A few weeks ago, for some unknown reason, I sat through a viewing of the entire "Lollipop" video from Lil Wayne. At the time, I proclaimed the official end of rap music being good or ever returning to being good again.
Oh look, another rap video with cars, iced-out wrists, mouths, hands and necks, and of course, scantily clad girls. Can't have a rap video without those.
Ever since MTV debuted Aug. 1, 1981, with "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles, music became a powerful visual medium. So many times in the past 26-plus years, you would engage in or overhear conversations such as this:
"Hey, did you hear that new song by [insert artist name here]?"
"Yeah, it's OK, but nothing special."
"Yeah, but you gotta see the video, it's crazy."
And so an artist gets paid on a marginal song with a extraordinary video. Indeed, music is as much visual now as it is aural.
With Weezie's "Lollipop" we have the exact opposite. A week ago, I heard the song on the radio and said, "Hey, this song is pretty good. The hook is definitely catchy."
It's weird to think that in 2008, a time when you can read the Internet on a phone, watch TV on a computer, and exercise by playing video games, actually listening to music can still be more effective than watching music.
The video, which I just wrote signified the end of the world, is embedded below. Why? Because it's the easiest way for you to hear the song, so please close your eyes for the next 4:56 minutes and just listen to the song.
Comments (14)
very bias with your opinion, you should learn to be more open minded and not love the richard. lil wayne is the best rapper alive.
It's a blog and opinions are the point here. Lil Wayne is the end of true hip hop.
Unfortunately, for you, your generation of music hasnt been played on the radio for decades. Today's generation listens to and loves Lil Wayne. If you understood 1/10th of his lyrics then maybe you would learn to appreciate what he is saying. Instead of judging 1 song and claiming that this is the "end of hip hop" make an attempt to deciphering his lyrics, on any of his tracks, and then be the judge if and only if you understand his rhymes.
She wanna make me dinner, I tell her make me rich.
Re-read what I wrote. I said the video was the end of rap, not the song.
I actually like the song and I think Weezie has some skills. And, no, Big Cat, the South isn't the end of good rap music, but it helps speed it up. It's like E-ZPass.
The end started with Ma$e.
i love it! e-z pass is killing me! hahahaha
Well, Weezys not bad - that is: can you name someone better who is putting out stuff right now. No one better in their prime and in the main stream that i can think of. I know many ppl listen to other (tighter flow, better images, realer story, more worthy message, etc) artists, but I just say 'in their prime' and 'main stream' bc thats who gets all the exposure and blogged when they drop.
So Lil Wayne is who's hot right now - probably easier to appreciate this if you came up listening to him. I came up listening to someone else, and so IMhO no one else can/has come close. With that in mind, I'd have to say and agree, yeah, hip hop (rap) is on its way out - or at least its in a long and deep slump - needs a leader, or a leader is needed to create something new and explosive.
Love and find meaning in your music. Peace
hahaha, glad you liked the E-ZPass reference. i was pleased when i typed it, too.
dunny, fair points, no doubt, though an argument can be made for Kanye West, even though his album is technically "old" at this point.
i like how you had to write "hip hop (rap)" since they basically get grouped together all the time.
i often wonder when that little change came about. my hunch is the early 90s when R&B groups such as Guy starting showing up and softening what made rap work so well.
in my mind, hip hop and rap are different. anyone else agree.
Lil Wayne gets the gas face!
I think the real seminal moment came when Rakim, aka The God, rapped on a Joy Watley song. It made Rap more accessible to the R&B and dance audiences. It paved the way for record companies making more friendly rap, with R&B singers crooning hooks or rappers appearing on R&B tracks for one verse. Heavy D's collaboration with Guy was the first full-melding as they shared multiple tracks on each others' albums beginning in 1989.
What's funny is that current hip-hop is almost exclusively a development of another of Teddy Riley's ventures- bootyshaker music. Riley was a musical pioneer crossing and creating many genres: he produced Kool Mo Dee's solo career when he left the Treacherous Three and became one of the first solo acts; he singlehandedly created New Jack Swing; he created bootyshaker hip-hop with his creation of Wreckxs-in-Effect, and he was the producer and group member of two of the 80's and 90's top traditional R&B groups- Guy and Blackstreet.
It's fine to have a subgenere of hip-hop as bootyshaker music, but now it's the entire genre. There are no longer any storytellers
(see: Slick Rick), educators (see: KRS-ONE), or political rappers (see: Public Enemy) in the mainstream. The marketplace demands that hip-hop be pre-packaged and fit in in the strip club and dance club. Lyrics are secondary to produced tracks. Perhaps even third to produced tracks and manufactured products who believe they are artists.
I agree that it began with Ma$e. Biggy's second album, released shortly after his death, relied much less on samples and much more on a produced sound. What I remember at the time was being disappointed in the sound-thinking it was overproduced, but enjoying the storytelling lyrics. Puffy soon calculated that if he found a friendly face artist with a voice similar to his own, he could be the product himself and not just the producer by confusion and replacement of the artist. It was genius from a marketing perspective and from a profit perspective, but it dumbed down the actual creativity and put someone in the front with no lyrical skills. Listen to the Ma$e and Puffy collaborations and tell me who is doing which verse. Russell Simmons didn't help by bringing out his cousin to bark shortly thereafter. Plus, with only two major radio syndicates, it's a lot easier to control playlists and prevent up and coming outsider artists with a real voice from coming out. Not to be outdone, Dr. Dre found a reasonably talented lyricist who could be attractive to white audiences, despite the fact that his voice was horrible. A rapper with a fine baritone like Big Daddy Kane is the appropriate voice of the genre.
It's nearly impossible to find an artist now who works with a DJ and a producer who uses samples. It's also hard to find an artist with his own voice- not some synthesized, Britney Spears like echo-voice. As Guru once said, "it's mostly the voice that get's you up." Not anymore.
Yo, they (the record companies and radio syndicates) suspended the teacha! "Yo I'm strictly about skills and dope lyrical coastin'
Relying on talent, not marketing and promotion."- KRS-ONE
well said blastmaster!! i couldn't agree with you more...
Wait for Thursday afternoon when Top 5 Thursday throws down its best MCs of all time.
My take:
1.- The Bridge Wars- KRS-ONE and BDP vs. MC Shan and the Juice Crew- too much back and forth and entire songs dedicated to the battle for anything else to be the top battle. Everyone won because there were so many good tracks around this battle.
2- The Roxanne Wars- UTFO vs. Roxanne Shante vs. The Real Roxanne- it seemed like the first battle to me- at least it was the first on wax.
3- The Mama Said Wars- Kool Moe Dee vs. LL Cool J - KMD had just taken down MC Busy Bee and LL was jocking his style, so he had to step up. Too bad LL won the battle.
4- East vs. West - Bad Boy vs. Death Row - we all lost this war with the deaths of Tupac and Biggie.
5- Death Row vs. Ruthless Records- Dre and Snoop vs. Eazy-E, Eazy had the best line of all referring to Dre's wearing of makeup on the World Class Wrecking Crew's album cover. Without Snoop Dre would have surrendered on day-1 of this war. With him, he pulled out a close win.
Honorable mention: Nas vs. Jay-Z- seemed manufactured and now they are business partners.
top 5 MCs-
1. Rakim
2. Biggie
3. Big Daddy Kane
4. Guru
5a. EPMD (as a pair- if separate, they fall, so there is a 5b)
5b. KRS-One
yall got to stop confusing RAP artists with HIP-HOP artists. Lil Wayne is a RAPPER, not a HIP-HOP artist. If for some crazy reason someone calls that HIP-HOP that someone clearly never listened to real, underground HIP-HOP. Lil Wayne is helping to take Rap to a new, which could be a worse, level. I actually have an opposite view of the song: when I listen to it I think it is a rapper who makes money for singing simple garbage; however, the video is catchy, I mea, who wouldn't dig to be throwing money in a Hummer limousine for a HOT ASS brunnet like that one in the video so you can convince her to have a taste of your lollipop?
Hip-Hop is not dead and it is not the RAPPER Lil Wayne who is going to be killing it anyways.