Golden Gate BasedGod Train * WOW * RARE *

[Anne the Man]

Hey, that was cool. I couldn't watch the video cos I'm working, but damn. Maybe I should get based. But there's so muuuch material.

[jebreject]

I still haven't listened to the new mixtape

I'm sorry BasedGod

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

it's really good.

[howardfinkel]

was posted on facebook with the caption #bitchmob

green flame!

[fishjim]

If I were to call Choices and Flowers the first rap album without words, would I be saying something, um, falsifiable?

*Not asking whether folks think C&F is in fact a rap album without words - I explain what I mean in the piece I'm writing. Just wondering if there's any other rap artist out there who's gone wholly musical before.

[Antero]

If I were to call Choices and Flowers the first rap album without words, would I be saying something, um, falsifiable?

*Not asking whether folks think C&F is in fact a rap album without words - I explain what I mean in the piece I'm writing. Just wondering if there's any other rap artist out there who's gone wholly musical before.

Well, there are plenty of instrumental hip-hop albums in the world, some of which are made by people who also rap (see: J Dilla, RZA).  So I don't think that would make much sense.

A more significant question might be, is this in any way hip-hop at all?  It seems to be, insofar as Rain In England was, and this is kind of like that without words, but how the hell do we define that relation?

[fishjim]

Yeah, that relation is the nut I'm trying to crack.

How much of C&F would you say is straight from Rain in England, minus the words? Feels like maybe 30-40% to me. And what happens to those words when they're suddenly missing?

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

30-40%, and then a few of the tracks are also from the paint mixtapes

[Antero]

So really it's an instrumental hip-hop tape, except the tracks don't seem to be at all hip-hop instrumentals and the original compositions with vocals were already stretching the concept of "rapping"

[Chet]

really it's irredeemably terrible.


sorry, basedgod.

[Thermofusion]

All I care about anymore is KEKE's inevitable debut mixtape

[alistarr*]

A more significant question might be, is this in any way hip-hop at all?  It seems to be, insofar as Rain In England was, and this is kind of like that without words, but how the hell do we define that relation?

I didn't think most of RIE was "hip hop" in any way other than that it was made by a hip hop artist with, and that here maybe there's unnecessary* confusion between the culture that the artist's a part of and the kind of art he's creating in these instances. Most of the interesting stuff about both it and the instrumental album is happening outside of the music itself, for me - the idea of them existing and having been made by this particular artist with this particular history, and having been made that way deliberately with knowledge that they don't really fit with their expected genre.

Hip hop has always had that kind of arms race built in where you're either trying to do it harder or softer of faster or slower or weirder or totally different than the other people doing it, much like lots of other genres (see someone's potted history of everything that lead to dubstep in that other thread for one example), and a whole crowd of listeners looking for new exciting interesting different stuff, so musically it fits into a tradition of deliberately trying to not fit with the tradition, albeit reduced ad absurdum, but that doesn't really mean much when the point it's trying to make is that hip hop can be any kind of music. At which point the genre loses usefulness as a musical signifier and becomes purely a cultural one.

*unnecessary to me when discussing the work - it might well be necessary to Lil B in order to actually find a big enough audience to listen to the work.

[Antero]

The link, though, is that Lil B's lineage is hip-hop, and his aesthetic vocabulary is derived from experimenting with hip-hop forms.  In that respect, something like Rain In England isn't actually distinct-in-nature from something like "Wonton Soup" or "I'm God" - they're part of a unified project which is specifically about playing with and stretching the structures and signifiers of rap, and they take part of their meaning from that relationship.

[alistarr*]

Yeah, I agree with you there - I think what I was trying to get at is how you can have a hip hop artist playing with the form of hip hop without all his albums actually being hip hop records as far as musical description is concerned. But at the same time that like you say maybe you can't, and it's all hip hop, and hip hop as a description of music is now as broad a church as "pop" has become. Because there isn't a line you can draw - like, he has quite deliberately (I think) ensured that there is no point at which one could draw a line.

As far as fishjim's first rap album without words thing is concerned, I think it's an interesting thought - the J Dilla/RZA examples you give obviously aren't anything to do with rap, they're instrumental! Whereas with C&F you've got this artist who'se kind of carefully peeled back the layers bit by bit until he's left with no words left on the album, but it's still recognisably part of the same whole.

[fishjim]

Whereas with C&F you've got this artist who'se kind of carefully peeled back the layers bit by bit until he's left with no words left on the album, but it's still recognisably part of the same whole.

Is it a nut I'm trying to crack, or an onion I'm peeling? Food for thought.

Seriously though - thanks alistarr & antero, your thoughts are extremely helpful.

[Antero]

Green Flame!

[Chet]

GATO GATO GATO GATO GATO GATO GATO GATO GATO GATO GATO GATO GATOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[Thermofusion]

GATO GATO GATO GATO GATO UNO DOS TRES WOOP

[Thermofusion]

AND THE LATIN GRAMMY GOES TO....LIL B

[Chet]

hahha

it really does legitimately sound like the crazy spanish club music my spanish friends would listen too

and it's amazing

[Thermofusion]

HOLA MAMI CUAL ES SU NOMBRE HOLA MAMI CUAL ES SU NOMBRE

[Thermofusion]

im dominicano an i bump dhis

[Antero]

GRACIAS DIOS BASADO

holy shit

this is epic

[shai faithe]

the samples in the beginning are from ocarina of time. based god def playing some early 00s n64.

[Antero]