Rap/Gansta: Perferences?

[Umbran]

5. Music Talent: Sorry, rapping requires some rhyming talent, but most of these rappers sing worse than either Simpson daughter. Take away rap and make them sing and it's over.

Musicians are often like authors or actors in that they work themselves solidly into one specific genre, but without ability to stretch beyond that genre. Every genre has it's conventions, and it is rather easy to learn only those conventions, and nothing else. Like many rock guitarists who learn a few blues chords they need to play rock, but founder if you ask them to play classical guitar.

The recording industry as a whole does not often reward versitility, or broad musical education.

 

[Ranger REG]

I prefer old-school rap, from Run-DMC to the Sugar Hill Gang. Also, LL Cool J, Will Smith (aka Fresh Prince), Tone Loc, the Candyman (Knockin' Boots), Heavy D, Queen Latifah, etc.

 

[The Shaman]

I find that rap music, despite its lyrical content, is the spiritual successor to poetry.

Absolutely.

And its lyrical content can be pretty remarkable, too - try some of KRS-1's rhymes, for example.

It's like any genre - gotta find the pearls among the dreck.

 

[Mercule]

Some rap's okay, but mostly, it sucks.

The "hip-hop culture" is completely insane, though. It's an orgy of destructive behavior. Sure, there's a lot of debauchery in music -- or show-biz, in general -- but hip-hop/rap glorifies it and turns the world around bad=good, enslavement=freedom, etc.

 

[Desdichado]

Power from Ice-T was a great album, too. And he's the Original Gangster.

Nah, if he weren't with Niggas With Attitude, he couldn't have been an original Gansta. Easy E's probably the original Gansta, although Dre and Ice Cube and... whoever the other two were probably get a nod as well.

 

[Ranger REG]

Can't really see Ice Cube as a gangsta these days, what with his film role in Barbershop films and the most recent slapstick comedy, Are We There Yet?

EDIT: spelling corrected.

 

[Davelozzi]

People, it's 'gangsta', or if you want to be proper, 'gangster', but not 'gansta'. The second 'g' has to be there.

Sorry. Had to get that out of my system. To me, it's worse than the 'rogue/rouge' thing.

Nah, if he (Ice-T) weren't with Niggas With Attitude, he couldn't have been an original Gansta. Easy E's probably the original Gansta, although Dre and Ice Cube and... whoever the other two were probably get a nod as well.

Actually, Ice-T was around before N.W.A. was, they just came onto the scene more prominently because their lyrics were more in your face. Ice-T was making records in the early-mid eighties, had a few tunes on compilations and the like (he appeared in the movie Breakin' in 1984). But both artists released their first full albums in 1987 (Ice'T's Rhyme Pays and NWA and the Posse).

I been makin' records on wax since 1982,
Now it's 1988, finally I'm coming through,
That adds up to six years of makin' ok jams, but now I'm mad,
Here comes the body slam...