The Batlord

A pleasant surprise. I figured you wouldn't hate it completely, but didn't think you'd be anything more than indifferent. I also agree that hip hop albums tend to go on too long, BTW. Don't know why that is, since the songs are often more to the point and structurally stripped down when compared to a lot of other genres. I'd love it if hip hop artists started releasing more thirty-to-forty-minute-long albums.

So, would you say it's more the subject matter and language used in a lot of hip hop that turns you off to the genre, more than the actual music? I can't imagine any totally anti-hip hop people like my mother or uncle getting into this regardless, so clearly you're not as close minded to it as you might appear at first glance. Your slowly growing appreciation for more extreme forms of metal certainly undercuts your assumption that you "know what you like" as well.

Digression: Honestly, I suspect you just got too used to being in an isolated musical bubble throughout your long, long, loooong life, and possibly never had the experience of a community with the free flow of ideas between music fans that exists here, and so just assumed that your tastes had become set in stone to an extent. With your opening yourself up to all sorts of recs through this thread and others, I think you should give yourself more credit and really consider abandoning altogether your stubborn stances against such genres as punk, hip hop, jazz, etc, since they really don't seem to reflect the reality of your potential musical evolution. TBH, you're coming off as a late-blooming Goofle ATM.

Getting back on topic: I'm not trying to flood you with hip hop recs, but right now I'm just academically curious about testing the bounds of where your like/dislike for the genre lies. If you can like it at all, then clearly you can connect to music which is rhythm-focused, rather than melody-focused, even if you have a limit to how "hard" the rhythm is, and how little melody there is.

Would you say that something like this is to your taste (just a song, not an album)?





Another test. These guys are definitely gangsta rap, but they combine their vocal approach with actual singing (at the same time, so not just changing from one to the other), creating a unique combo of hip hop rhythms and often mellow melodies that I really don't think would fall into any stereotype you might have in mind when you think of gangsta rap.





You don't have to listen to those just to make me happy, but I'm really curious about your reaction to both.

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