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Websites / Forums / Online Communities

Blogs
- 2DopeBoyz
  - Apparently this blog is closely associated with OKP.
Forums
- Articles
  - 2013.08.07 - Complex - The Most Influential Hip-Hop Message Boards Right Now
    - I added the forums listed in this article to the list below.
- Boxden - Hip-Hop ← 178 members online, 237 anons, seems pretty active, but it seems listener-focused as opposed to creator-focused. Everything hip-hop is in a single subforum.
- TheColi - Very active, dozens of posts per day.
  - "New registrations are currently not being accepted."
- FutureProducers.com
  - Rap & Hip-Hop / R&B - ~3 comments per day
  - Songwriting and Lyricism - one comment every 1-7 days
- GearSlutz.com - "The #1 Website for Pro Audio"
  - Rap + Hip Hop engineering & production - ~5 comments per day
  - Songwriting - 1-4 comments per day
- Genius - Rap ← Hundreds of comments per day.
- TheHoodUp - Though this isn't explicitly a forum about rap music—its focus is street life—rappers are a common topic of discussion on Hood Up.
- HypeBeast - Dead/Frozen. There's a message saying they're prepping to reboot it.
- IllMuzik.com
- IGN - Hip-Hop - ~10 comments per day. Listener-focused.
- KanyeToThe - 3000 people online?? It looks like 200+ members. Has "Creative Showcase" and "Gadgets & Tech" subforums.
- Lil Wayne HQ - Very active, hundreds of people per day.
- NikeTalk - Music - 130 mems / 260 anons. Listener-focused subforum of a shoe-focused forum. They have two threads that are open to people promoting stuff.
- Okayplayer.com - began as the official fansite of The Roots
- Philaflava - Almost dead, 1-3 posts per day. "the go-to site for East Coast/"Golden Age" rap purists"
- Rap Battles Forum - ~1 comment per day in a few of the subforums. They have a "Lounge" forum.
- RapMusic.com - Dead
- RapPad Forum
- Rap-Royalty.com ← This seems to be strictly rap battles. There's no "General" forum. 58 members online when I visited, it said 617 total people viewing. This is the #2 site on Google for "rap forums" after Genius.
News
- HipHopDX
- HipHopWired
- Independent.co.uk - Rap
- IX Daily
- The Juice Media
- Pigeons and Planes
- Rap Basement
- RapNews <-- Russian
- SOHH
- The Source
Reddit
- /r/makinghiphop
  - A link to a search I did for references to existing apps.
    - Lots of the threads are people asking for mobile (mixing) apps. Mobile is taking over...
- /r/Parappa/ - Parappa the rapper players. Seems to only be posts about the game.
- /r/rap
- /r/hiphopheads
- /r/rapbattles
- /r/cringe
- /r/ThisIsOurMusic
- /r/Hiphopcirclejerk
- /r/radditmusic
StackExchange - Music
YouTubers
- Full-on rap
  - ColeMizeStudios
  - Epic Rap Battles
  - RapNews <- Russian
  - TheWarpZone ← They do movie recap raps
- People who have made a rap song or two
  - Diran Lyons
  - Jake Paul
  - h3h3 - They know that white rapper, Ethan critiqued Jake Paul
  - Schmoyoho

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)

Why are rap lyrics so heavily focused on the tough-guy image? Why isn't there a Marvin Gaye of rap?

Here's my guess
1. Rap depends heavily on the ability to rhyme words and convey information in the smallest number of words possible.
2. Because rap is similar to singing except without the melody, it seems to not be as good at conveying
3. Young black (poor?) culture also seems to have become somewhat / somehow dominated by a tough-guy culture, and a lot of artists seem to come out of the poorer segment of society (e.g. Jay-Z, Biggie, Eminem).
  1. The more-middle-class / higher-educated rappers I can think of off the top of my head (Ludacris, Drake, Kanye) also seem to veer away from the more-violent / drug-related rapping.
4. The poorer accent and grammar simplifies the pronunciation and grammar and changes the sounds of many words in such a way that words and phrases that would normally not rhyme do rhyme.
  1. Example: Biggie rhymes "picture" with "get you" on "Warning" → "pick-cha" and "get-cha"
  2. Because the ubpringing of other cultures focuses heavily on pronouncing words "properly" and using "proper" grammar, it may not be as easy for people of those cultures to sound "natural" while bending words the way rappers do.
    1. It's not impossible, and it's getting easier as the pronunciation and grammar that shows up in rap becomes more popular among non-black groups, but it also seems to be not as easy.
    2. Asher Roth's "I Love College" actually shows some interesting ways that white rappers can bend words and not sound like they're pretending to be something they're not: "I am champion, at beer pong / Allen Iverson, Hakeem Olajuwon"
  3. Counter-argument: Is Tupac really articulating his words less than Marvin Gaye?
5. Internal rhyming sounds became dominant in the mid-80s and all through the 90s.
6. Teen guys were drawn to buy rap records that made them feel pumped up / excited and powerful, and conveyed an image of being a tough guy.
7. Rules for what was acceptable to play on the radio became more relaxed.

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 that are neither a 'how-to' for writing lyrics nor about analyzing certain songs' lyrics (I have those books listed on the pages for those activities):
- Rap-Up: The Ultimate Guide to Hip-Hop and R&B
  - This is just a simple history of hip-hop.

Courses

Coursera - Songwriting: Writing the Lyrics

History

Spotify Playlist - Billboard #1 Rap Singles of the '80s and '90s
- Based on Wikipedia - List of Billboard number-one rap singles of the 1980s and 1990s
- The following songs on the Wikipedia page weren't on Spotify:
  - Self-Destruction - Stop the Violence Movement
  - Funhouse - Kid 'n Play
  - Untouchable - Above the Law
  - Treat Them Like They Want to Be Treated - Father MC
  - The House the Dog Built - Jibri Wise One
  - Ain't Gonna Hurt Nobody - Kid 'n Play
  - Oochie Coochie - MC Brains
  - Lost in the Storm - Chubb Rock
  - Bonnie & Clyde / IBWin' wit My Crewin' - Yo-Yo
  - Valley of the Skinz - Trends of Culture
  - Romeo and Juliet - Sylk-E. Fyne featuring Chill
  - 4, 5, 6 - Solé featuring JT Money and Kandi

Articles

2011.02.01 - Poetry Foundation - How Ya Like Me Now: Does rap’s suspended adolescence keep it from serious consideration?
- TODO: Summarize this.
2011.09.30 - Yale Books - Adam Bradley Asks: Is Rap Poetry? Is It Good Poetry?
- TODO: Summarize this.
2011.12.07 - YouTube - TEDx - Hip-Hop & Shakespeare?
- IMO the best part of the video is where he performs Sonnet 18 as a rap.
- A lot of the later part of the video felt like fluff.
- The rap he does at the end (fitting the names of the plays into a rap) is boring because it's the typical "I'm the best, you're lame" diss rap.
- He's a good performer.
2016.02.04 - Reddit - r/hiphopheads - [Discussion] Knowing almost nothing about hip hop, I listened to (and ranked) 143 albums from the HHH Listening Club.
- hiphophead listening club ← This is the spreadsheet with his reviews
  - A nice visualization
- r/hiphopheads Essentials List ← This is another spreadsheet with "essential albums" rec'd by HHH. Looks very helpful.

Tools

WhoSampled

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.

International rap

Korean

2016.04.19 - YouTube - EUNG FREESTYLE (응프리스타일) - LIVE, SIK-K, PUNCHNELLO, OWEN OVADOZ, FLOWSIK

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