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Banned
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Seattle
Posts: 7,639
Repped: 1,633
Repped 8,968 Times in 2,258 Posts
Neg Reps: 0
Neg Repped at 2 Times in 2 Posts
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06/21/07 - funny ass reviews...
06/21/07 - funny ass reviews...
Illmatic
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Some time ago, a well-meaning friend, concerned that I did not like hip-hop, decided he would “educate” me. His didactic methodology left a lot to be desired however. I don’t think I could take listening to six or seven albums, one after another, of any genre of music. Using that approach for hip-hop was no way to broaden my horizons and ultimately became self-defeating. He said he saved the best until last – that was Illmatic. By the time it came on I had taken enough. I panned it. I didn’t want to hear any more hip-hop.
Having been recently slated on the message board for my review, I felt that perhaps the circumstances of my listening to this album had not been the best. Perhaps I had been overly harsh. So, seeking the advice of Credn333, who is a notable fan of this album, I asked what I should look out for. I then downloaded six tracks from Limewire – my usual approach for testing any album to see if I like it enough to buy it – and set about giving it a thorough listen.
On the face of it, Nas often runs through the themes which are so comm
the mere mention of word must conjure up such negative emotions? But there is worse. Am I the ONLY person who finds the following line, from “Halftime”, utterly repugnant – ”I rap in front of more ******s than in a slave ship”? It trivialises one of the greatest crimes against humanity in history, and that trivialisation is done by someone who is still suffering the lingering consequences of that crime.
I will accept that my original review underestimated the album and some of its qualities. But the fact I wasn’t listening properly allowed me also to overlook negative elements, including the truly repulsive lyrical content. Add stars for the quality and then take them away for the negative, and ultimately you are back where you started.
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At least 100 better rock albums from the year '94! another talentless rapper!
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Now I bought this because I wanted some quality Hip Hop, and having not heard anything of anyworth before, I got recomended this. Now, this is better than the likes of Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, 50 Pence etc. But at the end of the day its still the same idea, just implimented better. The problem is that the idea does very little for me. The bass lines, whilst 'jumpin' or 'bangin' or whatever, do fuck all for me, simply because its the same thing looped for 4 minutes. The lyrics, well, I dont care to be honest, I dont relate to them, I dont feel anything from them. They simply dont connect with me.
Basicly, I dont like Hip Hop. It doesnt do anything for me. I can imagine my musical tastes do nothing for a lot of people aswell, so, I think everyone should agree to disagree.
At least I tried...
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I downloaded this to see what all the fuss is about. A Hip Hop album ranking #28 overall! This must be some amazing release, I thought. Funny though, I can't remember Nas being such a big deal back in '94 (I mean among listeners, not critics). I used to be a big Hip Hop fan, although by '94 I was already starting to lose interest. Too much ego-triping and not enough originality - there were more interesting things happening elsewhere.
Now, after listening to it a few times, I still don't know what the fuss is about. I honestly fail to see why this is special - for me it is mediocre Hip Hop all the way through. Production isn't breath-taking and certainly not original. I found myself reminded of acts such as Naughty by Nature, A Tribe Called Quest and - most obviously - Eric B. & Rakim (among other, It Ain't Hard to Tell is a total rip off of Don't Sweat the Technique). All of this had been done a million times before, but what do you expect when almost every song has a different producer - that's not going to invent a new style! As for Nas's so praised flow, it sounds so averege! He was hailed "the second coming of Rakim" at the time - well, why isn't the first one up at overall #28? Anyway, there were so many second comings of Rakim around I can't even count them.
This is, and always has been, a hyped critic's album. It didn't sell nearly as well as critcs had foretold, which gives a good picture of what the streets thought about it. They didn't dislike it, it just wasn't special. As for RYM, another classic case of "all hail the king's new clothes". That's my opinion, anyway.
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Bought this a while ago cos of all the good things said about it... and gues what? It's dull. There's not a single track here that stands out compared to the competition. I haven't listened to this many times simply because nothing has made me want to come back to it. A damp squib. Try Jeru, GZA, Wu Tang, Gang Starr, Madlib, anything but this. Not worth the hype.
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Songs generally consist of two main things: music, and lyrics. Both are important, but in different ways. The lyrics on Illmatic are of a very high standard, but unfortunately (as with a lot of rap) the repetitive, sparse background music (sometimes little more than a rigid beat) causes my interest to wander halfway through each song.
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Recently, I’ve been branching out and listening to the kind of music I normally steer clear of. In the past week or so I’ve taken in some punk (Patti Smith, Television) and some weird (Captain Beefheart – Trout Mask Replica) so I thought I should broaden my horizons with some rap/hip-hop. I picked this one because it was highly-rated and considered to be a seminal rap album.
Well, I tried, but I still don’t like this genre. It’s not that I don’t get it, I just don’t like it. Although it has some nice background rhythms and ambiences, they soon get monotonous. Also, being a middle-aged white guy living in a suburban environment, the lyrics don’t speak to me at all. If I said I did relate to them, I’d be lying and just trying to be hip and cool. Take the lyrics away from the songs and there is not much left to enjoy.
I’m sure this album speaks loudly and to the heart for some, but it doesn't for me.
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It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
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Another album a friend of mine played to me to show me how "good" (c)rap is. Just sounded like the same old lame and tired (c)rap really is. It's just the same stuff as done by dozens if not hundreds of others - no originality, no effort, no hope.
I have recently been heavily criticised (by implication in public and by one individual who went to the lengths of setting up a separate account so he could send me a nice PM which attempted to tell me his less than pleasant views) for reviewing (c)rap. Apparently, if I don't like the genre, I should not review it. That way, only people who like it can review it, and thereby keep the album ratings high.
Hmm. I had never thought of it like that. I always thought I was supposed to review whatever I heard, like it or not. After all, I own records I don't like, so should I not review those because some may feel I am dragging their ratings down? Others may review stuff I think is great and shit all over it: should they not do this because it might bring the overall ratings down?
Well no! Ratings reflect the views of those who have heard it. I have heard this. I have a view. My view, in this case, is that this album is unlistnable. It is boring, trite, derivative and utterly unoriginal. It does nothing to alter my overall opinion of this genre. When I hear something from this genre that does, I will happily tell everyone.
And if that drags the ratings down, tough. In my personal opinion (and you are as entitled to yours as I am to mine) this should not be in the top 100 of its year, or even in the top 1000. But then that is my opinion. Others have put it there, so it must have some merit to some. Just not to me.
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I'd give this 4.5 stars from a purely musical standpoint, but due to it's enormous negative impact on American culture and the music industry I have dropped it to 3.5. Due to the fact that I simply hate this album I must drop it another star to 2.5. Due to the fact that it is rap (a genre that is almost as interesting as listening to intestinal noises) I have dropped it another star to 1.5.
Seriously, as a rap album, it just doesn't get any better than this, but in order for my compatibility list stays valid I have to be honest and say that I hate this kind of record.
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yet again i go for a farty review. have at you:
greetings from the new bazaar y'all!! we're having lunch with the devil. gahahaha.
whatcha tryin' to say to us? ? ? TAHT TEHRE'S HELLUVA FART HIER MAH BO1. AaAa!!
not task that is some extraordinary thing here. the voices are esagerazione of annoying exposure but that counts as vigor like the black colleague confirmed. the music sends these men hammering your ass and throbbing with a furious range of sonic colors and soon i will lose interest. the fear of a black planet has played little more rad than this if i care to remember my past. i wouldn't use this albun to convert men into rappers. . .
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Paid in Full
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I first listened to this when a well-meaning friend decided that I needed to be introduced to what he regarded as the best of hip-hop and sat me down and proceeded to play me several of what he said were the greatest albums of the genre. Now I could not listen to six or seven albums straight off of any genre – the lack of variety would get tedious – and therefore being asked to do this for a genre which had hitherto had no appeal to me was, in retrospect, probably an exercise in futility. Paid in Full came towards the end of the list and, I will admit, by the time it came on, I was in no mood to compromise. I had had enough.
Now, having taken another bashing at the hands of some fans on a hip hop message board thread, I felt that I may have been overly harsh and decided to give this, and another highly rated album which also came towards the end of that evening’s listening pleasure Illmatic, another chance. I sought the advice of Bruklover, who is one of the more knowledgeable hip hop fans around, as to what to look out for and he kindly provided me with some pointers. So, I downloaded six tracks of the album (as I would do with any album I am checking to see if it worth buying), uploaded them onto the iPod and gave them a week of listening.
Just before I go any further, in case anyone wonders, though there is no reason why you should, I write reviews totally subjectively. I am listening to it and I am not doing so to fit in with the crowd or to please anyone else. Just because others rate an album as a classic does not mean that it is going to get the same status from me, and there are reviews to Sgt. Pepper, Loveless and Grace around to testify to that.
To begin with I will put aside the fact that this album is nearly twenty years old. To me the production sounds empty and tinny, but I am prepared to accept that, in these relatively early days of hip hop, a distinct production technique was still evolving. In some ways the production is quite quaint – it has an almost live feel to it as if it was recorded in one take – which provides an atmosphere if nothing else. I will take as read Rakim’s status as an MC way ahead of his time and therefore see this album as being the first, rather than the latest, of a particular style of MC-ing.
My standard criticisms of hip hop are, particularly with relation to gangsta, the odious persona which goes with it and the straining of the language to fit artificial rhythms determined by beat rather than the natural flow of stressed and unstressed syllables, what I describe as the difference between poetry and doggerel. Thankfully, Paid in Full avoids the first trap. There are no macho-man drug dealers smacking up their bitches, so a plus there. As for the poetry-doggerel argument, listening to it I could detect the occasional strain on the English language, but it was nowhere near as overpowering as some and did not dominate to the extent, as has been the case with some other hip hop albums I have heard, that you find yourself, almost subconsciously, ignoring everything else and waiting for the next inappropriate stress. Another plus.
Unfortunately, the plusses stop there. I was advised to pay attention to the lyrical content. Now it may have been unfortunate in terms of the six tracks I downloaded, but of them, one, “Chinese Arithmetic”, was an instrumental and the lyrical content of the other five seemed to revolve around “I’m Rakim, I’m an MC. He’s Eric, he’s a DJ”. Twice I heard the same reference to MC standing for “move the crowd”. Now self-promotion on songs – any songs – always strikes me as a bit naff. On five out of six it is just over the top. A concept album? Hmm, OK it’s not about the hobbits beloved of the prog rockers, or wizards and demons of metal, but I find it hard to believe that anyone could make a concept album out of being a rapper and, just as if someone made a concept album out being a guitarist or a rock singer, the subject would not be something which gives me any satisfaction.
As for the beats, well, given that this was 20 years ago and the style was still comparatively new, the sampling comes off as interesting at first. But after six tracks of ‘chi-ah, chi-ah, chi-ah’ vinyl scratching, the novelty quickly wears off. By the time I got round to “Chinese Arithmetic” there was not enough innovation, in my book, to hold an instrumental.
So how do I rate this? I will accept that the half star I gave it was probably a little harsh and that, for the innovation of its time it deserves more. If I had bought this I would have done so on a recommendation only and by my rating criteria, that’s two stars.
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Enter the Wu-Tang
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sorry - this is meant to be a classic?
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I don't know what everyone raves about. This is just crap. Political? My arse, it’s an ill-directed rant. Nothing more, nothing less. I have had the misfortune of hearing far too many of these so-called hip-hop classics. Not one of them has moved me in any way. Most genres I can at least appreciate what the aim is, even if I don’t like it – hell I can even tap my feet to disco music! But this stuff, no, it’s just the same old stuff put out time and time again.
I find the flat delivery irritating, the sentiments expressed in a completely unappealing matter of fact way and the music nothing more than background filler for the voices. Like all rap albums, the vocals are enslaved by the rhythm, resulting in the most strained and tortuous usage of English imaginable. Pauses for breath are taken at the most inappropriate times, there is no flow, no substance, no passion, no spark. Whereas some lyrics can aspire to poetry, hip-hop cannot even aspire to doggerel.
The worst genre in the history of music remains the worst, and this garbage does nothing to improve on it. I wouldn't accept this if it were free.
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Shaolin shadowboxing, and the Wu-Tang sword style??? what the hell is that? This album is completely pointless to listen to, its 6 or so guys rapping about crap thats what it is no other explanation except for maybe "HORRIBLE"!!! throw this in the bin if you ever see it, you will be doing someone a favor.
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WU-TANG CLAN AINT NOTHIN TO FUCK WITH, BULL-SHIT, i'll wu tang all you motherfuckers back to south central if you bitchez keep saying this track is ill shit it aint ill shit its bull shit a waste of people time, money and patience. So don' go round saying that this album is the motherfucking album of 1993 man In Utero by Nirvana was the motherfucking album of 93 so you punk ass bitchez better get your priorities straight or you'll be dealing with the fat end of my baseball bat motherfucker! I aint goin back to jail if the motherfuckers come after me and i havent done shit i'll put a 90 in their ass coz i aint goin 2 jail for shit i aint been doin but if i done shit i'll go to jail because when i was living in new york i didnt know the game! when i was living in denver i didnt know the game but know i live in ohio and i know the game if some i'll shit punk ass motherfucker walks pass my house looking for trouble i'll have to kick the shit out of the motherfucker because u know he aint got know respect for me and for women and when a motherfucker aint got no respect for a high livin pimp he has to get the shit beatin out of him.
peace out
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Per song: a drum loop, a one-finger keyboard riff and a bunch of grown-up men bellowing about themselves. Well, occasionally it sounds palatable, when the backdrops get a bit meatier as on the opener track. The only thing on this album I really like is the (fuckin-)tongue-in-(fuckin-)cheek intro of "Method Man". Some of the spoken-word things on this album bring interesting associations into my head.
-What do you run on, Ol' Dirty Bastard?
-I run on beans!
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I only have 5 rap albums so far and yet I can already make a list of criteria that a rap album must typically meet in order to be called classic by the general population. No other type of music is as predictable.
1) The album either has to have a gimmick throughout or, bear minimum, it must start in a gimmicky way.
2) There has to be more than one person rapping on it. It's a cold-hard fact that almost no rapper can keep your attention for that long.
3) Every single rapper on the album has to brag about how great they are at rapping, better than the rest, which is odd because they must really hate each other then.
4) There needs to be various references to attacking the microphone, with different wordings. For example: "I leave the mike in body bags", "I leave the microphone on fire", etc.
5) You need to talk about how brutal the neighborhood you grew up in is: drugs, guns, blah, blah, blah.
6) Beats. Lots of them. Lots of samples too, because not a single person in the band can play an instrument, not very well anyway.
7) Swearing, because that somehow makes you tough. I guess it also reinforces that you came from a bad part of town.
8) Lyrics littered with similes. If you don't know what that means, it's comparisons of things with the use of the words "like" or "as". I'm sorry but overuse of similes is a sure sign of immature lyrics, regardless of musical genre. Pick anything and write rap lyrics around it. How about socks? I'm the most mackin', you ain't sly like a fox, your rhythms stink like my gym socks. Get down on your knees, lick 'em, my nuts is fuzzy like kiwis.
How much I enjoy a rap album is directly proportional to how much it distracts me from being cookie-cutter. This album doesn't do that more than 30% of the time. You can imagine that this confuses the hell out of me as to why this is called one of the greatest rap albums ever made. I had a similar reaction to Abbey Road by The Beatles. Both albums had the potential to be really good but opted to be frequently juvenile for no good reason instead.
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1993 must have been a bad year.
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Ready To Die
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I thought he'd already got blasted?
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this album lacks any kind of musical talent! crap!!
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self inflicted drama set to weak beats, lousy theater, and lame rapping. merely worthy as a possible study for psych students. waste of time for everyone else.
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Thanks to dickheads like B.I.G. and Tupac hip hop went down the tubes in just a few years after they emerged with their wave of shit, I mean with amazing lines such as: "When I die, I wanna go to hell cuz Ima fat piece a shit, it ain't hard to tell".
Woo hoo!!!!God damn that shit's deep!
Well Mr. Fatman you must have made mad dough to attract Lil' Kim your way....Hope you got your wish about your resting place of choosing.
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Shallow lyrics, inane dumb voice, uninspiring beats, what the hell is the fuss about? I have a hundred better albums than this. Gangstarr, Public Enemy, Quannum, Hieroglyphics, J5 - all with insight, intelligence and most importantly, good beats.
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Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...
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A laughable travesty of faux bravado, limp-dicked threats, and boring/juvenile/hypocritical lyrics, all atop the worst beats this side of Color Me Badd; a chubby little second-fiddle rapper (he was basically the waterboy for Wu-Tang, who themselves were always a stunningly talentless, awful group anyway) who sincerely believed, in his own THC-damaged mind, that he was Al Capone & Bruce Lee rolled into one... But certainly he couldn't possibly fool everyone else, right? Oh wait, this became a "classic," "landmark" record, thanks to a horde of clueless poseurs touting it for the last decade. My bad.
All the people who describe it as "cinematic" clearly swear by such highbrow film fare as Soul Plane, House Party 3, and Next Friday. Most of the beats on this album sound like the presets in any cheap mid-80s Roland; they have no forward thrust, no momentum, no complexity, no gravitas, no surprises, nothing. The songs plod forward with zero changes in tempo or style whatsoever, which is likely why it is prized as an ideal soundtrack for blunted-out, Robitussin-chugging, catatonic, zombie-fied high school dropouts. The members of The Bomb Squad probably laughed and/or cried uncontrollably while first hearing this CD, knowing that the era of creative beats in hip-hop was now officially over.
This aneurysm-inducingly-bad album laid the groundwork for the complete collapse of the golden era of hip hop, and ushered in a new, even more pathetic, even more materialistic strain of "mafioso" gangsta rap, as taken to the bank by Jay-Z, from which the hip-hop world has still not recovered and likely never will. So it is truly a landmark album in that respect. Learn your history before you start handing out 5-star ratings in lemming-like fashion, people.
I'm extremely upset that RYM does not offer a 0.0 (or negative 20) rating option, so I'll have to grudgingly bump my rating up to 0.5.
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Yet more glorification of drugs and drug dealing. Musically, this has nothing to offer and is just standard (c)rap fare. Rip-offs of others' music (euphemistically called "sampling"); limited use of instruments, and then in a n overly repetitive manner; over-reliance on programmed drum machines. Yep, this is (c)rap alright. Nothing to recommend it.
Also, there is the dreadful mangling of language. There is a persistent inability to identify the natural flow and rhythm of language and incorporate it into the rhythm. Instead, the rhythm and flow of language is ignored when necessary and forced, artificially, into a pre-defined beat which bears no relation to it. The result is a truly dreadful sound, devoid of any lyrical merit whatsoever. Add that fact to the apparent absence of any musical talent and one is left wondering how this can be listened to.
Ultimately, it all comes back to the message. Like so much gangsta, that message is all about the laudable aim in life of two low lives to score big on the drug trade. What a wonderful ideal to look up to! The result is revolting and leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Why anyone thinks that the message, as conveyed in the story, is worthy of anything except a footnote in a prison record is beyond the thought of rational man. If this is the future of black musical culture, if this is what the music of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Smokey Robinson, Jimi Hendrix must be compared with then there is truly no hope.
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The Low End Theory
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Unbelievably monotonous. The music is the same five notes repeated over and over from start of the song to the end. The drumming is boring and unimaginative. The rhyming is juvenile, but the lyrics are descent. This may be one of the best rap albums off all time, but like almost all rap it sucks. Muddy Waters said "The Blues had a baby and they called it Rock". I say "Rock took a crap and they called it Rap"
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Whole load of boring.
Hip-hop lite
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Straight Outta Compton
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The turning point for rap music. From here, intelligent (whether meaningful, humorous, or both) lyrics were increasingly abandoned in favor of
-mindless nihlism
-the wholehearted embrace of violence; not necessarily as a reality for the urban population ( Illmatic would perfect that), but as a fashion statement, and even more importantly, a way to gain publicity, and in turn, sell records
-the wholehearted embrace of misogyny
But that's not even what makes SOC a bad album. The simple truth is that the songs just kinda suck. Eazy E delivers one of the worst performances by any rapper, ever, on this album. This is just one pathetic example, one that he matches at many points on the album:
" So what about the bitch who got shot? Fuck her! I don't give a damn about a bitch, what do you think I am, a sucker??" MC Ren isn't much better, and while Dr. Dre's clumsy flow doesn't make a mockery of rap music as Eazy did, it somehow manages to bring the songs down even further than they would be without his verses.
If I'm not mistaken, Chris Rock named this the greatest rap album of all time. Rock, being a comedian who usually delivers poignant and rousing commentary on the black community, should know better. I'm not going to say that rap has made society more violent, but it helps to reinforce whatever violent impulses its listeners have. SOC
i'll finish later
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Could explain why 'gangster' rap is so crap and hilarious these days. If only rappers took more influence from Public Enemy. Can you imagine how could rap would be today if that did happen. Sadly it didn't and crap albums like this with terrible 'beats' and corny rapping are seen as masterpieces.
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gets worse as the years pass on. the first step on the slippery slope to 50 cent.
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Listen to it again, now, in 2004. You are no longer 14 years old, and you realize that saying '******' isn't that funny, and Express Yourself features a posse rap which isn't really all that hot, and F*** Tha Police was really, really hilarious and risky, it really was, but then again, was it? Was it that good?
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I think you peoplez have with bad attitude. You need to have ice cubes down your pants. Now I have expressed myself.
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Criminal Minded
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Not my favorite flavour of beats, rhymes are decent though.
I should've saved that first utterence for a PE review.
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The Chronic
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a classic in that it sold tons. but so did the eagles and britney spears. this is dumb, stale, hip hop. especially when you consider what was being put out around this time (tribe, pharcyde, del, beasties, de la soul, etc...). for 19 year old bong worshiping douchebags, red-eyed thirtysomethings still living with their parents, and all others who are "keepin' it real," know-what-i'm-sayin'?
uh, no.
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Do I really want to hear 45 minutes of Parliament songs hacked to bits and Dr. Dre rapping about his dick? No.
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This review is easy, simple, and summed up best in one word: OVERRATED!
This is ONE if not THE most overrated album of all time.
Do I hate it? Yes and no. The production and sound was done extremely well; however, IMHO, this is not a Hip-Hop album. It's the beginning of Pop Rap. This is the album which destroyed classic Hip-Hop. The album which caused a younger generation to sneer at the likes of Gang Starr, Rakim, and Nas.
Can Dre produce? Of course he can. I think his best work was with NWA. But I also think his talents have been wasted on Snoopy Snoop and ******* Boy Chocolate Treat. The argument I hear so often is, "He's Paid!" Yeah, so is Bill Gates, but does that make him a Hip-Hop producer. If I had the money Dre's got, I too get get a gang of ghost producers and writers to hook my s--t up.
Can Snoop emcee? Maybe, if you're retarded enough to listen to this Dee Dee Dee. I've dropped turds that could rap better than this crack head.
I don't love dem hoes: Snoop and Dre.
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06-21-2007, 03:13 AM
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