[noisereductions]

I don't even know what I just walked into. But I love it.

I was never a big Stones fan. I think Sticky Fingers is great sure. But I was always a Beatles guy in the Stones/Beatles debate.

BUT my favorite Stones song "Back Street Girl." Ugh. Great song. kind of wrong, but great sounding.

Also much as y'all hate Eminem, I think "Toy Soldiers" is utterly brilliant. And I think "Rap God" is probably the finest example of his actual rapping skills.

"Hard Knock Life" is amazing - and I mostly think that Jay's carrier was horrible for that stretch. Seriously I think the IN MY LIFE or whatever trilogy is pretty much the worst era of his work. How you go from Reasonable Doubt to those three records? Everything* before and after is better albums. I mean I'd still rather hear I don't know... Streets Is Watching?

*except the R. Kelly collabs.

I also think it's stupid to even spend any brain power debating a Rolling Stone mag list of hip hop songs in 2017. I mean I grew up reading that mag, but they're so antiquated at this point who are we kidding even discussing?

[Severian]

Originally Posted by noisereductions

I don't even know what I just walked into. But I love it.

I was never a big Stones fan. I think Sticky Fingers is great sure. But I was always a Beatles guy in the Stones/Beatles debate.

Same. Definitely same. But, I'm not sure that debate really exists anymore. That was a debate for our parents' generation. The Stones have gone on to live (and limp) trough SO many different variations of the same exact phase since their early late-'69s to early-'70s golden period that they have really botched their chance at having a career comparable to that of the Beatles, who quit almost 50 years ago, after less than a decade, leaving the world with an incomparable legacy. I think for a time, especially as the Beatles were dissolving and after their breakup, the Stones had a shot at being a force of nearly equal power, but if you look at their careers as a whole, you have 7-8 years of lightning in a bottle that changed music forever and will someday be the subject of doctoral dissertations just as Shakespeare is today (the Beatles), and then you have the ultimate band that didn't know when to quit, and represents the stereotypical arena rock legacy band that can still make money touring, but hasn't released a truly good record since before we were born (the Rolling Stones.)
There is no Beatles vs. Stones except for hardcore Stones fans who think Voodoo Lounge and Bridges to Babylon are, like, classic albums (hah!). I think a good analogy for our generation would be Nirvana vs. Pearl Jam. Does anyone sit around and argue about which of those bands is better and more significant? I don't believe any sane person does, except for our version of those Stones folks... the people who genuinely think Lightning Bolt is great, and have deluded themselves into thinking that Pearl Jam is somehow too good for the dumb old modern world to properly appreciate (not true).

I think there's still a debate about who the most definitive old guy artist of the classic rock era is, but I think that debate is about The Stones vs. Bob Dylan. Both are doing covers albums 50 years after their superiors bowed out and left a permanent mark, and with respect to that debate, Dylan is better.

BUT my favorite Stones song "Back Street Girl." Ugh. Great song. kind of wrong, but great sounding.

Mine is *probably* "Play With Fire." It's a weird choice, I know, but it just hits that sweet spot. And that scene in Darjeeling Ltd. kind of cemented it for me. I also really love just a fuck ton of their music from Satanic Majesty's to Goat's Head Soup. It may sound like I'm anti-Stones, but I'm not. I'm just anti-BAD Stones; which is basically all Stones since Goat.

Originally Posted by noisereductions

Also much as y'all hate Eminem, I think "Toy Soldiers" is utterly brilliant. And I think "Rap God" is probably the finest example of his actual rapping skills.

I don't totally hate Eminem, and I definitely don't think he's a bad rapper (not that you were insinuating that I felt that way... I know you weren't). But to say he's bad at rapping is just factually and categorically untrue. He's an amazing rapper. He just chooses to rap about the **dumbest possible shit over beats that mostly sound like they came from a child's jack-in-the-box toy. But I like the beat of "Role Model," and I could probably listen to him freestyle all day (as long as I didn't have to watch him... his mannerisms really put me off), and I recently revisited "I Just Don't Give a Fuck" and "Rock Bottom"and there are some decent moments on both tracks.

(** Why people throw tantrums over Kanye's "bleached asshole" line in an otherwise soaring and vibrant song, when Eminem got away with saying the most absurdly disgusting shit about the most absurd things in the most uninteresting ways for the stupidest reasons for so long... is just absolutely beyond me.)

My main issue with Eminem, aside from his entire existence being perhaps the most perverse waste of talent in the history of mankind, is that he always tries to hit the same note. Unhinged murdery dude who has a daughter and is "not afraid" but probably shouldn't have a daughter, and should be afraid. I think a lot of people still believe he's relevant to rap, and that's just absurd. He's never really been relevant to rap culture. He was relevant to rap becoming something white people of the worst kind could appreciate. He was rap's Elvis, it's true, and he became so big standing on the backs of black America. His popularity was always a symptom of casual, culture-wide racism. He never chose to actually take any kind of stand about anything significant, and used his pulpit to make plain white t-shirts super popular.
It didn't have to be that way. He could have, I don't know, NOT rapped about mouth raping Hillary Clinton... NOT rapped about beating up women (at the best of times) and murdering them with his daughter at the worst of times.
But even that was better than when he became the Creed of rap, and developed his god complex and stopped being in on his own joke and started to legitimately milk his celebrity without irony.
ALSO, as I said before, songs like "Lose Yourself" and its malnourished conjoined twin song "Sing for the Moment" gave birth to a kind of bullshit hick-centric pattern in rap-adjacent rock that we're still dealing with today. The overly self-serious autobiographical white guy overcoming odds motif has been used by every one of the worst artists of the era, including Nickelback and Everlast and ugh... Machine Gun Kelly.
He could have been something great, but nope. And yet, people all over the world who are uncomfortable with blackness respond to the praise heaped on Kendrick Lamar by saying, "What a joke! Let me know when he can do THIS" and posting videos of Eminem rhyming "orange bill" with "ignore skill."

Kendrick Lamar is a better technical rapper than Eminem. So was Tupac. Eminem is a has-been whom many dumb white Americans somehow think is still "being."

[Severian]

Originally Posted by noisereductions

"Hard Knock Life" is amazing - and I mostly think that Jay's carrier was horrible for that stretch. Seriously I think the IN MY LIFE or whatever trilogy is pretty much the worst era of his work. How you go from Reasonable Doubt to those three records? Everything* before and after is better albums. I mean I'd still rather hear I don't know... Streets Is Watching?

*except the R. Kelly collabs.

I also think it's stupid to even spend any brain power debating a Rolling Stone mag list of hip hop songs in 2017. I mean I grew up reading that mag, but they're so antiquated at this point who are we kidding even discussing?

I basically agree. I definitely agree that "Hard Knock Life" was the absolute highlight of the In My Lifetime... era. Those albums had some moments, especially, I believe, the first one. But on the whole, they're quite shoddy. Their "moments" are few. Most of them are pretty minor moments. Except for "Hard Knock Life," which is about as perfect as radio rap got in 1998.

I used to excuse those albums, because I was just plain loyal to Jay Z — I mean, he can be so impressive at his best that it's really hard to think of him as an artist who was lacking, especially with all that kind of retroactive legendary status that became affixed to his name and brand in the late-'00s and early-2010s. But you're goddamn right... when you look at what he's capable of when he's really ON... when you look at his truly great albums (Reasonable Doubt, The Blueprint, The Black Album, American Gangster, **Watch the Throne), it's hard to forgive his earlier discretions. ESPECIALLY those R. Kelly collabs. YEESH.

** It's kind of interesting that despite the shared album credit, Watch the Throne has become, rather indesputably, a "Kanye" thing at this point. Like, when people list the Kanye albums (which many critics and bloggers and bloggers have been doing online since COMPLEX put that list together a while back), WTT is always included. Not included with an asterisk, but ranked right alongside College Dropout and MBDTF. Jay's name may have come first on the album itself, but as far as popular discourse goes, WTT is a Kanye joint.

As it really should be. Jay had some great verses on that album, but what would it have been without Kanye's curative abilities? His sense of style and flow. His humor. His own production, and his actual rapping on the tracks, which I believe goes just as hard as Jay's in most cases.

Jay tried his hand at executive producing and curating... remember that? The Baz Luhrman Great Gatsby "soundtrack?" Yeah... I don't really remember it either, except that it re-used "No Church in the Wild," a very Kanye-centric WTT song.

Hahaha!

[louder]

Ok, we all need to talk about..

B R O C K H A M P T O N

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMZZUyos1kI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_ZRRlVDVa8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__VkyJWH5ak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpu0JZxDz-w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nWYiEq4wd0

[louder]

Man, wow. I haven't felt this way about a new group since Odd Future. They are much much better than OF though.

Where the hell did these guys come from? Just wow.

Speechless.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by louder

Man, wow. I haven't felt this way about a new group since Odd Future. They are much much better than OF though.

Where the hell did these guys come from? Just wow.

Speechless.

Their name is dumb as fuck, but I'm listening to "Gold" right now and I'm impressed. Who are these guys?

What a nice, eerie, jazzy, soulful beat.

I like this shit louder.
I like it. Only about half-way into my first song, but fuck me in the ass, this shit is promising as fuck.

P.s. When are you going to pm me? After some of those messages I got from you you'll understand if I'm a little nervous about not having heard back from you. You good bro?

[Severian]

Holy shit, "HEAT" is even better!!!

[louder]

Yeah I'm fine dude, thanks! Just exams + work have been keeping me busy. I promise I will get back to you soon!

[louder]

Originally Posted by Severian

Holy shit, "HEAT" is even better!!!

YES!!

[louder]

I'm still not sure who they are. They seemed to have arrived outta nowhere and are now getting praise by all the blogs and critics.

A friend told me about them, then the next day I saw that NeedleDrop gave their album a 9/10, you know I don't really care for his opinions, but still, that score is pretty rare from him.

I haven't heard the album yet, just watched their vids on YouTube yestetday and I was pretty amazed. They've got that classic, raw, underground hip hop feel going on, but mixed with all that new, modernized shit.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by louder

I'm still not sure who they are. They seemed to have arrived outta nowhere and are now getting praise by all the blogs and critics.

A friend told me about them, then the next day I saw that NeedleDrop gave their album a 9/10, you know I don't really care for his opinions, but still, that score is pretty rare from him.

I haven't heard the album yet, just watched their vids on YouTube yestetday and I was pretty amazed. They've got that classic, raw, underground hip hop feel going on, but mixed with all that new, modernized shit.

I hate the NeedleDrop guy. He doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. He's not actually very articulate, but he goes for the "articulate, intelligent guy" shtick. A lot of what he says makes me wonder what the fuck world he's living on. Like how he said, in his ranking of Kanye albums where he placed Yeezus in LAST PLACE, that "a lot of fans and critics couldn't get behind this album because... (blah)"

Seriously, prematurely bald college dropout guy? Really? Yeezus was an album fans and critics couldn't "get behind?" Uhhh... it was ranked either the #1 or #2 album of 2013 by *literally* every major outlet that bothers listing that kind of thing. Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Spin, Pitchfork, Guardian, Time, Newsweek, and maybe hop on over to AOTY.com just to see how many others. But apparently we "couldn't get on board," and it was just "experimentation for experimentation's sake." It's not even really that experimental... it's just not easily boxed in hip-hop. And no, if actually doesn't sound anything like Death Grips, though I get why the album is conceptually linked with he band.

Fat-headed idiot.

Oh and he said DAMN. was weak, and bitched about some of the best parts. Ugh. I hate listening to him talk about shit. He gets things wrong too. Untitled mastered. wasn't a "B-sides" compilation, moron. Idiot. That's factually and categorically incorrect.

And he's not funny. To his credit though, it takes an awful lot of determination to become a nationally known "music critic" despite having no experience or education. You really have to have a lot of time to kill making YouTube videos. How *brave* that in this independent contractor "gig" economy, someone would pursue such a dream. *eyeroll*

He want everyone to think he's like a huge fan of all different genres, but I don't buy it. Listen to him talk about Swans. He's missing some pieces of that puzzle. There are gaps in his knowledge. And let's face it, the only propel who legitimately think College Dropout is the best Kanye album are this generation's "I like their early stuff" posers. The people who decide what they like and don't like based on an urge to go against popular opinion. Like the assholes who think "London Calling" isn't real Clash, because they want to be able to look down on people. Ugh!!

Fuck you, NeedleDrop guy!

[Severian]

They have one that album that came out in 2016. Check it out on Apple Music or Spotify or YouTube or whatever.

[noisereductions]

late to respond, but I actually liked the Great Gatsby soundtrack quite a bit.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by noisereductions

late to respond, but I actually liked the Great Gatsby soundtrack quite a bit.

Hmm. I guess I've never really listened to it. I was pissed that it was marketed as a rap album, so I was expecting something like American Gangster. Then I realized it was more like a score... or something? With a couple bars scattered throughout and "No Church in the Wild."

Is it worth looking into? Certainly not worth buying, but if I'm missing something let me know.

[noisereductions]

nah. More than anything I should say "I really liked it in the context of the movie".

[Severian]

Originally Posted by noisereductions

nah. More than anything I should say "I really liked it in the context of the movie".

Ah.

[louder]

New albums by Young Thug, Keef, 2 Chainz, Big Boi. Opinions, y'all?

[Rob Instigator]

need to hear these albums. I have been too busy to do so lately.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by louder

New albums by Young Thug, Keef, 2 Chainz, Big Boi. Opinions, y'all?

I'm sick of 2 Chainz. Jesus Christ.

Probably not going to listen to any of the others, except maybe Big Boi.

[Rob Instigator]

"so many bitches by the pool/ I make them hos look like my landscape"

I love 2Chainz. he is funny. Kanye? Not funny AT ALL.