By the way, I really wasn't trying to talk shit about Kurt when I made that comment about the "Drain You" interlude. I don't actually think Kurt was a poor or ungifted guitarist. The mere fact that he wrote "Come As You Are," and played that riff while singing over it should be evidence against the argument that he was "bad." Not that it's a difficult song for an intermediate guitarist to play and sing, but it's not the kind of thing someone who's just guessing can pull off.

What I was trying to say was that when I was younger, I used to listen to that break in Drain You and wonder why so little was going on with the guitar part. I may have previously thought, "This is smoke and mirrors, and he's trying to cover for a lack of ability" ... But just because Kurt wasn't a Moore/Ranaldo-level composer — just because he probably could have never in his life cleanly pulled off "The Sprawl," — doesn't mean he was a bad guitarist.

I do think his brain wanted to do more than his fingers would allow, and that he had to practice like a madman, even after they became successful, to nail some of the parts he'd written for himself. And I say that as a musician who's done plenty of brute-force muscle memory mastery in my time. BUT, looking at the parts he wrote, the sounds and feelings he managed to convey with his riffs and his melodies, and his weird chord choices, I think he was actually one of he most effective guitarists in the history of rock.

Kind of like John Lennon. Lennon couldn't touch Harrison or McCartney in actual skill. But man, he made up for it with a truly whacked out ability to riff, with serious muscle. I think Plastic Ono Band is, for what it's worth, one of the most Nirvana-analogous albums out there. Listening to Lennon's crunching two-string riffing on that album is almost like listening to Kurt playing the blues. I would never call Lennon a virtuoso guitarist. Nobody who knows anything about him or the instrument ever would. But it would be equally stupid and unreasonable to write him off as a bad player. Same goes for Kurt. In my opinion, anyway.

But Cobain didn't write Come as you are. The Damned did.

yes. this is what Nirvana was and indeed what made Kurt's voice so unique.

fixed.

I can tell you are in fact a guitarist. only a guitarist would know things like this. I remember when I learned that riff while beginning to play guitar. easy enough. singing while playing it is another thing in of itself. I finally nailed it one day. I lot of his songs are like this. I lot of songs in general are like this. I learnt having a riff and a vocal melody are two separate things most of time while composing. thank god for home portable recording devices.

Timeline. .

New Atmosphere album is good.

There's a new Atmosphere album?

(Sigh) ... I'm trying to be interested, but I just can't get there. It's just like the rock thing. New Atmosphere is just new Atmosphere. Remember when Atmosphere was actually new? That was pretty cool.

I also passed on the most recent Aesop Rocky. Actually, I did give it a couple quick listens, but not enough to let it sink in. It's just really hard to get genuinely psyched about something like that. That new Snoop album? Cool-Aid? His supposed "return to form" (which I've discovered is industry-speak for "out of ideas") was just... aack! Blech! Why?! At least the new Dino album has some moments that make my ears and brain feel nice, and take me back a bit.

Hip-hop is necessarily evolutionary. When rap artists stagnate, or become obsolete, it's even more pathetic than when it happens to rock-type acts, and that's because rap is and always has been about keeping one foot in the past, and kicking the other straight into the future. When rap gets stuck in the present, it's a fate worse than death. Hip-hop was supposed to be a solution, an answer to rock's slow demise. Now, most of it might as well be Tom Petty. More of the same.

Though maybe I should listen to this new Atmosphere before waxing pedantic about how irrelevant I think it is. But hey, this is the Internet with a capital "I." If you can't talk shit about things you know nothing about here, then what's the goddamn point?! ;)

I'll give it a spin.

the new Atmosphere is my favorite in at least a decade.

The new Aesop Rock is even better. It's one of my favorite hip hop releases of 2016. It's probably my favorite AR album since Labor Days. You should really give it another spin.

A couple of good examples:

Aesop Rock "Rings"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npcGql9Ir6Y

Aesop Rock "Kirby"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T_KKiQiolk

and

Atmosphere "No Biggie"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vigbCk1JkvE

New PARTYNEXTDOOR is very bad.. what happened?

New Rae Sremmurd is pretty good so far.

Comes out 8/26. Same day as "Birds in the Trap", apparently.

Prima Donna EP tracklist:

1. “War Ready”
2. “Smile”
3. “Loco” feat. Kilo Kish
4. “Prima Donna” feat. A$AP Rocky
5. “Pimp Hand”
6. “Big Time”

hip hop is over 30 now, it couldn't be a music revolution for ever.

I didn't even know Vince was working on a new project. I'm excited.

http://www.thefader.com/2016/06/20/v...tory-interview

"That evening, as we listen to songs from Staples’s forthcoming Prima Donna EP, the sturdy insulated walls at Hollywood’s Record Plant Studios shake so hard that you envision the platinum plaques falling to the ground. The eyes of the ultra-professional engineers give the “great googly moogly” bulge. Even though this isn’t their first time hearing the EP, they tell Staples they haven’t heard anything like this before. It’s the truth, not idle flattery. With production from NoID, James Blake, and DJ Dahi, the six-song set starts with a rap star killing himself and concludes with him first coming to fame. You’re meant to be able to play it front-to-back or back-to-front. Either way, it’s a chaotic fusion of warped soul, distorted hooks, and extraterrestrial demonic spirituals. The tentative release date is sometime this summer."

"If trap turned self-destruction into the contemporary party soundtrack, Staples’s music details that party getting shot up, the getaway of the killers, and the retaliatory search party that sets off in pursuit. It respects both the one who got shot and the shooter. Prima Donna represents his greatest artistic leap forward: it’s a hyper-musical fusillade of sounds that could be described as psychedelic gangsta rap blues that you could play at 2 a.m. at an underground rave."

Hip hop is 40. Has to be. Doing the math... Afrika, Kurtis Blow... gotta be at least 40, maybe 42. But hey, that's quite a bit younger than punk was when Nevermind hit. Maybe there's hope.

Even if there's no hope for the bigger artists, underground rappers like Open Mike Eagle, Milo, Shabazz Palaces, Homeboy Sandman, Black Milk, etc. are still making interesting hip-hop, even if it lacks a bit of the wow factor.

Sev plz check those aesop rock vids...

i placed it at 1985 and im comfortable with my decision. lets say anything before that is proto-rap

Enjoying SremmLife 2 a lot.

Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition



1. "Downward Spiral"
2. "Tell Me What I Don't Know"
3. "Rolling Stone" (featuring Petite Noir)
4. "Really Doe" (featuring Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul & Earl Sweatshirt)
5. "Lost"
6. "Ain't It Funny"
7. "Goldust"
8. "White Lines"
9. "Pneumonia"
10. "Dance In The Water"
11. "From The Ground" (featuring Kelela)
12. "When It Rain"
13. "Today"
14. "Get Hi" (featuring B-Real)
15. "Hell For It"

Sept. 30

It all starts with slick rock for me.

everything before was disco toasting.

Wow, Kanye has overtaken MJ for most top 40 singles. :eek:

Of course, they're both below chodes like Chris Brown and Drake for some reason. But I imagine that has a lot to do with the latter two having so much of their success in the streaming era, where a "single" doesn't need to be an actual single to chart.

If every song from Thriller or Dangerous was allowed to enter the charts based on how many people listened to them, MJ would be king of the mountain for solo artists... next to Elvis, since MJ didn't release as many songs.

Also there's a caveat in that any song with a feature by the artist in question, whoever it may be, is eligible for a spot. So Drake charted for "Tuesday" (which is bullshit) and Kanye charted for "American Boy" (which makes more sense because he produced and co-wrote the track and performed half of it.... And because I'm totally biased).

The whole "system" as it stands is flawed in that it fundamentally favors artists from certain genres and certain eras. Specifically hip-hop/hop-hop related artists — who are about 100x more likely to record feature tracks than any artists from any other genre — and artists of the streaming era, who can enjoy seeing every song on an album chart as a "single," as Drake did on IFYRTITL and VIEWS, while also having those exact same figures count toward "album equivalent" figures. When those Drake songs charted, they did double duty, counting toward his official solo Billboard song record and also counting toward his album sales.

This is frustrating to me. Sure, I love Kanye (in case you guys missed that bit), but he's had plenty of chart success on his own. Scoring multiple #1 singles over multiple albums is a big deal for any artist. Nirvana never really came close to a #1 single. Led Zeppelin never had one. But in the first real decade of all around decline for album and single sales alike, Kanye West thrived in both album and single sales. That's good enough for me. I don't think he should necessarily get credit for his verse on "THat Part," because that song isn't a "Kanye West Joint" in any way, shape or form.

And don't get me started on Drake again. Goddamnmotherfucking Drake.

Anyway, here's an article from NME magazine where Mike's daughter defends Kanye against a super fucked up commenter who suggests that Kanye should be dead instead of MJ. Ms. Jackson also says the first time she heard Kanye West was when her father (a Kanye fan) played 808's & Heartbreak for her repeatedly in '08.

Somehow it really makes me happy that Michael Jackson "loved that album." I'll bet Kanye would be over the moon about it too, as MJ was definitely a massive inspiration to him overall, but perhaps moreso on 808's than any other project. Kanye's "pop singer" persona always felt like an attempt to recapture some of the singular magic of MJ's power-period, right down to the glove.

http://www.nme.com/news/kanye-west/95703

I can't help but feel that at the very least the timeline should start with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Message," if not Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" in '79/'80. Perhaps earlier.

It would be a crying shame to say rap started with Blondie's "Rapture," but that was the first track with a rap to hit #1, and that was in '81. I think '85 is a bit late. Sure, what came before may have been "proto-rap" compared to what followed, but "rap" was an established slang term by 1980 and I think that should count.

I tend to trace punk back to Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat. It was proto-punk... definitely wasn't punk-punk, but it was also punk as all fucking hell, and pretty much everything that came after is considered proper punk, from the first Stooges album on. So as far as I'm concerned, punk — real punk, not the kind of singalong Benzedrine mod stuff the Who was kicking out in '65 — started in 1968. So I'd be more inclined to trace rap back to a period before '85. I mean, Run DMC had an album out in '84, so there's that.

Anyway. Whatever.

i agree with Velvet Underground and Lou Reed being proto punk, i think Rock And Roll Animal era Lou invented the punk image and style on top of the music being so influential to later punk bands.

about rap in 85 again I'm comfortable with my decision

indeed since 1978 the original LA rappers were performing at clubs and party scene BUT i think of it as proto rap because like rob said, a lot of it waas still as much disco and funk as much as it was rap. Egyptian Lover came out in 84, and while it was a huge part of early LA rap, indeed On The Nile with Egypt, Egypt is more or less the Beatles British Invasion of LA rap, it influenced EVERYBODY... but that record still sounds as much a funk record as anything

I would grant the Message primal seminal status. That was 1982.

Blondie's "rap" sounds worse than when Theo and Cockroah tried to rap shakespeare Macbeth....


You go out at night eating cars
You eat Cadillacs Lincolns too
Mercurys and Subaru
And you don't stop, you keep on eating cars
Then when there's no more cars you go out at night
And eat up bars where the people meet
Face to face, dance cheek to cheek
One to one, man to man
Toe to toe, don't move too slow
Cause the man from Mars is through with cars
He's eating bars, yeah door to door
Wall to wall, hall to hall
He's gonna eat 'em all
Rapture, be pure, take a tour
Through the sewer, don't strain your brain
Paint a train, you'll be singing in the rain
Said don't stop to the punk rock

Yeah but The Message!

Most people clock rap back to Sugarhill Gang, but if not "Rapper's Deligh," I think The Message is as recent as I'm willing to go with it personally.

End of year I am gonna ask if yall heard Impossible Kid yet...

I will. I always try to listen to as much as I can. I've just been really busy. Haven't listened to any music in the past couple days.

It's been too bright and warm here so I haven't been in the mood for the more "lyrical" hip hop, I'll have to wait until the fall before I can bump the likes of Atmosphere.

Been playing the new Rae Sremmurd nonstop in the last few days.

The new PARTYNEXTDOOR album is his most well received album critically so far, but in my opinion it's easily his weakest. I don't get the critics at all nowadays, man..

Why does every artist under Drake's label make such subpar music? And they all do really bad commercially too, despite having support from the biggest artist in the world. Weird..

I think it would make a lot of sense if Drake really took PARTY's best songs for his own last two projects. PARTY is a talented dude, but a lot of the songs on his new one sound like a bunch of uncooked demos.

For those who didn't know, he also wrote "Work" by Rihanna and Drake (which was a #1 hit for 9 consecutive weeks).

Dude, let's not call him that. Please. Let's just not go there. He wants us to think he is the biggest artist in the world, but even if that title holds for the immediate present, it still comes with a shit ton of asterisks.

Did you read the comments in that story you posted about the statistics of VIEWS sales? From what I read, there was nobody commenting that didn't agree with the premise of the story: that Drake's actual popularity and influence have been overstuffed, by someone or something, and that the sales don't hold up to close scrutiny. Not a single person said, "No way, Drake's the best!" In fact everyone seemed to agree that they didn't know anyone who talked about the album! One comment in particular struck me... it was something along the lines of, "I've heard more people playing and talking about Chace the Rapper's Coloring Book by far."

I actually just read an atypically intersting Business Insider article about lil Chano, in which his rise was documented, and HE was more or less referred to as the biggest artist in hip hop right now.

Drake has the benefit of being a rather faceless and absolute pop "artist." He drops really safe singles that appeal to the kinds of people who buy a lot of singles. That is, non-hardcore music fans. Whatever the 2010s version of "whatever's on the radio" people would be.

Drake is like Justin Bieber and Chris Brown. He's more likely to inspire total loathing than devotion. But the songs he drops are safe and (to quote Meek Mill, which I never thought I'd do) "buttery soft" enough to appeal to the masses. Among keen eared listeners who really value the craft, he's a joke. But he's a joke who puts his grating voice on catchy shit, so even the critics can't help but approve of his singles (if not his albums).

Because I'm a very strict once-daily minimum schedule of mentioning Kanye West, allow me to use him as a comparison. I've said before that Drake has gone from being Kanye-lite to being the anti-Kanye, and I think that's more true than ever now. Take what I just wrote... Drake is (often grudgingly) approved of by the music fan equivalent of "basic bitches;" people who don't really care much about what they listen to or where it comes from, but still want it in their lives. They listen to Pandora, they like what's on the charts because it's on the charts and easily accessible, and Spotify will play it on their Hot Tracks playlist -- or whatever it's called... I dropped Spotify a few months back. But how often do you encounter someone who genuinely loves Drake? I work with a number of sickeningly young folks these days... interns, or reporters fresh from journalism school, or, worse yet, multimedia kids who basically majored in "Fucking around with MacBooks." They all like this Drake song or that Drake song, but even they think he's an absolute tool, and while they may know "Hotline Bling" and "Work," they don't know the names of his first few albums.

Enter the Kanye comparison. Kanye is hated by a lot of people, sure, but generally speaking they represent a completely different type of listener. Kanye is known as an asshole or crazy by the masses, by the "whatever's-on-the-radio" folks who like Drake songs they can't name, but those people almost always — in my experience — concede that he's a crazy talented artist. They most certainly know the names of every one of his albums dating back to 2004, and while they may not necessarily bump "FML" or "Hold My Liquor," they can sing along with pretty much every Kanye single up to 808's, before he started going anti-pop.

The effects are similar, but at opposite ends of the spectrum. Drake isn't considered a "legend" by anyone but himself. Scoring pop hits doth not a legend make. People who don't really "know" music still know Kanye, and real music fans, even the ones that hate him, acknowledge his enduring influence and skill. He may not be scoring #1 singles anymore, and his songs may not be jumping from the speakers of every high school kid with an iPhone, but he's universally respected as an artist. Drake is the opposite. He's finally got a #1 single, 7 years into his career, but it's called Fucking "One Dance" and it eats shit. Then there's "Work," a Rihanna track that as you mentioned was written by PND, and "Hotline Bling" that was outright stolen. His songs are consumed blindly by millions of fair weather fans, but he's universally known as a douche. And as Wheelchair Jimmy. And nobody thinks he's a skilled or gifted artist. The possibility doesn't even pop into people's heads, and the word "genius" is not even part of the conversation.

Drake is utterly of the moment, reflective of these unbearably stupid times we live in. Calling him the biggest artist in the world is a disservice even to other empty pop artists. He's like the Coldplay of rap. His music requires no thought or understanding, his character is utterly one dimensional and opportunistically, falsely, self-deprecating. But his songs are inoffensive, easy, mass marketed shit. He won't upset your parents (he's not black enough... amirite?), and he has so totally inserted himself into hip hop culture that even real rap fans kind of have to accept him because he's featured on this track and that track by this or that "real" rap artist.

Essentially, Drake is big because he's inevitable, not because he inspires genuine affection from fans. He has become part of the cross-promotional wind in modern music, and you can't get away from the wind. And who doesn't like a nice breeze sometimes? Nobody. But Drake's impact is just as fleeting as a passing breeze, and somehow a good deal lighter.

I think I hate Drake more than I like Kanye.
I actually wanted Eminem to release that rumored diss track to put him in his place. Eminem. Me. You know me well enough to understand how much it says about my hatred for Drake if I see fucking Eminem as the lesser of two evils.

Anyway, hopefully he just goes away. I thought his initial plan was to not rap past he age of 30... wasn't that it? Well, he's fucking 29, so if he sticks to that he's pretty much out of here. But I think that number has grown to 35 at least, if not 40, God help us. God Fucking damn him. God damn that stupid beard! God damn his stupid fucking face!! And that ridiculous racing stripe he sometimes cuts into his stupid hair. God damn the shape of his head. God damn his creepiness -- why's he checking girls' phones? That's red alert creeper behavior in the real world!

Ok I'm getting worked up.

BTW there's a new Danny Brown single.
Kanye's releasing new music with Yeszy season 4.
And there's an "I Miss the old Kanye" beer out there! But most of you probably know this because you probably check Pitchfork once a day just like I do, even though I'm loathe to admit it.

I didn't mean it as a compliment.. I, for one don't give a damn about Drake's popularity. But I'll take your word for it, maybe he isn't the biggest (as in most commercially successful) person who released music this year.

the Atmosphere is good, not great. It has a couple great songs, though.

The Aesop Rock is just great all the way thru.

Ah I see.

By the way, the Tory Lanez debut isn't as good as I wanted it to be, he "borrowed" too many ideas from the likes of good kid m.A.A.d city, Take Care and Rodeo.. to the point where he just comes across as a confused artist looking for identity.

Still waiting for y'all to listen to SremmLife 2 though.

Yeah I know you didn't. I just get overtaken by hatred when Drake comes up.