Week 4: 50 Records that Changed Music.

[BradH]

...ever since the Velveteen Underwear debacle, these threads have sorta' lost their thrust IMO...

The list is "50 Records That Changed The Face Of Music", not "50 Records That Changed The Face Of Music Only If Resident Loser Likes Them."

Painful, I'm sure, but most people here are able to deal with it.

[bobsticks]

Hey Kex,
I think your post shows what a perspective-based thing musical influence can be and how evolutionary this album was.

In your last lines of your posting you state that you have outgrown gangsta rap but are still interested by other forms of the genre. Assuming that NWA was one your first exposures to rap music,it evidently acted as a gateway for further musical exploration. It did for me and I would suggest that this was a good thing.

You also mentioned that during your youth there was the formation of schoolyard gangs sometimes exhibiting minor fisticuffs. Boys will be boys and this stands to reason. However, remember that this is a universal reaction to youth, rebellion, and general mischieviousness.Pretty normal coming from your perspective.

OTOH a certain segment of the gangsta rap audience lacked two key qualities that many/most of us on this forum were blessed with. Discipline and hope. Take a kid, any kid and make him poor. Then give him part-time parents (usually just one) and surround him with substance abuse and abusive behavior. Then put him in an overcrowded school. Finally, feed him messages of victimization and self-victimization...and make guns easily attainable. The outcome is predictable.

Two warehousing facilities under my purview are in the inner city. When I make an appearance in either I try to actually get to know some of the young people that work there.Most are bright and friendly enough, but man, you look in their eyes and there's something missing. Some of these kids just seem like they're waiting for something to happen. Something usually consists of shootings or jailings. Hope and aspirations just seem to be choked off.

I haven't lost anybody yet, but I have had two shot and they all know someone who has been murdered. I've lost many to the criminal justice system.

I'm not blaming this or any other album for the state of things within the poorer classes in this country as everyone is to be held accountable for their behavior. I can say that Straight Outta Compton didn't make anything better. Anytime you repeatedly pummel a message into someone's brain they are eventually going to internalize it. If they behave on it it just exacerbates existing conditions and thereby reinforces stereotypes.

That's just my perspective. Who knows, I could be wrong...but I doubt it.

Take it easy,
M

[3-LockBox]

...not quite champing at the bit to continue but, ever since the Velveteen Underwear debacle, these threads have sorta' lost their thrust IMO...little or no debate results in ZZZzzz...and this one thus far is the ultimate sleep inducer.

Well then, the VU thread wasn't a debacle, since it did generate discussion, however polarized or heated. Not enough fans of rap here to argue with I suppose. But I'd rather wait it out than to try to digest the list in one thread anyway.

So, my vote is to keep it to one per week.

[MindGoneHaywire]

I've been a fan of this rec for a long time, but it has unfortunately had a rather destructive influence, the way I see it. I thought it was hysterically funny, but a lot of people who similarly took the wrong message from the movie Scarface apparently took it seriously. Bad news.

I've long thought that, for the most part, these guys were not gangsters, they just enjoyed playing that role. Eazy-E was involved with some stuff, but I think the rest of them were raised under circumstances that I think would be considered decent, if not middle-class. But I could be wrong. That's what I remember about it.

I think they were willing to play it either way. If people chose to view it as cartoonish, I think they would've been willing to roll with that. I do think it's cartoonish & exaggerated to a decent extent, though not totally. But whatever the quotient of art imitating life, before long life was imitating art to way more of an extent than I would consider healthy in any respect.

If Ice Cube hadn't left, does anyone think they have that incident with that reporter? I have a feeling it might not have happened. Ice Cube had a plan & took it seriously. And considering that I don't think he's much of an actor, it's quite the B-movie film career he's carved out for himself. I think he's moved into producing at this point, as well.

Is that a guy who is the tough guy character you hear on this rec? I don't think so.

I've never understood how people could listen to this rec & take it seriously as they did, but then the Scarface issue...I rented that when it came out on DVD & there was a documentary, and I believe Ice Cube was in it, and he did apparently choose to view the Tony Montana character as a hero, rather than a vicious, thuggish criminal. I don't get it, especially since this is in conflict with the idea of Ice Cube as canny professional.

But ultimately I don't care. Hip-hop followed this bizarre interpretation of this record down into a sewer it remains in. The Geto Boys? Geez. The Chronic? Ugh. I've come to appreciate some of the first Snoop Dogg, album, but Tupac...good as he may have been, it became formulaic, and Biggie wasn't good enough, and didn't live long enough, to do anything about the unbelievably rapid decline of this genre.

Eminem is great in spite of the people who hear this record differently than I do, not because of the genre it helped spawn. Outside of him, I haven't heard one new hip-hop artist in the past 15 years who's impressed me beyond one album, and since outfits like A Tribe Called Quest are so few & far between (Outkast doesn't do it for me well enough to rate them as highly), the genre's long been a washout.

I enjoy this album for what it is, at least relative to what I hear in it. I deplore its influence. Gangsta rap worked best as novelty, heavy on the comedy aspect, for me at least. Keeping it real is mighty overrated.

This album deserves its placement on this list. Acknowledging its influence is not a problem. Celebrating it is distasteful.

[JoeE SP9]

West Coast Connection said it all with So many Rappers In Love. Most just talk the talk . They can't walk the walk or live the life.

[bobsticks]

It just occurred to me that gangsts rap is a lot like pro-wrestling with guns...

[dean_martin]

I've come to appreciate some of the first Snoop Dogg, album,

It's confession time - I was going through the vinyl at a Virgin Recs. store in Orlando (Disney West Side of all places) and found Snoop's Doggy Style. Heck, I knew it was out on vinyl and had considered ordering it. But since it was right there in my hands I went ahead and bought it. Lodi Dodi!

[Resident Loser]

The list is "50 Records That Changed The Face Of Music", not "50 Records That Changed The Face Of Music Only If Resident Loser Likes Them."

Painful, I'm sure, but most people here are able to deal with it.

...Rocket Man...consensus breeds snore-time...Differing opinions make for interesting threads, and the length of the threads bear me out...unless,of course, a mutual admiration society is what you seek...

Week one was the high point...everything else has been second-rate, if even that...this one being the zz-topper...

The inclusion of most of the remaining albums on the list are a mystery to me (I envision a widening consensus on that count that I'm sure will become painfully evident as things progress) and I simply suggested when the traffic fades and interest wanes (as in this one) we simply kick it over to the side of the road and move on...

jimHJJ(...if you don't like my POV well... la-di-freakin'-da...)

[Troy]

Yes, you can't talk about this without talking about race . . . . and that is the problem.

Because that's really ALL it's about. There's really very little there except crude proselytizing and chest-beatng. Musically and spirtually it's pretty much empty.

Yes, you can argue that it's cartoonishness been misinterpreted in the same way that the movie Scarface was in the last 10 years, but that doesn't make it good either. Nothing worse than a joke no one seems to get.

The fact that the genre degenerated so quickly should lead one to realize just how limited rap is as a musical form.

Yes, it influenced a lot of things, I suppose, but certainly nothing that I care to listen to or be associated with.

[nobody]

Rap is unlimited as a musical form...been around over 30 years now...anything can be subject matter and has been in the past...spiritual, political, personal...anything. It assimiliates music with samples and grafts itself onto other forms when turntables and loops get used across genres.

Now, gangsta rap, I see as a short-lived entitity as far as having any vitality, which is now a severly limited genre all about making big record labels rich and duping suburban white kids into thinking they're being rebellious by buying it.

But, rap, or more largely put hip hop, has been a musical evolution the likes of which the world hasn't seen since rock 'n' roll came bubbling up.

[3-LockBox]

Yes, you can argue that it's cartoonishness been misinterpreted in the same way that the movie Scarface was in the last 10 years, but that doesn't make it good either. Nothing worse than a joke no one seems to get.

Its this same arguement that fans of Andy Kaufman used over and over again; that somehow we need to acknowledge him as one of our generation's greatest comedians, even though few ever found him funny. I for one, was a fan of his when I was a kid, but then I grew up and got tired of explaining him to everyone that didn't 'get' him, and in the end, I failed to 'get' him anymore. People who though he made a wrong turn with the wrestling thing don't realize that it he was in his his true element there; a place where he didn't have to be clever, just antagonize the hell out of people. And time wasn't kind to Kaufman either. When Danny Devito made that boring film of him (Man On the Moon), the movie goers still weren't interested in 'getting' Kaufman. Could you imagine if Kaufman ever wielded as much influence on pop culture as gangsta rap did?

Speaking of "pro" wrestling...when the WWE was in its glory 6 or 7 years ago, there was a concern about its influences on younger children and teens, even though everyone with half a brain could tell it was cartoonish and fake. (Backyard 'wrestling', a short lived fad, had caused some serious injuries amoung teens and parents were getting nervous about pro wrestling encouraging thuggish behavior).

But whereas most people can look at pro wrestling and its fanbase (or a performing artist like Kaufman) and dismiss them as moronic and unimportant, we're still somehow suppose to hold some measure of respect and import for gangsta rap, despite the moronic behavior associated with it. If all gangsta rap did was affect its own in the way of violence, I could write it off as natural selection. I do hope its on the wane.