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PORTOGAZI t1_iyexep5 wrote

Reply to comment by pucklermuskau in Who ‘pioneered’ the transition from old school hip hop to melodic rap? by trytoholdon

While 36 chambers is perfect it’s like the absolute antitheses to OPs question. Theyre talking about modern pop-rap and Wu tang were far from it, despite being big commercially.

I’d credit Puff Daddy for ruining hip-hop starting with Mace — when 'mo money mo problems' came out I knew it was trouble. Sure enough with subsequent hits, everything edgy and exciting about hiphop just softened.

Then came g-unit, sure they rapped about gangtsa shit but it sounded like boy band music with rapping on top -- and aimed at 12 year olds. The fact that Mobb Deep ended up fucking with g-unit hurts to this day.

After that we gotta point the finger at T-pain for the auto-tuned vocals and then drake for the sound design beats and hang-sang rap.

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pucklermuskau t1_iyf1f68 wrote

it's a pretty damned melodic album, compared to old school 80s hip hop. not quite sure what you're on about...

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PORTOGAZI t1_iyf31ia wrote

ughh .. lots of typos .. incoherent post on my part...

the tldr: Having bits of melody on a record was hardly the strength of Liquid Swords or 36 chambers ... they were grimy NON-POP albums. Plenty of rappers had melodic songs earlier than GZA's solo stuff ... 93 till infinity? when OP says "melodic" rap they're likely talking about modern POP-RAP ...it all sounds like sound-design with digital reverbs, auto-tuned half-sang vocals (thx to Drake). This is a complete shift from boom-bap hiphop where the emcees were the focus. This is basically pop music now.

The shift from rap sounding underground and FOR hiphop-heads happened in the mid/late 90s when the commercial stuff started to sound closer to Backstreet Boys than its origin.
I'm all for progress but this felt more like selling out ... pandering to people who don't actually LIKE rap music and making it watered down for their soft ears. Punk music went through the same decline thanks to pop groups like Blink182 which introduced millions of suburban kids to an edgy genre -- free of any discomfort.

As Q tip says in Check the Rhyme -- "Rap is not pop, if you'll call it that you'll stop it." or something to that effect.

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pucklermuskau t1_iyf74ih wrote

i think you're reading a lot into OPs question. just go back and reread: he's asking about the shift from old-school hiphop, into the melodic 90s hiphop, its not focused on modern pop music at all.

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PORTOGAZI t1_iyf7d6h wrote

>truly “modern”, melodic rap music — which I think you could argue arrived in the late 90s — that replaced the “old school” hip hop sound.

Nope -- he says it right there homie.

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