Kanye West Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris [The Rap Thread]

[shai faithe]

http://stereogum.com/1068221/kitty-pride-orions-belt-feat-riff-raff-video/video/

this is the first time I've heard Riff Raff, and if this is representative of what he does, I hope that he please stops making music soon

I still find myself kinda liking Kitty Pryde in spite of myself

i find him consistently hilarious:

When it comes to hateful words, I got skin like a rhinoceros
Diamonds on my binder, in fourth grade I was immaculate
Reading and writing, arithmetic, my favorite mathematics
Marked my paper more than average, you bastard rappers you could play in traffic
The way I ball, I could've played for Toronto Raptors
Olympic swimmers from Nigeria, emeralds in my ends
So far from clear cause they resemble frozen lettuce
91 degrees out and buzzin', you ever seen melted lime jello?
Did I confuse you losers? I pull up in the candy relish
Rap game Peppermint Patty and the lavender bumble bee jackets
Your girlfriend's vagina? Smells like bumble bee tuna
She duct taped me to the dumpster, otherwise I would've left sooner
Riff

[Chet]

i know yr probably all too cool for why? here but yoni is straight up rapping again and he is ON POINT.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVJQYNxHnAo


p.s i like why? a lot.

[shai faithe]

yeah i still listen to that early why? stuff. hell, i still listen to all of that early anticon. stuff. it's exciting!
but yoni was never rapping. he's not rapping here either. not that his early projects weren't firmly hip hop, as AK pointed out wrt to lil b's instrumental work over in the basedgod thread. (still digging elephant eyelash most of all.)

[Chet]

in what way his he not rapping? interested to hear yr pov.

[shai faithe]

i mean he's rapping in the same way that debbie harry was. and the term is so loose these days as to be mostly without meaning. whether one is or isn't making rap music is entirely predicated a whole host of cultural contexts and receptions that have little to do with the actual content of the product. i mentioned my fascination with these inbetweens early last year when the whole clams casino phenomenon was beginning, and i was left wondering why some people thought this was hip hop, when, divorced from the particular audience that was then first receiving it, it otherwise would have been called something entirely different (like drag maybe).
i guess with yoni, i just put him next to someone like dose, with whom it's much more obvious where he's coming from and working towards, and it makes yoni look like he's not bringing the fundamental substance to the project (cLOUDDEAD), but rather some of its eccentric flavorings--another dichotomy that i'm aware is rife with problems, but has always felt true, even under scrutiny.
none of this is to say that yoni hasn't rapped now and then. when i said "never" before, i meant as it was never his primary project, nor was it, i think, how his early material was received, especially, as i said in the last paragraph, next to artists like dose and sole.

[Chet]

i dunno, to me the early why? stuff was still v. much hip hop while helping to develop that who anitcon experimental is it or isn't it? thing. but here it seems yoni is straight up doing a rhymes vs bars thing. it is rapping as far as i can tell.

[fishjim]

I don't want to start a big argument about it, because I'm not sure it's that important in the end, but I think Debbie Harry's rap on "Rapture" is awesome. To me those lyrics feel like the biggest omission in the otherwise pretty decent Anthology of Rap (2010), an example of an artist adapting rap to new audiences - no different than what Run-DMC, The Beastie Boys, and LL Cool J did. I mean, it was Debbie Harry who got the Funky Four + 1 the first rap gig on national TV (Sat Night Live) so clearly she was listening to the scene. Why shouldn't she be a part of it?

EDIT: Here's a video with just the rap. Lyrics nicely sync'd:

"Rapture"

The first half hews pretty closely to the late 80s rap conventions - don't stop, sure shot, everybody's fly, space, etc. - but the second half blasts off and ends up linking hip-hop to punk rock.  

[dieblucasdie]

Re: Sasha Go Hard http://instagram.com/p/MkDy59vbC8/

Yessssss

Hey Antero, do you know much about the Compton rapper/Pharrell protege Buddy? I don't know him from Adam, I only ask because apparently my friend got super-baked with him last night

[fishjim]

i know yr probably all too cool for why? here but yoni is straight up rapping again and he is ON POINT.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVJQYNxHnAo

I'm something under my breath that half resembles some words
And like a bird in a suit cut for a brutish bear
Back out of there babbling like a Jew in prayer

ON POINT  

[Antero]

Hey Antero, do you know much about the Compton rapper/Pharrell protege Buddy? I don't know him from Adam, I only ask because apparently my friend got super-baked with him last night

Not much beyond knowing of his existence.

Maybe Pharrell should let them release Fam-Lay's album first though

[shai faithe]

I don't want to start a big argument about it, because I'm not sure it's that important in the end, but I think Debbie Harry's rap on "Rapture" is awesome. To me those lyrics feel like the biggest omission in the otherwise pretty decent Anthology of Rap (2010), an example of an artist adapting rap to new audiences - no different than what Run-DMC, The Beastie Boys, and LL Cool J did. I mean, it was Debbie Harry who got the Funky Four + 1 the first rap gig on national TV (Sat Night Live) so clearly she was listening to the scene. Why shouldn't she be a part of it?

EDIT: Here's a video with just the rap. Lyrics nicely sync'd:

"Rapture"

The first half hews pretty closely to the late 80s rap conventions - don't stop, sure shot, everybody's fly, space, etc. - but the second half blasts off and ends up linking hip-hop to punk rock.  

yeah i don't know, the early hip hop scene was so wonderful because it didn't fall so nicely into people being outside or inside. i think i should have pointed to other artists in the 80s who were adopting rap, but who were more plainly not a part of that downtown art scene that transformed it. "rapture" has always felt like a song that was more pointing to rap than an actual rap song. for me, it's probably just the context, again, of harry being someone who was obviously friends with, and a fan of, many of the early acts, but wasn't producing that sort of art. it was an homage to young genre, and it just so turned out to be pretty key in the development of that genre merely because it was a popularizer. and yes, it holds all the signifiers of early rap, but at what point does can an homage be classed with that to which it's paying homage? i don't really know; i think critics have been struggling with that for a couple of decades, as art has become increasingly self-referential--and a lot of the distinctions they make between what's a neo and what isn't are pretty loaded with assumptions about originality and authenticity that seem to make less sense as the cultures and their languages move at increasingly high speeds.
so this is me throwing my hands up in the air, and saying i just feel that "rapture" isn't rap (though, yeah it should have been in the anthology if only for historical significance), and the only reason that the beasties are (a similar punk/new wave move into the genre) is because they stuck with it, while for blondie it was a one-off. again, for me, it comes down to an artist's larger project and its reception.

[shai faithe]

so this mos def take on "niggas in paris" is sort of old, but yeah, i dig it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfMx-miPtms

[shai faithe]

I was listening to Late Registration recently and got really depressed. What happened to THAT Kanye?

also this: apparently he just wrote the verse for "new god flow."

[Antero]

"rapture" has always felt like a song that was more pointing to rap than an actual rap song.

This is 100% accurate.

[mrwednesday]

Really enjoying this: Harry Fraud of "Shot Caller" fame on the beat, Smoke DZA and Action Bronson tag teaming on "Turnbuckle Music"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1Euie7JX94

[Chet]

the note frank ocean posted on his tumblr is beautiful

http://frankocean.tumblr.com/post/26473798723

[dieblucasdie]

Also, the preamble:

BASEDGOD WAS RIGHT. we're all a bunch of golden million dollar babies. my hope is that the babies born these days will inherit less of the bullshit than we did. anyhow, what i'm about to post is for anyone who cares to read. it was intended to fill the thank you's section in my album credits, but with all the rumors going round.. i figured it'd be good to clarify...

[shai faithe]

so a lot of t.i.'s guest spots are exciting again, and still really technically impressive. hopefully king uncaged will match up.

[dieblucasdie]

Hey guys, it's the 25th anniversary of Paid in Full! Here is a link to a mix of the samples:

http://www.hiphopisread.com/2012/07/sample-set-175.html

[shai faithe]

Hey, I was just kinda curious about what you view as the greatest hip hop album of all time. Most people would put The Cold Vein at that spot, but you listed it under Operation Doomsday last night and was just wondering what your #1 was.

Most people would not choose The Cold Vein as the greatest hip hop album of all time because most people are wholly unaware that it exists. You should get off the internet and try to meet more new most people.

The Cold Vein is a very good album but it’s not even close to the best of what the genre has to offer. My favorite rap album of all time is currently Goodie Mob’s Soul Food but that is subject to change on a near hourly basis.

lies. everyone that's heard the cold vein would unequivocally choose it as the best hip hop album of all time. this is a categorical truth.

[dieblucasdie]

I have heard The Cold Vein and I would not choose it as the best hip hop album of all time so that's at least two

[Chet]

make me 3

[Antero]

I'd probably put it in my top 5.

[dieblucasdie]

I mean, see upthread, Rakim alone has two albums ahead of it

[shai faithe]

I have heard The Cold Vein and I would not choose it as the best hip hop album of all time so that's at least two

make me 3

I mean, see upthread, Rakim alone has two albums ahead of it

nope.