Album?

So... it's pretty telling that nobody has said a word about the new Joey Bada$$ album, All-American Bada$$, that came out like two weeks ago. In 2015, this thread was pretty stoked about B4DA$$, as forgettable in retrospect as it may ultimately have been. I think the engines that once powered this thread are failing a bit, but hopefully I'm wrong.

I've listened to a few tracks, and I just don't really hear anything particularly special or interesting.

Anyway, here's the cover or something:



It's pretty sad when there are so few hip-hop artists out there that can really hold anyone's attention. There was this album and that new Lupe Fiasco joint, and they were just GONE, almost before they arrived. Even Future's albums have failed to hold interest.

The new Kendrick is a work of art, and Frank Ocean is doing some crazy and interesting stuff, but the genre isn't really in a very good place over all right now.

Hip Hop is dying, just like rock and roll did in the early 90's

Heck, it might be.

The kids see the likes of Joey and Lupe as "dusty", "corny" and "preachy".

Not surprising. The hip hoppy crowd isn't down with the half rapping half singing shit, club friendly bangers, Mike Will production, Rihanna feature, etc.

DAMN. is my favorite Kendrick album. I don't care.

I think you're talking about "DNA."? Whatever.

I think you are correct. I confused track name and album name.

XXX.
LOVE.
DUCKWORTH.
GOD.
LOYALTY.

Are my top 5 songs on the album as of right now.

So I've spent pretty much most of this afternoon watching Nardwuar videos. Especially his more recent ones with a pretty incredible list of rap artists you guys should really check out

Kendrick
ASAP Rocky
Vince Staples
NERD
Drake with 40

It's incredible how blown away they are by his research. You can see their cynicism towards interviews be broken down as the interview goes on.

Interesting fact I learnt-It was through the Pharrell interview that Nardwuar got an interview with Jay-Z. Supposedly Pharrell was so blown away by the interview that he nagged and nagged Jay-Z to let him be interviewed by Nardwuar.

And Sev, you should totally watch the Drake one. He comes across as a really interesting guy who certainly knows his stuff. He also mentions his friendship with Kanye.

Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott, and D.R.A.M. tour this summer. Houston TX show July 15.

That will be a fucking KILLER show!

I appreciate the thought, but I just simply can't do Drake. I can't. I've seen him be cool and sort of humble and self-deprecating, and I've seen him be a total shitstain. None of it would matter if his voice didn't make me want to puncture my eardrums. I even stay away from the tracks he guests on at this point ("Fuckin' Problems"). I just can't do it.

What do you think about the following song and video, Sev?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vyzIp12DRQ

Well, I'm at work, so I had to turn that video off right quick, and get my headphones in (NSFW warnings in the future please... I pretty much live at work these days).

Anyway. It's the kind of thing I would have been into in 2004. It sounds an awful lot like Madvillain. I don't think I'm a fan of this WIKI chap, but I like Kaytranada as you know, so I'd probably put it on a playlist. But I wouldn't rock it on the reg.

Video is kinda terrible.

Pretty excited about the new Gorillaz album that comes out tomorrow.

It kinda feels like this year's Wildflower (Avalanches) ... which was basically 2014's Random Access Memories ... but I have faith in Gorillaz. Plus, Vince Staples, Danny Brown and De La Soul are involved. Sooo, yah.

I totally see the Madvillain comparsion. I don't know, I like it. *shrugs* Wiki is a pretty good MC. He's better live than on record; a very passionate and energetic performer.

Watch this when you have time, y'all. It's worth it.

He got Vince and Danny on the record because his daughter stans them! So cute and adorable of both. :)

So Humanz is not getting the kind of GREAT reviews that Plastic Beach and Demon Days did, but it's not getting reviews quite as bad as those The Fall got.

I'm not judgung yet myself. I like the tracks I've heard, especially "Ascension" and the one with Pusha T and Mavis Staples (I forget the name, don't actually own the album — yet — just streaming).

But it occurs to me that Gorillaz are less hip-hop than they are, for lack of a better word, "alternative." Having rappers on your albums doth not a hip-hop group make. I guess they're hip-hop adjacent enough to be talked about in this thread, but this isn't a DAMN.-level event for hip-hoppers.

Still, I'm giving it a warm welcome. More interesting than most of the shit out there.

Louder, noisereductions, h8kurt, and all other Kanye fans, or hip-hop/sampling appreciators who also have a social conscience... Help me out with something, friends.

This thought just dug its way into my brain today and wouldn't let go, and I'd love to hear any input from anyone regarding this matter. I also posted about this in a hip-hop forum, so I'm looking for any feedback I can get.
Here goes...

It recently occurred to me that Kanye West's sampling of "Strang Fruit" in the Yeezus track "Blood on the Leaves" might be considered deeply insensitive or even offensive to some listeners. I'm not saying I feel this way, necessarily... I'm just saying I totally understand how it could be construed this way.

"Strange Fruit," written by Abel Meeropol in protest of the lynchings of black Americans in the early 1900s and later popularized by Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, is a devastating and deadly serious song that shines a light on America's greatest shame — the lynching deaths of approximately 1,500 black Americans during the early 20th century.
** (See note at the bottom of rant.)

While "Blood on the Leaves" certainly is a powerful and dramatic song in its own right, it would not surprise me if people were offended by the chorus being used in a song that, while still dramatic, is ultimately about far more trivial matters such as relationships, marriage, divorce, and people wanting things from Kanye.

It's always been one of my favorite songs of his, and I believe he has paid a lovely tribute to the memory of Nina Simone. But ... the original son, "Strange Fruit," is one that reportedly made Billie Holiday vomit nearly every time she sang it. So I ask you, as fellow Kanye fans, was this sample used in bad taste? What do you think and why?

As you all know, I love Kanye more than Kanye loves Kanye ( :D ) so I'm not accusing him of anything. I'm just trying to stimulate a conversation, and process this thought that hit me like a hammer.

** Note: This is merely the peak period for lynchings in the U.S. They have happened throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In fact, there was even a "lynching" as recently as March of THIS YEAR. No rope was involved, but it counts, according to prosecutors of this case:
Timothy Caughman's murder: A lynching in Trump's America

hellOOOOOO

Never heard the Kanye song. I just now read the lyric. It mostly sucks, but perhaps with music the lyric has more force. On paper it's mostly about how great he is and how shitty she is. Sampling "Strange Fruit" was a very, very poor choice, both artistically and morally. If he wanted to pay tribute to Nina, he should have sampled a different track and written words about an entirely different sort of woman.

There are other problems with this song. Example:

Now you sittin' courtside, wifey on the other side
Gotta keep 'em separated, I call that apartheid

The fuck? Look up the word "apartheid" you brilliant wordsmith.

My two cents. From someone who doesn't particularly like Kanye. Or hip-hop.

Musically it's one of his most powerful songs. I doubt you'd like it but not everyone can have my impeccable taste ;)

Thanks for REPLYING btw. The rest of these goons can't be arsed apparently.

"Apartheid" may not be tasteful, but I believe it fits as a metaphor. Not a great metaphor, and it may reveal that Kanye's understanding of the word is limited, but on a basic level it works I think.

You're so hot, I want you back,
Feel like Ghandi just as he got whacked.

Just come back to me, okay?
Don't say our love is dead like MLK.

You don't know what you're doing to me.
Bitch, you're worse than slavery.

But I want you back, you're so hot
Don't be mean like that guy Pol Pot.

Bahahahahaa ok yeah point made. It's a false equivalence. Separating two people is not the same as apartheid, even if it is, technically, a form of segregation. I get you. I just think it works as a lyric and is it as dumb as those examples you came up with.

Also I've decided that as a middle class white man with a college education, I kind of have no right to judge what "Strange Fruit" means to black people. "Strange Fruit" belongs to black Americans. I may not find the juxtaposition entirely tasteful, but I don't think it matter much whether I find it tasteful or not, and I don't think I have much of a right to criticize how the lyrics are reinterpreted by a black man.

Dats just me tho.

Hey girl, you know, our love was boss
It had to end, but at what cost?
Now I feel this sense of loss
It's pretty much the holocaust

:D :D :D

You can win.

But we're joking. He was serious. I can take a lot of tastelessness in music as long the artist knows it's tasteless.

Whatever. I doubt he'll be boycotted anytime soon.

Kanye's lyrics aren't always necessarily that serious. He has a dark/warped sense of humor. He's mentioned it in a bunch of interviews as well.

:D

For some reason, people refuse to see how naturally funny he just is, and take him more seriously than they should.

I mean, at least he made a joke about his own people's history. It would've been much worse if a non-black person made that joke, to be honest.

This is what's I was getting at when I said that I didn't have a right to have a problem with his use of "Strange Fruit." It would be kind of fucked up for me to criticize or even question how a black American chooses to re-interpret that song. It doesn't belong to me.

That's my decision. Same with Apartheid, not that I had any problem with that one. But ... it's not my place to question HOW "Strange Fruit" is introduced to a new generation of music listeners. It just isn't.

And you know, in the Kanye forum where I also brought this up, I explained the song's history and a lot of people told me they had no idea where the song was from. They didn't know the history behind it. Now they do. Why? Because Kanye's music started a discussion.

Also, the response has overwhelmingly been "no this is not I bad taste" among other Kanye fans.

Eeeehhhhhhh.... *shakes hand in "ehhh" motion* ... I'm not so sure we can take his seriousness at face value. In the next song on the album he raps about heartbreak, being left by someone he loves who has made herself unavailable to him ("it's getting cold, better bring your ski clothes, I'm peaking through the key hole of the door lock by myself...") and then raps about Chewbacca.

Whether he's serious or not (sometimes he certainly is, other times clearly not, sometimes it's anyone's guess) is part of the odd dichotomy that Kanye's music presents. Do we love to hate this, or hate to love it? Or just hate it? Or just love it? Is he in on it? Is he out of it? Is he Picasso or Escobar or Paul the apostle?

The answer is 42.

MORE WORDS!!

I got an interesting take on this from my girlfriend last night. She told me her interpretation was that Kane was actually using "Strange Fruit" and juxtaposing it with materialistic and narcissistic lyrics intentionally, in an effort to show how vapid and inconsequential these things (divorce, drugs, relationship problems, alimony), are compared to what black America has been through. I've listened to the song a lot lately, and the phrase "black bodies swinging in the summer breeze" comes up more times than I remember. It kind of writhes under the surface of the song and then bubbles up, and when it does it's like a punch to the gut. You're listening to lyrics about Instagram and not being able to do cocaine, and then you hear "black bodies swinging in the summer breeze," and it snaps things back into focus.

I think "Bloood on the Leaves" might be a very deliberate compare contrast piece. I think my girlfriend was right and that the point of the song is to make the main narrative sound totally empty... to remind people of how things are and how things used to be. And as f***ed as they are now, we shouldn't forget that it was not really that long ago that these lynchings still took place frequently.

I always thought the point was to compare the suffering of celebrity to the suffering of slavery and segregation, but I think the point might be to say, "hey, I think life is so hard because I have to pay alimony... but 100 years ago I would have been swinging in the summer breeze."

Just a thought. Sorry. Not trying to be a dick, or be confrontational. Interested to see if I'm making any sense.

This is by far the most interesting conversation in this thread, and yet, y'all aren't saying shit.

Y'all are BALLS.

:fuckyou:

not concerned with Kanye's pseudo-political weaksauce. ;)

Kanye's sauce is so not weak that Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Pirchfork, Aziz Ansari, some chick from SNL, Will Toledo and I, to name just a few, have attested to the undeniablility of his genius.

Just sayin' ... y'know... that you're wrong. :D There may not be a systematic and empirical way to prove that you're wrong, but there's everything but that.

Kanye West makes great music /FACTS

Anyway shut up so people can talk about my words and stuff. And hopefully not respond too sourly to being called "BALLS." ;)

I've been blasting Future's latest and Rich Homie Quan's latest and they are great and I love how my car vibrates and I love the fucking tracks about drugs and intoxication and overuse and degeneracy.

A day late, I know, but 5 years on he's still missed.

R.I.P Adam Yauch 'MCA'

You haven't even listened to DAMN. yet have you?

I feel you though. Not big on Homie Quan, but I get in the mood for Fugure sometimes too. Usually just blast a track or two. Not an "album" artist. But whatever.

You seem to like hip-hop the way I like horror movies. Not classy horror movies like Nosferatu, but, like, Dead Alive ... or Nightbreed.

I have spun DAMN, but it doesnt boom my trunk like the hot trap hits. sorry.