brrr...

 

@Elisea Yep, true but rare and when it happens (that an unknown band with an unknown track hits the top of the charts) it is usually orchestrated by the pluggers in cahoots with the radiostations and programmers. NOTHING, I repeat; NO-THING will hit the top of any
chart if 'they' don't want it to. Rammstein is enkle deep in it. Their entire catalog is published by, ta-taa; Universal. And regardless of their
honest and true intensions they sold out. BIG TIME. The tripple X thing 4 example. No offense, I LOVE RAMMSTEIN.
I was talking to an A&R friend of mine from LA a few weeks back and we were talking about the conditions of being signed today by one of the big eight, and he was prety clear about it; 'if we don't see a six figure return through sales or touring within six months, we're not game.
End of line. Thats why we see the biggies like Paradigm and others turn to young DJ's, picking them off Soundcloud and setting them up with huge festival tours in the US and some in Europe. Which then creates an audience of probable buyers and following. It's only math, no music.

 

Last edited: Jun 25, 2017

Not sure if you mean it positive or negative. In the 80ies rap mostly belonged to the break dance movement and was very exotic in europe. Many kids found it cool. Me too. RunDMC and Beastie Boys were really successful. But then something changed, because in the 90ies some artists began to let guest rappers participate in normal pop music. This was the moment when it lost every credibility. It just got anoying especially with this stupid bling-bling attitude. Today i can't stand it anymore as long as it doesn't stand for itself.

If you mean poetry and music you should mention Anne Clark. I once met her on a festival gig and she was pretty nice and seemed grounded. As a teenager i translated all of her songs and loved all those images and scenes she transported in her songs.

Here is my favourite: It doesn't belong to this thread, because i really loved it (and still do). I would say it had such an impact on my development that i later started writing just because of that. And Homecoming created lots ob pictures in my mind (mostly very erotic) wich never faded away or lost their power. Not rap - but very poetic!

 

I wish...Some artists manage to pull it, often it's oldschoolers. Maybe we got too technical in the rapping, the flow is everything now, content and sometimes rhymes have become secondary. And you gotta remember that this music was a ghetto music, not something you did thinking "I'm gonna end up millionaire, and be on the top of all charts", even if in the end it happened for some. The content reflected that too, the world was very different 20 to 30 years ago, the hopes and dreams something else.
And the music.... You know some kids really impress me with what they come up with, I think about back then with our samples and our mpcs, 90% of the job as far as production was concerned consisted in vinyl digging, chopping, laying out a beat, sometimes a bass line...and, well, that's it.
Productions were often weak, but still very raw, and they incorporated the spirit and musicality of the samples that were chosen, as well as whatever groove you came up with. It was a very efficient formula, but also a reflexion of a spirit. Music made with samples, synths that no one wanted anymore (Dre first solo album : the moog front and center : not an esthetical choice, those were easy to find and cheap back then, so he went with that, and G Funk was born) simple yet powerfull grooves (and the invention of sample layering, not on purpose, we choped like we could and there were always stuffs we couldn't get rid of), simplicity at its finest. And you know it wasn't theorized, it just ended up being what it ended up being, you listen to the "new school" vs the "old school" (and sometimes some went from one to the other : nwa was old school, but Dre was mighty important in building the new one, same with 2Pac, if you listen to what he did with digital undergroung or in his first solo albums vs what he did starting with Me Against the World, it's just another world, a world post Dre rev musically and post Rakim rev for the rapping side of thing), those are related...but vaguely, and yet they happened pretty much in the same time line.
We took this thing as far as it could be taken, there is a logic in rap being today something else completely. I don't think anything more could have been achieved in the boom bap realm, beside repetition which was what it was in the end, not with the means we had then, and the technological revolution did the rest, gave first grade studios to the newcomers in the form...of a simple computer.
I think the focus shifted from a lyrics driven music to music driven music, with a big focus on fxs, sound design, etc.
It's not all bad, but well, not really a gain either. Man, they have no groove, that's the saddest part ! You can't pull a groove with hht and snare rolls. The only albums I find that incorporate grooves are from oldschoolers (that did the new school which is now considered obsolete by most).
@Elisea 90's were also for Hip Hop a time when it was the most conscious. Beatifull texts were written and performed then, but it wasn't the rap that was the most successfull, and not the one that was being played on commercial radio, but bling bling either because there wasn't so much of it. It wasn't so accepted back then, even in the US, the whole bang bang, bling bling thing, specially in a culture, which standed against everything the bling bling stands for (and you can still view interviews of guys like Melle Mel, today, that still bitch (rightfully) about this tendancy, reminding the balck panther and deeply political roots of this movement). Bling bling was actually pretty marginal up untill the big Biggie 2Pac fight. That both took away from us two of the most talented rappers we ever had (and 2Pac was political as hell), but it gave this bloody mythology to the thing, which wasn't the case before, which became a trend and started being front and center. More after the mid-90's, but I'm cutting hairts in 4, here.

 

If you can't sing you rap.....

 

Go explain that to freaking Drake.

 

Yeah, you probably are right. In my first post i called it business connections, but i guess you have no chance as long as you don't sign a big major contract. They initiate to play your songs on radio and thats the first and most important step to get into the ears. But as i mentioned it doesn't work always. Sony BMG once signed a so called gangster rapper in Germany. They even made a TV ducumentation about it. The rappers name was "Massiv" and they tried to push him. It didn't succeed even after lots of influence and money played in. So maybe its kind of a poker game, they put a certain amount of effort in it and hope the best.

 

Haha, I've got one there too!

 

Didn't know that you're such an insider. And I think we talk at cross-purposes (as sometimes ) because I have no clue what exactly happened in the Hip Hop scene. I just remember how the music of the late 90ies tended to get influenced by Hip Hop heavely. Not by the original style but rather by a cheap reflection of it. Michael Jackson started this trend with his song "Black or White". At the end of this song is a short rap part wich drived me crazy and still does. Later the Germans also went crazy. Many thanks for reminding me of this shameful episode of german music. Here are some "gems". Fitting perfectly in this thread! Lol

 

Oh yeah they quite fit here.
No genre can remain original to its root once it goes mainstream. Not in our world. Music is music, but then there is the music industry, making a number one hit, watching sales figure. To my knowledge most genres die from that crap.

 

Oh, yes. It's as if someone who hasn't had love in his life tries to write a lovesong. That wouldn't come natural. Some of my deepest feelings (best and worst) I've had was, in my darkest times. So, who never had bad times, I think, will most likely not be able to write believable poetry (if any). Deep feelings are, in a way, connected with (mental) pain in one or another form, as most great poetry is.

 

Check out the Laibach cover.

 

LoL, Was a under half a tanker of whiskey when reading this yesterday, didn't realize you were making a great grandfather self reference.

 

Since you mentioned that the devil is in the details: head voice (or head register) and falsetto are not the same.

Other than that, call it whatever you like, what she does in that song is still annoying as hell, as is the song. And playing the language card is pretty undignified.

Trashi Deleg!

 

You are absolutely right about the difference between falsetto and head voice. However, what she is doing still is not yodeling but for surely is for me as well as for you is annoying as hell, as is the song. However I do feel saddened that you would write that I am playing some sort of language card. Your mastery of the English language as I have witnessed is superlative, and I have, I guess wrongly, assumed that it is your first language, my memory of your country of origin a blank (my memory these days absolutely sucks, probably know someplace the info lodged on some random neuron in my brain). Beside that, I wouldn't stoop to childish or unfair behavior just to try to one up anyone in an argument, and with our history of friendship here at the site I would hope that it would have informed you otherwise. For me it wasn't a matter of language as I wrongly assumed that we were on even ground, but rather one of perception and of the technicality of singing at debate, having some good fun discussing our common passion and focus of interest . Seeing passed my initial feelings, I apologize for any wrong that you feel I have done towards you, sincerely.

 

The focus on one word, and the correction of others, that's what led me to think of it. For example, I just translated the German term "Kopfstimme" into "head voice". It is more common then Kopfregister, which would be head register. However, it is good to see that I was wrong in my assumption. By the way, Mrs. Houston can be identified as a professional singer whenever she is not decorating. She then sings spot on to the note and I would not believe that she ever needed an autotune session. Which reminds me on the school choir. Our teacher said that vibrato from the start of the note is only used by singers who aren't able to exactly hit the note. She insisted that we learned without vibrato. And Mrs. Houston obviously as well.

 

The song I will Always Love You was recorded in 1991 or '92. Antares Auto Tune was created in 1997, so what you hear is what you get. No vocal correction needed to hit her notes, she had the pipes.

 

amen.

(pay close attention to the uberchick in the audience taking matters into her own hands at; 04:11.)

 

In case you did not know W.Houston's "I will always love you" spent 14 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart (which AT THE TIME was a record) and 11 weeks at number one on its Hot 100 Airplay making it one of the best selling single of all times. It also holds the record for being the best-selling single by a woman in music history. Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" re-entered the charts in 2012 after her death, making it the second single ever to reach the top three on the Billboard Hot 100 in separate chart runs.

 

@tonyg0499

No one denies it was a very successful and catchy song especially in context to the also very successful movie Bodyguard. BUT that doesn't mean everybody has to like it. I'am not as irreconcilable as tulamide, but i have to agree when it comes to Whitneys singing style. I just can't stand it. Or lets use a different way to describe the aversion: If she would have sang it without that much vibrato and tone changes, I would have liked it a lot more. Here is a similar singer and song from the eighties that shows what i mean.

Still goose bumps all over my skin even after extensive hearing!