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Dr Dre, Ice T: they're the equivalents of Wordsworth

Started by touchingcloth, August 01, 2020, 12:12:31 AM

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Mister Six


Urinal Cake

You're lucky if Dre produces his own beats let alone writes his own lyrics.

chveik


You can love rap and poetry and still think that rap isn't poetry. The main difference for me is rhythm. Rappers flow over the top of a steady drum rhythm so they don't have to establish a primary, essential pulse, it's already there.. As such they have way more freedom to change their speech rhythms or throw in arrythmic interjections.
Poets, page or spoken word, have to work harder to establish a pulse- not necessarily anything as a rigid as a 4/4 beat but neverthless something to act as a rhythmic theme for a piece.


Sin Agog


bgmnts

Quote from: Astronaut Omens on August 01, 2020, 12:40:47 AM
You can love rap and poetry and still think that rap isn't poetry. The main difference for me is rhythm. Rappers flow over the top of a steady drum rhythm so they don't have to establish a primary, essential pulse, it's already there.. As such they have way more freedom to change their speech rhythms or throw in arrythmic interjections.
Poets, page or spoken word, have to work harder to establish a pulse- not necessarily anything as a rigid as a 4/4 beat but neverthless something to act as a rhythmic theme for a piece.

Do limericks count as poetry? They have a pretty easy rhythmic pattern.

Yes, absolutely. The limerick is a perfect example of a poetic form, something different people have used again and again, a clear rhythnic design, a fixed number of syllables in each bar, a fixed rhyme scheme AABBA, even a fixed opening line, always a variation on "There was a young woman/man/person from..."  Most modern poetry doesn't look as rigid as that at first glance, but most of the stuff that's good is written by people who've spent a lot of time thinking about and practicing those old forms and then writing their own stuff informed by that. And I'd argue that they just can't be as flexible as rappers can without losing the poems sense of rhythmic momentum-wheras with rappers, because the drums are always there in the background, they can make more drastic switches in rhythm over a few lines. Read any good poetry out loud and you'll be able to detect rhythms, find some rap lyrics for a track you've not heard and try and read them out loud and you will get lost a bit more quickly. It's a different discipline.

PlanktonSideburns


PlanktonSideburns

If the op's post is true, who is Pam Ayers equivalent to?


touchingcloth

Quote from: chveik on August 01, 2020, 12:29:59 AM
are those two the only rappers you know?

No. It's a David Brent quote from when he was trying to get on the good side of a black man.

I started this thread after watching a documentary about Hamilton - the show and the man - where an academic put forward his thesis that Lin-Manuel specifically and rap singers in general are the first artists since Shakespeare to do what he did, in terms of turning the language of commoners into poetry with mass appeal.

I don't think I agree with that completely, but it's an interesting thought. Arguably also a facile and unoriginal one.

touchingcloth

Quote from: PlanktonSideburns on August 01, 2020, 05:38:31 AM
If the op's post is true, who is Pam Ayers equivalent to?

Catullus, if her poem "Oh, I wish I'd sodomised and face fucked you" is anything to go by.

I honestly misread the title as "The equivalent of Woolworths". I thought the thread would be about rappers that were popular, though mediocre, and have no place in this decade.

Glebe


dissolute ocelot

QuoteThere is a Thorn—it looks so old,
In truth, you'd find it hard to say
How it could ever have been young,
It looks so old and grey.
Not higher than a two years' child
It stands erect, this aged Thorn;
No leaves it has, no prickly points;
It is a mass of knotted joints,
A wretched thing forlorn.
It stands erect, and like a stone
With lichens is it overgrown.
And it gets worse. Find me any passage of Ice-T that's worse than about three quarters of Wordsworth's turgid doggerel.

touchingcloth

I don't think it's at all an accident that the site Genius started life as Rap Genius.

Shit Good Nose

#17
Quote from: PlanktonSideburns on August 01, 2020, 05:38:31 AM
If the op's post is true, who is Pam Ayers equivalent to?

Oh, I wish I'd looked after me gold teeth [sucks teeth],
And spotted the mother fuckin' dangers beneath
All the fuckin' bullets I chewed,
And the sweet fuckin' food.
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me gold teeth [sucks teeth].

I wish I'd been that much more willin'
When I had more tooth there than fillin'
To give up gangbangin',
From respect to me n***as,
And to buy something else with me shillin'.

When I think of the bitches I licked
And the hos I picked,
Oily butts, big and little,
All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.

UZI MOTHERFUCKER!


etc.

PlanktonSideburns


JaDanketies

you'd assume Wordsworth was always intended to be read and chewed over, whereas Ice T and Dre are always intended to be heard so you can bop your head to it. It's a bit like comparing looking at Van Gogh to a scenic tour of Iceland; they're two different mediums and they're appreciated in two different ways. Perhaps a better example would be comparing watching Breaking Bad to reading Dickens.

I don't think I'd call Ice T and Dre some of the greatest wordsmiths in hip hop, either. MF DOOM is lyrically superior. Not to slam Ice T or Dre, I like both of them. Wordsworth must've done something right so he must have some merit as a poet.

Even comparing MF DOOM's lyrics written down vs Wordsworth's poems, they're aiming for two different things. For instance DOOM is interested in getting as many rhymes in as many clever locations in a rhythmical manner as possible, and using metaphor, simile and other techniques to make jokes and say something funny. Wordsworth is about evoking some imagery and getting a rhyme in at the end of every line.

One for the money, two for the better green
3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine
Told the knock-kneed ghetto queen, "Get the head fiend"
Tell him it's for Medellin and use oxyacetylene
Who needs airplay? It's all just hearsay
Leave a wig like it was having a bad hair day
Miracle glide master, asked him what's his secret
He said Shasta and turned to formaldehyde faster
When I'm home with my lady, I try to duke her daily
One night, she tried to flail me with her ukulele
Pack your heat, the Villain on the cover of Black Beat
With a bunch of crackers and some snack meat


Mister Six

#21
Quote from: JaDanketies on August 04, 2020, 10:16:22 AM
you'd assume Wordsworth was always intended to be read and chewed over, whereas Ice T and Dre are always intended to be heard so you can bop your head to it.

....

Even comparing MF DOOM's lyrics written down vs Wordsworth's poems, they're aiming for two different things. For instance DOOM is interested in getting as many rhymes in as many clever locations in a rhythmical manner as possible, and using metaphor, simile and other techniques to make jokes and say something funny. Wordsworth is about evoking some imagery and getting a rhyme in at the end of every line.

I don't think it's good to be too prescriptive about mediums/genres. Here's Block by clipping:

[Verse 1]
No parking Wednesdays at noon and the garbage lines the streets
A cereal box with cartoons and a price tag way too steep
And a fence that leans to the south around a yard with specks of grass
And a dog with more teeth than mouth chained up sifting through trash
That ice cream truck rolls too slow and the picture's black and white
And the cabin up back still ain't cold and it's mostly out at night
And there ain't no kids where it go and it don't play music right
And a kid with a hoodie looks old under the traffic light
That liquor store sells Patron but it just sits on the shelf
And that Steel Reserve in the back practically sells itself
And the Arab up at the front don't ever touch the stuff
Single Swishers and blunts in a package opened up
And a white tee XXXL make the men on the corners look tough

[Verse 2]
And the men on the corners have lines and the women walk by straight
Bold black and red for sale signs posted up on the gates
Of every other Victorian with wood over the windows
And someone converses about Jordans while wearing last year's Timbos
And a Chinese takeout menu decorates the gates with symbols
And the cats are feral and fat and unreasonably nimble
The glass is full to the top no cans or bottles in it
Big bags being dragged down the street clanging and leaking liquid
Expired tags on a Buick with one rim all in chrome
And an older woman in stretch pants shuffles along too slow
Pieces of flowers and a poem falling off a flickering light pole
And a picture of someone it seems somebody used to know
And a buzz in the air from a congregation of telephone wires

[Verse 3]
And on the wires are birds sitting tiny and black
And tennis shoes from the 90's looking fine and intact
And a cable awkwardly hanging never reaching a house
And below it a stained up and soggy formerly leather couch
And rainbow patterns of oil pooling in potholed cement
And a screen door with no hinges hanging hopelessly bent
And a Bentley dressing the cover of a car magazine
And a Price Is Right crowd cheering on a television screen
With a big bat jutting out and the color mostly green
And a stove where one burner works and the oven should be cleaned
And coupons clipped on the table waiting to be redeemed
And a siren sings long and deep and the chopper's double meaned
And the median is asleep so to wake and walk at strange things   

...which also messes with Astronaut Omens' belief that rap lyrics have no obvious inherent metre.

JaDanketies

Quote from: Mister Six on August 04, 2020, 03:06:18 PM
I don't think it's good to be too prescriptive about mediums/genres. Here's Block by clipping:

banger. Definitely evocative. Better than some shit about why cows stand and stare.


Did you know Clipping. and MF DOOM both try to avoid the first-person perspective in their music?  There's no doubt they put about as much effort into their lyrics as you might expect from Wordsworth.

Maybe OP using Dre and Ice T as their examples muddies the water a little bit - I mean, Dre is one thing, but Ice T? Nobody ever congratulated Ice T on his great lyricism. I like his songs and Bodycount are surprisingly listenable but I don't think anyone pores over his lyrics

Mister Six

Quote from: JaDanketies on August 04, 2020, 03:31:10 PM
Did you know Clipping. and MF DOOM both try to avoid the first-person perspective in their music?  There's no doubt they put about as much effort into their lyrics as you might expect from Wordsworth.

Absolutely, although DOOM cheats a bit by just referring to himself in the third person!

BeardFaceMan

Quote from: JaDanketies on August 04, 2020, 03:31:10 PM
banger. Definitely evocative. Better than some shit about why cows stand and stare.


Did you know Clipping. and MF DOOM both try to avoid the first-person perspective in their music?  There's no doubt they put about as much effort into their lyrics as you might expect from Wordsworth.

Maybe OP using Dre and Ice T as their examples muddies the water a little bit - I mean, Dre is one thing, but Ice T? Nobody ever congratulated Ice T on his great lyricism. I like his songs and Bodycount are surprisingly listenable but I don't think anyone pores over his lyrics

Ice T is a far better lyricist than Dre, mainly because Dre had most of his raps written for him. Great flow, though.

Quote from: Mister Six on August 04, 2020, 03:06:18 PM
I don't think it's good to be too prescriptive about mediums/genres. Here's Block by clipping:


...which also messes with Astronaut Omens' belief that rap lyrics have no obvious inherent metre.

I didn't say they can't have one, just that they don't need one (because the beat's there in the background). Do a syllable count on each line of the DOOM verse above, it's completely different in every line. The term 'flow' surely is all about the skill with which rappers fluidly change rhythms over a solid unchanging beat.

The DOOM verse is also a good example of what make rap a distinct genre in 2 other ways:
Poets have often used internal rhymes in the past, but there's never been a style of written poetry that made so much use of internal rhymes, eg. the "ee" sound in the first four lines of the Doom verse.
And-there's never really been a genre of poetry where "I am amazing/the best/the greatest" was the subject matter, but loads of rappers do this.  B-Y- R.O.N, if I wasn't then why would you say I am.

Something else, so many great rappers like Rakim and Raekwon are good on paper but their records are good because of their distinctive vocal presence- even a weak Raekwon verse sounds impressive I think because of his voice. I don't think even within performance poetry there's anyone who uses their voice to appeal in the same way.

This issue is obviously loaded because some people (on both sides of the argument) take the issue of whether rap is poetry or not to be a measure of rap's value. But this argument is confused, I think, because it assumes that poetry is itself inherently of value. But this isn't true, and limericks, which were raised earlier, are a good way of thinking about this- if you come up with a rude limerick in five minutes, it will definitely be a poem because it's following an established poetic set of rules- that doesn't mean it'll be any good.

bgmnts

Could Ice T or Dr Dre rap Wordsworth lyrics to a beat? Or vice versa, i.e could an orator recite rap lyrics in poetic meter.

Furthermore, if Dr Dre wrote the line "pussy tighter than conditions of us black folk" then he is indeed the king.

Mister Six

Quote from: Astronaut Omens on August 04, 2020, 04:24:29 PM
Words

Aye, fair enough.

EDIT: although...

Quote from: Astronaut Omens on August 04, 2020, 04:24:29 PM
And-there's never really been a genre of poetry where "I am amazing/the best/the greatest" was the subject matter, but loads of rappers do this.  B-Y- R.O.N, if I wasn't then why would you say I am.

...seems irrelevant.

#28
Quote from: bgmnts on August 04, 2020, 04:29:26 PM
Could Ice T or Dr Dre rap Wordsworth lyrics to a beat?

Yes, but it wouldn't sound very good. It would sound stilted. Vanilla Ice was often made fun of by other rappers as been particularly weak, and that's because his flow was waaaay too rigid. Think about how almost every line of Ice Ice Baby stops dead, leaving a gap before the next line: "Grillin' MCs like a pound of BACON. (pause)"- a better rapper would have danced around the pause a little bit, leaving a bit of suspense about whether the line was over, whether another bit was going to come in.

touchingcloth

Quote from: JaDanketies on August 04, 2020, 03:31:10 PM
Maybe OP using Dre and Ice T as their examples muddies the water a little bit - I mean, Dre is one thing, but Ice T? Nobody ever congratulated Ice T on his great lyricism. I like his songs and Bodycount are surprisingly listenable but I don't think anyone pores over his lyrics

The title is a jokey reference to The Office:

QuoteYou see all these white, middle-class fuddy-duddies going "we've got to find the new equivalent". And they're looking in Oxford and Cambridge. Dr Dre, Ice-T. They're the equivalent of Wordsworth.

Could have titled the thread: Rap & Poetry: Discuss.