HawkbitAlpha

The Great and Powerful Trixie at your service!

Yes. More to the point, though: I'll be sure to add the recommendations y'all put in here to my list of stuff to listen to!

I've made no secret about the fact that, over the last couple of years, my feelings on music and other media have been taking some unexpected turns. I've even become more sympathetic to a bit of pop music over the last few months, if this was any indication. Well, even after all of that, at the ripe old age of... [checks notes] ...22, I still can't find my way into enjoying rap music by and large. Now, let's clear some things up first... I'm a guy from very white rural Louisiana who grew up listening to rock and old-school country, and has been vibing to Van Halen and 80s thrash Metallica since he was 9 thanks to his dad. Given that background, you might expect me to come at this subject with some stock boomer complaints like "iT's NoT rEaL mUsIc!", "rApPeRs ArE tALeNtLeSs", "iT gLoRiFiEs viOLeNcE aNd SeX", or some shit like that. Well, this isn't going to be one of those threads. Instead, I'm about to lay out my own really big problem with a lot of rap music, and I want any of you with the patience to read the whole thing to let me know what you think in response. Hell, maybe by the end of this whole thing, you'll have made a convert out of me yet. But, onwards! I have a fairly big collection of music today (>3,300 songs) that, while the majority of it is rock, also includes quite a big share of other genres like electronica, funk, soul/R&B, country, folk, jazz/fusion, even a bit of pop, and more. (I'm actually listening to Metamodern Sounds in Country Music while writing this.) Through all of this content, I can find something in every single track that keeps me engaged, be it the funk-heavy bite of Living Colour, the adrenaline-pumping ferocity of Tremonti and early Metallica, the rich chromatic sounds of Gino Vannelli and Dream Theater, the emotional soul depths of Etta James (or Beyonce?) and Sturgill Simpson, the nostalgia-inducing minimalism of Jan Johansson and Boards of Canada... okay, this list has gone on long enough. Point being, there's something about all of these that I can enjoy, and I believe the really big common factor is that all of them are "musical" in some way, in the sense of having notes, chords, melodies, etc. This is the really fundamental thing that keeps me from getting into a lot of rap. It's a form of music where the tonal element is almost entirely stripped out in favor of focusing on the vocals, which also don't have much tonality to them. Now, that on its own isn't a total deal-breaker for me (as you'll see below). The problem is that this tradeoff of music for pure lyrics means that, in order for it to work for me, the lyrics have to be great... and as far as almost every bit of rap music I've heard from the last 15 years or so goes, it doesn't meet that standard. As I said before, I hate to harp on this theme, but in the year of our Lord 2022, we need another rap song about violence, sex, materialism, and so on about as much as we need another country song about beer, scarecrows girls, and trucks. Both of them should be legally considered a type of grain. Now, I could probably cook up some sociological hypothesis for why this kind of rap music is what makes the biggest hits (in a nutshell: its core audience is a population for whom, much like the music, the process of getting anywhere has generally been slow as well - EDIT: okay, that was poorly worded), but that doesn't mean I would start liking it regardless. Well, after all of that, this is the part where I throw a curveball and bring up the fact that I actually have a bit of rap in my collection too. Along with a select few songs I particularly like, I've also got two albums, both of which I want to talk about: Madvillainy and Biggie's Ready to Die. Let's do the second one first. Ready to Die has all of the rap tropes I disparaged before in spades, but a few things that make it still worth listening to in my opinion. One, there's still a good element of production behind it, making it easier to listen and not fall asleep like I usually would (I also especially like that one of the songs is built off a sample from one that was in GTA SA). Second, much like the song Gangsta's Paradise, it's great for historical value, as a way of getting a clear, brutally honest look into the state of the supposedly-prosperous "Roaring 90s", and seeing the consequences of the previous decade - over-militarization of police, Reaganomics, the oppression of the American underclass - in full detail. Third, it's a semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical loose concept album, meaning there's something to the entire album to get your attention and keep it. Madvillainy, on the other hand, is something straight out of what I imagine could've only been a very stoned meeting between rapper and DJ. Whereas Ready to Die is an album I can only really listen to all at once, Madvillainy has everything that I've looked for in a rap work, with strong (if off-the-wall) production/sampling and aesthetic, MF DOOM's supervillain persona making for an interesting narrator, and tight lyrical work all coming together to make an album whose individual tracks I go out of my way to replay all the time. It took quite the oddball effort, but the two madlads managed to pull it off! I also have to give another honorable mention to my favorite rap song outside of these two albums: Scared of the Dark, which avoids some of the pitfalls I've discussed above by (other than X's clearly shoehorned posthumous verses) combining some solid, pretty emotional lyrics with a memorable sung chorus, not unlike the aforementioned Gangsta's Paradise (which, fun fact, also samples a Stevie Wonder song in my collection). Just take the unnecessary autotune off of Lil Wayne is all. So, after all of that, you should know what clicks with my boomer-heavy music brain. I'd like to think that rap isn't a genre that I'm totally hostile to, and at worst, most of it just makes me feel... well, bored. Like I wanna yawn hard. With all of that said, what would you suggest I try listening to next, if anything? Or am I just not a guy who has enough of an acquired taste for this kind of thing? You decide!

A song about one of the most unbelievable true stories I've ever heard.

You know what? I straight up don't care anymore.

Being able, as an LGBTQ person, to "celebrate" the beginning of the genocide of an oppressed minority population, and go "hey, look who we're doing better than!"

Sprinting through the 90s.

Yep, here we go! I've had this site on standby for months now, but nothing to write for it until now. So, here it is: "Thoughts of the Free", a mainly-political blog by yours truly. I don't know how often I'll be updating it, nor when I'm gonna get around to actually building the rest of the site, but to start off, I thought I'd mirror the first post here for all of you to see and, hopefully, enjoy. This one's a summation of my thoughts on the whole discourse around Kyle Rittenhouse, and what I see in it. Let's go!

Get a little fright, get a little inspired, give a little HEE-HEE-HEE!

Sand dollar.

Putting this one on play after I... you know what? On second thought, just don't ask why.

Been up all night obsessively monitoring the progress of Hurricane Ida, so I guess this was a good night to have this event. Clockin' out at 6:47am Central.

16 years to the date that Hurricane Katrina tore my home state to shreds, now another, even stronger monster in Ida is knocking at my door. Let's hope FEMA has their act together this time!

I call dibs on Central time! EDIT @ 7:56am: Alright, this is where I'm officially clocking out. Been up all night and then some laying down some groundwork for YSRIAT, and my brain's not having it anymore, so it's time to shut off for now.

This track from the late 70s, the late 90s song that sampled it, or the late 2000s song that sampled the sample? You decide.

@SpongeOddFan, for a bit of a celebration of recent events, I'd like to present something that I put together over the last 30 or so hours specifically for you: On the Wings of Pride!

Alright! I haven't checked this thread at all since I started it. Time to update the OP.

Round two, folks! We're back with the SBC Community Mixtape, and this time, with the introduction of themes. Basically, iterations of the Community Mixtape from here on out will have a specific theme to them, be it a genre, a time period, or maybe even an artist if they're popular enough. So, you probably guessed from the thread title what this version's theme is... Electronic music! Be it your Daft Punks, Autechres, Pendulums, Fatboy Slims, or whatever else, this Mixtape #2 is all about showcasing the wonders that were introduced to the world of music by the introduction of computers and synth technology. The rules for submissions are mostly the same as last name, but since I'm expecting this might end up with longer songs than usual, let's re-post the rules from the first Mixtape with a slight change: Length limits per person: you have a total of 30 minutes worth of songs to play with, up from 28 in the last round. The flexibility of how many tracks this allows you to submit remains the same. (This site is great for calculating the times.) Joke/troll entries can and most likely will be excluded. Try to make sure that what you're submitting is available (i.e. not copyright-blocked) on both YT and Spotify. No repeat entries (can't submit the same thing as somebody else). If possible, try to make your submissions with a Spotify playlist. That makes the process of building the master playlist a lot faster. Most of all: have fun with it! To start off, the submission deadline is set for midnight on July 31, next Saturday, though we can kick it back if we feel more submission time is needed. With all of that said, let's get going!