Explain then why Hopsin deserves respect as the worst "Fake deep" Conscious Rap artist ever. That shyt doesn't deserve one finger of could be turned into a dap.
Surface level can also be relatable to your demographic, if they all happen to have a reading comprehension lower than a middle school, Bobby Hill-esque fukkboy IQ range. Conscious Rap artists shouldn't be "surface level" leave that Dora the Explorer shyt the fukk out of here.
Give us the "Iceberg" level implications of the issue at hand, we're mostly adults now.
It's like what Chris Rock said on Native Americans not being featured at their own "events" always misrepresented everywhere:
"That's not Pocahontas, that's Jennifer Lopez! "
The more specific and resourceful you are with the knowledge, the better a writer, and more realistic you become. It also has to make logical, cohesive sense line to line, almost as if making a foolproof argument.
There's no excuse for "smokescreen bullshytting" given nowadays everyone can find videos dating in the span of your entire career, using your own hypocrisy against you - to your obvious attempts to manipulate the masses.
In the context of the album its also the point where some of his friends become "bad kids". Kendrick later writes from the POV of one of these bad kids on "Sing About Me" about where his life went after he made certain choices.
"My plans rather vindictive
Everybody's a victim in my eyes
When I ride it's a murderous rhythm
And outside became pitch black A demon glued to my back whispering, "Get em"
I got em, and I ain't give a fukk
That same mentality that told my brother not to duck
In actuality it's a trip how we trip off of colors I wonder if I'll ever discover
A passion like you and recover
The life that I knew as a young'n
In pajamas and Dun-ta-duns"
The album is about the "good kid" watching his day ones get sucked into the omnipresent cycle of violence and poverty in Compton.
It's also about Kendrick teetering on the brink between "good" and "bad" which is what my comment that you quoted is referencing. Some of his friends are banging and sometimes he's involved in certain situations by still associating with them (i.e. "Art of Peer Pressure").
The way he phrases some of his lines though he suggests that he was in a little deeper than mere association which imo is a clear device to sell the album's concept. He's a West Coast rapper from LA which in mainstream terms is the home of gangsta rap. He chooses to blur the narrative a little bit to give himself more license to tap into the voyeuristic suburban market who wants their rappers to have street credibility. He may be speaking to a real mentality that some of his friends had with lines like "fukk you shooting for if you ain't walking up you fukking punk?/Picking up the fukking pump, picking off you suckers..." but he's also throwing a bone to the folks who want gangsta theatre out of every rapper from the hood.
I was there for that and black people started that.
"Backpack" rappers used to be "savages" and upstarts. Cacs took over due to graf and Rawkus being owned by Rupert Murdoch's son.
from what Im reading(starting from my first post in here) its people like Poiter and Fruitofthevale that are right and making sense
ya'll(and this may not be the case for you) are being obtuse to defend these rappers, ya'll like that this term can be applied to(Joey, Cole, Krit,etc)
Where did I imply he's not qualified to talk about it? You don't need a qualification to express your opinion or perspective, but I personally believe certain perspectives are inherently shytty, especially when it's literally Marxist rhetoric cooked up by socialists.
I believe anyone can talk about anything, just be prepared for what people have to say in response.
from what Im reading(starting from my first post in here) its people like Poiter and Fruitofthevale that are right and making sense
ya'll(and this may not be the case for you) are being obtuse to defend these rappers, ya'll like that this term can be applied to(Joey, Cole, Krit,etc)
In some ways yeah, I think there's a certain element of Kendrick validating his street credibility on GKMC in more explicit ways that he didn't do on Section 80. This partly has to do with GKMC being a much more intentionally theatrical album (plot driving interludes, continuous narrative) which he tries to accomplish by writing from the POV of his younger self without much reflection in order to allow the youth mentality to come across. He frames certain issues in the way that his younger self would see them which is the context of lines like "picking off you suckas".
"Ronald Reagan Era" is the only song on the entire s80 album where he uses a similar device to "Maad City" but he's also much more clear with spelling out his own perspective:
Compton crips/pirus/eses ain't nothing to fukk with
but they fukk with me and bytch I love it
Let's hit the county buildin', gotta cash my check
Spend it all on a 40-ounce to the neck and In retrospect I remember December being the hottest
Squad cars, neighborhood wars and stolen Mazdas
I tell you mothafukkas that life is full of hydraulics
Ups and downs, get a 64, better know how to drive it
I'm drivin' on E with no license or registration
Heart racin', racin' past Johnny because he's racist 1987, the children of Ronald Reagan raked the leaves off
Your front porch with a machine blowtorch (I'm really out here, my nikka)
He blowin' on stress, hopin' to ease the stress (Like, really out here)
He copping some blow, hopin' that it can stretch
Newborn massacre, hopping out the passenger
With calendars, cause your date's comin'
Run him down and then he gun him down, I'm hopin' that you fast enough
Even the legs of Michael Johnson don't mean nothin', because
Compton Crip nikkas ain't nothing to fukk with...
Kendrick starts the 2nd verse off from a younger point of view which is established in the 1st verse. He frames his own youthful indiscretions as being in the context of the gang wars that were happening in Compton at the same time. He then switches the POV to "the children of Ronald Reagan" which Ab Soul personifies on the adlib ("I'm really out here"). At the end of the verse Kendrick switches back to his own POV to juxtapose the "newborn massacre" with his own two cents ("I'm hoping that you fast enough").
Kendrick gives a clear perspective on how he sees the violence around him: he empathizes with both the killers and their victims as they are both children of the Reagan era. He paints himself as being a neutral witness to gang culture who is respected as such ("but they fukk with me...") as opposed to an active participant. He doesn't pick sides in the war even if the people from his turf do.
"Maad City" is almost the opposite of what he expressed in "Ronald Reagan Era" down to the hook.
"If pirus and crips all got along
They'd prolly gun me down by the end of the song
It seem like the whole city go against me..."
Again, the POV on the song is clearly his younger self. In that context, him talking about getting checked for his affiliation and lines like "pick you suckas off" make more sense because at the time he was associating with friends who were deeper in it. Lowkey though, throughout GKMC and especially on Maad City he intentionally doesnt label himself neutral. He paints himself as being on the verge of picking up a pistol which he never portrayed on Section80.
On the other hand, on songs like "Average Joe" on Overly Dedicated he actually speaks on that:
"With that being said, each one of their rivals
Was aiming something at my head, I needed survival
Got jumped, got jacked, shot at, shot back
And I don't even push a line, I'm just tryna push these rhymes
In the midst of staying neutral and discrete
My mama said you judged by the company you keep
But what you can consider, is that if it goes down
They'll kill you if you kill me, it gets deep nikka"
the rest of the song goes into the central themes of GKMC but almost feels a little more personal because he writes the entire song from his own POV... I think the multiple POV writing style he embraced on GKMC sometimes detracts from the potency of his own story.
In some ways yeah, I think there's a certain element of Kendrick validating his street credibility on GKMC in more explicit ways that he didn't do on Section 80. This partly has to do with GKMC being a much more intentionally theatrical album (plot driving interludes, continuous narrative) which he tries to accomplish by writing from the POV of his younger self without much reflection in order to allow the youth mentality to come across. He frames certain issues in the way that his younger self would see them which is the context of lines like "picking off you suckas".
"Ronald Reagan Era" is the only song on the entire s80 album where he uses a similar device to "Maad City" but he's also much more clear with spelling out his own perspective:
[spoiler="lyrics]Compton crips/pirus/eses ain't nothing to fukk with
but they fukk with me and bytch I love it
Let's hit the county buildin', gotta cash my check
Spend it all on a 40-ounce to the neck and In retrospect I remember December being the hottest
Squad cars, neighborhood wars and stolen Mazdas
I tell you mothafukkas that life is full of hydraulics
Ups and downs, get a 64, better know how to drive it
I'm drivin' on E with no license or registration
Heart racin', racin' past Johnny because he's racist 1987, the children of Ronald Reagan raked the leaves off
Your front porch with a machine blowtorch (I'm really out here, my nikka)
He blowin' on stress, hopin' to ease the stress (Like, really out here)
He copping some blow, hopin' that it can stretch
Newborn massacre, hopping out the passenger
With calendars, cause your date's comin'
Run him down and then he gun him down, I'm hopin' that you fast enough
Even the legs of Michael Johnson don't mean nothin', because
Compton Crip nikkas ain't nothing to fukk with...[/spoiler]
Kendrick starts the 2nd verse off from a younger point of view which is established in the 1st verse. He frames his own youthful indiscretions as being in the context of the gang wars that were happening in Compton at the same time. He then switches the POV to "the children of Ronald Reagan" which Ab Soul personifies on the adlib ("I'm really out here"). At the end of the verse Kendrick switches back to his own POV to juxtapose the "newborn massacre" with his own two cents ("I'm hoping that you fast enough").
Kendrick gives a clear perspective on how he sees the violence around him: he empathizes with both the killers and their victims as they are both children of the Reagan era. He paints himself as being a neutral witness to gang culture who is respected as such ("but they fukk with me...") as opposed to an active participant. He doesn't pick sides in the war even if the people from his turf do.
"Maad City" is almost the opposite of what he expressed in "Ronald Reagan Era" down to the hook.
"If pirus and crips all got along
They'd prolly gun me down by the end of the song
It seem like the whole city go against me..."
Again, the POV on the song is clearly his younger self. In that context, him talking about getting checked for his affiliation and lines like "pick you suckas off" make more sense because at the time he was associating with friends who were deeper in it. Lowkey though, throughout GKMC and especially on Maad City he intentionally doesnt label himself neutral. He paints himself as being on the verge of picking up a pistol which he never portrayed on Section80.
You are much bigger fan of Kendrick than I could ever hope to be breh.
I don't get the connection to how this was done for suburban voyeuristic validation, but it is a very intersesting comparison nonetheless.
You are much bigger fan of Kendrick than I could ever hope to be breh.
I don't get the connection to how this was done for suburban voyeuristic validation, but it is a very intersesting comparison nonetheless.
I definitely was a bigger fan of his in the early 2010s, OD and S80 are my favorite projects from him by far.
As far as the connection to the voyeurism, I think at times the 3rd person storytelling he increasingly made use of on GKMC and his subsequent work served as a device to insert gangsta rap content into his albums to the point where he himself isn't held entirely accountable for the content because it's really someone else's POV.
And at the same time, he uses the other character POVs to validate his own POV ("Sing About Me", "I", etc.) which comes across as somewhat problematic when his characters sometimes don't seem to really be speaking for themselves.
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Bobby Hill-esque fukkboy IQ range. Conscious Rap artists shouldn't be "surface level" leave that Dora the Explorer shyt the fukk out of here.
"
your obvious attempts to manipulate the masses.
pretty much.
