The sacred cows

C

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
grizzleb said:
Oh shut up. Dilla's the man.
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Because he's dead. Dilla died for your sins, we get it.

Should I have to wait for Ced Gee to die for people to realize he was possibly the best early hip-hop producer?

Though I'd settle for KRS-One shutting up and finally admitting Ced and not Scott La fucking Rock produced "Criminal Minded".
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
craner said:
Hang on, this sounds interesting. What do RATM have to say about the Shining Path?
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I'm never quite sure if you're taking the piss. I'll just assume that's a serious question. the video for Bombtrack is a primer on/glorification of the Shining Path, including footage from the trial of SP founder Abimael Guzman (philosophy prof, of course). plus Morello has plenty of interviews where he refers to them as the "Peruvian people" fighting "U.S. Corporations", which is pretty inaccurate. the govt was oppressive (& prob. U.S. backed, I dunno), but Shining Path were the rare guerrilla group that out-atrocities the govt it's fighting. infamous for murdering unionists, community activists, aid workers, anyone who was improving the condition of the peasants & thus staving off the inevitable revolution. also into killing leftist opponents (i.e. Tupac Amaru) but that's par for the course. with unintentional Maoist hilarity they were also against human rights for being too bourgeois. again, none of this would bug me if there wasn't guilt-by-association w/the EZLN. similar roots but the Zaps, unlike SP, became a legitimately popular & indigenous movement (rather than remaining isolated Maoist student cadre from the city) and in doing so became something totally different. you don't hear about EZLN massacres cos they don't commit them; it wouldn't make sense for them too. I doubt most kids who listen to RATM are really grasping the difference between Latin American revolutionary groups.

there's two political strands running through RATM. Morello's a trad rock dude & college Maoist; Shining Path is all him, I'd think. de la Rocha is a Chicano punk kid, a lot more general anti-authoritarian, I have a hard time believing he'd be into a Maoist dictatorship of the proletariat.
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
I'm never quite sure if you're taking the piss.
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Eh? I'm not. I know fuck all about RATM, but a bit about Shining Path. It seemed slightly mind-boggling; thank you for the explanation.
 
C

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
crackerjack said:
Dilla's great, but he would've been so much better with someone else on vocalists quality control. Just a trusted mate, going, "Slum Village? Zzzzz. Frank & Dank? You're fucking kidding, right? "
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Yeah, it's definitely a sad state of affairs when the producer is the best rapper in the group.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
craner said:
Eh? I'm not. I know fuck all about RATM, but a bit about Shining Path. It seemed slightly mind-boggling; thank you for the explanation.
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you're welcome. it wasn't a dig anyway, more like a complement. message board deadpan is hard to pull off.

it is rather mind-boggling. actually, RATM was a rather mind-boggling proposition; I remember seeing them in Chicago when I was 11, on one of nights in the 90s that the Bulls won an NBA championship (followed inevitably by sporadic rioting). cops out in great force on the street prior to show. Morello's cute as a button 60 y.o. mom introduced them as "the best f**king band in the whole f**king universe". halfway through de la Rocha had a raucous "F the police" chant going for 10 minutes, all these sweaty 13 yr old white kids from suburbia. then everyone went home. I bought an EZLN shirt (still have it, still wear it). supremely weird.
 
optimum

optimum

Poochie
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Wish Dilla did more synth driven stuff like this, still one of my fav rap producers. And better than all the imitators who followed him.

Also:

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grizzleb

grizzleb

Well-known member
CrowleyHead said:
Because he's dead. Dilla died for your sins, we get it.
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It's that anti-dead person thing, like 'oh man, this well respected producer is dead so now I'm gonna be all controversial and say he aint all that'

Boring. I've outlined why he's a great producer.
 
C

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
grizzleb said:
It's that anti-dead person thing, like 'oh man, this well respected producer is dead so now I'm gonna be all controversial and say he aint all that'

Boring. I've outlined why he's a great producer.
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If he was alive, I'd also be saying he wasn't all that. Of course, mind you, I'd probably be doing it a lot less often. Let's kind of break this down.

His era of producing for Tribe. Now, no offense, but the Q-Tip/Ali team is just as good, if not perhaps better than Dilla. Or at least, were in their prime. Dilla is responsible for making the music that caused Tribe to fall off in the public eye. Oh sure, you could blame Puffy for it like everybody else who wants 'to be down'. You could even use the more logical argument that by this point, Tribe was sick of each other just a little; but it doesn't help that he was essentially made navigator of a sinking ship.

Also, his production for Q-Tip solo was laughable, not to mention those songs he produced were offensive and naive. Q-Tip went from being founder of the "No-Fun Club" (I.E. Common, Blackstar, etc.) in which it's all "Roots & Culture" above all... and then, he's selling out as gratuitously as anybody in that era. Which is fascinating, because Jungle Bros. who were always both commercial yet positive simultaneously got phased out for their more dramatically 'positive' groups like De La and Tribe.

I'm not saying the man didn't make good music. But his death caused a lot of historical revisionism. I pointed out earlier how KRS-One rewrote the history of "Criminal Minded" to keep Scott La Rock in the legend of his career. But that album is a Ced Gee/Paul C project.

Dilla's death, however, caused everything he worked on to suddenly be 'under appreciated'. Some of it was just NOT GOOD, and people knew it.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
yeah ummah beats are much better than dillas for tribe. not close. i was slagging off dilla while he was alive all the time. loads of people were.
he wasn't just associated with atcq's shit period, he made a shit album with pharcyde as well. and he made beats for common when common went shit.... bit of a theme developing here isn't there?
the beats are utterly dull and inert, and, with a few excpetions, the people who champion are equally dull and inert.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
not tryna make a point, but this video is really kinda bugged out

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hint

hint

party record with a siren
He was massively productive... of course most of it wasn't all that good. But the best stuff is great.

Is there an equivalent opposite to Sacred Cows, or something? Where people refuse to entertain the idea that people might like an artist's music?
 
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G

gumdrops

Well-known member
dilla *is* overrated and over mythologised but he also put out a lot of really great stuff - its just hard to really weigh all that up against all the average stuff he put out as a result of releasing far too much (like madlib). but his best stuff/productions are great, even though there is a lot of stuff that really does just send me to sleep and is amazingly bland in the name of mellowness. but he has a couple of great albums to his name (slum villages first, welcome to detroit, ruff draft), which is something, and stops me having to scour all the productions he scattered all over the place, which obv vary a lot (though some of them are worth seeking out, just to hear him do more technoy beats). his consistency isnt anywhere near as good as premier or rzas was in their prime.
 
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