True Hip-Hop Thread

This thread is NOT for MTV spawned Hip-Hop heads. I'm starting this one for all those folks that spend time looking for true rap artists. Past or present. What's your favorite Hip-Hop artist and why? Who's your favorite "unknown but known" lyricist/producer?

For me:

Madlib (all aliases especially Quasimoto)
MF DOOM (all aliases especially Madvillain)
Oh No
Jay Dee

That's really all I'm aware of right now that's worth listening to when it comes to Hip-Hop. Are there any new and upcomming artists out there that aren't straight garbage?

Lets inform each other. Lets build a compendium of intellectual Hip-Hop.

Another thing I find is that the true way to respect and enjoy Hip-Hop is to actually understand and listen to the original material they're all sampling. I'm a crate digger myself, I enjoy finding that special loop and putting it into good use. It's always a treat to find something somebody else has sampled. This should also be part of the compendium.

Also, if you're producing beats or actually a lyricist yourself sick and tired of the crap you hear whenever you turn on the radio: Share it! Lets hear it.

[edit on 2-11-2007 by Donoso]

man i'm such a big fan of hip-hop.. i listen to it all

you name the artist i've got the albums

everything from lil wayne to brother ali to styles p to typical cats

from your list looks like you're into some more underground stuff, which is cool

if you like j dilla and madlib you should do yourself a favor and check out jaylib, they gotta CD called "Champion Sound" some of the beats in on that album go so hard

check out brother ali if you lookin for some real intellectual hip hop, i posted one of his videos on the forum called "god damn uncle sam" awesome song

typical cats are really good too.. 3 MC's from chicago, Qwel, Qwazaar and Denizen Kane, their first album which is self-titled is dope

umm what else.. if you like DOOM you should check out KMD and MF GRIMM along with other stones throw artists like Lootpack(Madlib, Wildchild and DJ Romes).. wildchild has a solo album.. secondary protocol.. good stuff

of course evidence is good.. dilated peoples.. people under the stairs.. planet asia..

a lot of good east coast stuff too like boot camp click, sean price, heltah skeltah, smif n wessun

man i could go on forever.. lets keep this discussion going and if you ever want some good stuff from some more mainstream artists or what you like to call music for mtv spawned hip-hop heads(lol) let me know

here check out the brother ali video


"You don't give money to the bums
on the corner wit a sign bleedin' from their gums
talkin' bout you don't support a crack head
what you think happens to the money from ya taxes
#, the governments the addict
with a billion dollar a week kill brown people habit"


KNOWLEDGE

[edit on 2-11-2007 by The Phantom]

I'm familiar with a whole plethora of Hip-Hop too. It's just that I find most of it to be boring or superficial. I used to like Tupac, now, I couldn't care less - There's nothing really there to connect to.

If there's any mention of image, I probably wouldn't like it. To me Hip-Hop is just as much about the music as it is about the lyrics.

I'm a huge Stones Throw fanatic so everything and or anyone from there I've got every single project. One of my favorite Madlib projects is Yesterdays New Quintet. It's obviously far more jazz oriented and is always instrumental, but, it's really nice.

Black Star (with Mos Def and Talib Kweli) was also a really good album. It's kinda' typical "back to Africa" but there were a gems in there that I found to be really nice.

Then there's obviously Deltron 3030, one of the best conceptual Hip-Hop albums.

There's just something missing when it comes to a whole bunch of mainstream rap these days. I recently got all the Top "blah blah" for each year up until 2006 and I found that as the years passed, it got worse and worse. The trends, the image. It just sounded more and more primitive and far less musical.

Know what I mean?

reply to post by Donoso


Man, I can't stand quasimoto, I'm a huge fan of the MAAADLIIIIB, though.. The beats from that whole clique are pretty nice though.

I'm also a fan of hip hop in it's entirety.

Def Jux
Doom
Madlib
Celph
Rugged
Sean P (My currrent jams)

I like a lot of vets too.

G rap.
Ghostface
Big

Blah blah blah...

I've been rocking stuff like Cass, and the Weeze in my car too.


Cass is on top. I think he's comparable to Canibus, but on a total street level.

CASS RUNS IT

I don't know. The way Madlib samples on his Quas tracks makes it for me. He takes your typical 80's korg drums for half his tunes, mixes them in with some Melvin Van Peeble vocal hits, and you've got a raunchy little track all setup with the sped up voice.

To be honest, I can't really stand his Beat Konducta crap. Those are too dry. Especially volume 3-4, the Indian one. It's hard as hell to sample Indian tracks mainly because of the lack of loop points mixed with the way they mastered back in India in those days. That could be the main reason why it sounds so... unnatural.

I'm not really familiar with that guy, I'll check him out though.

reply to post by DeadFlagBlues


Have you heard cassidys new album B.A.R.S.

i haven't checked it out yet but i've been getting a lot of mixed responses

carter III is going to be crazy!

reply to post by Donoso


I like the suble mumbling styles of Madlib and MF DOOM. Drawing you in and throwing # at you, you don't really expect that makes the rhyme instantly intricate.

I used to be huge on punk rock and hardcore, indie rock... KRS ONE ruined my life.

reply to post by The Phantom


I've heard some of it and love it, but there's still nothing like Cass doing his raw stuff for radio, or whatever. He's the dude, for sure.

reply to post by The Phantom


Speaking of Brother Ali, I got some of his old stuff and the # is absolutely terrible. Talk tough, all bark kind of stuff. His politically motivated stuff is awesome though. He's really fallen into his own and dropped the dumb ass tough guy image.

reply to post by DeadFlagBlues


Yeah. I can't stand the "tough guy" crap. What's the deal with that? Thug life died alongside Tupac as far as I'm concerned. But you've got morons like "The Game" coming in and claiming they're the name era of Gangster Rap when it has been gone for over 10 years now!

Oh well. They'll never learn, sooner or later people will get tired of it - hopefully.

SEAN PRICE




He has another song called "Remember me," that's probably my favorite.
I couldn't find anything worthy of his stuff on Youtube, So a dope verse with JMT is going to have to do it.


[edit on 3-11-2007 by DeadFlagBlues]

Cassidy



Don't get me wrong.. The dude did a video with R. Kelly who was wearing a pink mask at the time. He's an underground legend. I would say he's the "street" version of Canibus. I might catch hell for that.

reply to post by Donoso


For sure. I don't mind as long as they have lyrical value or a lot of style. The only reason I listen to Weez is because he's got style like nobody else.

I'm a political hip hop fan myself.

Non phixion and what not. I was really stoked to see JMT touch on politics.

I'm not into hip hop that much anymore but some of my favs are:

English:
Jurassic 5
A tribe called quest
Immortal Technique
Jedi Mind Tricks
Holocaust
Truepaz
Looptroop
Peace!

I used to love listening to A Tribe Called Quest back when we didn't even know Dilla was the producer. They were probably one of the more "clean" rap troops out there at the time. In fact, whenever those debates come up over the existence of "clean" Hip-Hop they're one of the names I always hear.

Jedi Mind Tricks, another group I used to love!

I don't really like Immortal Technique. He contradicts himself far too often and again is all about a single part - In his case it's the "message". The more emphasis on the music the better for me personally.

That reminds me, you guys know about RJD2, right? His latest album sucked but Deadringer and Since We Last Spoke had a few good tunes on it:

Smoke & Mirrors
Ghostwriter
Exotic Talk
Someone's Second Kiss
& Iced Lightning

i rap www.myspace.com/baconthedon i mostly listen to deep underground artists like vizunary demics people youve propably never heard of and never will hear of but then my favorites go

bone thugz n harmony
brotha lynch hung
chamillionaire (when he was underground)
south park mexican (one of the best lyricists ive heard in a while checc him out)
immortal technique
tech n9ne

reply to post by Donoso


RJD2's stuff blows my mind sometimes. Did you hear that "I'll sleep when you're dead?" That El P record's beats are so dense.As a music producer, I'm sure you can respect people like RJD2, El-P, and Stoops stuff, better than we probably could.

As a producer, who do you think is the best producer?

Here are a few of my favs-

Imortal Technique
A Tribe Called Quest
Atmosphere (never used good songs in his videos, but good nonetheless.)

Also a few bands that have good hiphop sound-

311
Sublime

reply to post by DeadFlagBlues


Well... There are multiple styles of production within Hip-Hop. There are multiple ways to sample and each way of sampling usually results in a completely different style. Just like people who play the guitar, it's easy to identify the best technique guitarist, melody maker, fluidity, etc etc.

I personally don't feel it's necessary to trash what I've sampled by adding my own beat to it for example. This is very prevalent on J Dilla's Donuts. I find it harder to correctly master a song if you're working simply with the original samples. In fact, if you don't worry about adding beats to all your songs then you're able to create far more loops splicing together integral parts of the original song which is usually noticed as sample creativity.

At this point it's whoever can emulate the most kinds of sounds and not be out of their place. RJD2 is very limited in this sense. He doesn't like to experiment - His new album actually dropped all sense of Hip-Hop and sold out to a more pop/gloss sound. DJ Shadow is also the same in this respect. While he's good at what he does, which is called collage sampling, it hasn't evolved for him since Entroducing... came out. He's doing that Hypy crap now which I don't consider to be a form of music. The thing that makes DJ Shadow interesting is that he finds records to sample which are so rare, there's hardly any chance of you being able to crate dig and find the tunes he sampled. But at the same time he did sample Nirvana... Which is a HUGE no-no in production.

I don't really want to get into that rule, but, I'll make it simple: Don't sample anything that happened after '82.

Then there are folks like Bonobo, Four Tet, The Cinematic Orchestra. Bonobo is pure modern downtempo. It's really good stuff and he's an expert at keeping fluidity. Four Tet is "folktronica" but creates amazing sound scapes through heavy sample chopping which most of us pure Hip-Hop producers don't want to subscribe to. While it's beautiful it doesn't work with vocals. (Note, Four Tet's remix of Money Folder).

So, who do I think is the best producer? Since I've actually remade a bunch of J Dilla's songs to learn how to mix vocal loops up and chop in that certain style, I know exactly the hardships and creativity that went into his tunes. All the way from Ruff Draft to The Shining. He evolved and changes his style to fit whatever he was trying to accomplish at the time and he wasn't a bad synth player. But I wouldn't consider him THE best. While Madlib has his ups and downs (more ups) I'd have to go with him in this respect. He has evolved his sound since his early lootpack days. He has multiple aliases that all capture a different element of Hip-Hop but all manage to produce:

Good music, good lyrics, a sense of creativity, and high understanding of sampling.

Oh No, Madlib's brother, he's also starting to pick up the pace. While not great yet... I have a feeling he'll be getting better over time.

Also, speaking of brothers, J Dilla's brother "Illa J" is a tool. I've spoken to him a few times and he's really just riding his brother's coat tails. If you guys are interested in hearing his tunes, just ask for a link where you can snatch some of his, well, crap.