61–70 of 128 posts
Tangential, but I think the streaming services are preserving the story just fine on their own. No matter how many times I skip or dislike a hip hop song, they all keep shoving them down my throat with their recommendation engines. Very frustrating. /rant
I've thought about this quite a bit. I'm a big fan of the record label Bear Family, a German label that specializes in releasing boxsets from R&B/Rock&Roll/Country artists from the 20's-70's. Want to hear every song The Carter Family ever recorded in their original incarnation? They have a 12 CD boxset for you! They generally do this be acquiring the original master tapes from the labels, which often include a lot of…
> Unfortunately, most of this material was only released in unofficial forms, often on low-quality MP3s and often with some random dude shouting over the intro. If that's the art form as it was experienced, do archivists need to make a "better" version?
For historical purposes, sure, have that as an option, but lil wayne's mixtapes are not better off for the random DJs or website advertisements yelled over them. That's not the music he made.
Tangential, but I think the streaming services are preserving the story just fine on their own. No matter how many times I skip or dislike a hip hop song, they all keep shoving them down my throat with their recommendation engines. Very frustrating. /rant
If you don't like the genre, then you are absolutely in no position to comment usefully or intelligently on whether it is being preserved properly.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I believe when it all became known about what Afrika Bambaataa had been up to the whole foundations of hip hop as a credible art form fell away, and it has been in decline ever since. Maybe the offshoots are more commercially popular than ever but that serious audience seems to have given up on the core product.
Given that a lot of 80s-90s hip hop music the musicians claimed to perpetrate murder, drug crime and sexual exploitation - would you expect the audience to much care?
The example that sticks in my head: if I, a black guy, were to get into Irish step-dancing, that's great. I would never, though, suggest that it's "not just Irish, it's universal." I'd respect where it comes from.
Yet we have ALL heard the well-meaning, but ultimately a bit harmful, exact same thing said about Hip-hop.
I think this ends up having real life consequences; see e.g. the rise of (Rap)Genius.com. They got big on the back of rap lyrics without much respecting the artists AT ALL.
Also related, I LOVE MF DOOM. Collecting his discography is a fun little task, considering he appears on various albums using one of many monikers.
Tangential, but I think the streaming services are preserving the story just fine on their own. No matter how many times I skip or dislike a hip hop song, they all keep shoving them down my throat with their recommendation engines. Very frustrating. /rant
So you don't pay a fair price for your music consumption and still complain about the quality of service?
A big thing in the background of all of this; America, perhaps the world, myself included, really hasn't come to properly reckon with the extent to which we all subconsciously think of Black American art (including hip-hop) as something to be "taken" or "used" or generally not culturally owned by Black folks, usually Americans. The example that sticks in my head: if I, a black guy, were to get into Irish step-dancing…
A big thing in the background of all of this; America, perhaps the world, myself included, really hasn't come to properly reckon with the extent to which we all subconsciously think of Black American art (including hip-hop) as something to be "taken" or "used" or generally not culturally owned by Black folks, usually Americans. The example that sticks in my head: if I, a black guy, were to get into Irish step-dancing…
If I was a hip hop artist, there would be no bigger insult than assigning ownership of my art to a specific culture. If it's really so great, it should speak to everyone. If this isn't true of Irish step dancing, it's because it's a relatively trivial art form. You can trivialize hip hop too if you want, but it's not necessarily doing hip hop artists any favors.