No black artists had a #1 single in 2013

[NAHSTE]

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.

 

[Hasselbeck]

The Macklemore hate is tired.. especially if that drum beat is getting louder now that he won some Grammy's. Even Macklemore said he shouldn't have won.. the vast majority of voters for these awards don't really give a shit about the Hip Hop genre thus when they were asked to vote they scribbled in Macklemore's name because they enjoyed his song about hitting up a Goodwill for some clothes.

 

[Pitty]

The Macklemore hate is tired.. especially if that drum beat is getting louder now that he won some Grammy's. Even Macklemore said he shouldn't have won.. the vast majority of voters for these awards don't really give a shit about the Hip Hop genre thus when they were asked to vote they scribbled in Macklemore's name because they enjoyed his song about hitting up a Goodwill for some clothes.

Yeah he was going to say Kendrick deserved to win on stage but the music started playing and he got scared. Instead he posted it on his twitter.


:troy:

 

[NAHSTE]

Yeah he was going to say Kendrick deserved to win on stage but the music started playing and he got scared. Instead he posted it on his twitter.

Personalized text message ... that he posted on his instagram ... so everyone could know how humble he is.

 

[Pitty]

Personalized text message ... that he posted on his instagram ... so everyone could know how humble he is.

He was totally gonna say it on stage though. :dd:

 

[NAHSTE]

He was totally gonna say it on stage though. :dd:

Totally ... he was just about to say it ... then the music played and he got nervous ...

oh well, better to keep the award then make an empty gesture on social media later.

 

[KINGOFOOTBALL]

I just realized that stupid thought I was gay song was Macklemores.

Dell is right plenty of rappers talk about social issues...but they also sound like 1979 street park rappers. Guys with unique voices or "flow" rarely talk social issues. The small amounts of HipHop I expose myself to make me think todays hiphop is some godawful hybrid of the shallowest topics , with the least impressive collection of voices Ive ever heard.
Im half expecting the next track on every rap station to be Sugar Hill Gang singing about Macaroni and Strippers.

 

[NAHSTE]

:facepalm:

I'm gonna pistol whip the next person who says not enough popular rappers rap about social issues in a thread which is directly comparing Kendrick Lamar and Macklemore.

 

[KINGOFOOTBALL]

:facepalm:

I'm gonna pistol whip the next person who says not enough popular rappers rap about social issues in a thread which is directly comparing Kendrick Lamar and Macklemore.

I picked Spin at random since it didnt seem much different then other names.
http://www.spin.com/articles/spin-50-best-rap-hip-hop-songs-2013/?slide=48


Included are 7 songs specifically mentioning money and or hoes.
1 that includes date rape
1 inspired by pokemon
1 that would seem about a social issue but its just another "why do people hate me" song

1 whos social commentary include such amazing lyrics such as "Versace ,Versace ,Versace ,Versace ,Versace ,Versace ,Versace ,Versace ,Versace ,Versace ,"

And of course 1 song with the line that "changes the rap game forever"..

"I had women on women, yeah that's bunk bed bitches." "You gon' get this rain like it's May weather." "Forever hot-headed but never got cold feet."

I mean...how can rap be the same after that line ?

10. Eminem – "So Far…"

The "Mo Money Mo Problems" for rich dudes who just wanna drop a deuce in a McDonalds bathroom. Forty-year-old Marshall Mathers wrestles the fame monster, and it doesn't get Eddie Vedder than this. C.W.


9.
Young Thug – "Picacho"

With Lil Wayne now on a puckish crusade to orally pleasure yo mama and foul every punch bowl he can reach with his still-rich-as-fuck, post-incarceration pimp stick, it's left to this Atlanta MC to push the boundaries of what's rapping and what's hysterically spontaneous jibber-jabber. And he's up to the task on this hysterically spontaneous track, jibber-jabbering his own jabberwocky hypnotically, with a constantly fluctuating tone and accent, sounding like he's always clearing his throat, navigating a cubistic cascade of synths (from producer Jay Neutron), bragging that his diamonds can wink and his watch is Italian and he wears slippers and yacht shoes and he'll hoot and screech "Picacho" (pronounced like both the Pokemon character or "peek at you") at anybody in the club. It's no "Ha," but it's a new day. C.A.



8
Travi$ Scott, feat. 2 Chainz – "Upper Echelon"

You could retitle Owl Pharoah, Travi$ Scott's debut full-length, as Children of the Screw, for how this manic Houston producer-rapper (and Kanye sidekick) taps into his hometown's tradition of dank, turgid, spooky dislocation and shoots it up with a we-so-fuckin'-high, kid-like bravado. Everybody's poppin' Xannies and partyin' at the Sphinx, while T.I. shouts, "I'm a king, motherfucker, who the hell are you?" amid incessant horn fanfares and snares stretched into pinpricks. Basically, this couldn't be more of an invitation for 2 Chainz to slide down the chimney and bless all the good little boys and girls with a bounty of naughty punch lines: "Uh, pull up in the 'rari / My ho beside me / It's a two-seater / Your bitch can't ride / Ho, I'm sorry." Ho, ho, ho to one and all. C.A





7
Big Sean, feat. Kendrick Lamar, Jay Electronica – "Control"

And with a single verse, the rap game changed forever. "I had women on women, yeah that's bunk bed bitches." "You gon' get this rain like it's May weather." "Forever hot-headed but never got cold feet." By gosh, Big Sean just slays here, a brash, confrontational tour de force that brought Twitter to its knees, inspired bar-raising answer records by everyone from Fred the Godson to Papoose, and totally established Big S as the hottest MC in the game, let alone on this, his own song, which in a bittersweet addendum, also featured two other rappers so thoroughly clowned by his typhoon of lyrical acumen that they were never heard from again. May weather! Mayweather! Like the boxer! This one gets five out of five Big Seans. ROB HARVILLA


#6
Rich Homie Quan – "Type of Way"

With producer Yung Carter's vaguely eerie suite of synth guitar/horns/what-have-you hovering (like a Mike WiLL Made It preset) and Atlanta MC (and Future stan) Rich Homie Quan's crying-style of vocalizing, one might be tempted to shout foul. But the more you let Carter's track drift along, the more you become entranced by its peculiar, light-on-its-feet, almost dancehall riddim ("My Jamaican Guy"?), and RHQ's odd, anxious #hashtag exploration of the emotion behind other people's jealousy, peppered with his own moments of raw, fourth-wall-breaking honesty: "I got a hideaway / And I go there sometimes / To give my mind a break." Ultimately, these guys find their own type of way. C.A.


5
Chance the Rapper – "Chain Smoker"

This prodigiously talented, "brain-broken, Frank Ocean-listenin', stain-hittin', satin-wood-grain-grippin'" Chicago rap nerd writes songs with such a boldly multifaceted whir of implied emotions and points of view that for any slumming outsider to try and elevate it above the genre and call it, say, refreshing, should be grounds for beef. C.A.


4
Rocko, feat. Kendrick Lamar, Schoolboy Q, Ab-Soul & Jay Rock – "U.O.E.N.O." (Black Hippy Remix)

So Rick Ross (the rapper not the drug dealer) matter-of-factly boasts about drugging and date-raping a girl, and after a groundswell of opposition (his murderous-international-drug-lord character finally crossed the line, apparently), he gets tossed off the track like so much recycled garbage, metaphor intended. No problem, since Childish Major's production was the song's nerve center all along — the quixotic, trapped-in-a-cloud beat woozily shielding its eyes from the sun, again and again. Black Hippy's remix was the most memorable of many, amping up the flow as Schoolboy Q brazenly subtweeted Ross: "Molly in her drink, but she asked me to." C.A.


#3
Kanye West – "Black Skinhead"

With a death-grip on the mic amid a cataclysmic, industrial-punk thud (courtesy of Daft Punk and French techno ruffian Gessafelstein), Our Lord and Savior Yeezus Christ blacks out about mass incarceration and never-not-mutating racism atop a vaporous mountain of Louis Vuitton pipedreams, then instructs his minions to burn their gold, grind it to powder, scatter it on a glass of water, and swallow the bitter result. Wait, that was Black Moses, right?! Regardless, here is Yehovah's Cray-Baldheads communiqué for Americans who find him (and other African-American agitpoppers) a nuisance or hypocritical or worse: Slavery and its ongoing damage ain't your fault, huh? You're bummed you can't say "nigga" like all those entitled nasty rappers? That's not the fucking issue, cowboy. C.A.


2
Migos, feat. Drake – "Versace (Remix)"

"Oh, shit, man, who that is?" It took 21 long years for Toronto/Atlanta relations to thaw in the wake of 1992's contentious Blue Jays/Braves World Series, but here, finally, is the endearingly cocky, magnificently knuckleheaded, triumphantly infectious one-word-repeated-until-it-scans-as-glorious-nonsense earworm upon which both David Justice and Dave Winfield can agree, here with a bonus Drizzy verse full of the most endearing lies he told all year (his record didn't quite crack a million first week, and we're assuming that whole Halle Berry thing didn't work out). The love child of Steve Reich and Gucci Mane; hopefully, Versace wrote 'em a golf-tournament-sized novelty check. R.H.



1
Ace Hood, feat. Future, Rick Ross – "Bugatti"

Hard-hustlin' South Florida Lotto winner hides in the trunk of reigning club-rap production auteur (Mike WiLL Made It) and unassailable hook-captain (Future). The beat creeps and races and shivers like an anxiety disorder orchestrated for lazer synths, while the Auto-Tune sing-song and agitated verses lure you into a Grand Theft Auto hellscape of Haitian gangsters, omni-racial orgies, stacks stained with blood, discussion of Ace Hood's mortgage ($4,200!), and Officer Jelly Belly braggin' about his "D-League" hitmen (what, dudes who shoot like Travis Leslie?). But that's all noise: Bottom line, the chorus will make any dance floor go kablooey on impact, like a dubstep drop without cartoon quotes around it. C.A.

 

[NAHSTE]

Spin was being ironical methinks. But nice jerb not knowing the backstory to Control and then quoting lyrics from the verse that had nothing to do with why it's considered "game changing" ...

:rambo:

 

[Houston]

Fuck social issues. People always act like it's hip hop's bread and butter or that it's not "real hip hop" unless you're saying something socially relevant. Nobody cared about that when the genre was just taking off.

It appears that #whitewashing started earlier than Nahste has been suggesting. :lolno:

 

[JeremyHight]

Sounds kind of like Kendrick Lamar, who everyone thought should have won ...

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.

 

[JimLeavy59]

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.

This is Ram's level of bad holy fuck.

GUESS WHAT IN 2013 PEOPLE NO LONGER GAVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT RADIO THATS THE POINT OF THIS THREAD.

 

[Houston]

Jeremy fighting all kinds of strawmen in that post.

:lol:

Can't tell people not to give a shit about grammy's but then suggest that they turn on the radio to gauge the quality of a genre of music.

 

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

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.

 

[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?