Ladysmith Black Mambazo School of Music

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Kirun

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Its literally just talking in sing-song way while repetitive noises play in the background.
So, country music then, got it. You literally trade percussion breaks (rap) for a fiddle and an acoustic guitar and you've just described country music.

But, since rap is so easy and simple, link us some of your poetry or novella bro. I can't wait to see what a regular fucking Dickinson you are.
 

Airisch

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So, country music then, got it. You literally trade percussion breaks (rap) for a fiddle and an acoustic guitar and you've just described country music.

But, since rap is so easy and simple, link us some of your poetry or novella bro. I can't wait to see what a regular fucking Dickinson you are.


Public Enemies first album is 1 song.


Rap brings nothing.
 

Aldarion

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So, country music then, got it. You literally trade percussion breaks (rap) for a fiddle and an acoustic guitar and you've just described country music.

But, since rap is so easy and simple, link us some of your poetry or novella bro. I can't wait to see what a regular fucking Dickinson you are.
Dont be ridiculous. Country music has melody. They sing. You can dislike it (although that opinion would be wrong) but you can't pretend country music has the clunky, inelegant, mumble mouthed tough guy talking over repetitive electronic noises thing that defines rap.

Country musicians play instruments and sing. Rappers talk and posture. Youre just wrong on this one.
 

Kirun

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Country musicians play instruments and sing.
Is this the bar we're going to use on what makes somebody good at music? Because if that's the case, Robert Plant, Ozzy, and Roger Daltrey all didn't play (unless you count the tambourine, I guess) and those are 3 of the most famous frontmen ever.


Just talking and posturing, nothing to see here..

But yeah, rap/hip-hop is super easy and just tough guy talking over noise, it takes no talent at all. So, you should have no problem letting us listen to some of your amazing beats. Link us your Spotify, bro. I want to hear how easy it is to just "talk and posture".
 
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Phazael

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There are clearly some rappers/hip hoppers who are better than others (usually the white ones LOL), but unless you want to roll funk in there (and again Chilli Peppers were as good as anyone despite being honkies), I would put the most talented hip hop/rap person ever to exist up against the merely good of other genres any day of the week. I do think Country has slid into the shitter trying to embrace pop shit, but there are more traditional acts out there with some real skill (Dead South immediately springs to mind) though a lot of the better ones seem to have moved in the folk direction. And honestly a lot of hard rock has the same shit talent issue these days now too.

But pop is the destroyer of music genres and rap/hip hop is just the black version of it.
 

Phazael

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PS- Ozzy, Plant, and Daltry also were phenomenal writers with strong voices. That's a better barometer for greatness as a singer, I think. But again, some of the most prolific lead singers in music history were also instrumentalists (even Freddy was a great keyboardist) so there is something too that argument. It is usually a pretty good indicator of someone who worked their way up the ranks as a one man act (at least back in the day as far as Billy Joel) rather than just being plopped up front as a frontman. One area where Country used to be better, from a musical standpoint, was intricate vocal harmonies and more complicated rhythm guitar work, but as its veered into pop bullshit that's kind of fallen away.

The line between country and rock has also blurred a lot since the 90s in a lot of ways, with Rockabilly making a massive comback in both genres.
 

Kirun

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There are clearly some rappers/hip hoppers who are better than others (usually the white ones LOL), but unless you want to roll funk in there (and again Chilli Peppers were as good as anyone despite being honkies), I would put the most talented hip hop/rap person ever to exist up against the merely good of other genres any day of the week. I do think Country has slid into the shitter trying to embrace pop shit, but there are more traditional acts out there with some real skill (Dead South immediately springs to mind) though a lot of the better ones seem to have moved in the folk direction. And honestly a lot of hard rock has the same shit talent issue these days now too.

But pop is the destroyer of music genres and rap/hip hop is just the black version of it.
I'm not trying to pretend like hip-hop/rap is some heavenly genre of music. There are a veritable shitload of dogshit rappers. But that's true of any genre. And while I agree rap/hip-hop tends to be more competitive(in that there aren't many true "greats" or "classics" at any singular time compared to other genres), I just think it's comical to pretend like it's just a bunch no talent hacks "talking aggressively". To think that people like Dre, Snoop, Biggie, Tupac, Eminem (even though I personally think he's trash), Kendrick, Post Malone, etc. don't have talent? Give me a break. It's as silly as saying guys like Plant, Ozzy, and Daltry don't have talent because they didn't play a guitar.

A lot of the "lololol that shit ain't music!!" is coming from white-bread nerds on a fucking forum created via neckbeard activities. No fucking shit most of you don't like rap. But just because I don't like blues doesn't mean I can't recognize the insane levels of talent present in a B.B. King or Stevie Ray Vaughan.
 

Phazael

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To think that people like Dre, Snoop, Biggie, Tupac, Eminem (even though I personally think he's trash), Kendrick, Post Malone, etc. don't have talent? Give me a break. It's as silly as saying guys like Plant, Ozzy, and Daltry don't have talent because they didn't play a guitar.
I wanted to come back to this after taking some time to think about a reasonable response. But I think it basically comes down to your age and environment influencing your opinions on this topic. Remember the primary argument several of us are making is not about success or relative popularity within their specific genre, but specifically the amount of musical ability and knowledge required to do what they do. Lets take a relatively pedestrian rock act from the 70s or 80s with only a couple top forty charting hits. Lets say Uriah Heap for rock and The Outfield for pop, both had maybe 2-4 charting hits total in the US at their peak. Not exactly prolific examples of the peak of their genres.

Now if I was inclined, even in the age before computers made it trivial and you actually had to have 4 track recorders and mixing studios, I would have no problem recreating anything that rap artists did. Most of them post Public Enemy and Beastie Boys don't even have fucking bands and just literally play samples of better acts music. Chant a bunch of rhymes about wakanda shit to a loop of some song that fits the rhythm of the poem. Fuck, William Shatner does it on his spoken word albums (and some if it, like Common People and Has Been is actually decent in a non ironic way).

I would have to be a lot more talented to recreate shit from the two pedestrian bands I cited. I could recreate the vocals and keyboards, but I am nowhere near a good enough guitarist to do the guitar or bass parts, let alone the drum lines (at least the Uriah Heap ones like in Easy Living). And I would still be putting way more effort to achieve it than pretty much any rapper does. And even the vocals where I am strongest would probably not sound as good, because it would be like a pop song with one singer multitracking. And these are middle of the road acts. Get to the level of guys like Rush, Elton John, Eagles, Men At Work, and on and on and its not even a contest. And in ten or twenty years people will still be listening to Uriah Heap and Outfield. Almost none of the rap music will be listened to (primarily because the fan base will have mostly shot each other by then LOL), outside of a handful of truly addictive riffs that (/drumroll) were mostly written by or outright performed by white guys (Sabotage comes to mind, but gotta give the Humpty Dance and some Biz Marquee shit the nod too).

Again, this is not a talk about performance stage presence or marketability. Guys like Flavor Flave, Eminem, and Tupac are/were amazing entertainers and very charismatic. But that mostly only matters to the kind of people who want to go to a show and watch guys chant about wakanda shit for two hours. What I am arguing is specifically musicianship and adherance to musical composition structure that has been refined over two millennia at this point. Most modern music lacks the skill barrier of entry these days, but the fall off really happened around 2010 roughly. And autotune did not help any, either. As recently as Weezer, managers had been making acts skill up a bit (Weezer's manager famously made them study barbershop music to learn how to harmonize better, hence the cover of My Evaline on the blue album). Most modern music IS shit, which is why Weird fucking Al's band can cover every genre lately with little to no effort.
 

Tuco

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metal and math are the universal languages.

Its literally just talking in an aggressive or sing-song way while repetitive noises play in the background. No shit, we never liked the genre in the first place.

Rap / hip hop /whatever you want to call the shit is the musical equivalent of the kid who was already growing a mustache in elementary school, and when the teacher assigned him to write a poem, instead just down wrote a bunch of the insults he heard once that he thought sounded tough, and handed it in and called it a new kind of poetry.

Then a bunch of goddam idiots spent a couple decades pretending it was art.
Phew, smells like boomer in here.
 
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