Album of the Week: The New Pornographer's "Twin Cinemas"

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

My Rap on Rap

It's always great when I can come across a writer who feels exactly the same way I do about an issue that's never talked about. Thank you Bill Simmons (espn.com)

(taken from his 2/23 article on the NBA All Star Weekend from ESPNs Page 2. I highly recommend reading his articles)

...Nelly was the main event at the NBA Players Association's party (NBPA), which was such a hot ticket that scalpers were hawking the invitations outside. I've never seen that before. Anyway, Nelly came out with like nine of his friends, who proceeded to scream the lyrics to his songs in the background, which caused him to start screaming ... basically, everyone screamed at the top of their lungs for an entire hour.

So here's my question: If Nelly released a studio album called "Here are some new songs that I recorded with 10 people who aren't singers screaming in the background and overpowering my lyrics," would anyone buy it? Of course not. So why does almost every rapper approach concerts this way? Are they worried that they don't have any talent, so they hide behind the screaming? Is it a posse thing, like they're worried about picking the two or three buddies who should be on stage, so they just go with their 10 closest friends? And why isn't this more of an outrage? Seriously, if you bought tickets to a U2 concert and Bono came out with nine buddies from Dublin who proceeded to ruin every song, wouldn't you ask for your money back? I don't get it.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I recently caught an accoustic evening with Naughty By Nature. The band's performance was both gentle and heartfelt.

Darin

10:30 AM

 

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