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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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Quote from: Astronaut Omens on August 04, 2020, 04:42:39 PM
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.

This reminds me - inversely - of John Clare's parody of Wordsworth's enjambment in "SONNET AFTER THE MANNER OF XXXXX":

I sought my little walking stick that
Stood behind the door oth office and
From the peg by the wall I reached my hat
& started to view the expanse of air sea land
Of the visibly created world Business
Had long confined me to its trammels so
I felt the delight more keenly In a dress
Of mightiest magnificance did flow
The garments of the universe The sky
Was like a broad blue looking glass & O
The joys of creations myriads was excessive Why
I saw the oxen like Philosophers repose
Profoundly by the mighty depths & I
Would have plunged into its mysterys but O my cloaths

Inspector Norse

Quote from: Astronaut Omens on August 04, 2020, 04:42:39 PM
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.

Though strangely this lazy, slow, barely-rapped style is very common and hugely popular now, what gets called "mumble rap" though that name is misleading. Not sure Vanilla Ice fits, though; I remember a documentary where Ice-T (I think) said one big reason Van Winkel got no respect was that he pretended to be from "the street" when he obviously wasn't.

BeardFaceMan

Quote from: Inspector Norse on August 05, 2020, 12:55:57 PM
Though strangely this lazy, slow, barely-rapped style is very common and hugely popular now, what gets called "mumble rap" though that name is misleading. Not sure Vanilla Ice fits, though; I remember a documentary where Ice-T (I think) said one big reason Van Winkel got no respect was that he pretended to be from "the street" when he obviously wasn't.

Vanilla Ice was from the street and was a respected MC, then he sold out and went pop, that's why everyone hated him.

flotemysost

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on August 03, 2020, 04:41:22 PM
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.

Fantastic.

In my first year at uni, we had a seminar in the English language module that included some brief analysis of Jay-Z's lyrics. I enjoyed it and I could see the value in it, but I remember thinking at the time that it did almost feel like a parody of everything the Daily Express probably thinks about modern snowflake Mickey Mouse PC gone mad degrees.

Wonder if the students are now analysing that corned beef poem.

Noodle Lizard

I went down a GeniusLyrics wormhole the other day and noticed that Eminem is a relatively active contributor (although his comments and insights into his own lyrics are often pretty banal - "I was on drugs when I wrote this bit").

Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on August 04, 2020, 08:12:06 PM
This reminds me - inversely - of John Clare's parody of Wordsworth's enjambment in "SONNET AFTER THE MANNER OF XXXXX":

I sought my little walking stick that
Stood behind the door oth office and
From the peg by the wall I reached my hat
& started to view the expanse of air sea land
Of the visibly created world Business
Had long confined me to its trammels so
I felt the delight more keenly In a dress
Of mightiest magnificance did flow
The garments of the universe The sky
Was like a broad blue looking glass & O
The joys of creations myriads was excessive Why
I saw the oxen like Philosophers repose
Profoundly by the mighty depths & I
Would have plunged into its mysterys but O my cloaths


It's really nice to see this comically bitchy side to Clare, because I usually think of him as a sort of doomed see-er who was too good for this world

Quote from: flotemysost on August 05, 2020, 11:07:20 PM
Fantastic.

In my first year at uni, we had a seminar in the English language module that included some brief analysis of Jay-Z's lyrics. I enjoyed it and I could see the value in it, but I remember thinking at the time that it did almost feel like a parody of everything the Daily Express probably thinks about modern snowflake Mickey Mouse PC gone mad degrees.

Wonder if the students are now analysing that corned beef poem.

Quote from: flotemysost on August 05, 2020, 11:07:20 PM
Fantastic.

In my first year at uni, we had a seminar in the English language module that included some brief analysis of Jay-Z's lyrics. I enjoyed it and I could see the value in it, but I remember thinking at the time that it did almost feel like a parody of everything the Daily Express probably thinks about modern snowflake Mickey Mouse PC gone mad degrees.

Wonder if the students are now analysing that corned beef poem.

One of the popular anthologies used by students, Rivkin's 'Literary Theory' contains (in one edition) a huge scholarly discussion of Ice Cube's 'The Ni**a Ya Love to Hate" from Adam Krims "Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity". What's interesting here is just how much work it takes Rivkin to describe a dense, collage-like track and the way the vocals work within it before he can even begin to analyse the sense of the words. Even just talking about the words, there are questions about whether all the different voices on the track constitute part of the lyrics or not.

About the relationship between English Lit degrees and stuff outside of the traditional canon:
  Ideally an English literature degree would give people a knowledge of the shape of the canon, some transcendent experiences with great art, some skills with which to make their own art, and a heightened ability to get what's going on with ALL the things people do with words. The skills students learn in moving from medieval Christian poetry to 18th century satirical magazine to modernist novels should in turn make them more adept at negotiating the contemporary supermarket of words and ideas. The student who's been paying attention should be able to get what's going on with rap lyrics, jokes, political speeches, shampoo adverts, newspaper opinion pieces, all of it. They should be able to spot rhetorical tricks like chiasmus a mile off. They should be better at thinking about whether an edgy, taboo-busting joke is actually a bit of reactionary lying in disguise.

There are obviously contradictions going on here, since the practical and necessarily debunking knowledge of what techniques writers in the past used, and why they wrote what they did doesn't necessarily sit easily with a conservative-canonical art worship. This is the point on which the Daily Express type journalism you're talking about is confused. There's an assumption that English department should exist just to maintain the great texts, but studying something isn't necessarily to revere it. In fact, I tend to think that people who get annoyed at students studying pop lyrics, or sitcoms for example haven't really ever considered how those things get made, that they even have authors.

touchingcloth

Quote from: Astronaut Omens on August 10, 2020, 01:23:04 PM
One of the popular anthologies used by students, Rivkin's 'Literary Theory' contains (in one edition) a huge scholarly discussion of Ice Cube's 'The Ni**a Ya Love to Hate" from Adam Krims "Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity". What's interesting here is just how much work it takes Rivkin to describe a dense, collage-like track and the way the vocals work within it before he can even begin to analyse the sense of the words. Even just talking about the words, there are questions about whether all the different voices on the track constitute part of the lyrics or not.

About the relationship between English Lit degrees and stuff outside of the traditional canon:
  Ideally an English literature degree would give people a knowledge of the shape of the canon, some transcendent experiences with great art, some skills with which to make their own art, and a heightened ability to get what's going on with ALL the things people do with words. The skills students learn in moving from medieval Christian poetry to 18th century satirical magazine to modernist novels should in turn make them more adept at negotiating the contemporary supermarket of words and ideas. The student who's been paying attention should be able to get what's going on with rap lyrics, jokes, political speeches, shampoo adverts, newspaper opinion pieces, all of it. They should be able to spot rhetorical tricks like chiasmus a mile off. They should be better at thinking about whether an edgy, taboo-busting joke is actually a bit of reactionary lying in disguise.

There are obviously contradictions going on here, since the practical and necessarily debunking knowledge of what techniques writers in the past used, and why they wrote what they did doesn't necessarily sit easily with a conservative-canonical art worship. This is the point on which the Daily Express type journalism you're talking about is confused. There's an assumption that English department should exist just to maintain the great texts, but studying something isn't necessarily to revere it. In fact, I tend to think that people who get annoyed at students studying pop lyrics, or sitcoms for example haven't really ever considered how those things get made, that they even have authors.

Posts like this are one of the reasons I love CaB.

I'm a science more than arts guy by education, and to my shame I've referred to English lit as a Mickey Mouse subject in the past, but the more I read things like this the more I realise what a daft young prick I was.