Does street credibility really matter? Especially when you originally said, "Eminem was the ground breaker and opened the door for a slew of white rappers to try and make it into the biz". Mr. Van Winkle had the first hip hop single to reach #1 on the Billboard Charts. He also had the fastest selling hip hop album of all time (not for sure if that still remains). That seems to indicate he "made it into the biz". Seems a little short-sighted to dismiss Vanilla Ice here.

 

I've not been trying to turn this into a white/black rapper thing, but Slim Shady paved the way for many more white artists to be successful than Vanilla Ice ever did. Besides, record sales mean little in hip hop because most of the best stuff is stuff that few people here, stuff on mixtapes and other underground gems.

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My direction for hip hop is a more grass roots approach. We've heard about Benz's, 24's, and Jacob Watches for over a decade now, everyone should be tired of that. Who cares? There is still some stuff in the underground right now that eats anything that is doing big things in commercial rap right now. Until he flamed out commercially with his last album, Wiz Khalifa was a guy like that. An original. Had a unique flow, and had a new approach to the game and how he did things. If you want to hear IMO a truly great hip hop masterpiece go and listen to Wiz Khalifa's Prince of the City II mixtape, unreal. I mean if you really want a clear cut definition of my vision of where hip hop needs to go to what Kanyes is, go back and listen to your raved about Dark & Twisted Beautiful Fantasy and then listen to Prince Of the City II. Listen to Mac Miller's K.I.D.S. Mixtape or listen to some tracks off Yelawolf's album Trunk Muzik. If you do that then you will start to see where I like to see things go in the rap industry as opposed to where I don't want to see it go. I want to hear stuff that is real and means something. Not something thats just fake and fabricated.

Isn't the song "Smokin Good" on the Prince of the City II mixtape? I'd like to hear how a song like that is any more "real" than something off of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. On the song "Who I Am" Wiz is essentially bragging the entire song, isn't that won't you are lamenting Kanye for doing?

 

I probably need to give Wiz a better shake but to champion him of all that is real, full of substance, and anti-Kanye lyrically is laughable at best. If you would have told me to pick up a Roots album, then we might be on to something.

Isn't most "influential rapper" kind of like calming to the be the "tallest midget".

Isn't the song "Smokin Good" on the Prince of the City II mixtape? I'd like to hear how a song like that is any more "real" than something off of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. On the song "Who I Am" Wiz is essentially bragging the entire song, isn't that won't you are lamenting Kanye for doing?

 

I probably need to give Wiz a better shake but to champion him of all that is real, full of substance, and anti-Kanye lyrically is laughable at best. If you would have told me to pick up a Roots album, then we might be on to something.

 

 

Yeah but Wiz is(was) keeping it G man.

 

 

 

And two, what I meant by go listen to, I meant take each album and just give it some run from start to finish. Just listen to every song top to bottom and then compare contents and emotions in each. It's like Kanye is trying to get people to feel sorry for him sometimes, like he is calling for the attention but all the attention and excess drives him crazy. You listen to Prince of the City II top to bottom and your going to feel a sense of triumph story. Someone who came from nothing, grew up in the streets, hustlin, but worked hard to grind out and get to where he's at. I understand its just all a matter of opinion so it doesn't mean either of us is right/nor wrong. Just for my musical taste after listening to both albums and after examining my rap preferences I get a feeling from the Wiz album that I just got something that was 100% real. It is something 100% real, uncut, raw, emotional, just bringing it and tearing it up on every track. Its like I love it because it keeps it real. I don't get the same feeling from Kanye. It's like I feel Kanye wants to brag, but Wiz doesn't (didn't) really want to brag he just tells it how it is. Like he always says on his tracks, "aint saying I'm the best but thats just what they people call me."

 

 

Its a different kind of brag. It's like stories from the street. He got his money hustlin', and I would much rather listen to someone with as good as flow as Wiz's rap about that than I would lyrics about what suit Kanye wants to wear or something like that. Wiz is basically rapping about what he got without rapping, and Kanye raps about what he has got because of rap. Any kind of lyrical content that can give you a look into the streets as if you are watching a movie is better than how powerful I am because I'm a famous rapper.

Tupac Shakur lives on and IMO isbstill a major influence. A lyrical genius fo sho.

He's still alive. Shackin' up with Elvis.

I think Kanye hurts the rap game in a lot of ways. For one he fits the stereotype most middle America anti-rap people love to hate on and give as reasoning for why rap music is terrible. Secondly, IMO Kanye promotes ideas of the same lame sell out commercial stuff that most fad rappers are moving toward nowadays. Basically what I mean is instead of trying to bridge away from the riding in the Bentley, pouring out gold bottles to rinse my mouth out, using benjamins as a fire place fire starter, brag a little more rap, he only continues to work on that same type of message just with a different twist. Rap is a genre that is notorious for producing one hit wonder nobodys. One minute this new rapper is the hottest thing out, you hear his stuff everywhere, this is the banging stuff right here. Then it gets played out, ends up on Now 147 (or whatever number they are on now), and two years later nobody even remembers who the heck that even was or whatever song they recorded. You can go count all the rappers who have dominated this summers rap scene and I guarantee only a small percentage of them will be relevant in a couple of years. It is my belief that Kanyes style and his ways do more to promote this type of fad rap than to deter it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My direction for hip hop is a more grass roots approach. We've heard about Benz's, 24's, and Jacob Watches for over a decade now, everyone should be tired of that. Who cares? There is still some stuff in the underground right now that eats anything that is doing big things in commercial rap right now. Until he flamed out commercially with his last album, Wiz Khalifa was a guy like that. An original. Had a unique flow, and had a new approach to the game and how he did things. If you want to hear IMO a truly great hip hop masterpiece go and listen to Wiz Khalifa's Prince of the City II mixtape, unreal. I mean if you really want a clear cut definition of my vision of where hip hop needs to go to what Kanyes is, go back and listen to your raved about Dark & Twisted Beautiful Fantasy and then listen to Prince Of the City II. Listen to Mac Miller's K.I.D.S. Mixtape or listen to some tracks off Yelawolf's album Trunk Muzik. If you do that then you will start to see where I like to see things go in the rap industry as opposed to where I don't want to see it go. I want to hear stuff that is real and means something. Not something thats just fake and fabricated.

 

People can sense realness. People appreciate something thats genuine. I cannot listen to Kanye and feel like I'm getting the real thing, instead I feel like I am listening to one giant poser who is rapping about stuff I could care less about. However, you put out something thats real, something thats from the heart and with some soul behind it, then you have something. If you are a talented rapper and you can have a different approach than the simple brag approach and flood the hip hop scene with some music with real substance I think you can have something special. My vision of the direction I would want to take hip hop is just a real grass roots revolution. I'm talking get back to the basics, have that banging beat and mix it with lyrics that actually mean something. I wanna hear people rap about the struggle again, I want to hear people rap about stuff that matters. Theres a reason why Gangsta Rap became so popular and changed the game and thats because what they were bringing to people was real and like something they had never heard before. So in my mind I like to imagine a world in which rap continues to get flooded with more originals than carbon copies because frankly thats all rap is turning into nowadays is a bunch of copy cats.

 

Kanye raps about some of the most real issues and ideas that are facing the world we live in today. I am a huge Kanye fan and huge Wiz fan (seen him 5 times), and in no way is Prince of the City II better than anything Kanye has ever made. Wiz bases nearly every single one of his songs on weed/girls/money. Kanye may mention those kinds of things every once in awhile, but they are not the main messages of too many songs. And Mac Miller is garbage.

 

Kanye is bringing all kinds of new sounds to hip-hop and is not afraid to speak his mind on important and controversial issues. You comparing Wiz or Mac Miller to Kanye is like comparing Luke Walton to Kobe.

Yeah but Wiz is(was) keeping it G man.

 

 

 

And two, what I meant by go listen to, I meant take each album and just give it some run from start to finish. Just listen to every song top to bottom and then compare contents and emotions in each. It's like Kanye is trying to get people to feel sorry for him sometimes, like he is calling for the attention but all the attention and excess drives him crazy. You listen to Prince of the City II top to bottom and your going to feel a sense of triumph story. Someone who came from nothing, grew up in the streets, hustlin, but worked hard to grind out and get to where he's at. I understand its just all a matter of opinion so it doesn't mean either of us is right/nor wrong. Just for my musical taste after listening to both albums and after examining my rap preferences I get a feeling from the Wiz album that I just got something that was 100% real. It is something 100% real, uncut, raw, emotional, just bringing it and tearing it up on every track. Its like I love it because it keeps it real. I don't get the same feeling from Kanye. It's like I feel Kanye wants to brag, but Wiz doesn't (didn't) really want to brag he just tells it how it is. Like he always says on his tracks, "aint saying I'm the best but thats just what they people call me."

 

 

Its a different kind of brag. It's like stories from the street. He got his money hustlin', and I would much rather listen to someone with as good as flow as Wiz's rap about that than I would lyrics about what suit Kanye wants to wear or something like that. Wiz is basically rapping about what he got without rapping, and Kanye raps about what he has got because of rap. Any kind of lyrical content that can give you a look into the streets as if you are watching a movie is better than how powerful I am because I'm a famous rapper.

 

And I understand Wiz "hustled" and "grinded" to get where he is today. But he has been a rapper since he was a teenager. He wasn't dealing drugs and going to jail or robbing people. Kanye did the same thing. He sat and made beats for years until he finally caught a break and produced for Jay-Z. The reason Kanye sounds like he is rich and bragging on his records is because by the time he actually got the opportunity to really rap, he had already made millions off of his productions. The only difference between their boasting is Wiz brags about how high he gets and Kanye brags about how audacious and infamous he is. Its all real.

Kanye raps about some of the most real issues and ideas that are facing the world we live in today. I am a huge Kanye fan and huge Wiz fan (seen him 5 times), and in no way is Prince of the City II better than anything Kanye has ever made. Wiz bases nearly every single one of his songs on weed/girls/money. Kanye may mention those kinds of things every once in awhile, but they are not the main messages of too many songs. And Mac Miller is garbage.

Kanye is bringing all kinds of new sounds to hip-hop and is not afraid to speak his mind on important and controversial issues. You comparing Wiz or Mac Miller to Kanye is like comparing Luke Walton to Kobe.

 

Nowadays I couldn't really argue that but his first couple mixtapes had a lot of promise. He crashed and burned with the last one though, went from being a fan of his stuff to hatin on him pretty hard.

^ The first couple of mixtapes though you could just feel the desire and ambition.

Clearly I opened up a nuclear disaster when I trashed Kanye, but just for what I like in hip hop and rap music I am not as high on Kanye West as everyone else seems to be. As far as I am concerned you all can have him.

Kanye raps about some of the most real issues and ideas that are facing the world we live in today. I am a huge Kanye fan and huge Wiz fan (seen him 5 times), and in no way is Prince of the City II better than anything Kanye has ever made. Wiz bases nearly every single one of his songs on weed/girls/money. Kanye may mention those kinds of things every once in awhile, but they are not the main messages of too many songs. And Mac Miller is garbage.

 

Kanye is bringing all kinds of new sounds to hip-hop and is not afraid to speak his mind on important and controversial issues. You comparing Wiz or Mac Miller to Kanye is like comparing Luke Walton to Kobe.

 

 

And is that really a good thing? Bringing a lot of these new sounds into hip hop? If the trend continues it may eventually turn into hip-pop instead of hip-hop. I look at it about the same way as country music. One could argue artists like Garth Brooks essentially killed true country music by bringing in all these outside elements. To me nothing makes me sicker to my stomach than new country music, or what I like to call pop country. Give me Hank Jr., Waylon, Conway, Keith Whitley, Merle Haggard, George Jones, George Strait, Johnny Cash, and stuff like that anyday.

 

So to bring home a point from a previous post in response to where Kanye is trying to take the rap industry as opposed to where I want to see it go. I think Kanye is trying to usher in things that will make hip hop the new country music in a sense because he is going to open up so many doors that are essentially going to kill true hip hop.

Tupac Shakur lives on and IMO isbstill a major influence. A lyrical genius fo sho.

 

Pac is my all time favorite.

 

 

Followed perhaps by Jay-Z, then Biggie.

And is that really a good thing? Bringing a lot of these new sounds into hip hop? If the trend continues it may eventually turn into hip-pop instead of hip-hop. I look at it about the same way as country music. One could argue artists like Garth Brooks essentially killed true country music by bringing in all these outside elements. To me nothing makes me sicker to my stomach than new country music, or what I like to call pop country. Give me Hank Jr., Waylon, Conway, Keith Whitley, Merle Haggard, George Jones, George Strait, Johnny Cash, and stuff like that anyday.

The only elements Garth Brooks brought to country are unoriginality, the desire to make money but nothing else, and general suck. I don't think brining other elements is a bad thing. Go pick up a Justin Townes Earle record and you'll see what I'm talking about. He pulls heavily from folk, gospel, Texas blues, and classic rock and stays true to himself and the music. In the same light I'm not seeing how an album like My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy hurts hip hop.