• YEAHBUDDY [they/them, love/loves]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    Im glad people are calling out drake for being a sexual predator but I dont trust all the rappers he be beefing with. Like some of them are doing it just for clout and are using it as a chance to get back at drake for personal reasons and would have never spoke up about drake dating teenagers if drake hadnt become persona non grata in the last few days. Its like harvey weinstein. People in hollywood knew for years there was rumors people spoke up and lost their jobs but it wasnt until he was done thats when everyone came out with shit on him. Like everyone who knew he was a predator before this and worked with him then and became angry at him not for the predator shit needs to go too!

  • dannoffs [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    Counter point, the Drake-Kendrick beef will be forgotten in like two months and nothing major will change because of it.

  • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    IDK, this guy is kinda reaching. I could see where he’s coming from if he was saying this beef and the things Kendrick is talking about reflect larger societal issues, but how could they possibly be shaping them? Pop culture, and all of the superstructure, arise out of the material base but has extremely little power to do anything except reinforce it. That’s why Kendrick and other conscious artists limit the scope of their message to a very specific part of the struggle, which elements of the ruling class are already ready to recuperate and make concessions in (more Black billionaires! (which is not what Kendrick is asking for but it’s definitely the safe, capitalist response to this tide of conscious hip hop (and it’s what other artists like Jay Z put forward as their solution) and even the most radical artists don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them)). Even then, I don’t want to be too cynical as to obscure what some smaller rappers out there are doing, others like Noname have put forward a more materialist criticism and have been outspoken about genocide and imperialism. How much of a difference does that make? Probably quite a lot, I’m sure many of the people in campus protests right now can attribute part of their political development to pop culture. But is it the actual, deciding factor for the movement and progression of history? marx-goth

    Ultimately the amount of change these artists can enact is limited due to their positions relying on capital; streaming platforms and record companies aren’t gonna keep Fred Hampton on board for too long if that’s really bringing about political action that threatens their bottom line.

    • EmoThugInMyPhase [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      Of course pop culture doesn’t change anything. After Weinstein got arrested we never got many updates about whether similar abuses have seized, and I assume not because nothing systemic was changed. Epstein dies, Maxwell goes to prison, nothing changes. Drake has an absurdly large contract with many brands - it’s unlikely to do anything unless Kendrick has some scathing, undeniable evidence that compels the police to go after Drake - but I doubt that would happen because it might self-incriminate Kendrick for various reasons, and doing it “officially” (i.e. working directly with the cops) is career suicide for Kendrick, so he basically only has vague jabs and perhaps inadmissible exposes

      I’m sure many of the people in campus protests right now can attribute part of their political development to pop culture.

      I would not trust many people who can be swayed by products lol

  • Dessa [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    Tired of hearing vout this and not actually hearing the songs, I went to look up Kendrick Lamar expecting to hate it because I’m old and all rap sounds like shit to me these days.

    And… This kinda hits. This Lamar kid’s got somethin.

        • Rx_Hawk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          7 months ago

          Just because “mainstream” rap isn’t good doesn’t mean people haven’t constantly been releasing quality stuff.

          Also, Kendrick is pushing 40 and has been putting out music for 2 decades, so he’s not exactly a part of the younger generation of rappers.

          • Dessa [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            7 months ago

            That’s certainly in his favor. I called him kid because he’s about 10 years younger than me and I was being cute

        • FungiDebord [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          7 months ago

          i can’t tell the difference between a guy self-consciously doing conscious jazz rap, who deliberately positions himself as stylistic through-line to the 90s and puts himself in literal conversation with hiphop greats, and his “wack” contemporaries

          why pretend to be an old head – you can just say you’ve never, once, listened to hip hop lol

          • Dessa [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            7 months ago

            I like what I’ve heard of Lamar so far. I like that stuff that sets him apart. It’s many of his contemporaries I don’t like.

    • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      Which one did you hear? Not Like Us is a pretty standard trap beat with some more lyrical complexity than usual, but it’s really nothing out of left field musically. It sounds like a pretty average trap song. The other 2 are a little more involved, but again nothing too crazy since these songs were made on a tight schedule. If this is really your first introduction to Kendrick I highly recommend you do yourself a favor and listen to To Pimp a Butterfly.

      • Dessa [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        7 months ago

        I may have already heard To Pimp a Butterfly? Not sure. But I will.

        But the fact that these were in a subgenre I usually hate is what surprised me here.

        • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          7 months ago

          IMO trap music is always unfairly maligned in mainstream discussions outside of the hip hop sphere (i.e. in predominantly white spaces). It’s a broad genre, there’s some low brow trap music, then there’s your Earl Sweatshirts, Jpegmafias, Uzis, etc. who take the genre and do some very interesting things with it. Kendrick has been known to freely take a lot of influence from different subgenres and he definitely also shows that the attitude that a lot of people, especially oldheads, took toward “mumble rap,” was super shortsighted. It’s like dismissing randomness in video games because slot machines exist.

          • ProletarianDictator [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            7 months ago

            There was a period where everyone was doing the migos flow. ~2017-2022 felt like a relative genetic bottleneck in hiphop structure. I agree there are some trap artists that diverge, and a lot of the vocal anti “mumble rap” discourse is carrying strong racial undertones, but I don’t think crackery is enough to explain the sharp trend towards the Atlanta sound.

            It felt like industry was collectively realizing they can capitalize on the triplet flow’s popularity more than artists independently drawing inspiration from it. Message-wise, trap also seems easier for capital to co-opt and commodify than what came before.

            Not sure I have a thesis here, just my thoughts.

            • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              7 months ago

              It’s possible. I’m a relatively new hip hop fan (started listening in 2018, 2019-ish) and I basically have always heard trap as the dominant subgenre. But I’ve also viewed it as hella diverse because I always stayed a bit closer to the underground, seeing trends of abstract hip hop and some experimental artists taking trap and doing interesting things with it, rather than the commercial trap which skated around the same few flows with nothing much to say. And, IDK, is trap really any worse than bling rap as far as being easy to co-opt?

    • buh [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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      7 months ago

      are you talking about jump cuts, because that’s been a problem in youtube videos since the early 10s, and it was way worse then (it might even still be worse now)

      • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        7 months ago

        Nah, not jump cuts, look at how the video cuts in the middle of the sentence which leads to a pretty jarring viewing experience if you’re not used to it. He sometimes cuts 2 or 3 times in just one sentence, super disorienting.

  • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    I used to just hate Drake cause I’m Canadian. Now I kinda like Kendrick Lamar for owning a dude so hard I has to see what the fuss was about. Now I have other reasons, as stenchcore scum who pays little attention to mainstream music, Kendrick goty clicks and I told co-workers about it. He was like if you made Narduar really mad at you.

  • ta00000 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    I feel like if you’re writing mean songs about how much you hate someone you’ve already lost. Why doesn’t the diss-ee simply make a wojak-nooo meme of them and be done?