The number one streamed song this summer. Can someone explain under what conditions this piece of music is relevant or acceptable? I really don't get it.
It’s music, everyone likes different types. Probably younger folk streaming it and that’s why it is the most streamed. They have more free time to dedicate to listening to music. I listened to it and thought it was bland and a bit shite. Then again I’m not the target audience for it.
The lyrics are abhorrent, but the tune and voice are appealing. I listened to plenty of songs when I was young without ever considering the lyrics. Could some of the streamers be non-english speakers so less of a concern about the lyrics?
I didn’t even clock the lyrics and I’m not listening to it again! What’s the gist?
cut and paste chorus:
Brand new Lamborghini, **** a cop car
With the pistol on my hip like I'm a cop (Yeah, yeah, yeah)
Have you ever met a real nigga rockstar?
This ain't no guitar, bitch, this a Glock (Woo)
My Glock told me to promise you gon' squeeze me (Woo)
You better let me go the day you need me (Woo)
Soon as you up me on that nigga, get to bustin' (Woo)
And if I ain't enough, go get the chop
This stuff's been around for decades. Think NWA and before.
The only difference nowadays is that the rapping is generally crap.
Those lyrics are pretty tame to be fair. Seem to have come from a ‘Write your first Gangsta Rap’ playbook. Expensive car, check. Gun as penis metaphor, check. Misogynistic language, check. Empty threat, check. 😀 it’s sad what mainstream American rap has become. Some great stuff out there and this shit is what’s popular.
It's just a song, in line with the current trends in music, certainly similar to what the young-uns in work play.
Prefer that to the Britain First lot sending Land of Hope & Weary to the top of iTunes chart (as if they ever watch the proms, or even know he words to it!)
Funnily enough we watched Get Duked on Amazon last night- it was OK
If anyone has seen it the Big Dick rap by DJ Beetroot at the start reminded me of the OPs video
RTJ were on the soundtrack- decent hip hop!
And the cast are in the new RTJ video
RTJ are great. The doc that Killer Mike did for Netflix, Trigger Warning, is a good watch too. Is that film worth a watch then?
Duke it Out is a bit of a mess, but has some good moments
Losing touch with society? I never was in touch with society. Though the ongoing (interwebs-piped) US-ification of youth-culture is something of a mixed bag
OP, the original music video had zombies and some nice outtakes with dancing zombies
This stuff’s been around for decades.
Chill bro.
It's not really that different to say, Nate Dogg or Bone Thugs n Harmony from the 90s.
It does sound extra shit though. I struggle with anything that has those hyper-autotuned vocals.
DezB will tell me off but the first half of the 90s really was a golden age for hip hop.
So I sat down with the wife and kids, watched the video then my wife pointed out Nickleback's Rockstar is also not so PC. So we watched that and finished off with Ice Cube's Good Day.
Everything is back in perspective, humanity is not lost and sense of humour found. Thanks, STW.
And you didn't even have to use your AK.
Fur-Q was a brilliant artistic, taken too soon.... 🙁
The number one streamed song this summer. Can someone explain under what conditions this piece of music is relevant or acceptable? I really don’t get it.
I don't get it too.
Is this a "cool thing" Or just a way to make more money?
Its obviously been produced to be listened through shitty phone speakers turned up to 11 as the bass below 100hz is flabby and undefined, not that I'm the target audience
Run the Jewels are brilliant though.....
This stuff has been around for Centuries, from ballads about highwaymen and pirates, to the Latin American odes to gangsters. It's all part of the folk tradition in music.
Think NWA and before.
NWA sang about life, oppression and fighting back, it has no comparison to modern gangsta rap, which is largely grown men still rapping about teenage fantasies. I guess they need the guns because women terrify them.
It's a pleasant melody, lyrics could be better
The number one streamed song this summer. Can someone explain under what conditions this piece of music is relevant or acceptable? I really don’t get it.
Old people in the fifties didn't 'get' jazz, rinse and repeat ad infinitum.
finished off with Ice Cube’s Good Day.
Love this, and only recently heard the song it was sampled from - Footsteps in the dark.
I think somebody might be getting NWA confused with Public Enemy.
my wife pointed out Nickleback’s Rockstar is also not so PC. So we watched that
I think being made to watch nickelback is grounds for divorce 🙂
Don't confuse most popular with best, defining or most influential.
What a load of shite!
Bring back Ice Cube!! Today was a good day!
Old people in the fifties didn’t ‘get’ jazz, rinse and repeat ad infinitum.
This is very true but it doesn't necessarily follow that every new development will turn out to have been as culturally significant and brilliant as Jazz. I'm sure some music from now will be looked back on with admiration but I don't think 'mumble rap' will be. I bloody hope not anyway.
It had a popular dance set to it on TikTok.
That would have boosted it’s reach.
Yeah cos no black people listen to Tupac or Biggie any more. Also, I went to a jazz festival and there was loads of black people there....
And are you suggesting it would be better to pretend that Lil Yachty is good because black people like it more than Gangstarr these days?
I don't think it's supposed to be taken any more seriously now than when it was written 12 years ago.
I'm just wondering what a bunch of middle aged middle class white people from the early 90s would make of us if they could see their successors seriously discussing the merits of NWA vs the rubbish the kids are listening to now.
NWA were responsible for gangsta rap. For that sin alone I don’t like them. When you have The Roots, Blackalicious, Gangstarr, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and Public Enemy as the alternative and NWA became the big mainstream stars. That’s all the evidence I need that popular doesn’t equal good.
It was so weird in the late 90’s and early 00’s when underground hip hop (not rap) was the catchy stuff with a positive message or political statement and ringtone rap with fake machismo was in the charts. In fact I think it’s still the same now.
Mumble, mumble, wanders off to listen to some B. Dolan, Talib Kweli and Deltron 3030.
Ooh I'd not heard B Dolan before, thanks
Hip Hop has been a bit pointless since sampling stopped. As mentioned above auto-tuned vocals sound rubbish, and too many rap songs have an R&B chorus to make it catchy for the streams.
The point about music being made specifically for phones was well made. At one point a lot of R&B was made to listen to on portable transistor radios, so has the bass mixed down really low. I always find it interesting when I realise how tech influences what music gets made.
@eulach
I'll see your dababy rockstar's paltry 182 million YT views and raise you with lil pump's 1 billion views with this lyrical masterpiece.
Run The Jewels, Sage Francis, Oddisee, plenty of decent hip-hop about.
I must say the current batch of soundcloud 'mumble rap' leaves me cold but as a white bloke knocking on towards 40 I'm probably not the target audience.
Weird thing is there is some talent in that scene under all the bone-headed nonsense, Post Malone, a man who's actual output I have zero time for, did a Nirvana covers set at the beginning of lockdown and fair play, it's good, very good.
Post Malone's finest hour
While we're hating on auto-tune can I also ask that the vocoder be taken into consideration? Cher has a lot to answer for!
How the **** can you need to be auto tuned if you are just basically speaking?
Shit but he no doubt has far more money than me .
The Hill used some great samples though. First two albums are great and then it all went a bit wrong 😕
The Cher thing was actually auto tune as well I believe. Originally it was just used to fix people singing out of key then someone realised if you turned the settings up way too high you get that weird vocoder like effect and now apparently every 'rapper'/rnb singer has to have it applied over everything.
While we’re hating on auto-tune can I also ask that the vocoder be taken into consideration? Cher has a lot to answer for!
Cher had nothing to do with the vocoder, unfortunately. But you may want to send letters of complaint to Kraftwerk, Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder, among others. And Zapp & Roger, obviously.