Moved the Site!

I kinda like wordpress better so now the blog can be found here:

http://rapandnonsense.wordpress.com/

Funny Picture

A friend showed me this hilarious photo



I'd buy it.

A letter to Diddy

 

Dear Sean "P. Diddy" Combs,

 

    First off I wanna say good job with Sean Jean, they make some decent clothing. With that being said, I write this letter to you asking for one simple thing: STOP MAKING MUSIC. You are the definition of an artist who doesn't know when to quit. You've have five studio albums, three of which went platinum so kudos for that, but each of them continue to do worse and worse album sales wise. I know the industry overall is getting worse with sales but in your case this is a huge indication that you need to retire. No one really minds too much when you do like Khaled and say a few words In the beginning or end. Hell you can even do a whole chorus if you want, those tend to be bearable. But as far as whole albums I don't know a single person who is ever anticipating your newest release. I didn't even see anyone care enough in my music circles to write a real review on it. I tried to listen to LTTP to give you a fair review but after hearing things like "Every track was good until you heard Diddy's voice" and "That cd sends your ears on their last trip to hell" I couldn't even bring myself to force the listen. So I can be the first, but damn sure not the only one, to admit I have gotten to a point where I won't even give your music a try.

    I am not even sure why you feel the need to make music. Maybe you love it. Maybe someone in your camp keeps lying to you and telling you the music you make is actually good, or maybe you're just bored. I know for sure It isn't the money because I know you have enough of that. Whatever it is driving you to keep making albums, find it and lock it away for a very long time. Feel free to take the Khaled approach and just scream over beats but please don't lay down your own verse. And please don't have the audacity to make another album. It's time for you to realize that you just aren't that good at it. So please just stop it. The general public thanks you.

 

Sincerely,

Everyone

 

P.S. I actually love the song Last Night so thanks for that. Everything else though, not so much.

 

 

Now who wants to help me find a way to get this to him?

Rap & Hip-Hop – Are they the same?

ALT Title; Why is the Blog Called RAP & Nonsense?

 

There are many artists and legends in the industry that have proclaimed that "Hip-Hop" is dead (Hip-Hop now referred to as HH). What does that mean though? Does it mean that the music that once held gave a voice to those who the public refused to acknowledge is now a thing of the past? Does that mean that it has changed so much that it can barely be connected to its roots? Or does it simply mean that they don't make music like they used to? In my self-proclaimed expert opinion, it means all of the above. That leaves a very pressing question in the back of my mind though – is there a difference between rap and hip-hop? Are rap artists and HH artists completely different? Is there any artist that can be considered both?

Now if you want to get technical, HH is defined as a culture and rap is just a genre of music. Both predominately embraced by members of the black community. (Hip-hop is also the name of the 76ers mascot so maybe he is the one who died that people were referring to, I won't be the one to research that but you're more than welcome to.) Now if we carry on from this point using those definitions that would mean rap may not be necessarily the same thing as HH, but in order for HH to be dead rap would have to be dead as well. This also means that while rap is alive, HH cannot be dead. So I think we can all agree while rap may not be in the same state it was in during past years, it is far from dead.

Now let's talk about the difference between a HH artist/song and a rap one. One again for consistency here are the definitions of rap and HH as it pertains to their genres:

Rap: A genre of African-American music of the 1980s and 1990s in which rhyming lyrics are chanted to a musical accompaniment; several forms of rap have emerged

Hip-Hop: A musical genre which developed alongside the hip hop culture, defined by key stylistic elements such as rapping, DJing, sampling, scratching and beatboxing.

 

Now obviously both these definitions are flawed. Rap is not just for "African-Americans" and of course has lasted longer than 20years, just to point out the obvious. Now if we ignore those parts of the definition and accept the rest, we once again see that rap is once again just one part of HH. Rap focuses more on lyrical ability with some music accompanying it while HH has an emphasis on multiple elements, rapping just being one of them. Now I'm not going to go into breakdowns of every aspect of HH because that's not what this is about.

The thing that stands out the most to me though, is how it is pointed out how there are several forms of rap that have emerged. This statement states a fact that could possibly the most overlooked aspect of rap. Many critics of the genre fail to look at all aspects of rap, just what they see on TV. The Wayne, Gucci, Flocka, Ross, etc. They rarely get a good look at the deeper minded side of the art. The Lupe, Common, Mos Def, etc. Next time you run into someone who obviously suffers from this fatal flaw of thinking, encourage them to do their research or stop their judgements all together. People are assholes though so don't be surprised when they don't take you up on that.

What about the difference between a rap artist and a HH artist? How would we classify these? That line seems extremely blurry to me, but I think a good way to do that is basing it off of the music the artist predominately makes. If its words thrown together with a catchy beat/chorus that the artists mostly makes, we can call them a rapper. If they often make tracks that have deeper meanings to them and require you to actually pay attention to them in order to understand them, then lets call them a HH artist. That's not to say a rapper can have a HH song and vise-versa, but just one out of every 10 doesn't quite cut it.

Now what all this comes down to me is that Rap and Hip-Hop are NOT the same thing. Rap is more like a subdivision under the umbrella of Hip-Hop. So why is this blog called Rap & Nonsense and not Hip-Hop & Nonsense? To put it simple…R.a.N. looks better than H.H.a.N. no me…