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Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 3803
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, March 06, 2007 - 07:11 pm: | 
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New Era: Hip-Hop in the Hall
By LARRY McSHANE
March 6, 2007, 6:39 PM EST
NEW YORK -- Ask Grandmaster Flash about hip-hop stars deserving of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he's quick with a list of rap icons. "Afrika Bambaataa. Run-DMC. KRS-One," he says, barely pausing for a breath. "Big Daddy Kane. LL Cool J. Eric B and Rakim. Tribe Called Quest. The list goes on and on."
Flash left himself out, with good reason: The DJ and partners the Furious Five enter the Hall on March 12 as its initial rap inductees. The Bronx hip-hop pioneers are part of an otherwise traditional class: R.E.M., Van Halen and a pair of fellow New York City performers, Patti Smith and the Ronettes.
As the first citizens of hip-hop nation in the Rock Hall, the arrival of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five signals a new age at the Cleveland attraction: Smith likely marks the end of the '70s punk inductees, and the time of hip-hop is upon us.
"This announces the beginning of the rap era for the Hall," said Bill Adler, a hip-hop historian -- currently editing the "Eyejammie Encyclopedia of Hip-Hop" -- and member of the Hall's nominating committee. "Flash and the Furious Five are going to open the floodgates."
Adler, a publicist for the hugely influential Def Jam Records in the mid-1980s, offered his own list of rappers destined for induction: "The Beastie Boys, very quickly. Run-DMC and LL Cool J will get in pretty quickly. Slick Rick."
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five enter 25 years after their groundbreaking single, "The Message," about hard times in their native borough during the Reagan Administration. It was the first popular rap song with a social theme -- "It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under," went the hypnotic chorus.
"One of the pivotal points in hip-hop history," said Furious Five rapper Melle Mel, who acknowledged his group initially wanted to pass on the song.
The group, which also featured Kid Creole, Cowboy, Mr. Ness and Raheim before an acrimonious 1983 split between Flash and Mel, had missed induction on two previous occasions. So when word arrived of the honor this year, Flash said he was initially skeptical.
"When it sank in that we were in, it was a good feeling for hip-hop," Flash said. "I think it's bigger than Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. To get that kind of respect is good for hip-hop."
Melle Mel recalled lying in bed -- "I usually sleep with the TV on" -- when he heard the news that R.E.M. and Van Halen were in. Before he could roll over, the announcer added the name of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
"The fact that we're in the Hall of Fame speaks volumes," said Melle Mel. "People try to separate hip-hop music like it stands alone, but it really doesn't. We're in with all the great groups in the history of music. It further legitimizes hip-hop."
Admitting a hip-hop group to the home of rockers from Chuck Berry through U2 is a bigger step for the Hall of Fame than it is for many rap aficionados, said Erik Parker, director of content at the hip-hop Web site SOHH.com.
"The average hip-hop fan long ago learned to live without validation," said Parker. "They realized it was already accepted as part of the mainstream culture." (VH1 started honoring rap's pioneers three years ago in a Rock Hall-like ceremony, and two years ago honored Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five).
The Hall is undeniably an equal opportunity inductor: its first class included James Brown and the Everly Brothers, while last year's group featured Miles Davis and the Sex Pistols.
But its requirement that candidates can't get inducted until 25 years after their first release kept many of rap's founding fathers from a shot at stepping inside the Hall until recent years. Unlike rock, which dates back more than a half-century, rap is a relatively young genre -- about 30 years old.
Parker said the timing for Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's induction was impeccable.
"This is what's really key: their `Message' is still relevant today, 25 years later," he said. "The words in that song couldn't ring truer."
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/news/wire/sns-ap-music-hip-hop-hall,0,22344 34.story
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Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 1985
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 07, 2007 - 05:39 am: |
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It's a sad day................ |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 7663
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 07, 2007 - 02:40 pm: |
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As a jazz fan, you might be a little more attuned to rap if you do like I do, NTFS; just think of it as word jazz, replete with improvisation. Some rap renditions can be very engaging when melodic hits from artists of other genres are sampled in with the "spitting". And because I am fascinated with words and language, I find some of the rap rhymes very clever. I'm sure you've heard King Pleasure's version of "Moody's Mood For Love", and jazz vocalist Jon Hendricks also put words to some of Charlie Parker's sax solos. These singers were like the forerunners of Rappers. I'm not saying I like all Rap but I find some of it OK. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 3820
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 07, 2007 - 03:15 pm: |
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Hip Hop is fun and NT is turning into a hateful old fart. What's up with that? |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 1987
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 07, 2007 - 07:35 pm: |
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"....NT is turning into a hateful old fart. What's up with that?"
Naaaawwww.....not me. It's not a generational or age thing. There is actually a lot of contemporary genres of music that I immensely enjoy, trust me!!! I'm just not spellbound and in awe of buffoonish Negroes strutting around with their pants hanging off their asses with do-rags and corn rolls, cursing, trashing talking and have never picked up an instrument, can't sing, can't read music, can't compose or arrange musical charts, yet they are considered musical geniuses and artists. WTF??? But I guess if you are willing to capitulate to the hype that they are the artistic equals to Sam Cooke, Nancy Wilson, Patti Labelle, Stevie Wonder or the Isley Brothers -well....have at it. I can live with it.
But to be fair, perhaps my revulsion is directed at the thuggish so-called gangsta and mack daddy wannabes. I will concede to that........
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Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 3824
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 07, 2007 - 10:09 pm: |
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NT - I understand your thinking - but we all have our personal preferences and we shouldn't always make comparisons. We don't have to question other people's likes and dislikes, or bemoan someone else who wants to listen to a different type of music than we do. Especially if they aren't forcing us to listen to it.
I don't need to compare Beethoven to Stevie Wonder, and I don't have to question who's better or more widely known, or who is more prolific between Prince and Elvis. Prince is Prince and Elvis is Elvis - and I could listen to them both and I might believe that both of them are great, and that both are timeless.
I have days when I might want to listen to Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette and then there are times when I prefer Billie Holiday, Etta James and Abbie Lincoln, Anita Baker and Sade and then I have my Johnny Guitar Watson - Parliament/Funkadelic days. My collection is vast and diverse, and I'm not mentioning the half of it.
And that's the beauty of music - you can switch it up, try something different, listen to something old or new, hard or soft, funky or folksy. You can get together with friends and spend the afternoon listening to something familiar or hear a brand new funk that's totally different from anything you've heard before. And you can decide with your lover what tunes you're gonna do the nasty to.
As far as who can play which musical instruments, who can write sheet music from scratch, who writes their own lyrics, etc. - I'd go nuts worrying myself with all of those criteria. Besides, not everyone had the opportunity to go to music school and some people just can't write sheet music. That doesn't make them any less intelligent or gifted.
Herbie Hancock was on C-SPAN recently giving a musical lecture to the National Press Club (he spoke some and he played some) when a guest posed a question regarding which music school one should attend, and Mr. Hancock answered that back in the olden days when he was coming up the musicians taught themselves and learned from each other. That doesn't make their music any less impactful.
So you are welcome to do your own thing, and of course I invite you to listen to whatever turns you on, but I think that you should lighten up some. Because you're starting to seem a little closed minded, especially since we have several generations of posters here.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 7670
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 08, 2007 - 12:25 pm: |
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What NTFS seemed to find most offensive about Rap music was how its performers look. Maybe he should just listen to Rap CDs instead of looking at Rap videos. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 3953
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - 07:55 am: |
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Rock Hall Welcomes Grandmaster Flash
By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY
March 13, 2007, 6:06 AM EDT
NEW YORK -- Instead of guitars, there were turntables. Scratches replaced soaring riffs. An induction speech was read off a Blackberry. The hip-hop era arrived Monday at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were the first hip-hop act to be inducted into the Rock Hall, joining other acts that represented a wide swath of artists: college rock favorites R.E.M., punk rock poet Patti Smith, rockers Van Halen and '60s girl group The Ronettes.
Jay-Z, the recently unretired rapper and Def Jam Records president, noted how far rap has come since the days when Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five exposed the world to gritty stories about the streets of New York on songs like "The Message."
"Thirty years later rappers have become rock stars, movie stars, leaders, educators, philanthropists, even CEOs," he said, reading his induction speech from his Blackberry. "None of this would have been possible without the work of these men."
Backstage, Grandmaster Flash talked about how hard-fought hip-hop's now universal acceptance had been.
"There were some that called it a fad. They called it a flash of brilliance, excuse my pun. I think the significance of going into this organization is it's the final place for corporate respect," he said. "They all finally accepted and embraced this wonderful culture we call hip-hop."
But while it was most certainly accepted, the embrace was not as warm as it could have been; the rappers got perhaps the most reserved ovation of the night, with an almost lukewarm response to their somewhat haphazard medley performance.
The night's biggest ovation may have been for the woman who swore she'd never make it in: Patti Smith. The bohemian poet straddled the hippie and punk eras, with her album "Horses" setting a standard for literate rock. At the induction ceremony, she performed her biggest hit, "Because the Night," co-written with Bruce Springsteen, and the Rolling Stones' classic, "Gimme Shelter."
Passed over in previous years, an emotional Smith remembered friends and family who didn't live to see the day -- and jokingly recalled an argument with her husband, MC5's Fred "Sonic" Smith, shortly before he died.
He told her she would get into the hall and that she would feel guilty because he would not make it -- even though he was more deserving. He asked her when she did make the hall to "please accept it like a lady and not to say any curse words." (She obliged).
She also remembered her mother asking her on her deathbed if she had made it into the hall yet. When Smith told her she hadn't, her mother said: "When you do, sing your mother's favorite song, the one I like to vacuum to."
So Smith did, dedicating to her mother one of her most fiery songs, 1977's "Rock 'n' Roll N-----."
If the absence of her late loved ones made Smith's induction bittersweet, the absence of most of Van Halen's founding members was downright sour. Eddie Van Halen, who went to rehab last week, was a no-show, as was his brother Alex. Former lead singer David Lee Roth, who sung such hits as "Jump" and "Panama," with the band, boycotted in a dispute over what song he would sing.
The only two who were present were Sammy Hagar and bassist Michael Anthony. Velvet Revolver performed two of the band's hits before Hagar and Anthony performed with the night's house band, led by Paul Shaffer.
Hagar said he wished his bandmates could be there, but "it's out of our control."
"It's hard for Mike and I to be up here to do this, but you couldn't have kept me away from this with a shotgun," Hagar said.
There was a happy reunion, though, for R.E.M., as they welcomed back drummer Bill Berry, who left the band in 1997 after suffering an aneurysm onstage two years earlier.
Out of Athens, Ga., R.E.M. largely invented the college radio scene in the 1980s with songs like "Radio Free Europe." They became mainstream stars with hits like "Losing My Religion" and "Everybody Hurts."
Singer Michael Stipe said his late grandmother once grabbed him by the arm and said what R.E.M. means to her is "'remember every moment.' And this is a moment I shall never forget."
With jewelry dangling from his hair, a mustachioed Keith Richards inducted the Ronettes, the New York City girl group who sang pop symphonies like "Be My Baby" and "Baby I Love You." He recalled hearing them the first time on a tour together in England.
"They could sing all their way right through a wall of sound," Richards said. "They didn't need anything. They touched my heart right there and then and they touch it still."
Lead singer Ronnie Spector thanked a list of people from Cher to Springsteen to her publicist -- but made no mention of ex-husband Phil Spector, the producer whose gigantic "wall of sound" is synonymous with the act. The snub was underscored when she gave a special thank you "to our FIRST producer," then cleared her throat.
Ronnie Spector had an acrimonious split with the legendary music man decades ago. His trial for the murder of an actress at his suburban Los Angeles mansion is due to start next week.
After the Ronettes sang a trio of their hits, Shaffer came to the microphone to read a note from Phil Spector, who said, "I wish them all the happiness and good fortune the world has to offer."
Two of rock's most influential figures -- and members of its hall -- received tributes: Civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton honored James Brown, while hall officials remembered one of the institution's founders, record executive Ahmet Ertegun. Both died in December.
One of the evening's highlights came as Aretha Franklin, one of Ertegun's greatest artists at Atlantic, sang the first million-seller she made with Ertegun, "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)."
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/news/wire/sns-ap-rock-hall,0,3940658.story
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 8820
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - 10:23 am: |
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Hip-hop is musical genre that's every bit as praise worthy as any of it's predecessors. Though the technology and the gross commercialization has robbed it of much it's prior energy, inspiration and talent.
The Message is a GREAT GREAT GREAT song. It almost by itself warrants installing Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five in the RRHOF. |
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