14 year old teenage girls, but he was one of the most respected artists amongst online hiphopheads. So once these fans could now download the album for free, his 3rd album Van Gogh kept getting leaked before its release date, and subsequently it was never worth it for the label to release the album. It got caught up in red tape, never came out, Rass was dropped from his label, and we still have yet to see an album in this millinium from one of the greatest lyricists hiphop has ever seen.
But what we do see is a tireless output of tracks like "walk it out" or "Lean With It Rock With" that have no substance or critical acclaim, but 14 year old girls purchase these songs for their ring tones. Ring tones have provided lables with a loophole to make up aquire some of the money they've lost on record sales.
HipHop is dead, just ask Nas... peace.
-
Im doing an essay in english class, and i chose 90's vs today's rap music as my topic. My arguement is that I feel music quality in the 90's was much better then todays.
Does anybody who feels the same as I do, list some possible directions I can go with this statement? Any ideas would help.
Cheers
Nice paper, can you post it here when your finished? I would like to see how it comes out.
1rst things 1rst, hip-hop is dead. And it died on September 13th, 1996. 2pac described himself as "the realest rapper out there". 2pac kept hiphop real in the 90's, and soon after he died the shiny suit, puffy and mase bubble gum pop era gained greater popularity. There was nobody left to step to fake artists in the game like Jay-Z and Bad Boy Records as Pac did in his last testament, Mackevelli the Don Kulluminati.
However, it wasn't a sudden death, but rather a slow decay. The 90's managed to finish strong, as Eminem brought hiphop lyricism back to its roots, by rising up through the underground and battle scene, and then connecting with the greatest producer and legend of the past, Dr. Dre.
The underground gained the spotlight in the late 90's piggybacking off Eminem's sucess, websites such as hiphopsite.com connected with Em's website and gave exposure to dozens of diverse underground artists. Also, just as in the late 80's you had the rise of Islamic consciousness, once more in the late 90's conscious artists were going gold. Dead Prez dropped the greatest hiphop album ever, "Lets get free" and Mos Def and Kweli put together a quality set of duo and solo albums.
The 90's also saw the rise of the West Coast and gangsta rap. But since the 90's, hiphop has lost its focus, intensity, and lost its way. Rappers like Eazy E and his protege's Bone were organic, the dressed in regular street clothes and acted like the brothers around the way.
In the new millineium everything is fake, every artists has to pretend they are a hustler, making millions off crack and rap and fucking 100's of women and makin bubble gum love pop rap tracks like Nelly and Ja Rule.
Also, digital media has wrecked hihop in the new millinieum. The most obvious example of this Rass Kass. He's an artist that in the 90's could manage to sell about 2 to 300,000, which is just enough for the label to recoup and turn a profit. Rass Kass was not a popular artist with 14 year old teenage girls, but he was one of the most respected artists amongst online hiphopheads. So once these fans could now download the album for free, his 3rd album Van Gogh kept getting leaked before its release date, and subsequently it was never worth it for the label to release the album. It got caught up in red tape, never came out, Rass was dropped from his label, and we still have yet to see an album in this millinium from one of the greatest lyricists hiphop has ever seen.
But what we do see is a tireless output of tracks like "walk it out" or "Lean With It Rock With" that have no substance or critical acclaim, but 14 year old girls purchase these songs for their ring tones. Ring tones have provided lables with a loophole to make up aquire some of the money they've lost on record sales.
HipHop is dead, just ask Nas... peace.
LOL @ it died when 2Pac did. What kind of groupie shit is that? Hip-hop started before 2Pac and it's not going to end anytime soon.
-
2pac was symbolic of the rise and fall of west coast gangsta rap. I'll give you that, but to say that that whole genre rested on him is rather ridiculous in my opinion.
he was a symbolic martyr and possibly to an extent interdependent with the genre but to act like he was the alpha and the omega is, once more my opinion, rather ridiculous.
-T
-
There's another important point I want to touch on that nobody else has mentioned, and that is the socio-economical condition of black people in America.
Mos Def said it best when he said, "people want to know what's up with hip-hop, well they should ask what's up with us (black people)"... he continued, "people talk like hip-hop is some giant over the hillside, but hip-hop is us, so if you want to know how hip-hop is doing ask how we are doing."
Well, lets take a look at black people then, and the socio-economical conditions that gave birth to hip-hop.
Hip-Hop was a product of the socio-economical conditions of the 70's and brooklyn mayor Robert Moses pet project of biulding a railway that uprooted thousands of blacks from there homes. And like hunter gathering natives they picked up and created something out of nothing and the Zulu Crew was a gang that used hiphop as a vehicle for biulding the self-esteem of black people.
Well, flash forward to today. Black people are about 4 decades past the Malcolm X revolutionary era. And now they have entered what I like to call a therapuetic phase, where the focus is on self-gain rather than a set of existential obligations.
The entitlement, welfare, afirmative action programs, and also the sincere efforts of economic upliftment amongst blacks themselves, have elevated the position of black people in this country, and they also have more money than they've ever had.
Therefore, to put it simply black people aren't as cool as they used to be. They are no longer engaged in a widespread righteous rebellion, or even destructive rebellion (such as gangsta rap) that made them so compelling. The issues facing America today, such as the patriot act or bushs so-called war on terrorism, hiphop has been mostly silent on, especially in the mainstream ofcourse. Why is this, cause hiphop is only a reflection of the mentality of people in the innercities of America.... and most of them don't give a fuck about anything anymore but being a hustler and strikin a baller pose.
Let me put it simply, black people aint as cool as they used to be.
-
Therefore, to put it simply black people aren't as cool as they used to be.
Let me put it simply, black people aint as cool as they used to be.
Twice you put that bullshit. Are you the judge of the cool people? Your statements are always ignorant.
-
Therefore, to put it simply black people aren't as cool as they used to be.
Let me put it simply, black people aint as cool as they used to be.
Twice you put that bullshit. Are you the judge of the cool people? Your statements are always ignorant.
Bundy you're the homey, but what abdul just said is completely true. If you're really going to boil what he just said down to those two statements, it is you who are being ignorant.
-T
-
Bundy you're the homey, but what abdul just said is completely true. If you're really going to boil what he just said down to those two statements, it is you who are being ignorant.
-T
Props to Tanjit for keeping it real. I never insisted on anyone agreeing with everything that I have said, I was just writing my perspective on the issue and anyone else is free to offer their own unique perspective if they like.
-
Allow me to elaborate, it was just before lunch when I made that last post and I was a little snarky.
Bundy, I agree that perhaps phrasing it like 'black people aren't cool anymore' is not the best way to phrase it. But the rest of the post (the backing behind the statement) was pretty much accurate and if you just looked at the 'black people aren't cool anymore' statement and not the rest of the post and judged it off of that alone, you're missing alot.
But basically yeah, black people socioeconomically speaking are not where they were when hip hop was younger so it's quite different .
BUT to me that doesn't say much about the quality, which is why I didn't bring it up....intelligent art comes from rich and poor areas you dig?
-T