Kanye West's Mom Shocked on How much he spends on....

[Cozmo D]

Basically dumbing down is making music that appeals to a younger audience, nothin' more than somethin' to dance to, something extremely catchy and it started with Sugar Hill Gang's "Rappers Delight" as the 1st commercial rap single, even Run-Dmc dumbed down "Walk This Way" is catchy is hell but a classic of course, but that's why a lot of people thought that rap wouldn't last in the '80s in a sense 'cause there was nothin' more than dance songs most of the time until conscious and gangsta rappers came out and started rapping more than just about being at the club, it was looking to be a novelty like disco if that didn't happen, that's happening again except most of the dumbed down songs suck now.

Must....resist....attempt....to....respond.......

[Vipa]

Dude, no one in the 80s "Dumbed Down".

Noone thought Rap would last, because it was new. They didn't see it as being a big thing yet.

Dumbing down is just not trying to your full potential, for the mian reaosn of making a few extra bills.

[bigted]

Well people didn't think rap would last 'cause it wasn't that diverse at the time, rappers like Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, and NWA showed that rap was more than just "Yes Yes Y'all" and "Throw Ya Hands In The Air", that term "dumbing down" shouldn't be applied to anybody in the '80s of course since they were originators but how could you say Will dumbed down? He never raps about guns, hoes, or drugs like most today's rappers do, that's the true definition of dumbing down to me, the only way you could say Will dumbs down is that he makes music that makes you dance and not think a lot of the times.

[Hero1]

I dont think when they were making rappers delight or walk this way there was any thought of dumbing down.. no1 knew those tracks would be successful.. it was when rap became a commercial commodity..record labels started to notice and interfere.. i'd say it was the early 90s when they started//it was the mid 90s 94/95 when labels really upped the pressure starting to force artists to make sure they had a hit record.. it happened before then..but i think thats when it became more widespread.. and subsequently a heap of artists ended up getting dropped around 93/94/95 ..cause they didnt go pop :1-say-yes: today if you sign to a label its like signing you're soul to the devil :sick:

[Frenetic]

Rappers delight is a dumbed down song with stolen lyrics and fake set up. Everybody knows it was like a record company stunt. Lyrics were stolen from alot of streetrappers and sugar hill never even liked the song.

The difference is that back then everybody liked anything that was put out, cause people were positive to new hiphop.

I like the message more.

[Hero1]

well yeah the message..defined what hip hop was about :bowdown:

[Lerkot]

yup tho the message probably also had lyrics stolen from the streets.

edit: yo by the way. in the music video to The Message, the guy in the background at 04:06 sumthin, is he supposed to look like he doesnt know what to do really?

Edited October 15, 2005 by Lerkot

[bigted]

Run-Dmc didn't want to do "Walk This Way" with Aerosmith, they thought that the lyrics for it was "hilbilly gibberish" but they were convinced by Rick Rubin to do it to help hip-hop crossover so I guess I'd call that an example of dumbing down if you call "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" dumbing down since it was basically the same way Columbia told Will that their needed to be a club anthem so he made "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It". Yeah "The Message" actually opened the doors for conscious rappers to come later on in the decade but most rappers shyed away from talkin' about the crack trade and poverty to just make party tracks, love songs, or battlin' each other but they did it to make people happy not for their own benefit unlike rappers today, that's the difference, most of the content was for all ages too on the most part too unlike now, Will's always been a party starter so he never really "dumbed down" but if we only had Run-Dmc and JJFP hip-hop wouldn't last, we needed conscious rappers like Public Enemy and NWA to bring commentary to the issues what was going on in the streets, that's what made hip-hop more unique helping it last and that's what's lacking now, after a while without subject matter hip-hop'll lose popularity. Hip-hop's always been about the youth and that doesn't change today, except it's nothin' but sex, drugs, and guns on the most part performed by rappers that don't live that life which makes older people hate hip-hop and only the younger generation loving it since they're too dumb to know about quality music, and that's what makes it dumbed down 'cause it's beyond having fun, it's encouraging kids to be thugs, "The Chronic" actually started that but you can't blame Dr. Dre that'd be like saying it was New Edition's fault that we have so many watered down singing groups now, it's a quality album but it brought the formula to how rappers make hits now, they just follow the format without being original.

Edited October 15, 2005 by bigted

[bigted]

Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five had ghostwriters for "The Message" believe it or not according to this hip-hop book "Can't Stop, Won't Stop", only Melle Mel wrote his verse that came from an old version of "Superrappin'" but if it's ok for Dr. Dre to have ghostwriters and it's even ok Kanye and Will to have help too, so it's ok for them too, artists from other music genres don't write all their songs either so who gives a damn as long as the music is good.

"It was credited to Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, but the story behind that revealed other tensions as well. The song was a home -studio concoction of Sugar Hill songwriter and house band percussionist Ed "Duke Boatee" Fletcher, featuring a memorable synthesizer hook from Jiggs Chase, that weemed to bear the influence of Peter Tosh's "Steppin' Razor" and Black Uhuru's Red. Bootee and Sugar Hill mogul Sylvia Robinson could not interest Flash in recording it. He and the rappers felt the song had no energy, that the lyrics would get them booed offstage by their hardcore fans. You went to the party to forget about **** like this.

But Robinson and Bootee recorded the track anyway, peeling off Furious Five rapper Melle Mel to add his last verse from a forgotten version of "Superrappin'". Robinson decided "The Message" had to be released as a single. Flash saw where this was going, and he pushed the rest of the Five into the studio to try to rap Bootee's lines. It didn't work. Instead, Bootee and Robinson added them at the end of the record, in streetside arrest skit recalling Stevie Wonder's interlude in "Living for the City". But Pandora's Box had been opened. The ensuing tug-of-wars between the group and the label and between Flash and Mel resulted in Flash leaving Sugar Hill the following year. The video appeared, with Flash and the crew lip-synching along to a rap only Mel had helped compose.

Sugar Hill's second most important rap record had been as A&R-driven and market-driven as its first, and the consequences for hip-hop music were also forreaching. Not only was "The Message" another boast for the rapper over the DJ, the crew itself become dramatic casualty of rap's realignment towards copywrights, trademarks, executives, agents, lawyers, and worldwide audiences. By the end of 1983, there were two groups called the Furious Five, competing in civil court for the rights to the name, and dousing their creative fires under thousands of dollars of cocaine. From this point, questions of ownership and authorship would become hip-hop generation obsessions.

But Robinson's instincts had been exactly right: the record became the fifth rap single to reach gold-selling status. The single certainly did not represent the first time post-'60s rappers had chosen to touch on themes of social dislocation and institutional racism-Kurtis Blow's "The Breaks", "Hard Times", and "Tough", Brother D and the collective Effort's "How We Gonna Make the Black Nation Rise", and Tanya "Sweet Tee" Winsley's "Vicious Rap" were just some of the recorded samples. But because it was set to a beat too slow to rock a crowd, "The Message" focused the listener on Bootee and Mel's vivid lyrics and their delivery -neither frenetic nor flamboyant, but instead, by turn, resigned and enraged. Flash's instincts had been correct, too, it was the grimmest, most downbeat rap ever heard.

And that vibe matched a rising digust with Reaganomics, the culmination of fifteen years of benign neglect, and a sense of hopelessness that only seemed to be deepening. Liberal music critics who had been sitting on the fence about rap jumped off with both feet. "It's been awfully easy to criticize mainstream, streetlevel rap for talking loud and saying nothing. No more," wrote Vince Aletti in The Village Voice, praise the song's chorus as "a slow chant seething with desperation and fury: and the track's "exhilarating, cinematic sprawl."

Edited October 15, 2005 by bigted

[Hero1]

interesting stuff ted :bowdown:

[bigted]

I'd say "Can't Stop, Won't Stop" is one of the best books I ever read about hip-hop, they go in depth about the making of some of biggest songs and albums that impacted the history of rap during the golden era, y'all should check that out, I borrowed that from my local library over the summer, I only skimmed through it but there's a lot of good stuff in there, I'm gonna probably take it out again soon!

[mfuqua23]

Perhaps, my question was misinterpreted. Heck, I don't even understand it. :lolsign:. But I mean like, of course I know that. And I totally disagree with you ted about dumbing down being when somebody raps about guns, sex, drugs, murder, likewise. That's just a substance you and others would prefer not to hear.

Basically dumbing down is making music that appeals to a younger audience - Not so my friend. We've all got ears (unless something happpens), which means we all got the right to listen. You either like the music or you don't like the music. I don't know if it's bitterness we feel when we see 50 Cent on our tv screens with that goofy, yet perfectly white Colgate smile (which I think he should advertise for), or for the fact that those of us that chose to reach farther back in Hip Hop's vault, see our "hip hop heroes" not at a level that those before us got to see(and some might have took for granted).

I don't want to say give it time, but I honestly do believe that these current rappers (you should be able to see who they are) are going to, well, should realize one day that there is no guarantee in anything that's handed to you. I mean, you probably think... with that logic, then they're probably living their lives to the fullest. Not so. All this is, is a tease. I mean it would probably take someone to one minute be that "Word up, out here doin' it real big with my crew dada-dada-dada", and the next minute release about the whole background of how "the business" is run at the moment.

Sometimes, I think about 'maybe I'm mispercepting the whole thing'. I wonder, "what is going on in that head of his?" And I stress the "his" because that is all you see. I notice Tim is like the only one that never really complains or debates, or rarely even comments on Hip Hop's state because he knows what he likes and he sticks to it. For those of us that do however, I can speak for myself, fear to venture into that comfortable world that Tim is in. And it's not all kick back and relax. I know there are other "underground heads" here like Tim, but not quite of his stature from what I can tell.

And is it really Dr. Dre's fault or blueprint for the way rap is? I mean, do these guys say that "The Chronic" is a big part of what you hear in their music. It's like they don't even know what "creativity" is. We always argue Hip Hop's turning point, but what about R&B's?

Everybody's got they're own quality of life; and life is what you make it.

[MooseKnuckles]

WELL...from a kanye topic to a black and white jesus..back to the topic at hand, its kanyes money, its his life, let him do his thing- hes the best thing on the radio and his tour is crazy..who cares if he watches some no pants dancing? the article was just a humorous piece..its all good

[Hero1]

Sometimes, I think about 'maybe I'm mispercepting the whole thing'. I wonder, "what is going on in that head of his?" And I stress the "his" because that is all you see. I notice Tim is like the only one that never really complains or debates, or rarely even comments on Hip Hop's state because he knows what he likes and he sticks to it. For those of us that do however, I can speak for myself, fear to venture into that comfortable world that Tim is in. And it's not all kick back and relax. I know there are other "underground heads" here like Tim, but not quite of his stature from what I can tell.

yeah I found my favorite artists and i like them.. I ain't mad at 50 or any of them because they are successful.. ima just stick to what i like..I think there is room for everyone and all different types of artists..at the moment we are only seeing one kind on the commercial front..but if you wanna find good music all you have do is look it is out there.. :word:

[Schnazz]

This whole christianity mind control thingy is crazy.

I disagree with ya on that. I've talked to many people who think homosexuality is wrong, the reason why they think it's wrong is because "The Bible says so." The way they know that the Bible says so? Their pastor told them. Why is it that evolution is wrong? "The Bible says so." Why is pre-marital sex wrong? "The Bible says so." Many, many times I've asked them for logical reasoning to back up their opinions on a variety of subjects, they can't provide it. They don't want to provide it. They simply claim that they have a relationship with God, so they trust what's in the bible and what their pastor tells them. That's their religion dictating how they think, and I'd say that's a pretty good description of mind control.

Now, the above doesn't cover all religious people, and I'm definately not claiming that it describes anyone on this board. However, I've been fortunate enough to meet a lot of different people from a lot of different regions of the US, from a lot of different walks of life, and the above describes many, many of the people I've met.