The Hip-Hop Appreciation Thread

[Cubecubed]

Anyone else a fan of Danny Brown? I found him through a Das Racist song, and XXX really blew me away.

I've started listening to him recently, because he is the opening act at the Childish Gambino show I'm going to in August. Good stuff.

[Gowienczyk]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRVOOwFNp5U

New Hopsin.

[Rocket2Russia]

**** Hopsin. He basks in misogyny (blatantly saying things like "It's your fault you're a single mother.") and justifies racism incessantly (using an approximation of that Chris Rock dichotomy of "respectable black people" [who are acting socio-normative] and "******s" [people partaking in substances, clubbing, all things Hopsin seeks to villify]). He wraps his blatantly conservative privileged stance in "a return to common sense" arrogance that makes me want to hurl myself out a window. Nothing personal to Gowi though of course.

[Gowienczyk]

But it is the individuals fault for her own predicament presented. But going on that I honestly don't see why are you getting so frustrated over it, its a standard diss track with a dose of conscious hip-hop. As for it seeks to villify substance use (it doesn't, you can't single out one thing about the first diss sequence) and if I could dig up a comment, it explains it much better than I could off the top of my head. One of the things that seems close to the comment:

"he's not dissing weed. He's dissing the losers who live to smoke, sit on their asses and never do anything productive with life. Drop out of school, etc. The weed parts was just helping paint the picture of what he was talking about."

He's not dissing weed smoking. He's dissing the idiots who put their drugs before the more important parts of life, he's dissing people who blow off the gifts they have in order to just get high. Have you ever smoked weed?

As for criticizing thug life and individuals who centralize around it with their arrogance? You are defending them?

I like Hopsin, he's the most interesting rapper to come out of the youtube scene and his flow and dynamic is fantastic. He has ways to go lyrically, but his technical abillity to spit is just amazing to hear.

[Rocket2Russia]

He is a preacher with a confused message that is just trite enough to be re-contextualized and made more or less nuanced depending on the audience in place, making him difficult to criticize because his message is so blatant but so easily manipulated. I am discussing his work on the whole based on the three songs of his I've heard of the, what, five that he's made so far? just to get that out of the way. As far as defending those people, yeah, I am. I am defending them from a criticism that is not constructive whatsoever. He just sits on a pedestal looking at the "dumb ass thugs" around him. Instead of doing something progressive he uses the bravado of the rappers he is insulting to beat into their skulls his boundless holier-than-thou attitude, but I would expect this kind of posturing to go right over the head of someone who sees single mothers as anything but a group of people endlessly vilified by people like Hopsin, who come just short of calling them "stupid *****es," essentially. I think that's my problem - Hopsin is just as misogynistic and arrogant and crass as his counterparts on the "thug" side of rap music, but he has such a boundlessly preachy message that he is lumped in with other real conscious rappers. If I may dig up a comment:

"Hopsin's rhymes are so ****ing elementary, and I don't enjoy being lectured at when I listen to music, which Hopsin doesn't seem to understand. There's a difference between delivering a message and delivering a message well. Hopsin happens to deliver it like a 5th grader writing his first essay, or a Youtuber writing about how much his generation sucks.

Yo, society's got you living for a whack cause
You're a ****ing adult with no skills at all
You don't read any books or play ball
You don't draw, you literally do nothing at all

Man, why do black people gotta be the only ones who can't evolve
Cause you in the streets acting like a neanderthal
Its clear you can't stand the law, you're lost as an abandoned dog
And all you're interested in is fighting, rapping, and basketball
I can't even **** with you, cause if we out in public
You gon' get caught stealing some **** and get my ass in trouble, too

compared to social commentary delivered well, like in

A project minded individual, criminal tactics
Us black kids born with birth defects, we hyperactive
Mentally sex-crazed, dysfunctional they describe us
They liars, the end of the day, we ****in survivors
I remember watching Scarface the first time
Look at that big house, that Porsche paid for by crime
How could I sell this poison to my people's in my mind?
They dumb and destroy themselves is how I rationalize
In a bastardized nation, magnum .45 carrying
Where I'm from ain't far from Washington Heights to cop Aryan

Hopsin doesn't know how to write music."

And again I'll point out how if you see Hopsin's lyrics there, they continue this justification for white people seeing "good" and "bad" black people, and Hopsin is now able to be used as a tool (well, this black dude on YouTube is fine with hating on ******s, who are different from black people) because he doesn't understand how to bring forward nuance into a discussion about crime, race, social situations, etc. He sees everyone's problems in the world as "****, dude, you can be what you want, and you're CHOOSING to be a poor black person with a minimum wage job and a drug addiction. That has NOTHING to do with social constructions or political decisions made by people who have no accountability to you. It's YOUR fault, and it's your PIPE'S fault." He just carries forward this ****ing ridiculous conservative propaganda that we should feel no sympathy for those less fortunate than we and he pushes this agenda of "bottom feeders" and blah I'll stop.

tl;dr: Hopsin is an insensitive reductionist ****wad, and I don't like his delivery, flow, beats, fanbase, or videos to boot.

[Gowienczyk]

You can dislike his lyrics and his videos for sure. I don't deny that and his beats aren't that great but I find them decent enough (I have the entirety of his second album, Raw, so he has written more than 5 songs).

Good counterpoints though for sure.

However, dismissing his technical ability and his rhyming dynamic and flow is just plain wrong.

[franticfish]

Long ass post.

Real good post there, one of the best on HoR in a bit. I agree completely.

Really though, I can get over the dumb lyrical content (I'll go listen to some Rudimentary Peni, Crass or Aus-Rotten if I wanna hear messages I agree with) of some rappers if the beats, flow etc is on point, that isn't the case with Hospin though.

[Ultimatum]

Nothing about Hopsin has ever impressed me.

[Runesmith]

He sees everyone's problems in the world as "****, dude, you can be what you want, and you're CHOOSING to be a poor black person with a minimum wage job and a drug addiction. That has NOTHING to do with social constructions or political decisions made by people who have no accountability to you. It's YOUR fault, and it's your PIPE'S fault." He just carries forward this ****ing ridiculous conservative propaganda that we should feel no sympathy for those less fortunate than we and he pushes this agenda of "bottom feeders" and blah I'll stop.

I agree with you. The bolded is a dangerous attitude to have, as well as incredibly insensitive and unrealistic. People far underestimate the power luck and heredity can have in determining one's present and future; skill or intellect (however you define it) be damned. Bottom feeder is a Walmart buzz word these days...why isn't top feeder? Mooching off the successes of those before you isn't uncommon in the least.

Also, I'm fighting the urge to turn this post into an attack against Ayn Rand dogma, so I'm just going to stop while I'm ahead.

[Insane3]

I agree with you. The bolded is a dangerous attitude to have, as well as incredibly insensitive and unrealistic. People far underestimate the power luck and heredity can have in determining one's present and future; skill or intellect (however you define it) be damned. Bottom feeder is a Walmart buzz word these days...why isn't top feeder? Mooching off the successes of those before you isn't uncommon in the least.

Also, I'm fighting the urge to turn this post into an attack against Ayn Rand dogma, so I'm just going to stop while I'm ahead.

agreed