Are you disagreeing with the content or substance of what I quoted?
I am disagreeing with it because almost every artist biography I have read cleans up the dirt and turns the normalcy into the mythic. Music by its very nature is subjective and then when you have them spin the objective aspects on top of that, it just becomes adoration instead of information.
Quote:
An "adoring fan?"
That article has been edited thousands and thousands of times by all sorts of people.
Address the substance please.
The "sorts of people" editing that article have handles like "License2Kill" and "Lebo Thug."
On to the substance... at least what exists within that article...
Quote:
Shakur claimed his first album was aimed at the problems facing young black males, but it was publicly criticized for its graphic language and images of violence by and against police.[18] In one incident, a young man claimed his killing of a Texas trooper was inspired by the album.
Next..
Quote:
His second album, Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z., was released in 1993.
It featured the single...I get around which was considered very sexist and disrespectful to women.
Quote:
Shakur was convicted of "sexual abuse (forcibly touching the buttocks)". In sentencing Shakur to one-and-a-half years in prison, the judge described the crime as "an act of brutal violence against a helpless woman."[24]
Quote:
In 1994, he was convicted of attacking a former employer while on a music video set. He was sentenced to 15 days in jail with additional days on a highway work crew, community service, and a $2000 fine. In 1995, a wrongful death lawsuit was brought against Shakur in the 1992 shooting of six-year-old Qa'id Walker-Teal of Marin City, California. The child had been the victim of a stray bullet in a shootout between Tupac's entourage and a rival group, though the bullet was not from Tupac's gun.
You prove my point from an initial read all those performers/groups are from the late 80's/early 90's.
Quote:
Originally Posted by groverat
If kids want a genre that parents absolutely do not understand hip-hop is the only way to go, rock is dead in that sense. Rock music today is completely accessible to parents, because it's the same stuff the parents of modern teenagers listened to. The parents listened to more controversial, challenging, and intelligent rock than kids listen to today.
What is controversial in rock?
What does rock have to offer anyone? It is crap.
The only decent rock-type music worth listening to comes from indie scenes.
Rock is dead because the people making it aren't about sex, rock and rebellion. They are about being whiny, self-loathing little shits.
Who cares what screen name someone uses to edit a user-contributed encyclopedia? If you want to talk about the accuracy of what I quoted-- try directly rebutting it. Yes, his lyrics might be sometimes sexist and yes he has a jail record-- but people in the black community look up to him because of what I quoted, which is a far-far different interpretation of his work than your analysis that he simply " advocat[ed] a life of crime including killing and harming others."
There's more there, trumptman, than what you think.
What you quoted was almost exclusively endorsements. People are entitled to their opinions. One doesn't refute an opinion. I gladly accessed the facts of the article you linked and pulled what was relevant.
I'd gladly prefer to hear Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-a-Lot. I much preferred rap as a social force and rap as a means to a good time as opposed to rapping egomaniacs who cap all suckaz for pleasure. Tupac got his wish in that the lifestyle he advertised was delivered to him. However I'd still rather listen to even him than the played out nonsense that passes for rap today. It is like a hair band in 1990. We are all waiting for the next real thing that will get rid of all the third cousins with record deals and pass for "rap" artists.
Although I could really give two sh*ts that they name the school after Tupac... I do find it a bit hypocritical considering Will Smith was the one who always had a problem with Gansta Rap and the themes of the genre.
You prove my point from an initial read all those performers/groups are from the late 80's/early 90's.
Uh, are you joking? Even de la soul, which is the only group with an album in the 80's (89) and along with tribe called quest is the only group that was popular in the "early 90's," has still been hugely popular and collaborated with gorillaz on a grammy winning song as recently as last year. And maybe Common Sense was popular in the early 90's in the sense that the "I Used to Love HER" video was played on BET's Rap City for a couple weeks in 94, but he certainly wasn't in Gap ads as he his today. The Fugees didn't even become popular until The Score in 96, and Mos Def and Talib Kweli became popular in the late 90's (first in 98 ) and early naughts, with Mos Def even becoming a film actor in recent years.
And I'm no tupac fan, but failure to recognize his cultural significance really requires a special kind of ignorance.
The level of Tupac's "crookedness" is entirely the point here. I will take it for granted that he is not a good moral character, but that is not a disqualifying characteristic for an artist receiving recognition and praise.
The thing is, we have established that Tupac is a crook who at least advertised a life of crime. For me at least, that's the end of the story. Tupac is associated with a degenerate culture (crime), and I think that no school should want to associate itself with that. It's equivalent in my eyes to naming a church after a crooked clergyman.
Whether they choose to do so or not is not something under my control, and ultimately it doesn't matter to me that much if it goes through or not, but I personally disapprove.
Since when is moral goodness something we expect of our artists? Do we only expect the black ones to be "good" people?
This is an interesting point. We definitely hold our citizens of color to a higher standard. Steinbeck expressed this most elegantly in an essay found in the compilation ?America and Americans?
Uh, are you joking? Even de la soul, which is the only group with an album in the 80's (89) and along with tribe called quest is the only group that was popular in the "early 90's," has still been hugely popular and collaborated with gorillaz on a grammy winning song as recently as last year. And maybe Common Sense was popular in the early 90's in the sense that the "I Used to Love HER" video was played on BET's Rap City for a couple weeks in 94, but he certainly wasn't in Gap ads as he his today. The Fugees didn't even become popular until The Score in 96, and Mos Def and Talib Kweli became popular in the late 90's (first in 98 ) and early naughts, with Mos Def even becoming a film actor in recent years.
And I'm no tupac fan, but failure to recognize his cultural significance really requires a special kind of ignorance.
I don't get you giant. I never claimed that though the acts originated in that time frame that they somehow stopped making significant music. I also didn't use the criteria of "when they became popular." Also I said it was just an initial read. Not to be rude, but these years fly by too fast and more often or not I keep scratching my head wondering how an even that seems like it was "recent" somehow become "retro." Eitherway, my view is that present rap is finished and hollow as a cultural force. (Totally secondary conversation within this thread anyway)
Finally I never even said that Tupac didn't have a cultural significance. I would state quite the opposite. He did and it wasn't a very good one. He may have shown that gangsters and thugs can have some redeeming qualities, but it would be much more impressive if he showed they could indeed be redeemed.
Instead he lived and died his credo. It isn't one that a school should be named after.
Not to be rude, but these years fly by too fast and more often or not I keep scratching my head wondering how an even that seems like it was "recent" somehow become "retro."
So? What are you saying, that even under 40 you are getting so senile that you think the dot-com boom was in the early 90's, too?
Quote:
Eitherway, my view is that present rap is finished and hollow as a cultural force.
It's clear that your view of hip hop is dominated by a disproportionate focus on west coast g-funk, particularly that of the actual late 80's/early 90's (ice-t, tupac, nwa and its offshoots), a pinch of bad dirty south and capped with the modern "gangsta" hip hop version of bubblegum pop that virtually only exists in the minds of marketers and 13yo suburban kids, ignoring that underground hip hop in most of the country and worldwide is dominated by other sub-genres and that many of the largest acts of the past 10 years (or even 5 years), including those in shawn's list and others like outkast, gorillaz and gnarles barkley, are making some of the most interesting contemporary popular music.
And, frankly, your view "that present rap is finished and hollow as a cultural force" is really totally irrelevant since most genres in the world's cultural centers (aka, not beaumont, ca) have been increasing cross-pollinating with hip hop, to the point where hip hop artists are now often drawn from the indie, electronica and shoegaze ranks. Even the neptunes, who have been responsible for a huge percentage of the biggest pop and rap hits in the past 7 or so years, have basically an electronica production style and have also put a huge amount of energy into NERD, their rock/electronica band. That's increasingly the case with hip hop producers, and dangermouse is another chart-topping example. This trend is reflected 10 fold in the underground hip hop scene.
The thing is, we have established that Tupac is a crook who at least advertised a life of crime.
We certainly haven't.
His legacy is social consciousness-- not thuggery.
I'm not sure just who some of you guys think this guy is... he's a tamer version of his father (a leader of the black panthers) and his god-mother (a pretty famous political activist for the black liberation army). His lyrics focus on the social condition of blacks in this country. You can just ignore what the black community reveres him for or just continue to ignorantly assume he's a meritless thug. It's not quite racist but really lazy and frankly disappointing of you all.
Also-- they're naming the theater after him-- which is appropriate considering he's a musical artist after all. They're not naming the freaking school after him.
His legacy is social consciousness-- not thuggery.
I think the argument Nick is trying to make is that his lyrics weren't exactly…*constructive or encouraging. He didn't do much (if anything at all) to suggest improvements for the situation.
I wouldn't quite label him a "thug" (though ironically, I think he'd quite enjoy being called that), but I sure wouldn't hand him the nobel peace price either.
It's not about whether gangsta rappers bring up legitimate, real problems. They do. It's about whether they do much to actually solve them, or merely whine about them (and possibly even increase the problem).
Comments
The only decent rock-type music worth listening to comes from indie scenes.
What have you been listening to lately?
Get your ass in that music thread we have going.
Utterly irrelevant.
Are you disagreeing with the content or substance of what I quoted?
I am disagreeing with it because almost every artist biography I have read cleans up the dirt and turns the normalcy into the mythic. Music by its very nature is subjective and then when you have them spin the objective aspects on top of that, it just becomes adoration instead of information.
An "adoring fan?"
That article has been edited thousands and thousands of times by all sorts of people.
Address the substance please.
The "sorts of people" editing that article have handles like "License2Kill" and "Lebo Thug."
On to the substance... at least what exists within that article...
Shakur claimed his first album was aimed at the problems facing young black males, but it was publicly criticized for its graphic language and images of violence by and against police.[18] In one incident, a young man claimed his killing of a Texas trooper was inspired by the album.
Next..
His second album, Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z., was released in 1993.
It featured the single...I get around which was considered very sexist and disrespectful to women.
Shakur was convicted of "sexual abuse (forcibly touching the buttocks)". In sentencing Shakur to one-and-a-half years in prison, the judge described the crime as "an act of brutal violence against a helpless woman."[24]
In 1994, he was convicted of attacking a former employer while on a music video set. He was sentenced to 15 days in jail with additional days on a highway work crew, community service, and a $2000 fine. In 1995, a wrongful death lawsuit was brought against Shakur in the 1992 shooting of six-year-old Qa'id Walker-Teal of Marin City, California. The child had been the victim of a stray bullet in a shootout between Tupac's entourage and a rival group, though the bullet was not from Tupac's gun.
How is that for a start from your own article?
Nick
...and
Common
Talib Kweli
Fugees
Lauryn Hill
A Tribe Called Qwest
De la soul
Mos Def
The Roots
among others...
You prove my point from an initial read all those performers/groups are from the late 80's/early 90's.
If kids want a genre that parents absolutely do not understand hip-hop is the only way to go, rock is dead in that sense. Rock music today is completely accessible to parents, because it's the same stuff the parents of modern teenagers listened to. The parents listened to more controversial, challenging, and intelligent rock than kids listen to today.
What is controversial in rock?
What does rock have to offer anyone? It is crap.
The only decent rock-type music worth listening to comes from indie scenes.
Rock is dead because the people making it aren't about sex, rock and rebellion. They are about being whiny, self-loathing little shits.
Nick
I'm so old school...these guys delivered "The Message" 24 years ago...
Best beat ever.
UTFO
Nick
"Careful, Chief. Dig up the past, all you get is dirty"
It's skirting pretty much every point I quoted.
Who cares what screen name someone uses to edit a user-contributed encyclopedia? If you want to talk about the accuracy of what I quoted-- try directly rebutting it. Yes, his lyrics might be sometimes sexist and yes he has a jail record-- but people in the black community look up to him because of what I quoted, which is a far-far different interpretation of his work than your analysis that he simply " advocat[ed] a life of crime including killing and harming others."
There's more there, trumptman, than what you think.
I'd just like you to see that.
How is that?
It's skirting pretty much every point I quoted.
What you quoted was almost exclusively endorsements. People are entitled to their opinions. One doesn't refute an opinion. I gladly accessed the facts of the article you linked and pulled what was relevant.
Nick
I'm not gonna get into it with you because I really don't have the patience.
Good luck to everyone else.
I'd gladly prefer to hear Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-a-Lot. I much preferred rap as a social force and rap as a means to a good time as opposed to rapping egomaniacs who cap all suckaz for pleasure. Tupac got his wish in that the lifestyle he advertised was delivered to him. However I'd still rather listen to even him than the played out nonsense that passes for rap today. It is like a hair band in 1990. We are all waiting for the next real thing that will get rid of all the third cousins with record deals and pass for "rap" artists.
Nick
You prove my point from an initial read all those performers/groups are from the late 80's/early 90's.
Uh, are you joking? Even de la soul, which is the only group with an album in the 80's (89) and along with tribe called quest is the only group that was popular in the "early 90's," has still been hugely popular and collaborated with gorillaz on a grammy winning song as recently as last year. And maybe Common Sense was popular in the early 90's in the sense that the "I Used to Love HER" video was played on BET's Rap City for a couple weeks in 94, but he certainly wasn't in Gap ads as he his today. The Fugees didn't even become popular until The Score in 96, and Mos Def and Talib Kweli became popular in the late 90's (first in 98 ) and early naughts, with Mos Def even becoming a film actor in recent years.
And I'm no tupac fan, but failure to recognize his cultural significance really requires a special kind of ignorance.
The level of Tupac's "crookedness" is entirely the point here. I will take it for granted that he is not a good moral character, but that is not a disqualifying characteristic for an artist receiving recognition and praise.
The thing is, we have established that Tupac is a crook who at least advertised a life of crime. For me at least, that's the end of the story. Tupac is associated with a degenerate culture (crime), and I think that no school should want to associate itself with that. It's equivalent in my eyes to naming a church after a crooked clergyman.
Whether they choose to do so or not is not something under my control, and ultimately it doesn't matter to me that much if it goes through or not, but I personally disapprove.
Since when is moral goodness something we expect of our artists? Do we only expect the black ones to be "good" people?
This is an interesting point. We definitely hold our citizens of color to a higher standard. Steinbeck expressed this most elegantly in an essay found in the compilation ?America and Americans?
Uh, are you joking? Even de la soul, which is the only group with an album in the 80's (89) and along with tribe called quest is the only group that was popular in the "early 90's," has still been hugely popular and collaborated with gorillaz on a grammy winning song as recently as last year. And maybe Common Sense was popular in the early 90's in the sense that the "I Used to Love HER" video was played on BET's Rap City for a couple weeks in 94, but he certainly wasn't in Gap ads as he his today. The Fugees didn't even become popular until The Score in 96, and Mos Def and Talib Kweli became popular in the late 90's (first in 98 ) and early naughts, with Mos Def even becoming a film actor in recent years.
And I'm no tupac fan, but failure to recognize his cultural significance really requires a special kind of ignorance.
I don't get you giant. I never claimed that though the acts originated in that time frame that they somehow stopped making significant music. I also didn't use the criteria of "when they became popular." Also I said it was just an initial read. Not to be rude, but these years fly by too fast and more often or not I keep scratching my head wondering how an even that seems like it was "recent" somehow become "retro." Eitherway, my view is that present rap is finished and hollow as a cultural force. (Totally secondary conversation within this thread anyway)
Finally I never even said that Tupac didn't have a cultural significance. I would state quite the opposite. He did and it wasn't a very good one. He may have shown that gangsters and thugs can have some redeeming qualities, but it would be much more impressive if he showed they could indeed be redeemed.
Instead he lived and died his credo. It isn't one that a school should be named after.
Nick
It's equivalent in my eyes to naming a church after a crooked clergyman.
Like that's never been done.
Not to be rude, but these years fly by too fast and more often or not I keep scratching my head wondering how an even that seems like it was "recent" somehow become "retro."
So? What are you saying, that even under 40 you are getting so senile that you think the dot-com boom was in the early 90's, too?
Eitherway, my view is that present rap is finished and hollow as a cultural force.
It's clear that your view of hip hop is dominated by a disproportionate focus on west coast g-funk, particularly that of the actual late 80's/early 90's (ice-t, tupac, nwa and its offshoots), a pinch of bad dirty south and capped with the modern "gangsta" hip hop version of bubblegum pop that virtually only exists in the minds of marketers and 13yo suburban kids, ignoring that underground hip hop in most of the country and worldwide is dominated by other sub-genres and that many of the largest acts of the past 10 years (or even 5 years), including those in shawn's list and others like outkast, gorillaz and gnarles barkley, are making some of the most interesting contemporary popular music.
And, frankly, your view "that present rap is finished and hollow as a cultural force" is really totally irrelevant since most genres in the world's cultural centers (aka, not beaumont, ca) have been increasing cross-pollinating with hip hop, to the point where hip hop artists are now often drawn from the indie, electronica and shoegaze ranks. Even the neptunes, who have been responsible for a huge percentage of the biggest pop and rap hits in the past 7 or so years, have basically an electronica production style and have also put a huge amount of energy into NERD, their rock/electronica band. That's increasingly the case with hip hop producers, and dangermouse is another chart-topping example. This trend is reflected 10 fold in the underground hip hop scene.
The thing is, we have established that Tupac is a crook who at least advertised a life of crime.
We certainly haven't.
His legacy is social consciousness-- not thuggery.
I'm not sure just who some of you guys think this guy is... he's a tamer version of his father (a leader of the black panthers) and his god-mother (a pretty famous political activist for the black liberation army). His lyrics focus on the social condition of blacks in this country. You can just ignore what the black community reveres him for or just continue to ignorantly assume he's a meritless thug. It's not quite racist but really lazy and frankly disappointing of you all.
Also-- they're naming the theater after him-- which is appropriate considering he's a musical artist after all. They're not naming the freaking school after him.
We certainly haven't.
His legacy is social consciousness-- not thuggery.
I think the argument Nick is trying to make is that his lyrics weren't exactly…*constructive or encouraging. He didn't do much (if anything at all) to suggest improvements for the situation.
I wouldn't quite label him a "thug" (though ironically, I think he'd quite enjoy being called that), but I sure wouldn't hand him the nobel peace price either.
It's not about whether gangsta rappers bring up legitimate, real problems. They do. It's about whether they do much to actually solve them, or merely whine about them (and possibly even increase the problem).
Rappers aren't policy makers!