No black artists had a #1 single in 2013

[Warner2BruceTD]

Hip Hop in 2013 is what Rock/Metal was in 1989. Its over-the-top, vapid, braggadocio-based fantasy party music with the occasional really corny love-jam.

There was plenty of great rock music back in the late 80's...but the pop charts were littered with Every Rose Has Its Thorn by Poison, Heaven by Warrant, When I See You Smile mixed with other shit from Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Whitesnake, etc.

But while that was controlling the pop charts, The Cure, The Pixies, Guns N Roses, among others were making really good music while Tina Turner was winning Best Rock Performance at the Grammys.

I just don't know if Hip Hop has their Nirvana and the rest of the Seattle Grunge scene to come along and kick popular hip hop in the balls.

Very good comparison.

[Aso]

Funk Volume and Strange Music FTW

[JimLeavy59]

Jeremy bro Biggie had a song on Ready to Die called "Me and My Bitch"

And Tupac made this little number.

[JimLeavy59]

My thoughts on "Same Love"

[DoubleDeuce]

Who gives a shit about winning a Grammy? Metallica's arguable best album (... and Justice for All) lost Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Performance to Jethro Tull. Winning a Grammy didn't make Jethro Tull better or worse, it is a piece of metal given out by people who are often painfully out of touch with society.

But like it or not, you CANNOT say the rap game is getting better. It just isn't. It has just gone downhill and has been on this path for a while. There are plenty of reasons why (real or supposed): bad voices, bad writing, bad beats (although I think the beats are actually pretty solid now a days), etc. Personally, I think it has to do with stagnation and misdirection of the genre. There are very few mainstream rappers who mix together an amazing voice with amazing lyrics. Instead, we get guys who are good at one, the other, or neither. As for misdirection, I would say that a majority of listeners just want to hear something stupid, happy, funny, and can dance to. Rap has tried to match that and man, it has made an awful concoction that is nothing like the rap we all grew up with. It might be the evolution of the genre, but many people consider it to be crap.

You can call me uneducated about it, but seriously, listen to a rap radio station for an hour and try not to be disgusted at the state of the modern rap. There are diamonds in the rough, but man, the genre is crap.

Can't you literally say this about every genre if you're only listening to what's on the radio?

[CCBrink]

In other news. Kendrick Lamar has seen a 99% increase in popularity on Spotify. for a guy that had 1% of the Grammy votes for best hip hop album.

[Tailback U]

Apparently one of Macklemore's songs derives its title from a Malcolm Gladwell concept. So yeah, that sums it up pretty well.

Middlebrow, populist garbage.

Ten Thousand Hours, by far my favorite song on The Heist, and his best (IMO).

A really good song all around, especially if you're familiar with the concept that he is referring to. Seems like all everyone talks about is Thrift Shop and Same Love when he has a few other songs that are better than both.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEr5H4E4r3I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAg3uMlNyHA&feature=kp

It's no doubt that he won because of his social impact. I think Kendrick's CD was a better overall rap album but I'm not gonna bitch about Macklemore winning it. His music is positive and he seems genuinely humble and appreciative of his new found fame.

[jeffx]

LiquidLarry said it best. Sadly, hip-hop has gone the way of R&B, which I talked about here years ago.

[Tailback U]

I've been listening to GkMC since it's been a while since I actually listened to the album and it's much better than the heist, IMO.

Sad that it got so overlooked but I can't say I'm surprised considering all the political bs that comes with these awards shows.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116364/macklemore-wins-grammys-rap-infuriating-kendrick-lamar-fans

MUSIC JANUARY 27, 2014
Macklemore Shouldn't Have Won Any Grammys, But Rap Purists Are Missing the Point
BY JUSTIN CHARITY

For rap fans, the premiere match-up of the 56th Grammy Awards was between Macklemore, of infinitely played-out "Thrift Shop" fame, versus Kendrick Lamar, whose major-label debut, good kid, m.A.A.d city, cemented a landmark narrative within the genre, frequently compared to Nas's '94 classic, Illmatic. Radio Disney bop-fun versus nihilistic, sex-fueled correspondence from the wrong boulevard in Compton, California—guess which LP the Grammys voters preferred?

On all comparable counts—Best New Artist, Best Rap Album, Best Rap Song, and Best Rap Performance—the tall blonde from Seattle's crunchy rap scene, last spotted in a fur coat swagger-jacked from Christopher Nolan's Bane, bested the in-genre favorite on Sunday night. Cue the tweets and the fury. Even Macklemore agreed that Lamar was "robbed."


It goes without belaboring that the voting committee convened by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences likely isn't too fluent or fond of rap. You know who loved "Thrift Shop"? Middle-class children, a.k.a. the kids of the Recording Academy. Meanwhile, his homophobe-hating track "Same Love," which was up for Song of the Year, checked the tolerance box of coastal media sensibilities that, to some extent, rewarded pandering with accolades. Macklemore's coup is part of a long tradition of Grammy snubs in favor of safe picks: Young MC beats De La Soul, Lupe Fiasco's debut loses to a Ludacris album that no one remembers, Nas loses all 13 Grammy nominations of his 19-year career.

Several activists and journos have moderated Twitter discussion of the upset. A common theme of Macklemore wariness is hyper-scrutiny of the messenger, rather regardless of his message. Appropriation fears abound. Macklemore is a straight white male emcee who, as such, has no business beating Lamar to the bathroom, much less to the podium. Tuesday morning, for instance, BuzzFeed's Ayesha Siddiqi tweeted, "if Macklemore is so self aware then he needs to stop pandering w apologetic screenshots of 'private' texts and start bowing out." Oh, so that's how lifelong artistic commitment works.

That Macklemore writes and performs so explicitly as a progressive—in support of marriage equality, against structural inequalities, and in lengthy examination of privilege—has created a strange feedback loop in which rap-illiterate critics laud Macklemore's politics, and rap fans resent him all the more for invoking this trump card. Or they resent his "mediocrity" in the literary context of a Kendrick Lamar—ignoring that Macklemore isn't trying to be Lamar, and he shouldn't have to be. Writing for VICE last year, Brooklyn producer Skinny Friedman declared: "Don't Kid Yourself: Macklemore's Edgy Politics Are Not Edgy." Fine, that's true, but who sold you the lie in the first place? Did Macklemore? Or did VICE? It's media, more than Macklemore himself, that have hoisted him as a liberal-activist here to save hip hop from bling and gay-bashing.

But this is Twitter, so a day later, the fury resides. Mostly. "Awards shows don't matter," sings the resigned chorus. What's infuriating to so many fans across genres is that awards shows do matter, and that's quite why we loathe them. Each year, either the Recording Academy is either validating our tastes or proving that we're old and/or out of touch. If you really don't care, then calm down. Don't worry. They'll ruin music next year, too.

[ram29jackson]

you know this is one of my all time favorites