What Kind fo Innovations Would You Like To See In Hip-hop ?

dhilsabeck · Post by **dhilsabeck** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 7:00 am

Run DMC
NWA
PE
De La Soul
Tribe
Digital Underground
Slick RIck
Beastie Boys
Notorious BIG
Busta
Deltron 3030
Dr. Octagon
MF Doom
El-P
Rob Sonic
Tech N9ne
Spank Rock

There is, and always will be awesome hip hop occurring. The people who say "they don't make it like they used to..." just aren't looking hard enough.

Hip hop has always been innovative and resourceful.

The cream will rise to the top.

dhilsabeck · Post by **dhilsabeck** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 7:06 am

more cross stitch

dredd i knight · Post by **dredd i knight** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 10:56 am

I want to see more imaginitive sampling (like Nick was saying) for starters; hip hop thrives when its got those weird juxtapositions of sounds, genre and style. Artists like Krush, Primo, Dilla, Flying Lotus, Prefuse 73, Express Rising, Harmonic 33 and Danny bBreaks are all good examples of this.

Big up Female Friend your tunes are creative; developing a great sound, keep on it!

Conversly I'd like to see more live instrumentation alongside samples, although there is a lot of this already, I think the boundaries need pushing more. (I LOVE The Roots though man!)

More textures within one tune, and more depth and texture across an album.

There's a lot of people dissing hip hop for plagarism and lack of creativity, its funny cos elsewhere in the art world, gluing various peices of other peoples work together is a bona fide artform ie: photo montage, and collage. It's just these precious "real musicians" who cant see the form and beauty and artistry inherent in that kind of endeavour.

Some of the comments here seem to me, to be coming from peeps who only know pop rap. there's so much more out there that these comments can't sound anything but ignorant. There are plenty of raps about the first black president out there.

And of course hip hop is a culture, this is well documented, and i'm not gonna get into why that is so (i started to then thought fuck it), but study its history and developement and this fact is unassailable.

@contakt321: i see what you're saying bout the artists who talk positivity being keen on getting paid more than the thug/ gangsta types, but maybe thats because they're struggling to keep afloat money wise. if i had the skills of talib or mos def i'd certainly be frustrated and grabbing for the dollars. their sales are pitiful in comparison to so many wack rappers out there *cough*soldier boy!

They deserve to make a living out of their skills and the reason they dont is that corporate america realised when NWA came out that this shit was selling more when it glamourised the ghetto for a white suburban demographic. Since then they've tried to mould and shape their artists through gangsta tinted spectacles; and if it dont fit, doesnt get on rotation on MTV etc. Can anyone remeber Yo! MTV Raps? they cancelled that show when it had the highest ratings for the channel. WTF? This was so they could start working with record companies to push the sex, drugs, guns, bitches side of the music, bigger margins. Fab 5 Feddy and Dre knew their shit and although that stuff had its place, they were into HIP HOP as a culture and had too much creative control over what was played. knowledge, revolution and creativity dont sell so well. look at the charts in every genre if you disagree...

i think hip hop will continue to reinvent itself, morph and advance, and if you have to dig for the gems so be it. I live it (in my own way), love it and always will.

PEACE.

dysanfel · Post by **dysanfel** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 7:10 pm

A great innovation would be actually conveying a intelligent and coherent message in a song that is relevant to peoples lives. Every hiphop song I hear falls into a few corny categories:

1) I am the greatest rapper ever
2) I am the greatest lover ever
3) I have more money or <insert material good> than everyone
4) I am the hardest gangsta ever
5) I am the life of the party

Please write songs that are not about the these 5 things....

I don't listen to hiphop any more because I just don't want listen to rappers talk about how great they are. I dont care.

dredd i knight · Post by **dredd i knight** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 9:26 pm

dysanfel wrote:A great innovation would be actually conveying a intelligent and coherent message in a song that is relevant to peoples lives. Every hiphop song I hear falls into a few corny categories:

1) I am the greatest rapper ever
2) I am the greatest lover ever
3) I have more money or <insert material good> than everyone
4) I am the hardest gangsta ever
5) I am the life of the party

Please write songs that are not about the these 5 things....

I don't listen to hiphop any more because I just don't want listen to rappers talk about how great they are. I dont care.

Those subjects are very prevalent in a lot of popular hip hop i agree, but like I said a little digging can reveal the diamonds amid the heaps of coal. If hip hop was REALY only about the stuff you listed there wouldn't so many people in this thread naming acts that DON'T conform to that stereotype.... what you think we're all lying?

3rdordertrauma · Post by **3rdordertrauma** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 10:55 pm

dredd i knight wrote:
dysanfel wrote:A great innovation would be actually conveying a intelligent and coherent message in a song that is relevant to peoples lives. Every hiphop song I hear falls into a few corny categories:

1) I am the greatest rapper ever
2) I am the greatest lover ever
3) I have more money or <insert material good> than everyone
4) I am the hardest gangsta ever
5) I am the life of the party

Please write songs that are not about the these 5 things....

I don't listen to hiphop any more because I just don't want listen to rappers talk about how great they are. I dont care.
Those subjects are very prevalent in a lot of popular hip hop i agree, but like I said a little digging can reveal the diamonds amid the heaps of coal. If hip hop was REALY only about the stuff you listed there wouldn't so many people in this thread naming acts that DON'T conform to that stereotype.... what you think we're all lying?

Again totally off topic... but if you could list a few of those diamonds amongst the coals then I'd be keen to have a listen. I'm sure they exist... every now and then I here some really cool shit that would be classified as hip-hop but doesn't fit that stereo type dysanfel mentioned. I too have gone from really diggin early hip-hop to really hating anything hip-hop or rap cause I too don't care about how much weed someone smokes or how much moneys they have to buy it or how many bitches they pimp in a day.

Hip-hop beats I can dig... the thuggy, arrogant, uneducated, violent and ignorant culture that encompasses the genre I can't stand.

My on topic non sarcastic contribution to the thread would be:
Drop the attitudes, master your craft and refocus on the music and story telling.

TRS80 · Post by **TRS80** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 11:21 pm

Less stupidity.

dredd i knight · Post by **dredd i knight** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 12:48 am

@3rdordertrauma (great name by the way!
ok try
master ace
balckalicious
roots manuva
ty
the aspects
edan
dilated peoples
el p
mf doom
jean grae
j live
and taskforce for intelligent lyrics and emotion.
try ugly duckling
katalyst
people under the stairs
common
john robinson
the roots
dizzy rascal
and good buddah for funky break driven party hip hop.
this is a huge generalisation, and highly subjective opinion mind, but i dont think any of the above can be accused of constant self agrandisment.
loads of others have been mentioned already so i tried to give up somethin' a little bit different.
i live in the uk, and used to live in oz, and there's a ton of hip hop from these and other places as well as the US that is still being creative.
there are also many producers who are making fine beats, and getting quality mc's to spit a verse or 2 on their tunes...
people like quantic
dj food
dj yoda
the nextmen
prefuse
rjd2
coldcut
i've never understood how hip can be so continuously condemned wholesale, as if whats on the radio and tv is actually representative of the whole culture (genre, whatever). no other music gets such a bad...rap.

ah i know; its too black and threatening right?? well thats how its always been portrayed, but no it has and always will be multi cultural. it started as music for the disenfranchised, and has turned into a corporate beast, but at every srage of its developement it has always been roundly dissed by so many, even as its fashions, language, and attitude slowly infiltrate every facet of modern society....
nutthin new though sane as jazz, same as blues, same as rock......

ah yeah and listen to burial for GREAT dubstep biznizz!

Darwinist · Post by **Darwinist** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 1:25 am

dysanfel wrote:
Please write songs that are not about the these 5 things....

I don't listen to hiphop any more because I just don't want listen to rappers talk about how great they are. I dont care.

People ARE writing songs that are not about these three things.

They just aren't deemed cool enough to get airplay.

A few examples of my all-time favorites(I´ve included lyrics links too:

Sage Francis

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8ZL33Uz8dw
Lyrics: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/s/sage ... ssist.html

Saul Williams

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HerpGwbLSM8
Lyrics: http://lyrics.astraweb.com/display/930/ ... guage.html

cLOUDDEAD

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuDHR2OY5h8
Lyrics: http://www.lyricsmania.com/lyrics/cloud ... 36141.html

Aesop Rock

video & lyrics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXAKOfk7_ho

video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd9qNrmq0bw
lyrics: http://www.justsomelyrics.com/1712920/E ... ock-Lyrics

This is just scratching the surface. I can turn you on to dozens of acts who do anything from political rhymes, abstract shit, personal reflection to humor.

Hip-Hop is just a certain delivery system of musical and lyrical ideas. Sure, it has some conventions, but what contents it delivers is wide open.

3rdordertrauma · Post by **3rdordertrauma** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 1:51 am

Thanks for the list dredd, I'll definitely check out some of the ones I didn't recognize.

I was going to go there but I won't get started on the whole disenfranchised thing.

Surreal · Post by **Surreal** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 1:52 am

All of Project Blowed.

especially Aceyalone. only slightly less especially the rest of Freestyle Fellowship. ... you know ...just listen to them.

ThrowAway · Post by **ThrowAway** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 5:18 am

Im positive someone has had to say it already in this thread but i would like to see rapper ventriloquists.

dysanfel · Post by **dysanfel** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 4:52 pm

Darwinist wrote:Hip-Hop is just a certain delivery system of musical and lyrical ideas. Sure, it has some conventions, but what contents it delivers is wide open.

Thanks for those links!

Your right, Hip-Hop is just another medium that has its own conventions as does other genres. I should probably point my dismay at the cultures that create these mindless, shallow, and consumer driven artists. I suspect the problem is that the youth that drives this culture are too immature to see that blind materialism is just another form of slavery that they cannot understand or perceive. That is unfortunate because it guarantees that individuality and creativity are products that are provided by corporations who can buy and sell 'cool'.

Hip-hop more so than other musical genres, cater to this misguided and in the end unobtainable social fragmentation by economic class. These divisions are perpetuated and reinforced to the detriment of all. I see no end in sight.

funky shit · Post by **funky shit** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 4:55 pm

Less kanye west.
Less Soulja Boy.
Less 50 Cent
Less people with their heads so far up their own anal passage.

Are we talkin hip hop / rap.

Then..
Eminems new album.
Detox???

Apart from a select few... I think hip hop in its current state should be banned.

cosmosuave · Post by **cosmosuave** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 5:45 pm

The demise of Antares Auto Tune...