Day 16: Beats and Loops, Writer's Music
Maybe it's just me, but I find that when I'm writing whether it be a blog post or a personal project I seem to be unable to articulate my thoughts correct if the music has lyrics to it. So a problem arose in my choices for music: I love things like hip-hop, power metal, and almost all manner of rock, but most of those have lyrics.
Then I started listening to Instrumentals.
Especially where hip-hop is concerned, instrumentals seem to be a very open form of music. Many hip-hop artists probably started out listening to instrumentals, putting their own rhymes to the music as the beat looped in their head, over and over. I try to harness that creative vibe whenever I listen to an instrumental. Except my goal isn't lyrics. (Well, not always.) My goal is to just flow with the music. My words are produced in rhythm to the beats themselves.
This isn't necessarily something that's for everyone. I could understand that. I know people who just can't get into hip-hop for whatever reason. Which really, has always been kind of a sticking point for me. I think at first I persecuted people a little for it, but as I got older (I won't say matured, because I know that I'm still a long ways off from mature.) I realized that people can have certain tastes about things. It's not a matter of hate, it's a matter of dislike. Granted, if someone brings up "I hate hip-hop." Then that is a matter of hate, and I do think it's prejudice, but.. less on that subject.
I think that the one thing people can always enjoy about hip-hop, doesn't matter if you don't like the rhymes or not. You can always enjoy the beats and loops. It's just something that harkens back (way back) to when that was all we had to communicate a musical pattern. We had drums, we had sticks, we had rocks. We would pound the earth with our feet and we would dance around the fire. That feeling is still alive, deep in the roots of hip-hop. Even if it's difficult to feel that way about it under all the lyrical content. (Bitches and 40s and Blunts. Get money, hit the clubs, degrade women.) But even the way that words are organized in the hands of a rap artist (regardless of the context of those words) are fascinating.
Rhyming schema of rap artists.
It's sometimes difficult to see how a rhyme might be clever because it's about drugs, but that doesn't make it any less clever. And if you want rap artists who are clever and give a positive message, there are those out there too, you just have to find them.
It's why I think we should start relabeling rap. Rap artists should be called: "Philosopher Poets." Because I feel that they get to see the worst and the best of the world in the time they have on the planet. A lot of the success stories started with having nothing, then they suddenly had everything, almost over night. They went from being broke, barely buying the base needs to Cadillacs, chronic and champaign. They write about the worst pains of the destitute and write about the worst problems of success, but lets not forget the glory as well.
And from their stance and perspective I think our generation will be judged, more so than the books we left behind.
Well.. maybe not. But I think that history will remember our addiction to this "crack music." -Philosopher Poet Kanye West
Then I started listening to Instrumentals.
Especially where hip-hop is concerned, instrumentals seem to be a very open form of music. Many hip-hop artists probably started out listening to instrumentals, putting their own rhymes to the music as the beat looped in their head, over and over. I try to harness that creative vibe whenever I listen to an instrumental. Except my goal isn't lyrics. (Well, not always.) My goal is to just flow with the music. My words are produced in rhythm to the beats themselves.
This isn't necessarily something that's for everyone. I could understand that. I know people who just can't get into hip-hop for whatever reason. Which really, has always been kind of a sticking point for me. I think at first I persecuted people a little for it, but as I got older (I won't say matured, because I know that I'm still a long ways off from mature.) I realized that people can have certain tastes about things. It's not a matter of hate, it's a matter of dislike. Granted, if someone brings up "I hate hip-hop." Then that is a matter of hate, and I do think it's prejudice, but.. less on that subject.
I think that the one thing people can always enjoy about hip-hop, doesn't matter if you don't like the rhymes or not. You can always enjoy the beats and loops. It's just something that harkens back (way back) to when that was all we had to communicate a musical pattern. We had drums, we had sticks, we had rocks. We would pound the earth with our feet and we would dance around the fire. That feeling is still alive, deep in the roots of hip-hop. Even if it's difficult to feel that way about it under all the lyrical content. (Bitches and 40s and Blunts. Get money, hit the clubs, degrade women.) But even the way that words are organized in the hands of a rap artist (regardless of the context of those words) are fascinating.
Rhyming schema of rap artists.
It's sometimes difficult to see how a rhyme might be clever because it's about drugs, but that doesn't make it any less clever. And if you want rap artists who are clever and give a positive message, there are those out there too, you just have to find them.
It's why I think we should start relabeling rap. Rap artists should be called: "Philosopher Poets." Because I feel that they get to see the worst and the best of the world in the time they have on the planet. A lot of the success stories started with having nothing, then they suddenly had everything, almost over night. They went from being broke, barely buying the base needs to Cadillacs, chronic and champaign. They write about the worst pains of the destitute and write about the worst problems of success, but lets not forget the glory as well.
And from their stance and perspective I think our generation will be judged, more so than the books we left behind.
Well.. maybe not. But I think that history will remember our addiction to this "crack music." -Philosopher Poet Kanye West
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