Tuesday 26 May 2015

Brief thoughts on your thinkpieces about instrumental hip hop

. <~~ This dot here represents a random old 45 King beat nobody ever spat over.









. <~~ And this dot here represents the genre of post-Donuts instrumental hip hop.

On this page they're separated by an inch or two, in the real world there's a gulf of a gazillion trillion bazillion miles in quality between the two.

The 45 King - Simply Dope Part 2
(From 45 King's The Red The Black The Green 12"; 1988)



Presumably Lakim Shabazz rejected the Simply Dope Part 2 beat for his first album because Night Of The Living Baseheads had everybody shook to rhyme over The Grunt back in '88?

7 comments:

yeldarb said...

this whole single is hard

Unknown said...

I never really understood instrumental hip hop albums seems like it defeats the purpose of listening to a rap song. Lord Finesse did put out a pretty good one last year but I'm pretty sure all the beats on it were one's he made in the 90's.

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

Something like Petestrumentals was basically "hey guys, here's a bunch of mediocre beats I made that nobody wanted to rap over + a couple of U.N songs to sweeten the blow of paying money for this shite".

styles palmer said...

Yeah I generally try to avoid accusing people of being disingenuous/just pretending to like music but I honestly don't see how ppl can get excited about instrumental rap.

Rick said...

I'm going to be the eye-roll-enducing buzzkill here and remind y'all that hip-hop was an instrumental music in its original form. I'm not going to get all four elements-y or claim that everything should always be preserved in its primordial stages or anything but I'll stick up for the legitimacy of instrumental hip-hop even though I don't listen to it (anymore), if for no other reason than I've had some very excellent moments of my life with some non-rapping rap in the background.

The CritIQ said...

Depends what you mean by "instrumental Hip Hop:" instrumental versions/backing tracks, turntablist routines,Yo Sushi funky wallpaper/library beats or songs composed and intended to stand as instrumentals. Lately I've found myself buying more instrumentals/beattapes because there's too many rappers with nothing to say. I like beats by The Dopelgangaz but a little of their misogynist-Mobbdeep mutterings go a long way. If it was just the beats/deejaying, UK Hip Hop would be almost enjoyable. As it is, decent beats ruined by Jehst wannabes.

David said...

wait, how was original hip-hop instrumental? u mean like...dj's spinning breaks in the middle of songs with vocalists & shit? that people danced to? It was dance music, not instrumental trip hop