roxstar wrote:To be really honest, it's this type of thinking that's kicking the true spirit of Hip-Hop while it's almost dead. I can't blame you for thinking this way since it seems like most people are doing the same but I seriously urge you all to watch Style Wars, or Wild Style before proceeding to the next level of production. These movies should be like Hip-Hop 101 to everyone that never experienced Hip-Hop from it's birth. There are so many people that think they are Hip-Hop, and have never seen these movies, or understand what the realness is all about.
First, let me say, there is nothing instant in Hop Hop, in fact, it's the lack of effort that makes 99% of these new producers/rappers sound so horrible. Breakdancing requires years of practice, Djing requires years of practice, Graffiti writing requires years of practice, Mc'ing requires years of practice. Nowadays, everyone wants results NOW. The same kid that downloads fruityloops is trying to sell beats for $20 a week later. Your not a Dilla just because you made a Boom Bap beat. Your not a Talib Qwali just because you made "cat" rhyme with "hat," and your not a producer just because you sampled a website song and made it sound like a Madlib track. There are diggers that have spent 10-20-30-40+ YEARS collecting records, and there is a certain level of pride of owning an clean, original rare album. Many collectors will have various copies of the same record with varying degrees of quality. Many will travel to different states and countries just to find albums not available in their area!
So now, we have the new school producer that gets a drum machine that can do 100 different things, goes online to seek assistance from the world wide web on how to use it, logs onto websites to cheat his/her way into acquiring rare music, gets his buddies to spit hot garbage over the unskillfully produced track while claiming the finished product is "real."
Anyone that honestly respects this artform can taste the effort that one puts into their craft. If you take time to program your drums, real heads will notice it. If you take time to get your vocab up to par, real Mc's will notice it. The lack of effort from this "Newskool" generation is really leaving a bad taste in the mouths of those that remember what this artform was originally about. Some of you may call it "hate" but really, it's not even about that. When something sucks, it is what it is, and most of the music produced today is just horrible. Right now, the "best" rapper is really just the "best of the worst" and the "illest" producers are the ones that sell beats to the best of the worst rappers.
With that said, everyone, please make an effort to learn what this artform is all about. If you sample off Youtube, doesn't the urge to actually own the album you liked enough to sample enter your mind? Would a scratched up copy really be good enough even if you did find it? And if you finally found the clean original album, I bet you would really put in some serious work to make it sound even better. This is the effort I was talking about. Learn your History. This message is a lot deeper than simply paying for the records. There's a whole lot you can learn from diggin' in the crates.
While I feel the point you're trying to make here, you gotta remember that there was mad wack shite back in the beginnings too. Hip hop has had a fairly consistent battle with the mainstream since 'Rappers Delight' and people have gotten too blinkered over the years to accept that not all of this music so many of us love and hate and love to hate (etc.), is always on a par with the best.
Like most forms of modern music, there have been patches of outstanding creativity, but this only happens sporadically within ANY artform, so peeps are quick to latch onto whatevers 'hot' or 'dope' at the time.
As an example, the guy I used to share hip hop tapes with introduced me to Ice T's OG and Vanilla Ices debut in the same week. Now which one do you think most cats remember?
I've copmpletely lost my train of thought now typing this out (god knows how you managed it

) but if I remember any more points, you can be sure I'll be back to make them.
Go hard or not at all