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Thoughts on Production and Engineering Nowadays (Rap and Rock)
I'd like to outline a few major problems in today's music industry but first I'd like to let you know that I'm no whiney indie bitch who's totally anti establishment. I love record companies...when they do shit right...when they aren't being sodding dicks.
Let's start with an easy target. Rap. The BIGGEST PUDDLE OF FESTERING SHIT IN MUSIC TODAY. Nas said it boys, Hip hop is dead. I'd like to make the distinction between hiphop and rap. because as i said; rap, which is what i'd call the mainstream black music scene today, is horrible. Hiphop the stuff that artists were coming out with in the late 70s all the way up to about 96, starting in the east and spreading to the west, is genious and artistic music.
Without sounding like a white supremecist (shit i cant even spell the word), rap today is at best blacksploitation where big time white company executives decide to market a excess black lifestyle to suburban kids and spoon feed it to black kids, making fuckers like Lil Wayne the heros of kids today.
The production of this music is neither artistic, varied, nor inspiring. The current trend which has sprung from southern hiphop with cities like Atlanta leading the way. Often the generated beats are produced with the same reverb, same delays, same slightly syncopated 16th hat beats and heavy catchy bass drum rhythms. i could take the top rap hit from this week, and compare it to 3 weeks ago and it would probably be almost the same sound.
There are some artists still moving hiphop forward and keeping it true. At the top of the list to me Nas (check out the album Hip Hop is dead), Gnarls Barkley (St. Elsewhere...i cant even describe how much that album means to me. It is the single most innovative album ive heard in several years especially for the hiphop community), Kanye West (I know hes a blabbering bitch who thinks hes god, but the guy makes some amazing music) and a few others.
Now lets move onto production and engineering in a broader sense. People need to appreciate this as an art, just as much as the artist who makes the music, theres a man at the soundboard mixing and mastering and manipulating every sound to make the music as much his as who's recording. Next time you hear a record take note of every sound. not just the music. but the sounds also. listen to where the guitar is panned, where the drums are, how much reverb is in the snare, how many voices are singing, what kind of effects are put on the voice, what feeling does that give you, theres a thousand more questions to ask.
Remeber the art.
Let's start with an easy target. Rap. The BIGGEST PUDDLE OF FESTERING SHIT IN MUSIC TODAY. Nas said it boys, Hip hop is dead. I'd like to make the distinction between hiphop and rap. because as i said; rap, which is what i'd call the mainstream black music scene today, is horrible. Hiphop the stuff that artists were coming out with in the late 70s all the way up to about 96, starting in the east and spreading to the west, is genious and artistic music.
Without sounding like a white supremecist (shit i cant even spell the word), rap today is at best blacksploitation where big time white company executives decide to market a excess black lifestyle to suburban kids and spoon feed it to black kids, making fuckers like Lil Wayne the heros of kids today.
The production of this music is neither artistic, varied, nor inspiring. The current trend which has sprung from southern hiphop with cities like Atlanta leading the way. Often the generated beats are produced with the same reverb, same delays, same slightly syncopated 16th hat beats and heavy catchy bass drum rhythms. i could take the top rap hit from this week, and compare it to 3 weeks ago and it would probably be almost the same sound.
There are some artists still moving hiphop forward and keeping it true. At the top of the list to me Nas (check out the album Hip Hop is dead), Gnarls Barkley (St. Elsewhere...i cant even describe how much that album means to me. It is the single most innovative album ive heard in several years especially for the hiphop community), Kanye West (I know hes a blabbering bitch who thinks hes god, but the guy makes some amazing music) and a few others.
Now lets move onto production and engineering in a broader sense. People need to appreciate this as an art, just as much as the artist who makes the music, theres a man at the soundboard mixing and mastering and manipulating every sound to make the music as much his as who's recording. Next time you hear a record take note of every sound. not just the music. but the sounds also. listen to where the guitar is panned, where the drums are, how much reverb is in the snare, how many voices are singing, what kind of effects are put on the voice, what feeling does that give you, theres a thousand more questions to ask.
Remeber the art.
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