Decline in rap quality is correlated to literacy. These rappers now don't read books,don't write, illiterate. No longer intense path b/w poetry to rap

[TheWiseWon]

Breh you're going too far left to not be wrong. You originally made an absolute statement.

I read my original statement again, and you are right. I should have hedged the statement.

 

[2 Up 2 Down]

It's not just rap it's a lot of art today. Think about how often you watch a film or TV show today and hear dialogue or argument that are ripped right from social media. We have writers who don't read, actors who don't watch films, rappers who don't listen to rap, singers who don't listen to pop/r&b, etc. A few months ago I saw an interview where Winona Ryder was depressed talking about how when she works with young actresses, none of them will watch older films (for inspiration, performance tips, etc) because the films are too long. Like...how can you be an actor but not watch movies? For writing we have an army of people who refuse to read old books because they are "too white" or too patriarchal or whatever. I'd imagine most of us read novels like 1984 or Lord Of The Flies in school. Now many schools don't require any reading.

And then you get to rap. I have a little cousin who is a Drake fan but won't listen to his earlier albums. She's never heard Take Care or NWTS because it's "old." Hell she hasn't heard Scorpion either, which came out in 2017. I just don't see how this mentality is sustainable. Younger people have ignored older shyt before...that's not new. But this shyt is on another level, given how much access they have to information.

Now I do think they can expand the scope of books they have kids read like how about adding some Zora Heale Hurston, Nella Larsen, and Langston Hughes also add speculative fiction.

But I think why kids have been much more extreme is that with social media young people are more connected with each other and they can form this bubble that reaffirms every thought they had.

 

[inndaskKy]

Like someone said, this isn't just a rap thing. Society as a whole has gotten a lot dumber and more anti-intellectual. This includes science too.

People nowadays hide behind the accomplishments of the advancement of technology. But being able to build and use advanced technology does not equal critical thinking or lofty souls.

People in academia and politics today are complete morons compared to scholars and politicians from 1850-1950.

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

I don't think that's really a problem. All music has always been derivative. Some good rock in the 1960s was ripped-off blues songs from the 1930s and 40s that ripped off folk music from even earlier.

The Animals made House of the Rising Sun a hit in 1964, after several other rock artists had already made less popular versions in the previous decade.

All of their versions were based in part on a blues version that Josh White had released back in 1942, which was also recorded by Lead Belly a few years later.

But Josh White claimed that he originally learned the song from a white hillbilly singer that he heard do it in the 1920s, and he just added additional lyrics.

There's a white Appalachian folk singer who recorded "Rising Sun Blues", the earliest recording of the song in 1933. He might have been the guy who Josh White learned it from. But he himself didn't write the song either, he said he learned it from his grandfather who might have been singing it since the 1800s.

Some music historians even believe that it is based on a folk melody that goes all the way back to the 16th or 17th centuries.


The idea of pure originality is bunk. All music derives from the music that came before it. The only question is whether you're adding and progressing and improving on what came before, or just lazy copying / regurgitation with no new contribution.

Its not about having some pure or original music its about having access to a much less shallow pool to draw inspiration from.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Its not about having some pure or original music its about having access to a much less shallow pool to draw inspiration from.

I don't think it's more shallow though. People in earlier eras only got to hear inspiration from the people they knew personally or a limited number of people on the airwaves. Even people in the 1990s were going through LPs and shyt gaining inspiration very slowly. Now it is FAR easier to hear inspiration from every country, every culture, every era. Just from population growth and technological advancement alone, there are 10x as many people making music now as there was in 1950, and probably 100x as many people getting their music an audience.

 

[mag357]

Spike Lee is from Atlanta. So I guess he is illiterate too right?

Your whole post is ignorant. And maybe this why Hip Hop went to crap because wanna be gate keepers who lacked intelligence themselves tried to dictate what was hot all while lacking knowledge on the very thing they were trying so hard to dictate.

I don't know where spike was born. But that nikka is from Brooklyn.
He went to my school.

And yes... We should have been gate keeping harder in hip hop culture. Just like we should be gate keeping in every aspect of life.

It's always the people who are lacking who wish there were no gate keepers, so they can sneak through.
NY rappers checked each other and made each other better.
If you were wack or not original... U were called out.

They let the south nikkaz run it up without calling them out because they didnt want to seem like haters.
Even though the sht they were coming with was corny, retarded, and alil fruity at times.

And look where we are now.

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

Spike Lee is from Atlanta. So I guess he is illiterate too right?

Your whole post is ignorant. And maybe this why Hip Hop went to crap because wanna be gate keepers who lacked intelligence themselves tried to dictate what was hot all while lacking knowledge on the very thing they were trying so hard to dictate.

Man, Spike Lee's from Atlanta like Michael Jordan's from Brooklyn, which is not at all

They were born there, that's it.

Spike went to Dewey High

False

 

[JustCKing]

Man, Spike Lee's from Atlanta like Michael Jordan's from Brooklyn, which is not at all

They were born there, that's it.

Spike went to Dewey High

Spike went to Morehouse in Atlanta as well. I'm sure he would say Atlanta influenced some of his work. Surely, there's a reason he chose Morehouse over say Howard.

 

[JustCKing]

I don't know where spike was born. But that nikka is from Brooklyn.
He went to my school.

And yes... We should have been gate keeping harder in hip hop culture. Just like we should be gate keeping in every aspect of life.

It's always the people who are lacking who wish there were no gate keepers, so they can sneak through.
NY rappers checked each other and made each other better.
If you were wack or not original... U were called out.

They let the south nikkaz run it up without calling them out because they didnt want to seem like haters.
Even though the sht they were coming with was corny, retarded, and alil fruity at times.

And look where we are now.

It shoukdn't be closed minded people who make blanket statements about an entire group of people vased kn the actions of some or a select few. Your posts in here read like rants from Teump supporters who paint immigrants in a bad light for political reasons.

 

[Sabretooth]

If the mainstream audience wanted bars,labels would be providing real spitters. Personally I think some of these rappers could hypothetically be decent lyricists or more expensive (storytelling etc,) but they know that's not where the money is.

The mainstream audience does not want that. Kendrick is one of the few mainstream rappers whose music sounds like he has read literary fiction. Lmfao.

 

[Art Barr]

Lets be honest, if the true history of Hip Hop was openly shared and written down and the knowledge passed around the way it should, then the likes of DJ Kool Herc would be Hip Hop national heroes. Keeping knowledge as a secret for a handful of brehs to not break bread to it to the younger generations, is what doomed it.

Can't say a thing when your gen repressed the knowledge as leverage to be better than anyone else, at the expense of Hip Hop's future and history.

Show and prove.
You are deflecting.
Any lack of anything.
in hiphop especially.. is from a lack of show and prove.

You dudes front on hip hop history.

Just when it comes to even me a lone.
Not realizing the more you deflect away from hiphop history. The more you will lose.

I am winning on a level.
that unless you at least study hiphop history. To see and know I am the protege to a legend.
You have no idea how to win.

I gather most of you are rap fans.
Maybe you got a friend.
Who think he can rap but never met no real bboy tho.
I am a real bboy.

Not some special interest rap fan.

I adore rap fans but it is a difference. Between a bboy/bgirl and a rap fan.


Art Barr

 

[Wild self]

Show and prove.
You are deflecting.
Any lack of anything.
in hiphop especially.. is from a lack of show and prove.

You dudes front on hip hop history.

Just when it comes to even me a lone.
Not realizing the more you deflect away from hiphop history. The more you will lose.

I am winning on a level.
that unless you at least study hiphop history. To see and know I am the protege to a legend.
You have no idea how to win.

I gather most of you are rap fans.
Maybe you got a friend.
Who think he can rap but never met no real bboy tho.
I am a real bboy.

Not some special interest rap fan.

I adore rap fans but it is a difference. Between a bboy/bgirl and a rap fan.


Art Barr

Start to TEACH, not to BERATE and PUT DOWN the younger generation.

 

[Art Barr]

It shoukdn't be closed minded people who make blanket statements about an entire group of people vased kn the actions of some or a select few. Your posts in here read like rants from Teump supporters who paint immigrants in a bad light for political reasons.

This is false equivalence.

Like how are you gonna compare someone speaking on hiphop. Who would speak from a place of knowledge of self to a trump supporter. Like the flawed false equivalence.

You jiggy enabler fans are a misappropriation false equivalence and narrative based lot.


Art Barr

 

[Wild self]

I don't know where spike was born. But that nikka is from Brooklyn.
He went to my school.

And yes... We should have been gate keeping harder in hip hop culture. Just like we should be gate keeping in every aspect of life.

It's always the people who are lacking who wish there were no gate keepers, so they can sneak through.
NY rappers checked each other and made each other better.
If you were wack or not original... U were called out.

They let the south nikkaz run it up without calling them out because they didnt want to seem like haters.
Even though the sht they were coming with was corny, retarded, and alil fruity at times.

And look where we are now.

The genre might as well be Ghetto Techno music. 16 bar verses go over these kids heads like it nothing.

 

[Art Barr]

Start to TEACH, not to BERATE and PUT DOWN the younger generation.

Go do the math.

You supposed to have your knowledge and understanding together first.

Show and prove.

The first problem is.
people not wanting to do the knowledge first.

They have hiphop.com

You start at the essence and build.
Simple as that.

You nikkaz think you gon fool, or flip it and bounce it. When you are not.

Ain't nobody teach me skills or my knowledge. I dug in the crate and built skills.

Then I show and proved. Till you dig in the crate and do the knowledge and build skill.
You will fail.

I built skill..did the knowledge.
To show and prove.


If you not going to show the culture respect and do the same.
You will not get props.

Simple as that.
nikkaz got film on jordan level talent. Then do not want to do the knowledge. Then think they can come outside and get props. With outdated skills. That easily show and prove.
who they are not.

Do the knowledge
Build skill.
show and prove


There is no other way.

all that other shyt is a bloviated excuse.

I am the living thing.
people have in their mind.
They want.
to do.
or be.



Art Barr


Dig in the crate
Do the knowledge
Build skill
Show and prove