Is Hip Hop Taking Over?

[Machinate]

dont underestimate the power of the dancefloor and ecstacy.

Or simplification of complex pop-culture structures, apparently...

[sweetjesus]

hip hop was the norm before house took over the UK and it aint comin back.

dont underestimate the power of the dancefloor and ecstacy.

Is that what you and your friends like or is house really the "best selling genre" of music in the UK?

I'd be surprised if it wasn't rock or pop or just "dance", which would include tarnce and your typical "euro-trash" dance music. (<--I'm not sure if Europeans refer to some of their crap as "euro-trash" but that's what we call that poppy trancy mainstream bs that comes out of there. We've got plenty of our own crap exports so don't get angry.)

BTW, I'm sitting in the birthplace of house and I went to two bars last night expecting house and instead it was hip hop. Crappy hip hop. House is still "big" I suppose, but it's underground or at least not mainstream.

If I had a dollar for everytime my friends (DJs) were asked to play some hip hop by some stupid chicks at a club...

thats interesting.

i got my quote from some dj's and im not in the uk, but i assumed the post is talking about clubs.

bars are different environments to clubs but i am pretty sure that when it comes to club culture house based music is dominant. at least it is here.

[sweetjesus]

dont underestimate the power of the dancefloor and ecstacy.

Or simplification of complex pop-culture structures, apparently...

edit: what do you mean by this?

[kramerica]

hip hop was the norm before house took over the UK and it aint comin back.

dont underestimate the power of the dancefloor and ecstacy.

Is that what you and your friends like or is house really the "best selling genre" of music in the UK?

I'd be surprised if it wasn't rock or pop or just "dance", which would include tarnce and your typical "euro-trash" dance music. (<--I'm not sure if Europeans refer to some of their crap as "euro-trash" but that's what we call that poppy trancy mainstream bs that comes out of there. We've got plenty of our own crap exports so don't get angry.)

BTW, I'm sitting in the birthplace of house and I went to two bars last night expecting house and instead it was hip hop. Crappy hip hop. House is still "big" I suppose, but it's underground or at least not mainstream.

If I had a dollar for everytime my friends (DJs) were asked to play some hip hop by some stupid chicks at a club...

thats interesting.

i got my quote from some dj's and im not in the uk, but i assumed the post is talking about clubs.

bars are different environments to clubs but i am pretty sure that when it comes to club culture house based music is dominant. at least it is here.

Oh, I thought the original poster was asking what genre of music is taking over in general (played the most at bars or clubs and in terms of records sales) as opposed to just what is being played in clubs; not bars.

As far as clubs in this city, it is still house (I think) but hip hop has its nights at every major club. And when I said "bars", I meant really small club/bars - whatever you want to call them - which have DJs on tables; not a jukebox.

[Tone Deft]

what kind of hip hop are people requesting? btw hip hop is what you live, rap is what you do.

rap has definitely been in the direction of dance music, the use of big synth lines in some tunes and minimal beats in others. then there's stuff like Kanye and his use of Daft Punk. with that shit I can see rap being played along side straight up dance tunes.

now if they're asking to hear A Tribe Called Quest while you're spinning Hawtin, that's messed up, or pretty damn eclectic.

I'm just glad the f-ing salsa fascination has died out, chicks dug it, the guys followed, I hated that stuff.

oh, and I hear rap in waaaay more places than 'ghetto neighborhoods', even in nice restaurants spinning hip music.

kids these days...

[kramerica]

what kind of hip hop are people requesting? btw hip hop is what you live, rap is what you do.

rap has definitely been in the direction of dance music, the use of big synth lines in some tunes and minimal beats in others. then there's stuff like Kanye and his use of Daft Punk. with that shit I can see rap being played along side straight up dance tunes.

now if they're asking to hear A Tribe Called Quest while you're spinning Hawtin, that's messed up, or pretty damn eclectic.

I'm just glad the f-ing salsa fascination has died out, chicks dug it, the guys followed, I hated that stuff.

oh, and I hear rap in waaaay more places than 'ghetto neighborhoods', even in nice restaurants spinning hip music.

Rap doesn't include your basic turntablism, beat juggling, etc. so I use "hip hop" in a general sense. There isn't rapping in all hip hop music.

I don't know about any salsa fad but this reggaeton bullshit is killing me. I worked in a DJ store a few years back and it's all they played on the radio and every other customer wanted to use some vocal effects rack so they could say "This is DJ Roberto...roberto...roberto (delay effect)". It was awful. Now J-Lo has some movie coming out that she produced about some reggaeton assholes "making it".

[Tone Deft]

true, and MTV is picking up on Reggaeton, a sure sign of a dying horse ready to be beat. do we need to get into how the term DUB has been completely raped?

hip hop
- rapping
- turntablism
- break dancing
- graffiti
- beat boxing

[sweetjesus]

Is that what you and your friends like or is house really the "best selling genre" of music in the UK?

I'd be surprised if it wasn't rock or pop or just "dance", which would include tarnce and your typical "euro-trash" dance music. (<--I'm not sure if Europeans refer to some of their crap as "euro-trash" but that's what we call that poppy trancy mainstream bs that comes out of there. We've got plenty of our own crap exports so don't get angry.)

BTW, I'm sitting in the birthplace of house and I went to two bars last night expecting house and instead it was hip hop. Crappy hip hop. House is still "big" I suppose, but it's underground or at least not mainstream.

If I had a dollar for everytime my friends (DJs) were asked to play some hip hop by some stupid chicks at a club...

thats interesting.

i got my quote from some dj's and im not in the uk, but i assumed the post is talking about clubs.

bars are different environments to clubs but i am pretty sure that when it comes to club culture house based music is dominant. at least it is here.

Oh, I thought the original poster was asking what genre of music is taking over in general (played the most at bars or clubs and in terms of records sales) as opposed to just what is being played in clubs; not bars.

As far as clubs in this city, it is still house (I think) but hip hop has its nights at every major club. And when I said "bars", I meant really small club/bars - whatever you want to call them - which have DJs on tables; not a jukebox.

yeah i agree in day to day life hip hop is all over it. it has been for quite sometime.

[mission1]

hip hop rules the world and it sucks. Talk about a dry well. I have not heard anything fresh in that over hyped genre in years. My dream is just as disco became loathsome may hip hop follow. I would not mind it if it were not the Borg genre, but it sneaks into everything. It is all about ego. Look at me I am so cool with me bitches and blind. Hip hop is so predictable at this point it blows my mind that it is still so huge. I know I'll piss of quiteva few people with this post, but maybe that will do some good. Normally genres rule for a while and then fade, but hip hop is a monopoly that has gone on for more than 25 years and I am so f)&(;ing sick of it. There is more to music that talking about oneself all the time. Fake crap...

[leedsquietman]

Jesus, dickheads who turn up at electro nights asking for Kanye West or 50 cent, deserve to be beaten hard. Any club night where music is higher than 120 bpm, with four on the four, blips, beeps and sampled women divas going 'whooaaa yeaaah' etc. is not a place you should be at if you want to hear Hip Hop.

If you went to a hip hop club and asked for Moby or Amon Tobin, they'd look at you like you a freak and probably whup you upside yo head.


As for gangsta rap, it was interesting for about 15 minutes a decade ago and now is just boring, cliched garbage - Eastside, Westside, Schmestside, who gives a monkey's anus. It's a poor reflection on the genre, some hip hop can be great but gangsta rap is the poor bastard cousin who has never had a girlfriend in his life but sings about smacking up his hoes and other BS we can do without. It is borrrrring.

[kramerica]

hip hop rules the world and it sucks. Talk about a dry well. I have not heard anything fresh in that over hyped genre in years. My dream is just as disco became loathsome may hip hop follow. I would not mind it if it were not the Borg genre, but it sneaks into everything. It is all about ego. Look at me I am so cool with me bitches and blind. Hip hop is so predictable at this point it blows my mind that it is still so huge. I know I'll piss of quiteva few people with this post, but maybe that will do some good. Normally genres rule for a while and then fade, but hip hop is a monopoly that has gone on for more than 25 years and I am so f)&(;ing sick of it. There is more to music that talking about oneself all the time. Fake crap...

Seems like you've kind of pigeon holed an entire genre there. That's like saying all country sucks, all bluegrass sucks, all jazz sucks, all R&B sucks, etc. Most rap isn't gangsta rap; that's just what gets played on the radio and television b/c that's apparently what the public wants (?). There's a world of rap and turntablism out there that is some of the best music in the world; most of which isn't violent, about bitches or hoes, champagne, money, or any other cliche gangsta topic.

Do yourself a favor and look up some good artists. I'd be happy to recommend some.

[beats me]

hip hop rules the world and it sucks. Talk about a dry well. I have not heard anything fresh in that over hyped genre in years. My dream is just as disco became loathsome may hip hop follow. I would not mind it if it were not the Borg genre, but it sneaks into everything. It is all about ego. Look at me I am so cool with me bitches and blind. Hip hop is so predictable at this point it blows my mind that it is still so huge. I know I'll piss of quiteva few people with this post, but maybe that will do some good. Normally genres rule for a while and then fade, but hip hop is a monopoly that has gone on for more than 25 years and I am so f)&(;ing sick of it. There is more to music that talking about oneself all the time. Fake crap...

Seems like you've kind of pigeon holed an entire genre there. That's like saying all country sucks, all bluegrass sucks, all jazz sucks, all R&B sucks, etc. Most rap isn't gangsta rap; that's just what gets played on the radio and television b/c that's apparently what the public wants (?). There's a world of rap and turntablism out there that is some of the best music in the world; most of which isn't violent, about bitches or hoes, champagne, money, or any other cliche gangsta topic.

Do yourself a favor and look up some good artists. I'd be happy to recommend some.

Maybe he wouldn't like some recommendations but I would. I've mostly shut myself off to the genre thanks to the commercial tracks and also because of the commercial track fanbase. To me commercial Hip Hop fans are the definition of not knowing what to like in music if a corporation didn't tell them. It's also funny that they've done polls, studies, surveys, etc. on what the average opinion is of commercial Hip Hop from lyrics and subject matter to the music being used and most people state they feel it is stupid and irresponsible and yet they continue to consume it. Crap is the new cool.

[dj superflat]

put me in the "i find this question weird" crowd, or the "that's a late-80s question" crowd. i think the real question is is hip hop dying. beyond that, hip hop's mutated to where it isn't nearly so monolithic/homogeneous (relatively) as it once was. so it's influence is felt just about everywhere, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily taking over, more like being corrupted, it's purity lost as it incorporates just about everything.

[Tone Deft]

hip hop rules the world and it sucks. Talk about a dry well. I have not heard anything fresh in that over hyped genre in years. My dream is just as disco became loathsome may hip hop follow. I would not mind it if it were not the Borg genre, but it sneaks into everything. It is all about ego. Look at me I am so cool with me bitches and blind. Hip hop is so predictable at this point it blows my mind that it is still so huge. I know I'll piss of quiteva few people with this post, but maybe that will do some good. Normally genres rule for a while and then fade, but hip hop is a monopoly that has gone on for more than 25 years and I am so f)&(;ing sick of it. There is more to music that talking about oneself all the time. Fake crap...

I think the same could be said for ANY genre that gets popular. the lyrics all sound the same, there's the attitude, the marketing, they saturate pop culture, we get sick of it.

as for lyrics, every genre has its cliches

metal - dragons, insanity, hell, 'I will crush you', death, strippers, chicks, the cheeseball metal ballad that's always the second single the band releases

solo pop singers - I'm sexy/in love/out of love

country - trucks, beer, god, dogs, the USA, 'the people in my town are better than yours'

rap - bitches, hoes, weed, bling, shout outs...

techno - audio clips from scientists/astronauts/nature shows, "little fluffy clouds"


if you don't like rap you'll only see the bad, if you do like it you'll find the good. anything genre that gets HUGE gets annoying.


Chris Rock covered this years ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9A2I-X7b-w

[thesmallisbeautiful]

As for gangsta rap, it was interesting for about 15 minutes a decade ago and now is just boring, cliched garbage - Eastside, Westside, Schmestside, who gives a monkey's anus. It's a poor reflection on the genre, some hip hop can be great but gangsta rap is the poor bastard cousin who has never had a girlfriend in his life but sings about smacking up his hoes and other BS we can do without. It is borrrrring.

I love how everyone is talking about hip-hop here as if it was still 96. Eastside vs. Westside has been a non-issue in hip-hop for a decade now. 99% of all the mainstream stuff is from the south, and they don't really use the term "gangsta" rap anymore either. That was mostly a late 80's-mid 90's term. I would guess that Kanye West sold more records the first day his album was released than most major electronic artists sell in a year, off the strength of a daft punk song. The boundaries are really not so well drawn now anyways. Kanye's daft punk song is one thing, but you also have Timbaland (a hip-hop producer) using synth patches from french electro producers to make beats for Justin Timberlake and T.I., what do you call that music exactly? What about the whole French electro/rap scene where you have T.T.C. rapping over what sound like trance keyboards and dirty south drums? What is Glitchmob, who use max/msp patches to manipulate pop and rap acapellas with electronic beats underneath? What do you call Megasoid, who do live remixes of crunk tunes using an mpc and a modular synth? I just went a show recently that had french electro bands playing on a bill with Chicago rap group the cool kids, and the packed house (it was at Hiro ballroom in Manhattan) loved it all.

I don't really know what the scene is like too well in the UK, but I have spent a fair bit of time there, and it seems like the electro/rock thing is pretty much the big deal, and that overlaps with rap like crazy. Even the indie bands there (or whatever you guys call the arctic monkeys type of band) are working with grime artists. That's not even starting to talk about M.I.A. and whatever the hell you want to call her stuff.

This isn't the old days anymore. Even kids in Iowa are on the internet and are hearing music from all over the world. People don't just listen to "trance" or "minimal house" or "hip-hop" anymore. People are like "I dig OCDJ because he uses a bit of that Baltimore breaks feel but he mixes it with playground singalong stuff and samples from ice cream trucks and gritboys acapellas". Most of the biggest artists in the world right now, not to mention the underground, are mixing genres like crazy and the result is a dancefloor's wet dream.

I hate to say it, but when you start complaining that the young people are coming in and requesting the wrong music, you might be getting a bit out of touch, no disrespect.