You didn't beat anything. I will stick by my statement that most mainstream Rap DOES promote violence. Will Smith is not considered mainstream.

The Scorpions are one of my all-time favorites. Excellent song. I have yet to hear them do a bad song. ;)

Definately!...and a good point christianb...music evokes emotions and memories...thats what makes it special to me.

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree here.

Wait, that's not right. I agree with this. ;)

You're the man Boofo but I disagree completely on this one.

The Alice Cooper comparison - absolutely. However Manson's band is better, his songs are better, his lyrics are better and as a whole he's a much better musician than Cooper is. As far as live shows go, I've seen both and while I give cooper a slight edge, Manson's live performances are nothing short of spectacular.

It's worth mentioning that Alice is to this day the best concert I have ever seen, and I saw him ~8 years ago when I was 22 and the majority of his "best" years were well behind him. Basically it wasn't even my generation's music and he absolutely blew me away. Not to take anything away from MM who is also fantastic, but Cooper is just flawless live.

That said, Manson is certainly taking a lot of inspiration from him, but he's hardly a "pathetic copycat". He's picking up where Cooper left off, if anything. If you aren't into Metal I can understand why you wouldn't care for MM, but don't dismiss his entire catalog if you have only heard the handful of radio hits he's released. He's a BRILLIANT songwriter, and his band is excellent.

The Ozzy comparison is way off base though, apples and oranges. Ozzy was a metal singer writing rock songs. Manson writes heavy metal, conceptual art. He's closer to a dark/heavy David Bowie than he is to Ozzy.

I agree to a point. The majority of Rap that I've been exposed to (which is quite a bit), while a "performance art" no doubt, simply isn't music. I am a musician. My instrument is the guitar. If you're a singer, your voice is your instrument, a violinist, a pianist, etc. If you're relying on computer generated samples and programmed drum tracks for your backline, and the best you can do is talk over them - that's not music, that's Dr. Seuss.

Every band is capable of putting out a lousy song. However those bands you mentioned are comprised of musicans writing original material, whereas the majority of rappers are reciting lyrics over a looped sample, and half the time those samples were recorded, written, arranged and basically birthed by an actual artist.

I play guitar. I'm classically trained, but I'm a metal guitarist, and I'm a shredder. I can play In The Hall Of The Mountain King, and I put my own style on it and turn it into a shred/metal piece. That doesn't mean that I wrote it, but at the same time it takes a decent degree of skill to pull it off. (And by decent, I mean quite a bit). I've been playing for almost 20 years, and I practice my ASS off.

If you buy a guitar, you are a guitarist. When you work at it, then you become a musician. If I wanted to put out a rap album, I can buy some software, loop some samples and read this post over it in a verse/cadence, and voila, I have crafted a rap song.

Some of rap's origins may be the blues, but I'm sorry, Jay-Z has as much in common with roots Blues as I do with an astronaut.

Most rappers aren't musicians, they're performers and entertainers. Granted there are exceptions to every rule, and you can certainly be both at the same time. Please point me to a brilliantly written, composed rap piece PLAYED BY MUSICIANS that isn't the work of a team of producers, that doesn't require samples and isn't borrowing melodies from any other artist.

Not to nitpick, but the time signature has absolutely nothing to do with it. You can speak in odd meter over a pattern in odd meter. At the same time, not all rock is 4/4, it's just the easiest and most basic time signature to play in, as well as the most naturally listenable.

If you want to try some fun counting, listen to the new Tool single, Vicarious, and listen to the first 15 seconds or so. Those are polyrythms, and if a rapper were talented enough to double vocal lines like that, I'm sure it would certainly sound interesting. Lots of classical/opera pieces have them in there - it's a LOT of counting and extremely hard to write but the end result is fantastic from a technical standpoint.

Such will be the bane of musicians for all time. Try being a metal guitarist. ;) I'm a progressive-ambient-metal-shred-rock-guitarist. But oh no, I have an acoustic piece with classical overtones, and I do play some polyrythms, and throw in some bluesy bits, so my album is a progressive-ambient-metal-shred-rock-blues-classical-acoustic record!

Which category is that on Amazon.com, again? :D

Best post in this thread.

Anyway, my final points:

- I now have the longest post in this thread.
- As the token music guy (see my site in my sig), that's my job.
- Whatever you enjoy is up to you, and hell, if you want to fart into a microphone and that's what you want to hear and you enjoy it, more power to you.

I'll never like rap. I won't deny that some of it has merit, but in a nutshell for the most part, not as a whole I do not consider rappers to be musicians in any sense of the word. They are artists and entertainers.

Being a musician is something very special that takes an enormous commitment, and I am in a small way offended when these talentless hacks are being given (by the media) a denomination that has taken me almost 20 years of my life to obtain.

I AM a musician because I have worked at it, I have lived for it, and after countless hours, days, years, I have earned it. It's not something you can buy, and not something the media can give you. That's something that I think only other musicians will ever understand.

Right... Can I quote that again?

...

His wife's band is metal.

http://www.wickedwisdom.net/

There's irony here! :D

My post is long. Blame it on the timezone. Bleh...


About Will Smith: Is considered "mainstream rap" since it has a lot of air play on the national and international level. He promotes positivity. I've listened to him (as Fresh Prince) and DJ Jazzy Jeff from the time they both came onto the scene in 85/86'. :)

@Paul M: No. Talking over beats is considered the Spoken Word but remains in the music category. ;) A musician uses a device to produce music. A device can be anything, including the voice. The voice can produce melodic (which by itself can be music) and non-melodic sounds (which is a component of music) as far as I remember. Anyone wish to verify that? :D

@Chris-777: Let's nitpick a moment. All rap came from the blues (and so did rock). Not just some (rap) as you've stated above. (Rap can be traced further back in history.)

Jay-Z, I agree. I don't listen to him, Diddy or Master P and most of the mainstream you hear today and back in the day. I have my preferences just like the next person.

You've mentioned about finding any rap artist that has written song(s) in its entirety without overlayed samples that are played with live musicians. I can name many actually but I'll name two: MC Hammer (2 Legit 2 Quit). Now he'll be the first to tell you that he's a entertainer/performer first and rapper second. Dr. Dre has also composed original songs from the lyrics to beats to music to production. According to the Music Industry what they do is considered music.

You say that you're classically trained. I'll give you props to that. I never went to a specialized school but have been playing the piano (now keyboards) and ukulele just over 22 years now. Yes, people who did B-Boying and were involved in the Hip-Hop culture can have other talents too. :) Well, definitely not as much as when I was younger. I'll definitely get back into it.

With the time signature of rap you're off. There is a discipline to it. Though, I won't compare Opera and classical as they are totally different and the pinnacle to all musical structures.

Just little over a decade now there have been a movement of DJ's who've commited themselves into the art of "Turntablism". Basically they use their turntables as instruments. They practice day-in and day-out. It has a lot of discipline. Does what they do any less than what you do as a guitarist?

-----

Anyway, going to my original topic, not all rap is gangsta rap; and not all rap promotes/glorifies violence. The mainstream, while is not the majority, do have the loudest voices since they get the most air play. It's too bad that's what you hear but as Flavor Flav always said, "Don't believe the hype". :)

Let me enlighten you as someone who knows just a smidge about production. Actually, I won't even be sarcastic - I know a LOT about production. 2 Legit to Quit? Samples. Every Dr. Dre song I've ever heard? Samples.

Now, I'm not being contradictory for the sake of it. It's very possible that there's someone playing the drumlines initially to those songs. But the drum and bass that you hear on each are 100% sampled, and overlayed into sections of the songs accordingly. The reason (in layman's terms) that you can tell (in a nutshell, basically, I can expand upon it more if you really need me to) is that if you listen to them, they are sonically 100% the same each time. Real instruments do not do that, regardless of how skilled the musician is. Bass is a piece of wood with metal wound strings. Drums are polymer resin stretched over a canister. No two bass notes will ever resonate the same. Neither will two hits of a bass drum, regardless of the musician behind them.

Big production studios, like the ones that produce both acts that you named, IF they are taking live tracks, will take those tracks, reproduce them electronically, and then THAT is what you hear on the album. Rock artists do it as well. Staind? Sampled. Godsmack? Samples. The new Korn album? Yep. Samples. It's a common studio technique, because with studio albums of big-label-caliber, there's no room for the earthy, artistic sounds that you get with a real drummer playing real drums in realtime on a track. It doesn't happen. And while musicians will appreciate it, anything mass-marketed (like rap) as opposed to non-major bands tailor their albums to the listening, cd-buying public. Jonny paintballer doesn't want to hear a difference in Tom sounds on the new Green Day album. He wants to hear his favorite song. That's what he gets.

That's the music industry. There are exceptions, of course. Offhand: Tool, Dave Matthews Band. Two artists whose careers thrive off of grassroots fans analyzing their music to the Nth degree. DMB needs to be earthy. Tool needs to be, well, if you've ever listened to them, Tool. They have the liberty of using 100% live (analog, mind you) recording techniques because the music that they put out BENEFITS from these qualities in the ears of the people who buy their CDs. The last Snoop Dogg album, the majority of the fans don't care about the saturation and resonance of the bassline. It's club music. DJ's need to mix it, play it, and the fans, quite plainly, just don't ++++ing care.

Are the beats their own? Sure. I'm drinking a glass of scotch right now on my right, and to my left is a pack of smokes. In the middle is my ashtray. I can give you 4/4 on them immediately, but that doesn't qualify it as "music", it's me tapping 4/4 on my vices.

If you want to hear someone that doesn't rap in 4/4, I can actually point one out. Listen to some Eminem. I can't name the song (because, as is obvious, it's not my thing) but I've heard plenty, and some of his stuff is in 7, some of it is in 6/8. And I'm sure that you'll agree that he's certainly a credible, mass-market rap artist.

4/4 isn't discipline man. It's just counting. So is odd meter. Bands like Yes, Rush, Dream Theater - they aren't just maiking signatures up. Playing in 7, 9, 6/8, 11 - that's the same as 4/4, it's just a LOT more difficult to write and arrange listenable melodies in that signature. 4/4 is just easy. Put on the radio right now, chances are it doesn't matter which station. At the first upbeat, start counting. 1.2.3.4.1.2.3.4. That's 4/4. It's easy. Rap is easy. They aren't rapping in 4/4 because it's "the rap discipline", they're rapping in 4/4 because 4/4 is as simple as counting to 4 instead of mixing it up and being creative and talented enough to write verse in something other than the time signature of 99.9% of mass-media, common music.

Listen to the beatles sometime. Check out Sergeant Pepper. I, admittedly, HATE the beatles. I don't like their songs at all, but mother of god, Ringo Starr and George Harrison were absolute theory monsters. Do I like the songs? Not at all. Do I respect them as musicians? You bet.


It's important to note that my day job is a Software engineer. I spent 4 years at Berklee because music means something to me. It's my art. It's how I express myself in situations where human nature might be contradictory. It's the single greatest, most passionate thing that I've ever been a part of.

Do I think it takes skill to scratch records? Yep. Are they even remotely in the same league as I am with a guitar in my hands? I'm sorry man, and if you look through my posts on this forum I consider myself a humble, balanced guy - but not even close.

If you want to learn to scratch records, you scratch records. I play instrumental guitar. In the supreme-nutshell-layman-lets-categorize-everything term, I'd probably be called a neo-classical shred guitarist. There are no "viking scales" or "classical modes" to learn. It's just guitar. I have to know the blues, jazz, metal, classical. I know it all. It's about incorporating blues and jazz scales and progressions into MY music, while at the same time not sounding like I'm a metal guy playing the blues. You can't scratch Miles Davis. I can play Freddie the Freeloader in post-modern progressive shred guitar, staying true to the roots of the song while playing it in a manner that expresses my contribution to the piece.

Is scratching easy? Absolutely not. Is it the same as what I do from a musical standpoint? Again, absolutely not.

I'm not down on you for liking Rap. If you liked kazoo music and that's you're thing, right on man. Music is subjective, and the bottom line is that if what you listen to inspires you, good for you. Keep it up and enjoy it. That's what makes music worth pursuing. The simplest bit of it can inspire millions. In this day and age, things like that are precious, rare, and should be cherished.

I myself simply endluge myself the slightest bit of pride when it comes to someone comparing something that's taken me 20 years to consider myself a novice at to something I could reasonably produce in a week given the time and the finances.

The Roots. The Roots don't sample (or didn't haven't kept up with their current going ons). They are a rap band, that uses real instruements.