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Underground > Radio & Music >

Resistence Hip-Hop?

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I'm Rick Jones, bitch

10:51 / 19.01.05

Edit that is not an edit: Oh shit, you like Dead Prez already?

12:28 / 19.01.05

Instead of catting it out, let me say this: You're off base. Chill. Seriously.

it's all good. i'm glad the suggestions were helpful.

I'll try to find Nas' first album, though a title would sure make it easier...

the title of the album is Illmatic, which, not coincidentally, is where the poster got his name from.

Haus of Mystery

13:20 / 19.01.05

In my humble, the tightest hip-hop album ever. 10 tracks without a single foot wrong, amazing flow and lyrics from Mr Jones, and stellar mid 90's production from Premier, Pete Rock, & Large Professor. Essential purchase.

14:58 / 19.01.05

Taking a break from my resistance to this thread, I reckon Company Flow's Patriotism is one of the finest pieces of protest music I've ever heard. It eats most lesser tunes alive.

15:27 / 19.01.05

MacGyver: Damn straight. Anyone heard his new one yet?

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

15:55 / 19.01.05

Likewise, the lyric Rap critics that say he's "Money, Cash, Hoes"/He's from the hood stupid, what type of facts are those?/If you grew up with holes in your zapatoes/You'd celebrate the minute you was havin dough places his music and his approach in context, and because it does it overtly within the song it clearly retains the resistance element.

I realise this has been adressed earlier in the thread, but I wanted to offer a rebuttal. If Jay-Z using rap as a means to escape poverty can be classed as social resistance, then my friend escaping from poverty in North East England by joining the army also deserves to be classed as social resistance. He was in Iraq during the invasion, BTW.

Of course that isn't an act of social resistance, and I don't think Jay-Z deserves to be tagged as such either. Is a poor kid working hard at school and going to university to land a top job commiting an act of "social resistance"? The means are different, but the end is the same. Jay-Z's living the American Dream, and more power to him, but he's no more attacking the ills of society than, say, Guns n' Roses did when they hit the big score.

farseer /pokes out an i

18:29 / 19.01.05

1, 2, 3, STIFF!: Edit that is not an edit: Oh shit, you like Dead Prez already

Actually, I think the only song I've heard of theirs is "Propaganda" which I like... Not sure about the rest of their tunes.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

19:12 / 19.01.05

Phew. Yeah, I got the album 'cos of the single ("hip-hop") but the rest didn't float my boat. Approach with caution, then.

21:37 / 19.01.05

I'll let Jigga offer his response to that:

Music business hate me cause the industry ain't make me
Hustlers and boosters embrace me and the music I be makin
I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars
They criticized me for it yet they all yell "HOLLA!"
If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be
lyrically, Talib Kweli
Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense
But I did five mill' - I ain't been rhymin like Common since
When your cents got that much in common
And you been hustlin since, your inception
Fuck perception go with what makes sense
Since I know what I'm up against
We as rappers must decide what's most impor-tant
And I can't help the poor if I'm one of them
So I got rich and gave back, to me that's the win/win
So next time you see the homey and his rims spin
Just know my mind is workin just like them...

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

21:52 / 19.01.05

So he'd fight the man and be true to himself if it paid (not that he needs the money these days), but it's ok, because deep down inside he cares?

ALL HAIL THE ONE TRUE HEIR OF CHUCK D!!!!

Yes, I know I'm being facecous and disingenious there, but damn, that is weak.

Not as weak as sampling Oliver twice, mind.

Still, I look forward to him destroying poverty. Any day now.

23:03 / 19.01.05

Genuine resistance hip-hop - Ready To Die by The NBIG.

The man saying his piece vs God, family, the law, and ultimately himself. And coming out briefly ahead in his finest moment, in that sort of terrible legacy that Robert Johnson, or Jimi Henrdix ( inadvertently, ) might arguably have been part of too.

00:26 / 20.01.05

I think it’s fair enough. He’s in a position in which he feels he can do the most good. After all, wasn’t it Chuck D who wrote bemoaning that money only ever seems to flow out of black wallets, never in?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

00:45 / 20.01.05

Going back to the initial post, I think one of the bands mentioned (Consolidated) was actually comprised of three white middle-class guys...
Were they not political/resistance?
Or were they not hip-hop?

07:57 / 20.01.05

Consolidated were, as I understood it at the time, very much considered 'whack.'

I'm going to try and not comment.

A

08:32 / 20.01.05

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't those Jay-Z lyrics feature the first and only time in the history of the world that a musical artist has actually admitted to selling out? That's remarkable.

10:44 / 20.01.05

Seems to me he took a look at his principles and at what he could realistically achieve. Just because he opted not to go for the more-often than not slightly patronising conscious MC approach doesn’t mean that he feels his decision is morally devoid. Although there’s always the fact that Jay-Z has an ego that would justify his choices, there’s no denying that this is a complex verse about the value of his own music and how he sees his contribution.

11:33 / 20.01.05

doesn't follow that anyone, sorry, everyone, with gold rims is thinking the same thing though.

sounds like he's just smart enough to feel uilty about how fucking lame a lot of his lyrics and his whole visual style are.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

11:52 / 20.01.05

Point stands that he does not make "resistance hip hop".

Has anyone checked out Newcleus yet?

13:35 / 20.01.05

Which is a category I've never encountered outside this thread and am frankly deeply suspicious of, for the stated reasons. The label doesn't have any real currency, isn't broadly recognised, and I'm not going to validate it by arbitrarily allocating artists to fit something I don't believe in.

18:18 / 20.01.05

Oh, come on Seth. Barbelith is synonymous with disingenuous bullshit these days.

You can do it!

19:25 / 20.01.05

Still, I look forward to him destroying poverty. Any day now.

what poor communities need more than anything else is economic development from within the community. Jay-Z has started a very successful, black-owned small business which provides a number of people with a good living (in addition to the charity work). if he had opened a laundromat or a convenience store or something like that, instead of a recod label and clothing line, no one would think twice about calling him a pillar of the community.

for god's sake, he's a successful black businessman, a self-made millionaire from the projects. last time i checked, one of those is considerably more rare and more important than yet another (*ahem*) "resistance" rapper. i can go down to any random open mic night and find you half a dozen of those, even if they're not on the same level as someone like Mos Def or Black Thought or someone of that caliber. i'm sure if he had eschewed commercialism and spent more time bitching about The Man, as opposed to actually going out and building something, he would have had more unequivocal support from a few white middle-class armchair Marxist hipsters in off-campus coffeeshops around the country*, but i think he's made a pretty good trade there.

obviously, political and consciousness hip-hop has an important artistic and political role, and i don't mean to demean it at all. however, i'm irritated by the self-righteousness of critics who seem to be arguing in favor of the moral superiority of voluntary poverty, and i'm increasingly tired of the worn-out cliches of certain segments of the left who insist that financial success is bad in and of itself. i think it's an astonishing sign of the health of the cultural mainstream that MCs as skilled as Jay-Z can be as financially successful as they are.

* who, it should be noted, still listen to his music - they just feel guilty about it and/or affect a pose of ironic distance.

Haus of Mystery

20:49 / 20.01.05

Oh, come on Seth. Barbelith is synonymous with disingenuous bullshit these days.

Yes, it's not been the same since they started letting outsiders in has it?

23:47 / 20.01.05

Since 1998. At least.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

01:57 / 21.01.05

Well, thanks for that. I've never seen much of what you might see in Jay-Z's music, but in light of those facts, he's an OK bloke.

(Weirdly the only Jay-Z stuff I have time for is the Linkin Park mashups, because it shows just how badly served Linkin P DJ Joe Hain is by those Nu-Angst fuckheads. He does some amazing electronic shit and deserves more goddamn respect than he gets < /rant>)

Haus of Mystery

11:09 / 21.01.05

Ahhhh 1998! Where's my fiction suit?! I've got magic mirror all over my hankie!

Those were the days.

11:35 / 21.01.05

Now don't knock it McGyver. I likes a bit of that stuff. In fact why I like Barbelith so much is I can come here and talk about Hip Hop and ahem, "qlipothic spillage".

Anyway onto this: successful black businessman, a self-made millionaire from the projects

I wanted to make the point earlier on in this thread that images like this, are in the contxt of the 'States, already images of resistance for their target audience, if we take that as being young, working class and black. If we take someone who's hot right now - Fabulous? 'Lil John? - the fact they're hugely succuessful, that they've made money on their own terms, that they trade on musical skills and lyrical dexterity - I'd say this is ofering an image that gives this audience something they can relate to and aspire to. I know I'm perhaps exaggerating peoples' readings of music figures but I hope people get my point. The whole term "resistance" seems a bit of a misnomer viewed in this light.

As I've said on here before, you have had exactly that same thing in reggae, with a (largely white) critical audience shunning artists who do "slackness" (sexual) lyrics in favour of "conscious" themes. (This isn't so much going on now, more an early 90s thing). It's was a bit like "stop making records about how much fun you're having and get back to telling us about how much you're suffering".

11:41 / 21.01.05

Farseer: I think you should have a look at this thread

19:44 / 21.01.05

It's was a bit like "stop making records about how much fun you're having and get back to telling us about how much you're suffering".

bingo. well said.

i think a big part of the appeal there is that a lot of young people who have grown up in such a way that they were very insulated from poverty, oppression, and that sort of nastiness. however, they're smart and educated enough to realize on some level how sheltered they've been and feel sort of awkward and self-conscious about being on the right side of the growing wealth disparity in the world in general and the US in particular. they're basically soft, pampered suburban kids, and they know it, and on some level are frustrated and embarassed by their own untested lives. hearing about the struggles and suffering of people on the outside of their suburban bubble gives them a sense of vicarious credibility and assuages their feelings of inadequacy.

please note that this is not a holier-than-thou thing on my part. i grew up in a nice suburban home, too. i'm one of the least ghetto person you've ever seen and just as susceptible to the guilty white liberal thing as anyone else.

farseer /pokes out an i

14:41 / 24.01.05

"Reality based" Illmatic Thanks for the thread post! Silly me for being unable to find it in the archives.

diz I'm not making any moral statements... just fishing for suggestions! I'm not so self-centered to think that simply because I'm not currently interested in some music, the music I'm not interested in is somehow inferior, or "bad." It's all perception.

what poor communities need more than anything else is economic development from within the community Totally. Some Solari-style community re-investment goes a long way.

Seth Oh, continue with the suspicion! No matter to me. *All* categories are illusion, made-up figuments of our language and imaginations. Sure, some categories have more mindshare due to their popular use... but to cling to "official" categories, just due to their previous use... Sometimes it's useful to reference a 'shared vocabulary', sometimes not. "Political Hip-Hop", "Resistence Hip-Hop", "Pro-Proletariat lyrics Hip-Hop", "Hip-Hop lyrics that are inspiring and uplifting in the face of our current times and troubles, global war, US gov. sponsored terrorism, corporate-imposed poverty, new-era immigrants as neo-slaves", whatever you want to call it.

Stoatie, Emperor of Aerobics CONSOLIDATED referred to themselves as "Crusading White Guys". Some of their tunes are hep. 2004 saw the release of "More Music Please - Best of 1988-1993", which has some of their best tunes on it. They rapped in warning of "Friendly Facism" and I wish I had heard them when they were together. Prolly would have turned me onto Hip-hop way earlier...

Again, thanks to all for the suggestions thus far...

Don't you understand the audience will listen and dance
In the club, crib or car or whatever they get the chance
To be emancipated start debating justice in the cipher
-Immortal Technique, "Revolutionary", Vol 1

farseer /pokes out an i

19:21 / 24.01.05

FYI,
For a overview of the fusion between the 9/11 Truth movement and Hip-Hop (feat. interview w/ Immortal Technique click here.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:13 / 24.01.05

Consolidated live were fucking awesome. Until they decided they'd be better of being a metal band. Then they were really poo.

08:13 / 25.01.05

farseer: no-one's arguing against categories in general, just this one specifically.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

05:30 / 26.01.05

Sod it, just get someone to beatbox over the Dead Kennedys

Harrison Ford, in a battle suit, wheels for feet, knives and guns

14:00 / 26.01.05

Resistence hip-hop is SHIT, unless some homie is talking about smoking some bitch in the ass with his glistening pork AK, then i'm not interested.

A few facts:

1) If poor people, you know rappers, choose not to express themselves in a moral decent way then they should be imprisoned.

2) What about the bitches? Exactly.

3)Ganster rap is made by rich gay white kids like Elton John.

4) U R A T I T.

peace

the dawg.

Haus of Mystery

14:09 / 26.01.05

Word up. A true head.

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