4/16/2023 0 Comments Neptunes videosIt's not your typical rapper iconography, that's for sure. Not that they don’t talk about drugs and guns and all that good hip-hop shit though: they certainly do, but when they do it feels like it comes with a knowing wink! "Bobby James", a track on In Search Of., tells the story of a 17 year-old loser who gets into drugs to forget about his life and ends up assed out. In many ways they're not really a hip-hop group at all. NERD is an outfit that doesn't generate the standard myths about themselves, and so hopefully won't fall into the predictable hip-hop trap of actually starting to believe them. And now there's NERD, the producers-as group outfit featuring Pharrell Williams, Chad Hugo and their Virginia Beach buddy Shay, with their debut album ln Search Of. Diddy) and aging hip-hop acts (Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J). The Neptunes have gone from being faceless up-and-coming producers (Kelis, Noreaga and Ol' Dirty Bastard) to the more public duo who make club anthems (Jay-Z, Mystikal, Ludacris) to the current perception of them as the hottest production team who makes millions doing remixes and songs for pop acts (Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, P. After all, by and large you quit playing cops and robbers, and cowboys and injuns when you were, what, 12? Younger? So why would you want to listen to some other asshole's drug-dealers-and-feds eyelid movies, especially when for the most part they lack the rudimentary wit to acknowledge that this is mostly throwaway stuff, schlock essentially. But when watching Rap City requires as much suspension of disbelief as you need to sit through one of those fraudulent Philip Morris commercials about how they give a miniscule fraction of the money they make from poisoning people to charity, and irks you equally, then you realize that it’s not just you, the world really has changed, and that maybe this hip-hop stuff is just a young man's game. But the kids expect it, so he does it, and Jay-Z does Jay-Z, and Nas does Nas, and you better believe they all do it straight-faced. So the stylistic breadth of hip-hop has narrowed drastically, imposing restrictions on those who wish to remain in the game, which means Redman (now 32) probably feels the same way about the retarded 15 year-old act he has to trot out album after album as Richard Pryor eventually did about Mudbone. The thug aesthetic totally dominates mainstream hip-hop now, to the extent that if you don't subscribe to it and act like you mean it, you’re pushed to the periphery. But that’s deep, because if hip-hop has reached the point of ironic self-referencing, if it has aquired the delicious mille-feuille layering of meaning that has rendered every other subset of pop culture grist for the vulture's mill, than that means one of the last diehard bastions of poker-faced earnestness has finally fallen by the wayside.īut is the world really ready for hip-hop with a smirk? Hip-hop has become thoroughly hung-up on a very literal take on what type of behavior, demeanor, lifestyle etc is appropriate for its ambassadors.
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