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Criticisms of rap

The lyrics
- Lack of substantial / sophisticated messages in the lyrics.
  - Keith Richards (of The Rolling Stones) - "So many words, so little said." (Source)
- Lack of variety in the messages / topics of songs.
  - Keith Richards (of The Rolling Stones) - "So many words, so little said." (Source)
The accompaniment
- Lack of sophistication in the melodies
  - Keith Richards (of The Rolling Stones) - "What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there. All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they’re happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can’t tell one note from another." (Source)

Criticisms of pop music more-generally

2017.08.05 - YouTube - Thoughty2 - Why Is Modern Pop Music So Terrible?
- Rough summary based on my memory:
  - He begins by talking about how experimental "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" is.
  - Timbre variety has been dropping. "Most music today is created with the same combination of a keyboard, drum machine, sampler, and computer software." (Based on a study by the Spanish National Research Council.)
  - TODO: Finish summarizing this video. I was at around 4:20. All the stuff below is from my memory, while the stuff above is based on writing stuff down as I go through the video.
  - Louder music tends to do better (is perceived as better?) and so there's a "loudness war". But because music often gets normalized to the same maximum volume (when played on the radio?), musicians are making their music seem louder by raising the volume of the quieter parts of their song, reducing the "dynamic range". But this is like trying to make an image bigger than it originally was, in that the new louder / larger version is clearly lacking detail, and so it looks / sounds worse.
  - Two guys have written "the overwhelming majority" of pop songs over the past ~20 years.
  - Producers are relying more on familiarity to get you to like the music, and so they arrange to have it playing on all the radios, in all the shopping centers, in all the movies, etc.

Books

Books about different rap songs' lyrics, but not exactly a 'how-to' for writing lyrics:
- Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies
- Decoded by Jay-Z
  - The book consists of lyrics "decoded," where Jay-Z explains both where the song ideas came from and the way all the lyrics are connected to each other, as well as portions of his real-world story
- Rap-Up: The Ultimate Guide to Hip-Hop and R&B
  - This is just a simple history of hip-hop.

Rap-analysis websites

Terms

punching - A technique used when recording a track where the rapper will start rapping part-way through the song, and then multiple recordings of them rapping will be stitched into a single track. This allows the rapper to correct mistakes more quickly. It's criticized by some people because it seems to make it possible to record raps that the rapper isn't actually able to perform live, because there's not enough gaps in the rap for the performer to breathe or because it's simply too difficult to get through the song without making mistakes.