It’s a pity it’s never really been sustained for anywhere near an album.

Apart from a few albums – The Chronic and Blazing Arrow come to mind – that’s the sad story of hip-hop.

I love how the really early days of rap had no uniform aesthetic. Basically carrying on the glam/disco tradition.

I love how the early days of rap had no 19 year-olds who wanted to beat you up for no reason at all.

ooooer

I’ve been diving into watermelon heaps this week Ambigulous…gotta bit of a rough throat, nothin’ like it to quench thirst…& goes down that reddened passage nice & easy. Hadn’t thought about the other benefits tho.

Here’s another character who has a few LPs that i’d put on to get in the holiday spirit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sjSHazjrWg&feature=related

(Cat Stevens – Peace Train – live)

Might have a Piña colada tonite. Hope it rains…:)

I like holidaying to this sometimes…gets ya loosened up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDvdBgJdEzU

(Bob Marley & the Wailers – Roots Rock Reggae)

Later on, groups like NWA were self-consciously unfashionable, wearing their hair in jheri curls that had since become passe on the east coast, but it was basically a uniform look for the whole crew.

I love how the really early days of rap had no uniform aesthetic. Basically carrying on the glam/disco tradition.

Awesome. Did anybody happen to dress like this? Bling meant something quite different at the beginning of the ’80s, it seems.

Like a lot of the best sounding tracks, that Mase one has done fuck all to the sample. It’s just all the bits of Hollywood Swingers that don’t already have vocals. Lazy perhaps, but you can hear in his voice he’s not really up for too much hard slog.

I still love the old school pre-sampling days though. I had a party in ‘99 or so where me and my boy decided to make it as 1980-block-party-authentic as we could. Decks, a TR-808, 2 old synths (Sh-09 and a Juno 6) and 2 open mics for whosoever wanted to get up. That was probably the best fun I’ve ever had playing music.

Sampling earlier hip hop tracks is an interesting phenomenon: it’s not uncommon to see a whole album now that only samples (slightly) older hip hop. It’s kind of like the music has started to eat itself after exhausting other source material. There is a lot of quotation and allusion in lyrics too, which has always been the case, but there are sometimes entire verses made up of citations of other artists, cobbled together with cliches.

Maybe so. More often they’d just sample some Run DMC I bet. I don’t really miss mine any more (co-owned with a bandmate who got it in the divorce) cos I spent a whole day making a sweeeeet sample library from it. Boring, but the result is *ahem* somewhat easier to program.

Anything I said above is perfectly fine with a sense of humour, natch!

Or just a really great flow over a really great sample:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGEGPq7XvqI

I guarantee that they did. I’d bet even the dodgy anonymous Southern producers at places like Cash Money chased them down. It’s also that it’s a disposable aesthetic: you’re not meant to listen to it for very long until the next unit arrives.

I also reckon that the Neptunes were great for about five tracks, and almost all of them are on the first album by Clipse. Timbaland has been more consistently interesting. The thing is, none of those guys are shifting units like they used to either. It may be something to do with the Bush presidency and the parlous state of the American economy.

That is an awesome Busta Rhymes track, Adrien. There are loads of his tracks that are individually very good. It’s a pity it’s never really been sustained for anywhere near an album. It’s also a pity that Mr Smith (another one of those!) decided that an uber-buffed look facilitated by steroids was a good direction to take.

A bunch of round, plump booty straining against shreds of fabric, fake cash falling from the sky, rented limos and Lexi, all the fake shit you can get on camera. The novelty clearly wore off, and people started caring about the sounds.

Wha’s wrong wi’ dat gee? Y’ gots ta get into this shit n-. It fonk on a who’ nu level, the rhymn is the bass and the bass is da treble. It’s not facile materialistic base self-gratifcation. It’s a statement.
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Gimme some more

If any of those guys ever even SAW a real TR-808, I’d be pretty surprised. But in any case, it was all about the clips I reckon. A bunch of round, plump booty straining against shreds of fabric, fake cash falling from the sky, rented limos and Lexi, all the fake shit you can get on camera. The novelty clearly wore off, and people started caring about the sounds.

Hence Timbaland, the Neptunes, and the whole rebirth of decent hip-hop production we saw circa the turn of the century.

I’m not sure those music choices really facilitate a celebratory holiday mood!

Well I considered The Pixies or maybe some the early Thames scene or even Pulp but nooo…
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I somehow kinda figured this would be a ’stayed loyal to the guitar’ type crowd. Sorry guys you missed out. Those two songs embrace an era that was kinda special to those who partook. Can’t really remember the best tracks for some reason. It’s Ebeneezer good.
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But I liked some of that other stuff too. My Bloody Valentine on acid was lots of fun. Same year as Nirvana. On acid. No I’m not an acid casualty. Really. No. Don’t listen to those people.
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Hip-Hop was downhill. Agree there. Trouble with Hip-Hop is the paradigm only changes twice. A century. Ice-T and NWA et al created a monster.
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Can’t say I ever got into Mudhoney. Love Sonic Youth. But Mudhoney? Tried. Went to see ‘em. No. But anyone remember this lot? -
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Scrummy. Not their best song sorry.