I've thought about writing this for a long time. It started with a telegram post by Bronze Age Pervert. I don't follow BAP but I saw Zero HP Lovecraft mention the post in a tweet so I found the telegram and read it. I also don't follow ZHP but I'm not saying that to get ahead of anything, I don't dislike him and his "she could lose weight" bit is pretty funny. This is BAP's post:
That is poltard "take your meds schizo" rambling that I won't talk a bit about other than how reading it made me realize the animosity BAP has toward eminently black music would spread through his devotees into the rightist sphere. It has, now it's at a simmer.
I'll give a bit of a primer but I figure a lot of you have some familiarity with Hip-Hop. It's more than just music, it's a subculture of fashion, art, music and dance, but I'm only talking about the music. As the genre developed, inside baseball is its variation into East Coast and West Coast Hip-Hop. East Coast where emphasis is on hard lyricism: artists like Biggie, Jay-Z and Run The Jewels. West Coast where emphasis is on the vibe: Dr. Dre, Tyler the Creator, Anderson .Paak. Subgenres people should be familiar with conceptually are Alternative and Progressive. Alternative about deviating from mainstream sound: A Tribe Called Quest, the Roots, BROCKHAMPTON. Progressive, about incorporating whatever sounds good as complexity is developed within the form: Outkast, Kanye, Kendrick Lamar.
I think most people I see in those threads who criticize "Rap"--and some elaboration will follow--don't really know it. They haven't listened to much and what they have is the weakest examples of the genre in performers like Drake and Jack Harlow. In polite terms they call it Rap. Rap isn't wrong but it's imprecise, rapping is what the vocalist does on the track, Hip-Hop is the rap-to-and-the-beat, and the production is equally if not more important. I'm not doing a pedantic gotcha thing, if you respond to this by calling it Rap I'll know what you mean, and when I call it Hip-Hop you can mentally shortcut Rap if it's easier.
I think most of those Xers would enjoy it if they were shown its best, but there is the minority. Those who didn't originate the thought but they are its loud propagators, so BAP, who are filled with the kind of racial hate where they dislike Hip-Hop solely because of its blackness. I know they'd yeschad me calling them racist but that's not my angle. I'm not criticizing them for being racist, I'm criticizing them for allowing their supposedly great intellects to be subjugated by their racism; to be made retarded by hate as they showboat their inability to appreciate beauty. A failing never more obvious than when they inevitably cope with their flaw unrealizing by saying "No, it really is bad."
I try not to call music bad, it's too subjective. I'll happily comment to the side, like Jack Antonoff probably does all the real work in his collabs with Taylor Swift, Swift's popularity is far more memetic than musical, and/also for Olivia Rodrigo who is a stunningly obvious industry plant; Jack Harlow grew up on a horse ranch, enough said. I still won't call their work bad. I have friends who love their music, why would I want to diminish that? But if I called Swift or Rodrigo or especially Harlow, or pulling back to the albums out of pop, rock and alt-rock of the last 25 years (country ignored for obvious reasons), with few exceptions--Viva La Vida counts and it's pretty good but a lot of its strength is the title track and I like X&Y more; Toxicity is superb; In Rainbows likewise--if I called the best of those genres bad relative to Hip-Hop's best, I would be right.
The best writers of lyrics is a long list of black artists. Ed Sheeran, who seems like a right proper lad, had song of the year 2017 with Shape of You (the link is the lyrics.) It might seem unfair to compare it to Outkast's Bombs Over Baghdad as it's the song of the millennia so far, but it is fair because BOB came out about 17 years earlier, as in pre-Iraq, pre-9/11. This is also where production matters so much, the lyrics are good but made best in context of hearing them in the song. So production, the best producers are many of those same lyricists--Kanye, Jay-Z, Pharrell Williams--or they work with those black artists. Nolan's Oppenheimer was beautifully scored by Ludwig Gorranson, Gorranson broke out on the strength of his production work with Donald Glover/Childish Gambino. He could do things he couldn't anywhere else because there is no genre that allows creativity to flourish like Hip-Hop. Shit Kanye was figuring out 25 years ago dominates the sound of modern pop. I anticipate a certain cope: "Yeah, because it's 2024 and we worship blacks." There is sardonic truth in ascribing a religious reverence to some of the leftist establishment's treatment of blacks but production techniques made prominent by Hip-Hop are now in pop because it makes it better. Carly Rae Jepsen's Emotion (2015) is one of the best pop albums ever recorded and it could hardly be more white. White girl from Canada spending 25 tracks (super-deluxe + B-Side EP) singing about her broken heart. Its production techniques, the samples, the synths, yeah that's the stuff Kanye was doing over a decade before, reaching a degree of culmination in his 2008 album 808s & Heartbreak. Easily the most influential album since its release, past all the Hip-Hop it impacted, down the line we have Scooter Braun and Jepsen, we have Lorde, Lana Del Rey, Dua Lipa, Rina Sawayama, Spellling (though The Turning Wheel calls way harder to Kate Bush's The Hounds of Love), Billie Eilish and the biggest and whitest T-Swift.
The only genre with that level of willingness and brilliance in total experimentation by arena acts, aside from the artist-that-is-the-genre of Tyler Joseph's Twenty One Pilots, is electronic music. Those Frenchies dominate it, and you know what? Game recognizes game. Daft Punk working with Kanye and then Pharrell, then later coming out of their soft retirement to work with the Weeknd. Outside of France there's Ratatat and MGMT with Kid Cudi, Moby with Public Enemy, DJ Shadow with Run The Jewels, and Calvin Harris with a bunch of artists.
Funny, I never see the righties complaining about what should surely be "height-of-degeneracy" raves. Heavy light shows where white girls take molly and get fucked by strangers in bathroom stalls. What, do they see blond blue-eyed DJs and it's easy to ignore? Must be they see a white girl dancing to a good beat with a black guy rapping and their miscgenic hackles raise. Funnier still since I'm certain those guys know by heart or else have desktop folders with charts of online dating message/response rates-by-demographic just ready to slam on a /pol/ troll's slide thread.
A tangent, but it follows. I watched Demolition Man a few nights ago. I'd seen pieces over the years but never watched it start-to-finish and it's free on Sling. Sly Stallone as the classic 80s (though 1993 release) action hero cop and the fantastic Wesley Snipes as the villain. After Snipes' big plot at the opening, he and Sly are cryo-imprisoned for decades, during which their "destructive behavioral patterns" will be conditioned away. When Snipes is revived for his parole hearing and jailbreaks, he emerges in an idyllic but Huxleyan-dystopic society. The cops are totally unprepared for a man of Snipes' criminality and martial prowess. Sly is revived to stop him; action comedy ensues. A recurring joke is in the control of language, Sly's frequent profanity is met with computer chime, chastisement and fine for violating the "verbal morality statute."
Control of language is a serious problem in modern discourse. It puts on the veneer with lies and thought-terminating clichés, it makes our speech inauthentic and our way of living becomes inauthentic in turn. I don't know if I'd give the film points for directional correctness, I will give it points for the crass, man's-man-at-the-time Stallone solving all his problems with a hammer. It's that language control--inauthentic discourse--has been a problem for this country since before cinema existed. Early American political discourse had a viciousness to it: Jefferson against Adams is the famous example, where Adams was described as with "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman," while Jefferson was described as a "mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw sired by a Virginia mulatto father." (There is some contention about whether these were actually said, I believe firmly they were.)
What changed? Elite WASPs, Boston Brahman and the like. Their values, their etiquette of "modesty" and "restraint" dominated elite institutions and those values trickled down, being inculcated in the masses and where we once had politicians showing their authentic animosity toward one another, now even lefties calling Trump "fascist Drumpfler" or whatever is somehow still only the patina over authenticity. Imagine that level of candor today: Trump calling Biden a "braindead retard whose only good son is dead" and Harris a "marabou cocksucker" while they retort by calling him a "smalldicked whorefucking bankrupt wannabe wop."
It'd be great. I love boisterous and loud, the most obnoxious political characters on all sides. We know you're thinking it, be authentic and say it! Who cares about pretense? whose standards are you appealing to? Yeah, WASPs from 150 years ago. Fuck off, it's a lie, it's the most inauthentic behavior. Trump will sometimes lie in really bad and obvious ways yet his character remains wholly more authentic than anybody else in politics. That fucking is Trump, that's the man himself, and I think it's a mark of great merit, in itself. I'd think every bit the same if AOC came out being her true self. I know there's a lot of digs at her actual competence vs if she's just a mouthpiece, I think she's probably more than competent enough to be a house rep, low bar as that is. I'd love it if she said what she actually thinks, authentic, absolutely no pretense (and to be appropriately crass, in a push-up bra with a tasteful top to show the goods.)
Would this cause future trouble? Would we move even closer to President Mountain Dew Camacho? I dunno, where's the impact? You're telling me American politicians have yet more character to sell? Or do you fear politics transforming into the final show, where the people are all but entirely removed from changing who stands at the levers of real power? Well I think the evidence is pretty good Biden isn't entirely running the operations of the executive so . . . who's there when he isn't?
Pretense, decorum, expected behavior; these are arbitrary and often worthless. Note often, not worthless for being arbitrary, worthless where they only exist to delineate class. Talk more properly, dress more properly, behave more properly, again I ask whose fucking properness? The culture-progeny of the blooded aristocracy we killed out of this country 250 years ago. That's who the WASPs were. They deserve credit for the spread of meritocracy America benefited from for so long, but they deserve scorn for that etiquette pushed post-war to post-war and then inertia did the rest. Profanity is nothing, it's sounds, use it or don't. (I do hate the thankfully unsuccessful practice of naming in things like "Slutty Cookie" recipes or putting "FUCK" very large on the cover of books.) Restraint is good to a point, modesty to a point, to speak in circles, restraint and modesty are good when they are good, but they are not good in themselves. "Modesty is a virtue" as it goes but I disagree, rather as with the proper understanding of "meekness", it is not modesty that is the virtue but knowing when to be modest that is the indicator of character. Frank Lloyd Wright said "Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change." As the greatest American architect and the greatest in the world since the Imperial Hotel or Fallingwater, were he to practice "hypocritical humility" it would only serve to assuage those who correctly appraised themselves as inferior to him and lacked the character to persist. It's not like he could design every building.
Not only Wright; the most effective wielders of power in this country's history dropped decorum wherever possible. Big Johnson, back to Teddy Roosevelt, whom I particularly like in this context because as the best member of the Roosevelt family his behavior spurned the etiquette of that mighty WASP dynasty. Back to Lincoln and of course Jefferson and Adams (Adams, whose descendants swiftly forgot the lessons of their sire.) Hate these figures if you want and where appropriate, their high effectiveness as political actors is not up for debate.
So Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop is more authentic to the founding spirit of this country than any other music. I don't mean it in the Project 1619 "blacks-built-literally-everything" pseudoacademic bullshit. I mean in its content, its lyrics, its successes. These are the most American stories. So hating on a guy rapping about all the bitches he fucks? It's called bragging, it's where the eponym "Casanova" comes from. Bragging about gang violence? To the Romanophiles (guilty), you've surely heard of Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico. Odds are good Ceasar made some of that up or at least embellished to boost his image but that reinforces the point.
Not that I'm comparing Jay-Z rapping about hoes or about his life in the hood to Caesar, but a man famously talking about his wealth or his women or the horde he reduced unto the slaughter, the idea of these as in any way novel, which is necessary for saying Hip-Hop is uniquely degradative, is comical. As long as humans have told stories men have talked about rape, pillage and plunder. Thus authenticity.
Success stories are obvious. Yeah there are guys like Drake who have a negative amount of street cred but Jay-Z was selling crack, now he's worth billions and married to Beyoncé. (And second pic so you can see how little help she needs from staged shots.) There's a lot just there, the pathetic racists who would deny, or maybe really are so tragically incapable of recognizing beauty they miss that Beyoncé is one of the most beautiful women alive just as they miss the beauty of Hip-Hop.
I've talked so much about it, I should really talk about it. If you're unlearned, here's a progress in tracks.
I start with Mark Ronson's cover with Daniel Merriweather singing of the Smith's Stop Me that incorporates parts of the Supremes You Keep Me Hangin' On. This is Neo Soul, Merriweather's soulful singing with modern production techniques: synths, drum machine.
Next is Gnarls Barkley's Smiley Faces. At release, Crazy was the massive single off the album St. Elsewhere but the rest of the album had a sharp falloff in listening. As with Stop Me it's Neo Soul, but with Danger Mouse's production we're getting closer to a beat to be rapped to.
That's Madcon's Beggin. Pure Hip-Hop, not Sugarhill Gang pure, but pure. Taking The Four Seasons' Beggin' as the hook to follow into Tshawe's sing-rap verse, to Yosef's pure rap verse.
Next is the Pharcyde's Runnin' as remixed by electronic duo Philippians. The original is closer to Sugarhill Gang purity vs Madcon, in part of course because Pharcyde is old school. Their sample of Saudade Vem Correndo as the guitar riff is the big feel of the song, gets you that instant West Coast vibe. The Philippians remix preserves the sample, keeps the rapping at the front, and is an example, insofar as it's DJs remix, of Progressive Hip-Hop. Developing complexity within the form. If you haven't listened to much but you enjoy what I've listed and you're interested in more, the original is just as good but I'd say Pharcyde's Passin Me By, which is probably their most well-known track, is the next step.
Last is Kanye, Heaven and Hell. Ye starting off as usual with a sample he's put his spin on from the beginning of 20th Century Steel Band's Heaven and Hell is on Earth, and he also incorporates the refrain from the song as backing on his verse. I'd say this is pure progressive Hip-Hop, it would have been at the start of his career, but now this is just standard work for him.
Can't ignore Ye. Continued below.
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Notes -
Is this really true? I haven't heard anything in Kanye that wasn't already done in the 90s or earlier.
I can't help but feel that this perspective is, for lack of a better word, basic. Who cares about arena acts? In a previous era what you described would be called "selling out" (when is the last time you heard someone complain about that? Makes you think). I have nothing inherently against selling out, but you can't sell out and keep pretending to be avante garde and brilliant. You can make a lot of money, you can draw big crowds, but to a large extent you are painting by numbers. Perhaps on the margin you can be different, but you are largely repackaging innovations pioneered by true heads.
Kanye's sampling and genre-bending. Acts were doing these in pieces, ATCQ, De La Soul, J Dilla (Ye fav) and Outkast among them. Kanye brought everything together, he was the fusion point. College Dropout showed the sampling all across the album, Jesus Walks as the notable genre bend with Southern Gospel. Late Registration with the incorporation of a full orchestra. Graduation with its use of electronic. Daft Punk-sampling Stronger was a huge hit, but Flashing Lights is also very good and prominently features electronic and it also had several violinists play on the production. And 808s is the reason most people, directly or by-effect, know what autotune is. It's trite now, it didn't start trite.
It wasn't an appeal to popularity. For artists in most genres, when they achieve the level of success where they can do arena shows, they lock-in, their sound at that point is their sound from then-on. Multiple Hip-Hop artists have reached that level but have continued to deeply experiment as they search for new and better sound. It would be a mind-blowing difference to go from a Kanye Graduation concert to one of the concerts Kanye put on for Donda. Elsewhere, unless Taylor Swift takes a hard genre pivot into more experimental work, I doubt there will be a meaningful difference between a 1989 concert and whatever her album concert is in 2027. It's that drive and willingness to change in pursuit of greatness I find so admirable, it's part of why I love Twenty One Pilots. Through Scaled & Icy every TOP album has been a different dominant genre. There is a core sound, but take a dozen of their songs at random and there's a pretty good chance you'll find those songs belong to a dozen different genres. Hip-Hop most definitely included.
Kanye put out College Dropout eight years after Endtroducing, one of the pinnacles of plunderphonics to this very day.
Hybrid sampled Gorecki in 1995 in Finished Symphony and hit #12 in the British dance charts (just off the top of my head).
Massive attack, portishead, dj Shadow, rjd2... All this was done already ten years before Kanye was on the scene.
If it's a matter of a deep attribution of the pioneering of sound then we just fall back to Tomorrow Never Knows and A Day in the Life and Come Together and everything since 1966 is just riffing on the Beatles. Except, what about their inspirations? At what point are we just falling back to the guys who invented the piano, the guitar, the violin?
I didn't say Kanye invented it, I said "figured out," as in he figured out how to bring those techniques together in a way nobody had before him, or at least nobody since Lennon-McCartney. This is a fact, it's why everybody knows who Kanye is and the recognition falls precipitously for every artist you've named. Kanye knows them, surely loves their work, but the relationship is this: Kanye heard elements in songs he enjoyed, he put those elements in his music, and he experienced incomparably greater success than those who inspired him because he did it better than any of them. Kanye's peers and especially the young musically aspirant, heard what Kanye did and they wanted to do it too.
But you don't have to take my word for it, you can just look up all the artists who've named Kanye as their inspiration.
I'm not even talking about deep attribution. I'm just saying that Kanye didn't figure out any of the stuff you listed. Yes, there were people doing sampling with strings and electronics in the 90s. I don't know what Lennon and McCartney have to do with it, I don't think they did much sampling.
I am simply looking for an answer to the question of what exactly is his innovation, because none of the things you listed are actually his innovation.
What it sounds like you are saying is that he "figured it out" not because he actually pioneered anything but because he made it big. To which my answer is, to make it big you need to appeal to the least common denominator. I don't begrudge his success, but it's a real head-scratcher when people talk like Kanye invented sampling despite the fact that his only innovation was making it palatable for the masses. If that's what we're talking about, let's call it what it is rather than pretending he is sui generis.
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