my kind of rap

 

Noise, energy, blare, blast - and voice and words as just a joyous shout of self-assertion 

What I've less interest in: lyrical rumination, inwardness, reflection

What I've no interest in: didacticism, messages, uplift 

I like tracks that are like engines with the foot on the gas... unflagging... jets of steam shooting out from underneath

The kind of rap I like is in fact rap where the rapping is not that important as semantic content, instead it's all about the the sheer pumping flow-motion of it. Another form of rhythmic thrust dovetailed with the track .... the voice completely merged with the dynamo of the beat....  an adjunct to or constituent element of the groove.

I suppose human beatboxing would be the ultimate extension of this idea, but - fun as it is - it's a step too far beyond the semantic into purely rhythmatized vocalism. 

What thrills (more on this below) is a dance between sense and nonsense, a battle between lyrical meaning and the demands of rhythm.

Okay, now this next example does have great writing but what matters is the swing and unflagging pump-action of Rakim.

But in case you think it's all old skool, stuff from three decades ago

That tune contains within it the "engine" / foot-on-the-accelerator idea.

Now this one - it's a "Loose" for 21st Century

I have no idea what Kanye is on about here - what gets me is the sheer aural thuggery, it hits me like Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll, Pt 2"

Languid is fine so long as it's pure feline sass  - again, the words play their part but above all it's the grain and tone of his voice that makes this seductive

This now forgotten fellow was my early Platonic ideal of rap - "annihilating" sense in the cyclotron of rhythm madness

I wonder why Mantronik didn't just invite T. La Rock to be the MC in Mantronix? 

(MC Tee is a sweet presence in the sound, but he's overmatched)

"Push It" belongs in this company but my fave Salt N' Pepa is this:

Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Skinny Boys...  some Public Enemy moments...

Latterday exponents: Onyx, DMX, Lil Jon 

For sure, the writing-as-writing is often great - DMX especially, LL and Beasties too, Chuck D obviously

But primarily it's about energy and vocal force and command 

I feel that whenever you have to concentrate  - when there's wordplay, allusion, meta-reference - or even where there's picture-lyrics that appeal to your visual and imaginative faculties.... this is detracting from the pure musicality, the insistence of rhythm.

I'm with Nietzsche here: his distaste for the Italian style of opera in which musicality is distorted by and suborned to the requirements of the libretto - the result being “semimusical declamation” from a “singer who speaks more than he sings” and appeals to “the listener who desires to hear the words above the music” 

(My rap version of this would be going to see El-P (supporting Cannibal Ox) and finding the too-many-words thing really aggravating - and even more so the way that fans in the audience would rap along to the too-many-words that they'd learned by heart, all of them). 

Against this unmusicality, Nietzsche exalted the folk song, where the primordial incantational force of melody and rhythm overrides the text:

 “The continuously generating melody scatters image sparks all around, which in their variegation, their abrupt change, their mad precipitation, manifest a power quite unknown to the epic and its steady flow.” 

This might seem a paradoxical expectation of rap, which is nothing if not speak-sing.... but I guess I'm saying the "sing" - rhythmelody - and other non-semantic vocal aspects (grain, intonation, etc), these are more important than the "speak" (meaning communication).

My favorite rappers makes me glaze out, dip in and out of lyrical-focus, catch words here and there

Just like the Rolling Stones, like the Fall -  like most great rock music in fact

The golden rule with pop and rock overall is that lyrical sense is fairly low down on the list of virtues...  it's not absent, it doesn't contribute nothing to the pleasure and power, but it's far from the be all and end all.

You can have great pop and rock with lousy words

But no lyrical cleverness or poeticism can salvage music that is sparkless. 

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The ad libs era of recent trap was a massive re-irruption of exactly-what-I-like - vocal noise, non-semantic energy-bursts, voice-as-logo, onomatopeia, voice FX, gimmicks - purely rhythmatized speech and non-speech - made all the more delirious through being filtered through Auto-Tune and other processing technologies. 

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Talking about folkmelody, image sparks and mad precipitation, Nietzsche would have loved these surely