Is Rap Music Dead?

grimtraveller said:
As cynical as it may sound, record labels exist to make money.
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Of course they do...and I certainly have no problem with that.
My comment (or the documentary's comment) was that for many of the Gangsta Rappers...the music was about the message (or so they thought it was), when in fact their own people were exploiting them and getting into deals with the major labels just for the $$$. The message was not the driving force.
 
Rap is a joke and a parody of itself. It's not made for me or by people like me. I'd pretty much rather listen to literally anything instead of rap.
 
miroslav said:
My comment (or the documentary's comment) was that for many of the Gangsta Rappers...the music was about the message (or so they thought it was), when in fact their own people were exploiting them and getting into deals with the major labels just for the $$$. The message was not the driving force.
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And that's the danger when any art form becomes popular; the message becomes diluted as people make more money from it. it's a double edged sword in some cases; you may have a world changing message but if no one hears it then it's never gonna change the world, but if lot's of people do buy the songs, go to the shows, buy the merch than the message will spread but someone somewhere will exploit it for capital gain and in the end the message will get lost behind big $ signs in peoples eyes.

Like i said earlier, the franz ferdinand scenario isn't uncommon. a band creates a "unique" or "new" sound that sells. suddenly a lot of other bands try to copy this sound and the record labels buy them up very quickly and sell them so that they have their own version of that sound. these bands copying the sound aren't trying to convey any real message, they've just seen what sells and are trying to jump on the band wagon. whether or not the original band were doing it for the love of music and/or because they had something to say or because they just wanted to make some money is always debatable but certainly those that come after are often much more in it for the money over the music
 
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Conway Twitty - if "family guy" hadn't pushed their little conway twitty clips so much i wouldn't mind him, but thanks to Seth MacFarlane and the "repeat all" function on dvd players i've been woken up far too many times by the same crappy clips :mad:

Still better than most rap though :D
 
miroslav said:
My comment (or the documentary's comment) was that for many of the Gangsta Rappers...the music was about the message (or so they thought it was), when in fact their own people were exploiting them and getting into deals with the major labels just for the $$$. The message was not the driving force.
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I understood that, I wasn't in any way disputing your point, but I do think that the two ran parallel to one another. They nearly always do. Record companies have one channel of focus {shifting units}, the artists might have another {getting their 'message' across}. That's why, for me, it's neither one nor the other. There is definitely some overlap {for example, you'll often have a record company bod that feels more than just a passing sympatico with where the artist is coming from} between the two, but money talks, rappers rap and singers sing. Even the Beatles with their utopian ideals with Apple, originally artist driven, within a year had to get money smart and start focusing on making profit. And into the 70s and 80s, even the indies couldn't just be about the artist.
 
Come back Quincey, all is forgiven !

Hey, you know, if rap is dead, we're doing some serious postmortem examinations here ! :D
 
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