This went 'round the InterWeb a while ago, but as usual, I'm late to the party ;) If you've always wondered what those rappers in freestyle rap battles are rapping about, here's the plain English translation: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
This went 'round the InterWeb a while ago, but as usual, I'm late to the party ;) If you've always wondered what those rappers in freestyle rap battles are rapping about, here's the plain English translation: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
Of course, they're not mainstream, but most of us can attest to the fact that tons of amazing music is not being played on the radio. That's another subject entirely...
We, as people, tend to generalize all too often, and by doing so, we miss out on wonderful things that fall outside the norm. It would be like saying, "Rock and roll sucks!" because of Nickelback. Yes, Nickelback sucks, but not all rock & roll does.
When was the last time you heard a musical artist of any other genre deliver a message like this in their songs:
"I'm convinced now that more then truth is at stake
Where people create language that pretends to communicate
Euphemisms are misunderstood as mistakes
but its a bi-product of the ghetto music we make
From an extroverted point of view I think its too late
Hip Hop has never been the same since '88
Since it became a lucrative profession there's a misconception
that a movement in any direction is progression
Even though of the potency of it lessens
big money industries writing checks to suppress the question
And nobody gives a fuck no more, no one goes to the book store
ever since the confluence of Moore's Law"
That excerpt is from the 10-minute magnum opus, Poet Laureate II. In the same song, the emcee (Canibus) rhymes about the Scottish philosopher David Hume, evolutionary biology, and theories that extend Einstein's theory of relativity into five dimensional space-time.
The same rapper opens another song talking about remote viewing the geoglyphs on the Peruvian pompa.
Then you have acts like Lost Children of Babylon, who have done entire tracks dedicated to concepts like the ancient Egyptian Duat and the Orion Correlation Theory. Or Immortal Technique, whose song "Peruvian Cocaine" says more about the war on drugs than 10,000 hours of cable news could ever hope.
So, yeah: Go ahead and remain ignorant if you want, but hip hop is much more than what's on the radio.
My apologies!!
And, to JdF:
Despite your use of words like "dodgy", and "deprecation" to make your argument sound more intelligent, your claim has no backing. The English language is not a "white" language. Speaking the language properly, by using correct grammar and pronunciation, does make a person more "white". I think it's a bit of a stretch to accuse the makers of the video of being racist merely because they find it amusing to translate slang into formal English.
I am not trying to insult rappers, but please explain to me how a song about having sex with another person's mother is MORE poetic than poetry written in formal English.
-Nicole