Does Mike Skinner count?
Nice, thanks for sharing that.
Do Loopers like Dub FX count?
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Finally someone else who remembers 3rd Bass!
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It’s the faceplate modified from a helmet Russell Crowe wore in Gladiator. Probably a replica, but
ETA: The first version was made from a plastic Darth Maul Halloween mask. (And Michael Myers’ mask in Halloween was a Captain Kirk mask painted white.)
Even more unfortunate is that Japanese as a language doesn’t lend itself well at all phonetically or otherwise to hip hop.
This is true. There’s a limited amount of syllables and infections that makes makes a traditional rap “sound” difficult (rhyming really isn’t a thing) but “nature finds a way”. There have been some damn good rap groups to come out of Japan like Dragon Ash, m-flo, desROW, and others.
I remember Dragon Ash from way back when, they had one big hit with “da yo ne” but aside from being catchy/poppy (not a criticism) they always felt more “jpop” than hip hop.
Anyway the problems are exactly as you describe. It’s just not something I can enjoy.
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Feh. Pam Ayres for the rave generation.
I’ll take a few minutes to address the article itself. Part of the problem is that it is entirely MTV centric. Rappin Rodne" and Rappin Duke may have been part of MTV’s history of white rappers but on their own dont really deserve more than one line of text. It would have been better to mention that Licensed To Ill was in part treated as a novelty record by record shops until sales started taking off.
Calling 3rd Bass, even in part, an uproarious crossover gimmick as an opening statement entirely misses the point. The Cactus did better sales than the following year’s A Tribe Called Quest debut People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm.
While MTV may have treated Informer as a white rap record, in fact it was a released as dancehall reggae record and was in fact reasonably popular with the Yardies in the 5 boroughs.
Anyway, those are my bones to pick with the article itself.
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Loved that when it came out, but people give it too much credit on the “pioneering sampling” thing. Sampling was already a thing, see also here
If you read hip hop family tree, or a number of word based history books on rap, it kid of did start out as a “punk scene” music. Took years before there was any real commercial success in the “urban radio” or records side of the business.
The article is MTV centric and as far as I know, by the time Die Antwoord came around, MTV had long since stopped being about music videos.
[quote=“anon61221983, post:20, topic:81664”]
Just think about the reactions to a song like Body Count’s Cop Killer vs. say Johnny Cash singing about similar themes. [/quote]
Curious as to which Johnny Cash song you are thinking of here?
IIRC from at least one Cash biography, he had trouble with his labels on various occasions about his songs.
Considering the number of gold and platinum records from Green Day, I’m not so sure about that…
That ship sailed long ago.
@Wanderfound would have done fine in Dallas or Austin in the 80s as well.
BTW, is your username at all related to Sly & Robbie?
Hip Hop is basically one of many bastard children of Jamaican musical traditions anyway. DJ Kool Herc, credited for being the first to loop breaks across two turntables was really just carrying on the Jamaican soundsystem tradition which also featured people talking/rhyming over instrumental versions of popular records.
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M - "Pop Muzik"1979:
The judges will have to make the call if this counts as rap.
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Which is why I said ‘helped’. Might have been more relevant if I said that it helped bring sampling to popular consciousness?
This is a good observation, but to me different. This is a proto-scene. It would have been the disco/funk/soul punk scene. It could not have been a reactionary form to a form that did not exist yet.
I wasn’t referring to commercial success. It would have been weird if that was what I meant, considering the large number of hip hop artists who have achieved platinum records and mainstream success and acceptance. By ‘popular movement’ I meant meaningful social change, which I still believe hip hop is capable of achieving.
You seem to be knowledgeable about hip hop history; I always appreciate references to any articles, books, etc that people think others should read, thanks.
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appreciate that input; @ficuswhisperer, too . never was sure what to make of the japanese-language raps on my DJ Krush albums. I like how some of them sound, but it’s like how I can’t take rapping in Spanish seriously: every word ends in an O or an A. That’s like someone saying “I’m good at crosswords” because they do the one in TV Guide.
the analogy is deep because Pickering is totally the hype-man here. and the phone call functions like a skit. he’s even holding a mic in the form of the phone.
the human experience truly is universal. people get so bent-out-of-shape about race, they can’t see the patterns.
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Holy shit! Trogdor, I love you! I used to love this song when I was in kindergarten and then it faded away into obscurity before I was old enough to think about finding out who it was. And it has a video! a good video!
The rhythm has that jamaican stutter-step in it and their MCing traditions came from the radio DJ traditions that this guy is also drawing on; as @Israel_B broke down above, these are the traditions that started rap music, so I think you made a good call. There is historical precedence for this legitimately being a rap song.
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned Edan yet. Too underground?
And of course the first and perhaps whitest white rapper. . . .
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Get the HHFT books and from there check the bibliography. The HHFT books are worth it anyway.
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