I was at work last night babysitting a couple of hormone fueled 16 year olds and the subject of music came up. Now, I've always considered myself fairly, not supremely mind you, but fairly educated on music and all things related. I'm not some indie music head who goes to the Triple Rock to catch some obscure band who some other indie-head told me was the new Steely Dan, but I get around enough to have heard a lot of different stuff.
Anyway, we started talking about music, and they asked what I thought of Fallout Boy and Something Corporate. Admittedly, I haven't heard a lot of either of these bands, but from what I have heard I didn't really like. I told them as such. I believe my exact words were "Those posers suck cock." That didn't go over super well. I tried to clairify my statement a bit with the reasons that they sound just like all of the other new wave punk bands (Yellowcard, Panic at the Disco, My Chemical Romance, A Simple Plan, All American Rejects, etc.) but was again quickly admonished. They know that I'm into my old-school hip-hop, so they countered with the notion that the Wu-Tang Clan sounds just like G Unit. This, obviously, is patently false. We went back and forth a little bit, then respectfully agreed to disagree.
It certainly did get the wheels turning for me though. Did Wu-Tang sound like G Unit? Is G-Unit the "new" Wu-Tang? I needed answers. So I did a little research until the wee hours. Fueled by Cheez-Its and Coors Light, I embarked on a musical mystery journey, passing many stops along the way, all the while laughing, crying, yelling, smiling, peeing, spilling and rejoicing.
I started off at Pandora, which is a sweet music site that finds similarities in other groups/artists to the one of your choosing, in this case, the Wu. The first song it pulled up was Do It Now by Mos Def feat. Busta Rhymes. It's a good little track. I've heard it before, I have the album in fact, but I'm not sure if it has a Wu-Tang type feel to it. The others it pulled up were "Brooklyn Zoo", by the O.D.B(R.I.P), but, fuck, he's in, or was, in the Clan. "Family Tree" by KRS-One, "The Bizness" by De La Soul feat. Common, which is another favorite song of mine, "It's Alright" by Jay-Z, "Woo-Hah (Got them all in check)" by Busta Rhymes, "Respect" by Notorious B.I.G, and "Get Money", by Junior MAFIA(how old do they look?), another great track.
The common themes in the explanations provided were "East coast rap roots, tight lyrics, boastful lyrics, a repetitive song structure, hardcore rap attitude, use of modal harmonies and acoustic drum samples." Those were the unifying factors in all the songs. G-Unit did not appear, although Jay-Z and Junior MAFIA did, both of which I consider to be a little bit closer to the G-Unit than Wu-Tang.
As for G-Unit's Pandora profile, it came up with this: The first song was "California Girls" by something called Fredro Starr, then, next, was, you guessed it, "Fast Cars" by the RZA. Other songs from Juelz Santana, The Diplomats and 50 Cent followed, but the RZA one was the biggie. The common musical traits in all songs? Well, "Hardcore rap attitude and east coast rap roots" were the only similar traits to the Wu-Tang Clan, so, if you're hardcore and from the east coast, you're similar to the Wu-Tang clan I guess, which means that you could probably include Lil Kim in the discussion.
I didn't fully buy into Pandora, and did a little more searching. I ran into a bunch of hilarious shit like this (scroll down for comments), this, a Village Voice article, some hardcore dudes bringing ICP into the mix, and more random thug message board stuff, all of which is awesome. It seems that the general Internet consensus is that Wu-Tang "pwns" G-Unit. I wasn't really looking for who's better though. I wanted to know if other people thought that they sounded similar. From what I read, it doesn't look like anyone really mentions it, only their similar profiles/backgrounds, which would be:
Bottom line, my employees are douchebags for thinking that G-Unit sounds like the Wu-Tang Clan. I would have given them credit if they would have said that G-Unit has followed the same business model, albeit on a higher level, than the Wu-Tang Clan, and has many of the same characteristics, but I'm going to have to fire them regardless. I wonder if they did the same thing last night and researched all of their punk bands?
Other questions to think about:
Anyway, we started talking about music, and they asked what I thought of Fallout Boy and Something Corporate. Admittedly, I haven't heard a lot of either of these bands, but from what I have heard I didn't really like. I told them as such. I believe my exact words were "Those posers suck cock." That didn't go over super well. I tried to clairify my statement a bit with the reasons that they sound just like all of the other new wave punk bands (Yellowcard, Panic at the Disco, My Chemical Romance, A Simple Plan, All American Rejects, etc.) but was again quickly admonished. They know that I'm into my old-school hip-hop, so they countered with the notion that the Wu-Tang Clan sounds just like G Unit. This, obviously, is patently false. We went back and forth a little bit, then respectfully agreed to disagree.
It certainly did get the wheels turning for me though. Did Wu-Tang sound like G Unit? Is G-Unit the "new" Wu-Tang? I needed answers. So I did a little research until the wee hours. Fueled by Cheez-Its and Coors Light, I embarked on a musical mystery journey, passing many stops along the way, all the while laughing, crying, yelling, smiling, peeing, spilling and rejoicing.
I started off at Pandora, which is a sweet music site that finds similarities in other groups/artists to the one of your choosing, in this case, the Wu. The first song it pulled up was Do It Now by Mos Def feat. Busta Rhymes. It's a good little track. I've heard it before, I have the album in fact, but I'm not sure if it has a Wu-Tang type feel to it. The others it pulled up were "Brooklyn Zoo", by the O.D.B(R.I.P), but, fuck, he's in, or was, in the Clan. "Family Tree" by KRS-One, "The Bizness" by De La Soul feat. Common, which is another favorite song of mine, "It's Alright" by Jay-Z, "Woo-Hah (Got them all in check)" by Busta Rhymes, "Respect" by Notorious B.I.G, and "Get Money", by Junior MAFIA(how old do they look?), another great track.
The common themes in the explanations provided were "East coast rap roots, tight lyrics, boastful lyrics, a repetitive song structure, hardcore rap attitude, use of modal harmonies and acoustic drum samples." Those were the unifying factors in all the songs. G-Unit did not appear, although Jay-Z and Junior MAFIA did, both of which I consider to be a little bit closer to the G-Unit than Wu-Tang.
As for G-Unit's Pandora profile, it came up with this: The first song was "California Girls" by something called Fredro Starr, then, next, was, you guessed it, "Fast Cars" by the RZA. Other songs from Juelz Santana, The Diplomats and 50 Cent followed, but the RZA one was the biggie. The common musical traits in all songs? Well, "Hardcore rap attitude and east coast rap roots" were the only similar traits to the Wu-Tang Clan, so, if you're hardcore and from the east coast, you're similar to the Wu-Tang clan I guess, which means that you could probably include Lil Kim in the discussion.
I didn't fully buy into Pandora, and did a little more searching. I ran into a bunch of hilarious shit like this (scroll down for comments), this, a Village Voice article, some hardcore dudes bringing ICP into the mix, and more random thug message board stuff, all of which is awesome. It seems that the general Internet consensus is that Wu-Tang "pwns" G-Unit. I wasn't really looking for who's better though. I wanted to know if other people thought that they sounded similar. From what I read, it doesn't look like anyone really mentions it, only their similar profiles/backgrounds, which would be:
- Both large groups of individual style rappers
- Both were hooked up label wise with Mobb Deep
- East coast affiliation
- Forward thinking--changing the business of rap
- Thugged out pipe hittin' brothas
Bottom line, my employees are douchebags for thinking that G-Unit sounds like the Wu-Tang Clan. I would have given them credit if they would have said that G-Unit has followed the same business model, albeit on a higher level, than the Wu-Tang Clan, and has many of the same characteristics, but I'm going to have to fire them regardless. I wonder if they did the same thing last night and researched all of their punk bands?
Other questions to think about:
- Is rap music going to be played on "oldies" channels in the next 15-20 years?
- Does our genral disdain for current mainstream rap music stem more from the music itself, or our age?
- Can you be too old to listen to rap music and still be taken seriously? (I say that because my employees told me I was too old for it.)
- What's up with U-God?
posted by f theb at 10:03 AM
3 Comments:
I've often wondered if rap would become "oldies" and replace what our parents refer to as such. If that happens - Goodie Mob better make a christmas album soon - I think the Jerry Mather LPs are wearing out.
How rediciulous will it be when one of us has a 15 year old daughter, and someone else rolls up in their driveway blaring "Put it in Your Mouth" by Akinyele? Do you think the cops will be called?
I hope that our dislike of current rap is a product of the product - not of our age. I think we all agree that Laffy Taffy is the worst shit ever and proof that the armegeddon is upon us. However, I was in Sally's last night and had one of those holy fuck I'm old moments where I was flirting with a shot girl and a bunch of other chicks were looking at us like we were the biggest losers of all time. So unfortunately - we may be too old. However, that doesn't mean that we can't stomp the shit out of all these young punks to a Black Star album.
If you want to tackle the can you still listen to rap and be taken seriously - think about your initial reaction to the scene in office space where the guy is in his car, shirt and tie on, blasting the gangsta shit - this is how we all look.
Does anyone else find it outlandish that the black community is so obsessed with racial prejiduce that they exist solely to play the race card on whitey - and then discriminate against each other based on the "tone" of their skin? Honestly - I thought they had something when George Washington Carver backed up Eli Whitney's cotton gin with some groundbreaking peanut research - but just like Icarus - they had flown too close to the sun.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
oops, accidently deleted my comment.
Great post, and definitely some food for thought. I was thinking about those questions you posed, here's my 2 cents:
-I do think rap will be played on the 'oldies' channel and I think it will all get lumped together in one all encompassing genre (i.e. 'jazz': from Sun-Ra to Kenny G). 2020 will see the release of the "Best of Rap Music" featuring such rap titans as 50 Cent, Jay-Z , M.C. Hammer and Sir Mix-a-lot.
-For me I think it's my age. I'm sure I'd love all the mainstream hip-hop if I was still 16 and retarded.
-As for when are we too old to listen to rap, I think it depends on the rap. Old skool rap is safe, Maybe conscious rap is safe, maybe some Kanye is alright, but other than that it does start to be like the Office Space scene.
-What do you mean? Ugodz-illa Presents the Hillside Scramblers was brilliant. Instant classic.
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