Proverb

[Anthony]

yo zubz.1st mistake-IT'S NOT ABOUT U.if u an artist and u don't want to communicate to your audience(us) then get on the hamlet spaceship and write soliloquy.don't front 'if i don't like it i don't like it don't mean that i'm hatin it'.as far as the 'now' thing i know you since HARDCORE back here in Zim when u was singin gospel music.so don't front on me bout sellin out money.then again u do admit u dig certain producers.i'm sayin, we reached a certain age where we gotta make cla**ics and live of em,hail we aint no van gogh's.wise men are supposed to leave legacies for they progeny.i'm a fan of hiphop, it's why i got your albums in the first place.appreciate that.i'm sayin.i want african hiphop to be as marketable as american hiphop.yes!charisma sells characters.otherwise there would be no bob,pac eminem(shall i go on?).don't look for excuses for stagnation.use it as a challenge.i'm mad at y'all.with 5% the resources you have we tryin da best we can here.don't take your blessings for granted cous.they won't always be there.i love hiphop you can't force me to find taste in the tasteless.i live,eat,sleep,dream this.so when y'all put it out i better like how it smells.i'm a fan man.look at where all the keep it real cats is at.common still there cuz he growin with the music,so is outcast.

history teaches that men learns nothing from it...

and the dog will return to its vomit...

don't get it twisted it's all love.otherwise i would shut up and keep stuff to myself.hiphop raised me money, i see cats as fam.i WANT THE BEST FOR FAM.not saying i know what's bets for u.i'm just saying, n'a m saying? :wink:

[Anthony]

excuse my big mouth...it's used to big words :lol:

[Bobby Banks]

Props to munetsi for putting it as it is. It is clearly evident that change is the most important part of progress. And it is problably this same reluctance to change and in some cases, 'non acceptance',that is going to destroy something that hip hop cats have tried so hard to build. ' It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it"... unkown.

Cats need to at least start doing that if they,if they find it so difficult to change. Mind you, this is more directed to the fans than anyone else.

[GudEar]

I hear ya'll dudes, but for me personally, I'm happy with SA HipHop currently. I also believe that it's going to stick like that for quite sumtime. Believe me I dig Outrageous Records madly, Futhi I'd definetly put my foot down for it. I think It's all about 1's background. Mina everysong those cats drop they relate to my lifestyle. I think music should be like that. I don't care about who sounds like who, nor trying to be who. As long as the lyrical concept is fresh, relating, I dig it. Tell u wat mina I'd put my money on this, Outrageous artist(s) have truly gat it.

[authentic]

wow.....didnt think this was gone raise some dabate like this nway lemme state xzactly where it is i stand .....
first off i ant say verb album was a cla**ic ,damn i done listened to tooooo much hiphop to think 'long em lines,n i dont mean Verb cant mac a cla**ic l.p,that juss wasnt,what i meant though was :
lyrically he came out good,i aint worried bout "is he tryna sound american n all" coz i dot know him personally n for al i know maybe he does speak that way not strayin from what i am sayin ,lyricaly he hit above average,i am also that typeof listener "tha oooooohh ,wooow"punchline n metaphor in love wit rapper/fan too,i mean i grew up on canibus too,n from what i heard Verb is a bus fan so i thought he was gone raise tha bar for tha rest of em catts,he still came out good though
2 - tha beats was good,i also know of damn good producers out here like ma manns Munetsi said ,n em kids killin it wit limited tools,aint suprised at how he ,munetsi came at all of ya on this he is a hungry n well to mie a better rapper than al em s.a rappers i have heard,so he te be pssed off coz they kinda wastin ......
3 - tha concepts for em trax was real good..... he covered a lotof ground on that album money,sex ,drugs n alcohol was sick,heartbeat sc,microfone sweet homesic n none of e trax was tha same,even tha kimberly track,that was one sick track mann ,kidd spoke real pa**ionately bout where he came from,whats happening round his peoples n all
4- tha looooooove songs,i felt he dumbed down a lot for em,he got lke 4 trax that sound like these looove songs,kinda came off like 50 on ma**acre
5 - Tumi,well i also felt he was real low,thought he was soundin a lil bit faint n low on confidence fo sure,i am a biiiiigg tumi fan,well he ma fav rapper out ol em s.a catts,eventhough wat he spit was good n all,he did soud low wen it came to confidence

 n to cap it off i dun lisined to optical is album n em dudes be complicatin too much shit,i feel they be gettin emslves confused to some certain point coz some of they shit dont mac sense thunny

am a huge hiphop fan irregardless of whether tha dude thats spitting is afrian(kingpin is in a top 5 dead or alive,r.i.p kdd),southern i lisin to jeezy n t.i n e dudes talk mo sense than a otof new york rappers,i lisin to  skool catts,got everythan from dela,common,tribe,big daddy kane,rakim n all,so maybe at tha end of tha day we all choose what we feel is good "to us"....i choose anythan that gives hiphop a positive movesoething solid ,something people can relate to n Pro is coo wit mie,wont comment on zubbz that much only heard b.e.a.t.s n some otha song wit a vid he aaaaight but i feel he is one of en catts that gets 2 much love coz ya all cast him as that "real hiphop"...what is real hiphop in tha first place???
if its produced by preemo does it mean its real hiphop??
if k.r.s says thats real hiphop ya down wit it??
i am mie n at tha end of tha day i lisin to what appeals to mie mos ...
one

[jahfish]

well we havent signed a contract to be hiphop, so it's a personal thing. i guess that if u feel it, then it's "real" for u ....

personally, i'd rather judge a track from the feeling i have for it, rather then base my judgement on a detailed explanative content research.

i mean so much has been said - packaged in hiphop lyrics - that we should allready have a hiphop book of laws and facts ... and all these questions on the board should be solved.

but its not because it's about the whole mixture ... the voice, the music, the lyrics, the message ....

btw. hiphop started with spinning old funk and rock vinyls on parties ...  ain't nuttin wrong with catching up with some old vibes ... f*** the now and then discussion.  the ninetees were dope, so why not share that again? SA rappers just shouldn't try to sound too "brooklyn"! mix that up! take a portion of musical nyc roots, and take some of your local flava ...

the music is still an important factor that gets neglected too much much nowadays ..... d was talking about musicians - not just artits - and thats an important point.  munetsi was complaining about previous gospel singing ... anything wrong about some musical education & experience? there is too much rappers missing intonation and flows. while there is beautifull gospel singers and great songs. u just have to dig a bit deeper in any type of music and u'll find something that u can feel! it's the thin line between musician and music-makers ....  that's what i would rather worry about "beeing real"!

so keep the music real, not clichés and media-images ...

[DomOu]

there's this 1 track of his that i like i think its called hip hop i love you. a friend of mine has 1 of his albums & he played that track...seriously amazing track, speaks about how he met hip hop

[MrC The Rap God Almighty]

Yo on the real, i don't see what the problem is with cats trying to capture that "Golden Era" hip-hop sound. The shyt that's coming out nowadays can never compare to those times, so if you trying to capture that 90's sound the go for it dunn.

Personally there hasn't been much that has excited me in hip-hop after the whole RAWKUS era. There has been a couple of nice albums here and there but in general most of the music has been wack. Now i grew up on that 90's shyt and right now it's the only hip-hop i feel and love, so i'm gonna embrace that and try to produce the same kind of vibe im my music, cos that's what i relate to and truthfully speaking so do most of the ma**es, it's just that there is not enough of it out there.

I don't think things should change just for the sake of changing. If it aint broke then don't fix it. Change is good but if change brings about wackness then i'm not for it. I'd rather hear a booming beat with some nice heavy ba**, saxophones, hard snare,bangin kick drums,etc than to listen to that electronic shyt that every producer seems to be on nowadays.

And then cats have the audacity to call it progression. Nigga Please. If it's wack it's wack, stick to your basics man.

BOOM BAP ALL THE WAY!
One,

[N.A 187]

Yep, da Pro 2 da Verb is on sum shit for real. Peep this soundclick.com/nativea**asin url its got Vaals finnest featured on my promo tracks for my new joint coming up "sick of being iLL". I met an emcee on soundlick from US called Proverb too....mmmmmm... aint that a bitch. THey should battle for the name.

[N.A 187]

Yep, da Pro 2 da Verb is on sum shit for real. Peep this soundclick.com/nativea**asin url its got Vaals finnest featured on my promo tracks for my new joint coming up "sick of being iLL". I met an emcee on soundlick from US called Proverb too....mmmmmm... aint that a bitch. THey should battle for the name.

[crus-ou]

i dont think the problem is embracing the old school i think the problem is letting that be a reflection of where we come from and also a standard for what Hip Hop is. I dont think its a recipe or bilble of what sud be produced.

the problem with stagnation is that ish becomes irrelevant and cats produce just another hiphop track

reflect the essence that's good but also show what you can do, what is now, what is relevant.  If we are diffrent - Let it be heard.

Ps. I'm loving this thread.

[infamoushiphopsta]

The Proverbial one is tight and on point wif his rhymes Zubz is the man didnt like 1ne or 2wo songs on the album but the rest are dope

just waitin 4 the new ones from Pro & Tha last Letta

[MrC The Rap God Almighty]

I believe every kind of music has a standard that it follows:

For example:

You know that if you listen to a rock CD you gonna hear a lot of guitars whinning, highly reverbed snares, etc,etc. Thats what defines rock music.No doubt rock has changed over the years but the fundamentals are still there.

You know if you listen to jazz expect to hear a ba** guitar, maybe with some soft piano, some nice trumpet sound,etc,etc.

Cla**ical music - > same shyt. You gonna hear a lot of strings, a lot of movement in the track and what not.

All genres of music have a certain pattern they follow, the patterns might change throughout time, but the fundamentals will still be there.

That is what i'm saying. 90's hip-hop for me is a standard cos i believe that's when hip-hop was at it's most creative. In the 80's everybody was still trying to find themselves, a lot of the music was a bit thin, the beats were fresh but most of them were still underdeveloped and shyt.

What's the difference today's between hip-hop and R&B? NADA. They sound too similar. So we have basically compromised our sound to a point where black music as a whole sounds too similar. And all of this so that we can avoid stagnation?

.Back then there was a clear distinction between a Tevin Campbell CD and a Naughty by Nature CD. These were completely different genres of music. Nowadays everything sounds the same.

The thing we should realize with 90's hip-hop is that it wasn't stagnant ,meaning not everybody had the same sound back in the day. A tribe called quest CD was different from a Boot Camp CD, a Ghetto Boys CD, an NWA CD, a Black sheep record. The music was different because of a whole lot of circumstances but at the end of the day you could tell this is hip-hop music.

Jermaine Dupri could have easily gave Mariah Carey the beats he did for BOW-WOW's album and given BOW-WOW Mariah's beats and people would still have embraced either artists. So what is what here? You got cats
sampling or rather trying to include elements of  that electronic shyt, trance, house, rave,etc,etc. To me that's not hip-hop. There is no soul anymore in the music.

So clearly the change did take place, but was it worth it in the end? Did we really elevate this hip-hop music? NO. So let's go back to the drawing board, start at the last point where hip-hop was still real and then try to grow it from there by following a different route, cos for me the current path we are on is totally too far from home.

One,

[Dpleezy]

"i grew up on that 90's shyt and right now it's the only hip-hop i feel and love, so i'm gonna embrace that and try to produce the same kind of vibe im my music, cos that's what i relate to and truthfully speaking so do most of the ma**es."

The ma**es actually hardly buy any 90s-sounding Hip Hop. The ma**es buy 50 Cent, The Game, Lil Jon etc etc (if we're going by record sales),,, but that's not the point anyway...

I grew up on the oldest of old skool Hip Hop and Electro but I'm sure as hell not gonna keep making 80s music,,, it doesn't have any relevance today. I'll always have those influences, just like i'll have the 90s era influences,,, but I don't want to live in the past.

'New' doesn't mean 'electronic'. We've had electronic music since the 60s,,, that shit ain't new at all. 'New' just means developing your own thing, something relevant to now,,, the context you live in, your culture etc. If an artist likes Golden Era Hip Hop - cool - but let him make it his own. Putting on an American accent, adopting US slang, dressing like an American, copying their mannerisms,,, that's just copycat fan-behaviour. I can't take any artist seriously who acts like that. It's how you twist those influences and infuse them into who you are that makes something 'new' and 'now'.

Jamaica, for example, is highly influenced by the US, especially as they are so geographically close,,, BUT they retain their own identity through their accents, their slang, the way they dress, the style of music they make. In Jamaica, just like in the UK, your are ridiculed if you rap in an American accent (and that's not how you speak day to day).

I just don't see how in the context of South(ern) Africa music that sounds like it could have been made in New York in the 90s has any relevance,,, and the ma**es seem to agree because they don't buy music like that,,, they buy Gospel and Kwaito because it reflects their culture.

[Dpleezy]

"That is what i'm saying. 90's hip-hop for me is a standard cos i believe that's when hip-hop was at it's most creative."

So you're going to keep making 90s music? That sounds like the death of creativity to me.

I love the fact that Hip Hop has developed and become something new. I'm not talking about Germaine Dupri and Lil Bow Wow,,, that's just pop music - I don't even include shit like that in this discussion.

Hegemony by B.Sharpa is one of the dopest pieces of music i have heard in years (Sibot's electronic-influenced production),,, You'd have to be out of your mind to tell me that it's not Hip Hop,,, or that it hasn't elevated the art.

As for the argument that there is no soul in new Hip Hop,,, especially if that means electronic music,, man, i don't buy that at all. Soul comes from what the artist puts into their music. Real instruments can be just as soulless as electronic instruments in the wrong hands.