Opinions on (C)RAP music.

For me it's like jazz, ranges from the unlistenable to the excellent. I'm more of a hip-hop fan than rap but the line between them is blurred.

There was a youth down the street used to play the worst rap you've ever heard with his window wide open but he's moved on since. Or someone murdered him. Whatever.

Alan and Macca sum it up simply and well. Like most if not all music there is genuinely excellent stuf and on the other hand some stuf that is absolutely awful in every respect, musically, rhythmically, lyrically, I've heard both.

Some of the jazz inspired tracks with conscious/spiritual and deeper, imaginative lyrical content can be very inspiring and great pieces of music in my experience.

I'm not one for the banal, big dikk, bad boy rap stuf BUT I cant deny that I've heard some of those that have been so rhythmic, that I've found them unbelievably infectious Biggie The notorious B.I.G here for instance - now that boy could sit on a rhythm,

and then MOP here is another example

I like the old stuff, the lyrics have to be on point and I like it jazzy.





Or it has to be banging like the MOP track up thread.

Meh - take it or leave it myself

I went to south central LA once. By mistake. Nothing was going on though, didn't seem to be anything like it is the in the films.

I'm with you Alan, can't stand it, the same goes for all this techno beat stuff which comes in lots of different names, all sounds the same - SHITE

Hope you can understand the meaning of my post, I'm not a fan 

Listened to a fair amount of (actual) rap music back when I was a youth. My mates were a lot more into it than myself to be fair. Late 80's to early 00's there was actually a lot of listenable-to stuff produced.

I rarely listen to any these days but from what little I have heard it is simply abysmal. Incoherent mumbling about the same money driven and material objects as well as how they're going to kill you. Even though none of them would say boo to a grandma in all honesty. Too worried about chipping their diamond teeth....

Unlike the 90's when most of them actually were killing eachother, but that's another story. At least it gave rapping about it some substance and context I guess.

Anyway, as others have mentioned, Notorious BIG, Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Dr Dre as well as N.W.A along with some lighter stuff from the likes of Jurassic 5 among others is actually very good. If you don't like the 'sound' (beats and rhyming generally) then you won't like any of it, that's the sound of the genre.

I will single out Dr Dre - "2001" as possibly the most well produced album of all time however, not just in hip-hop/rap, but I mean the lot.

Makes Steely Dan and Dire Straits sound like they were produced on a children's Casio keyboard..... No really, his production skills are unmatched bar none.


As for the "Techno" stuff.... Well there's about 10 genres in 1 word there. Then there are many subgenres after that. Like most genres (and I don't think I speak out if turn here saying most have barely scratched the surface) there is good and also utter crap. If you delve a little into it you would not be of the opinion that it "all sounds the same", it simply doesn't. If you mean the completely commercial stuff you might hear on a "dance/electronic" radio station or if you type in "techno" in Google/YouTube, then yes, you will hear a load of predictable tripe.

I mean I'd be happy to point people in the right direction (been listening to and collecting for 25 years really!) but I seriously doubt there is the appetite for any of my ramblings on the "electronica" genre here!

If there is do let me know!

Optical, I'm partial to a bit of techno, Mills, May and Saunderson. Mills live at the liquid rooms is an all time fave.

Of course you have to experience it live to really get it. It ain't the same on the hifi...