JUSTIN HERBERT
Banned
You saying trey songz was some lyrical god?
The fukk going on here
The fukk going on here
The Decline in Musical Lyricism is Depressing - A Coli Dissertation
He was
I'm drunlk as shyt right now
Is this shyt really invisbible or am I just that far gone?
Is this shyt really invisbible or am I just that far gone?
I humbly submit this
The biggest issue is that we’ve gone from f a society that listened to and understood popular music that was almost entirely instrumental. The significance of that is that it takes more raw and emotional intelligence to convey similar contexts without the use of vocals; two trumpets would sound completely different because the musicians had enough skill and techniques to create their own instrumental voices. They made their instruments sing in a way that many contemporary musicians in [today’s] popular genres are unable to.
Hathaway
Someday, We'll All Be Free
No my nikka, I'm saying those song were really meaningful lyrically.
shyt is turrible. Listening to thots sing about their p*ssy so crass... Sexual innuendo is out the window. No suggestive language not creative writing just direct vulgarity. So you can't even have double meanings to songs anymore or have dirty songs that are clean without words being censored.
True lack of creative writing effort and talent.
True lack of creative writing effort and talent.
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Hathaway
Someday, We'll All Be Free
Exactly my nikka. I was schooling a youngin a while back about SWVs song 'Downtown".
Me anf my wife was listening to it and I asked him if he knew what this song was about. He was like 15. He said, "going shopping downtown"?
The song is clearly about a woman getting head but the lyrics were written in such a creative, metaphoric way that the listener has to understand the double meaning. And even that song is a light example when we talking about lyrics. Any person with sexual experience could see passed those lyrics after the 1st verse.
But take a song like "Rain" also from SWV. A song about a womans climax. But it's so poetically hidden that the meaning of the song could be mistaken for just another love song.
That nuance has disappeared these days. Blatant vulgarity leaves nothing hidden for the imagination to discover.
100%Exactly my nikka. I was schooling a youngin a while back about SWVs song 'Downtown".
Me anf my wife was listening to it and I asked him if he knew what this song was about. He was like 15. He said, "going shopping downtown"?
The song is clearly about a woman getting head but the lyrics were written in such a creative, metaphoric way that the listener has to understand the double meaning. And even that song is a light example when we talking about lyrics. Any person with sexual experience could see passed those lyrics after the 1st verse.
But take a song like "Rain" also from SWV. A song about a womans climax. But it's so poetically hidden that the meaning of the song could be mistaken for just another love song.
That nuance has disappeared these days. Blatant vulgarity leaves nothing hidden for the imagination to discover.
IMO no. We’re never going to get a widespread of lyrical music any more.
Nobody wants to hear that anymore. Music reflects the people and in todays world not to many care for or have substance in themselves to even draw down thoughtful lyrics.
Nobody wants to hear that anymore. Music reflects the people and in todays world not to many care for or have substance in themselves to even draw down thoughtful lyrics.
Awesome thread and I've been saying the same thing for a minute now. Lyricism is gone and hell R&B is just about a non-existent genre now...well not promoted like how it use to be. Pop just overran it and song writing is just a thing of the past. shyt is so wild now lyricism in hip-hop has been pushed to the underground. I know I'm aging myself here but growing up I remember everything having it's own lane. Video Soul, Planet Groove, Rap City, Soul Train, BET Jazz, BET Gospel. All of it sounded different and unique but all of it showed the true talent of black musicianship.
Man you are so on point about live instruments as well. Production nowadays is so hollow and soulless. I can go back and listen to albums damn near 30-50 years old and they sound more alive and real than this sound we're getting now. That's why I loved Organized Noize's production so much and a few others. Bringing in people who actually know how to play real instruments and hit certain chords just makes the production sound alive. I use to thoroughly enjoy reading liner notes and see who played the guitar on a track, saxophone, or bass drum. This is how you learned who was who in the music business and the true talent behind albums. I mean I get it technology has its advantages but we also lose shyt like sounds and real artists.
Man you are so on point about live instruments as well. Production nowadays is so hollow and soulless. I can go back and listen to albums damn near 30-50 years old and they sound more alive and real than this sound we're getting now. That's why I loved Organized Noize's production so much and a few others. Bringing in people who actually know how to play real instruments and hit certain chords just makes the production sound alive. I use to thoroughly enjoy reading liner notes and see who played the guitar on a track, saxophone, or bass drum. This is how you learned who was who in the music business and the true talent behind albums. I mean I get it technology has its advantages but we also lose shyt like sounds and real artists.
Hathaway
Someday, We'll All Be Free
I wouldn't go that far as to put it to this extent. I just think music has largely been catered to a particular crowd. It seems as if Pop (popular) music was a bit more diverse in years past. Pop music wasn't always cookie cutter, watered down bullshyt like we have now. Hell, Stevie Wonder and MJ were chart toppers as "Popular" artist back in the day and their music is legendary and mature. But you also had room for your Madonna's and such. Diversity. You had the bullshyt and you had the real shyt. Something for everybody to eat to. Now it's all bullshyt. It seems as though actual "artists" whom care about the art are being marginalized and pushed to the back in favor of those talentless people with pretty/handsome faces and huge social media followings.
Hathaway
Someday, We'll All Be Free
100%. I'm too young for Video Soul, Soul Train and Planet Groove but I grew up on Rap City, BET Jazz, BET Gospel. Something for everybody to appreciate.
You explained it perfectly with the word "alive". I can remember being a minister of music in my church years ago and leading the band and choir. There was nothing like the magic that encapsulated the building when all the band and voices were in perfect harmony. The presses of the keyboard. The strum of the guitar and bass. The boom of the drums. The padding of the organ. It stirs up something primal and intoxicating in black people. That real, genuine soul that comes from real emotion being played through the instruments. You can't really replicate that through automated, computerized instruments. Its dead. I can't remember the last time I felt that in modern music. I miss that shyt.
JulesMusic719
All Star
Break down a carl Thomas song like it's D'Evils bruhs
Forgot to reply, but what I was going to say was that this is the gradual shift we’ve seen since the last century. As the entertainment industry has grown, high culture has been sacrificed for pop culture. In our day, that shift has come to a very critical point as the balance has been fully disrupted. The drop in lyrical content and subject matter is a symptom to a much more widespread sickness.
Ultimately, when business models and marketing are more important than the content that’s when Pop culture gains a decided advantage over high culture. Our generation particularly lives in a time where nearly our entire capacity to imagine is fully and decisively co-opted by industry. So as such, it’s a very difficult ask to have an outside the box view of cultural creation. The business is so efficient that even the ones that believe themselves to be “different” or representing high culture are themselves compromised and remain within the common paradigms which keep things stagnated.
I’ll leave it at this, if culture becomes a commodity it has to conform to the realities of market forces. The commodities that have a quicker turnaround, are easier to create, and are relatively cheap will win out over the opposite. High culture also comes with its potential baggage as artists might be more inclined to create works that push the societal envelope. So pop culture serves an added purpose by allowing business to curate a marketplace of simplified cultural realities for the masses to choose from much like a pair of shoes. The ideal mores that they want inculcated within them to maintain a culture of consumers over thinkers are sold as fashionable and progressive lifestyles yet maintains their proximity to properly conformed society. In the end, culture is utilized to maintain status quo rather than be a tool to actuate a better human society.
Ultimately, when business models and marketing are more important than the content that’s when Pop culture gains a decided advantage over high culture. Our generation particularly lives in a time where nearly our entire capacity to imagine is fully and decisively co-opted by industry. So as such, it’s a very difficult ask to have an outside the box view of cultural creation. The business is so efficient that even the ones that believe themselves to be “different” or representing high culture are themselves compromised and remain within the common paradigms which keep things stagnated.
I’ll leave it at this, if culture becomes a commodity it has to conform to the realities of market forces. The commodities that have a quicker turnaround, are easier to create, and are relatively cheap will win out over the opposite. High culture also comes with its potential baggage as artists might be more inclined to create works that push the societal envelope. So pop culture serves an added purpose by allowing business to curate a marketplace of simplified cultural realities for the masses to choose from much like a pair of shoes. The ideal mores that they want inculcated within them to maintain a culture of consumers over thinkers are sold as fashionable and progressive lifestyles yet maintains their proximity to properly conformed society. In the end, culture is utilized to maintain status quo rather than be a tool to actuate a better human society.
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