GuD

all the kids, so satisfied to shut their eyes and shed their skins.

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I spit bullets in my feet
Every time I speak
So I write instead
And still people want me dead
~msc

Surell

Anything mainstream is mainstream. A whole genre isn't mainstream, there are still people working underground. I don't think you know quite enough about the genre to say every aspect of it is mainstream. There are rappers past and present as punk or more so than a lot of punk. Example:



In a relation of ethos. But more obviously (and currently):



And as Urban mentioned earlier:



It's got a confined feeling, it's tempo is relentless, it's a little tongue in cheek and self aware and extremely angry. How is this not in some way parallel to Punk? It was bred in the same exact city, just borroughs apart, and they were well aware of each others' existence. Hell, the Beastie Boys were originally a bunch of Punks, really into Bad Brains, before making the switch to Hip Hop, and they still fit Punk songs on their albums seamlessly. If the last example wasn't enough, there's always this classic:



You can say the mainstream sucks all you want, and you might be right to that extent, but to say all Hip Hop sucks for it is pretty off, considering that the mainstream version of any genre is likely to not be as satisfying as deeper stuff.

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bob.

Just thought I'd throw in my two cents about mondo's avatar. ...I'd take an existential author over a Dada painter anyday

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A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism.

Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose.

FRED HALE SR.

I like this guy. The Ramones were one of my first loves in the hardcore scene and deserve any accolades thrown their way. If it ain't broke whats to fix.

Mondo Bungle

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Lord Larehip

This sentiment is undermined by the fact that punk never went mainstream in any meaningful way. Punk was not the music of the everyman and never tried to be. Punk was the music of the freethinker, the radical thinker, the social activist. The everyman to punk was a lost cause--sheep, follower, automaton who bows to authority, conditioned by religion. Rap IS the music of the everyman. They are not the same, they are opposites. In areas where rap can be said to be radical, it's largely due, once again, to dada as I will explain shortly.

Example:

[/quote]

Gil Scott-Heron was NOT rap. He was a jazz poet. In interviews, he rejected the idea that he was in any way responsible for rap or that he was its "godfather" as he was called. He considered himself jazz--which he definitely was. His hero was Langston Hughes--the true inventor of jazz poetry--whom I doubt most rappers have ever heard of much less read.

Guys like Kanye West claim to have been influenced by Gil Scott-Heron but did he understand him?? Does he know what Scott-Heron meant when he said the revolution will not be televised? Scott-Heron spent much of his time railing against mass media regarding it as a mental poison. Yet West seems to revel in the spotlight of the mass media--everything from his embarrassing gaffe with Taylor Swift to his marriage to Kim Kardashian. Would Heron have ever done anything like that? Hell, no!

West has become the very thing Heron warns us against, something I think he got from the Situationists--the dadaist political philosophers--or he hit on the same idea independently (but being a very intelligent man probably encountered it by reading philosophical and political treatises). They warned us of mass media. Mass media can be summed up in a phrase: The Spectacle, i.e. a social relationship mediated by images. The spectacle thrives in mass media. Though it, the spectacle broadcasts images that turn us into consumers and, as consumers. we can then be controlled. Life then becomes not about living but rather about having.

Our religious fervor is transformed from the spiritual realm to an economic one. Commodities became as religious fetishes. A fetish is a little doll or figurine held by certain people to be a representation of a god and therefore imbued with certain powers. In a consumerist society, we hold commodities in a similar reverence. So religion is part of the spectacle. The more a person has, the more respect he or she is given. The more expensive their toys, the more we are awed. No thought is given to the ordinary workers who produce those commodities. it's not even the person we really respect, it's their toys. If he didn't have them, we could care less about him. It's as though the toys, the commodities, are imbued with a special, captivating power.

The images fed to us by the spectacle replace true human interaction. Everything becomes merely a representation, an image, a masking of reality.

So the revolution will not be televised. It can't be. True revolution would mean everybody is in the streets fighting the good fight. Were this televised, it would mean the corporations are still in control, still functioning, even orchestrating the whole thing. It would mean there is an audience watching and so are not participating and therefore not living and therefore no revolution. The spectacle would win.

But Kanye West has become a tool of the spectacle willingly and so it does not seem he understands a thing Gil Scott-Heron said. If you doubt that jazz could ever get that radical, check out the writings of Leroi Jones.

Surell

Even if Gil-Scott denies it out of his own displeasure with the genre, the beginnings of Hip Hop, especially with Spoken Word and other forms of post-beat poetry (which may be an incorrect term but they share similarities to me), are pretty well traced to him. I'm sure many people in early Hip Hop saw the same people and places as Heron did, and shared a similar disdain, so the roots aren't that far off.

And you keep bringing up Kanye, but he wasn't at the beginning of Hip Hop, he didn't create it. He is a significant part of today's rap culture, for sure, but, as recent an invention as it is, it has evolved rapidly. It's not nearly as sample based as it was, but it's revised its own conceptions of dance and rhythm. Basically, it's beyond where it started in the popular sense, but that doesn't mean the roots aren't still there, and that some people put emphasis on them more than others.

Very interesting points about mass media. It's definitely a qualifier for much of today's popular music (Hip Hop not excluded), but still, the earliest form, which developed closely to Punk (literally and figuratively), doesn't fall entirely into that trap.

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Engine

Isn't life a blast? It's just like living in the past

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Like an arrow,
I was only passing through.

GuD

Some people actually have to WORK for a living. They can't just coast off on student loans or trustfunds well into their 30s and expect it all to just work out. There's nothing wrong with authority if it's not oppressive and there's nothing wrong with being a part of the crowd if that's what gets your bills paid. Have you ever been homeless? It ****ing sucks man and I'm sure you'd wear the uniform if homelessness was the alternative. Henry Rollins used to work at Hagen Dasz before Black Flag. Minutemen wrote working class anthems- their parents were mechanics and waitresses. Ian Mackaye's parents were like pastors or missionaries or something I forget which. There's plenty of working class gents and dames who defy religion, myself included. I take some pretty serious offense to your statements, do I come across as some brainwashed automaton to you, poshboy?

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I spit bullets in my feet
Every time I speak
So I write instead
And still people want me dead
~msc

Mondo Bungle

Of the three times I've been without a home, none of them were all that great.

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