I'm starting a project where I'm gonna be comparing different rappers to see who's better (I'll also be doing ratings, comparing albums etc. but the main focus is comparing artists).

I've listed a criteria below that compares all aspects of different types of rappers, and I want to know what you think are the most important things to rate them by. My criteria:

• Rapping Ability (Lyrics, Flows)
• Songwriting
• Voice (Delivery or Singing. Together or separate?)
• Beats
• Consistency (quality and quantity)
• Discography
• Creativity (versatility, artistry, originality)
• Vibes
• Relevance (Influence/Size. Together or separate?)
• Fans (do they have good or bad fans, are they overrated)

What do you think are the most important things to consider when rating/comparing rappers? Thoughts on this criteria? Comment below! Any comments appreciated 🙏

I wasn’t around when Stevie was at her peak. Does this action and the content of the poem match to you who Stevie has been as an artist? Does she feel like a natural match/collaborator/comparison to Taylor Swift?

For additional context: the double album is about Taylor’s failed relationship with Matty Healy of 1975. Taylor references Stevie and herself in first album closing song “Clara Bow”, suggesting she was compared to Stevie when she was starting, and the future pop stars will be comparable to Taylor.

In the context of all this, what are your thoughts?

Poem: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/stevie-nicks-taylor-swift-the-tortured-poets-department

——-

PS. I’m trying to be posting this neutrally, but for disclaimer I was quite shocked Stevie at 75yrs old got involved like that, and do not think their work quality and importance is comparable.

But am curious what others think who may have same or different perspectives on these two musicians, and specifically have been around experiencing and understanding music for longer than since ~2009. I feel my frame of reference for Stevie is lacking, for example.

edit; I know who she is and listened to Fleetwood Mac to an extent, but I don’t have a grasp of her “character type” if you will. Is writing poems for a pop star smth you would expect from her?

My name is Mary, and I used to hate it and think it was an "old lady" name but now I think it's a timeless name, and there's so many songs named Mary, or about Mary.. person or thing lol. Trying to listen to them all. Personally I love sublime, and freaked out when I heard Mary (lyrics are def a little uhhh just messed up but when I was 15 I thought I was so cool) also like wind cried Mary. Oh and do you think there's more songs about "Mary" then other names, and why? Random thought/post.

The Blue Album is turning 30, I’m sure you’ve heard. What many people don’t know looking back is that The Blue Album was the first big Power Pop success, arguably, in the US. As beloved as Cheap Trick is, they never saw the runaway success in a studio album that Weezer saw in The Blue Album. What many also don’t know is there were MANY Power Pop bands that were supposed to make it big leading up to Blue, including The Lemonheads, Jellyfish, Teenage Fanclub, and Dinosaur Jr. Why was Weezer different? Well they were more charismatic and their album was better BUT there were many many top selling groups in Rock that are far more forgotten now than the aforementioned Power Pop hopefuls like Candlebox, Silverchair, Lit, Tonic, Staind, the list can go on.

So while we’re still in the 90s, please indulge me this Seinfeldian question: What’s the deal with Power Pop? It certainly, to music fans and industry people, sounds like it’s supposed to be commercially successful, so why isn’t it? One key difference between it and other forms of Rock is there’s almost no Blues element in it. This is almost like excluding normal Rock fans who love the attitude of Blues scales and inflections and excluding Pop fans who like danceable inoffensive catchy tunes.

There’s one more factor I suspect hurts it commercially and it’s a factor Weezer leaned into to their benefit: it’s nerdy. Idk why, but wanting to Rock out on stage as a way to be seen while presenting Baroque rooted, mathematically sound compositions under the hood just so happens to attract the nerds. Evan Dando is sole mention here who is objectively not a nerd, but other than that, nerds the lot of them.

So why do you think Big Star up until Ben Folds and The Apples In Stereo failed to make a commercial wave? Is it simply lacking bite?

All this comes from an avid Power Popper.

Each week a WHYBLT? thread will be posted, where we can talk about what music we’ve been listening to. The recommended format is as follows.

Band/Album Name: A description of the band/album and what you find enjoyable/interesting/terrible/whatever about them/it. Try to really show what they’re about, what their sound is like, what artists they are influenced by/have influenced or some other means of describing their music.

Artist Name – Song Name If you’d like to give a short description of the song then feel free

PLEASE INCLUDE YOUTUBE, SOUNDCLOUD, SPOTIFY, ETC LINKS! Recommendations for similar artists are preferable too.

This thread is meant to encourage sharing of music and promote discussion about artists. Any post that just puts up a youtube link or says “I've been listening to Radiohead; they are my favorite band.” will be removed. Make an effort to really talk about what you’ve been listening to. Self-promotion is also not allowed.

Whenever I see grunge discussed on the internet or podcasts, the end of it almost always described as "And yeah, in the end, grunge wasn't ready for the spotlight. It ended up imploding on itself, but that's a story for another time", almost verbatim. I've done a fair bit of Google searching, but I can't find a more in depth analysis.

What exactly happened to grunge? Was it that the genre was populated by moody, anti-corporate artists who couldn't get along with record labels? Were they too introverted to give media interviews and continue to drum up excitement for their albums? Did high profile suicides and drug overdoses kill off any interest (unlikely because it happens all the time for other genres)?

Are there any sources that actually go into the details of why "grunge imploded"?

I never used to give an album a second listen if it didn't click for me first time, but since listening to more albums recently I've noticed there have been many that have grown on me and taken at least 3 listens before I find enjoyment from them. I find it tricky now to not obsess over an album and make sure I've become familiar with it before deciding if I like it. There are so many times I feel no differently after 4 listens compared to 1 listen and that can feel like a waste of time. I'm now thinking there's too much music out there to spend so long on something I actually will never like.

Have you ever noticed signs that an album may grow on you with extra listens or do you think it's just a matter of guessing if it deserves extra listens or not?

Gorillaz is a band that I always thought was really really weird. I knew all of their "flagship" songs like Feel Good Inc and Clint Eastwood, and I loved them. So I thought I'd check their discography and I found some really really weird songs that I (to be honest) hated. This was around 7 years ago or something.

In recent years I thought I'd give them a go. And their music (particularly those in the Demon Days album) made me badly obsessed with them for the last 2 years. I haven't listened to anyone else since. I love all of their songs - they've basically hypnotized me.

What do yall think of Gorillaz? Whether you know of them a lot or just a little, i am curious of your thoughts. What are your favourite songs? What feelings conjure up when you play them? Why do you hate them? I wanna know!!!

Whenever I listen to music, I take in everything. The instruments, production, the flow, the tones, EVERYTHING.

But, I always find myself not paying that much attention to the lyrics. And then whenever I do, I have to purely focus on them and nothing else. I still listen/take in the vocal melody but not the words attached to it

Is there a word for something like that or a scientific backing as to why that is? And is anyone the same or the complete opposite?

I'm from Greece and a big fan of Marina Satti. She's known of including a lot of traditional elements in her music which could be described as urban/pop. Do you have similar artists doing the same thing in your country with your own traditional music and do you think it can work or not?

I personally think it can be very effective when done well, as a lot of traditional songs in their raw version might not be really "accessible" for the ears of younger people. Mixing the traditional and the new in my opinion is a very nice start to dive into older, more traditional and ethnic music. Otherwise it could easily get lost in time...

I truly hope that people don't even see this as a hot take because to me it's blatantly obvious. The indie sound has been gentrified to hell and back, and it's not really a good thing. A cult following for bands like The Smiths, Pixies, Beach House popping up out of nowhere, artists like TV Girl / girl in red / Mitski / Arctic Monkeys / Phoebe Bridgers / Alex G / CAS / Steve Lacy suddenly blowing up, even massively mainstream records like Taylor Swifts's folklore or the very recently released awful TTPD have obvious indie influences. And god, I don't know if I hate the types of people and fans jumping on the bandwagon or the music itself more.

The art subgenres (art rock, art pop, etc.) are what the indie subgenres (indie rock, indie pop, etc.) have always tried and horribly failed to be. It is pseudo-intellectual music playing into overdone two+ decade old tropes, feelings of self-loathing and anti-social tendencies, and the good old "sound of nostalgia" - and yes, I'm counting bands like The Smiths into this because they really were not groundbreaking for the 80s, and Morrisey is a talentless fuck - and none of it stands for what indie is supposed to be. It's a genre that has weaponized human biases and soft spots into a commercialized money-making machine, it's inauthentic and completely devoid of the "passion" and "intimacy" that it's supposed to stand for. I hate it because it's fake. I hate indie.

And yes, I've listened to most of the discography of every artist I listed and a lot more. And no, I don't hate all bands/artists labeled indie, or all "mainstream indie". I love The Strokes, I love Radiohead (though they lean more art rock), I love Elliot Smith, I love Siouxsie and the Banshees, but they actually make good music instead of playing into cliches and sappy self-deprecating lyrics.

Edit: mistypes

The way it blends the sound of trap with r&b in a way where some of the songs are a perfect blend will become the norm.

With Songs like faith, take me to la, alone again, and heartless, It takes the idea of synth wave from the 80s that eventually turned into what is wave now. And puts it back into wave kinda. Idk it’s weird. That’s my point the line is gonna get more and more blurry and I can’t wait.

This has already been a thing in cloud rap for a long time but I think it’s interesting that it’s hitting the mainstream more and more.

Especially with this new future and metro album blending r&b with trap in such a unique way again.

To anyone else paying attention to this trend, Where do you see this moving in the future with them continuing to intertwine in the mainstream?

Ok, so keep in mind that Billy Joel's first three albums didn't chart very well at all.

1971. Cold Spring Harbor

1972. Piano Man

1973. Turnstiles

These albums all did not crack the top 10.

In 1977 Billy Joel releases his fourth album: The Stranger, which becomes a top 3 hit album.

Then his fifth album: 1978. 52nd Street goes number one and become his first number one album.

In 1980 he releases Glass Houses, another number one in the US

So what do you think Mr. Joel does in 1981?

Wrong!

He releases his first live album, but It's all material from his first three albums that kinda flopped and nobody heard of

No Piano man

No She's Always A Woman

No Uptown Girl

No Movin' Out

It was unheard of!

Live albums were usually bands doing their hits and some stuff from the new album. Nobody every did this before and it took might big balls to do.

The reasoning behind making this album that I've read is that Billy Joel didn't have the creative control during his first three albums to record in the studio with his own band.

So he usually had to work with studio musicians, which is fine, but not what Billy Joel wanted, so this album is in a way the vision Billy originally had for these songs in the first place.

So what do you think?

Hi, I’ve decided to stop paying for infrastructure and marketing and go back to the good old days of managing my own music library, and I’m looking for an aggregate platform that allow me to buy albums and get a digital file that pays artists fairly, or allows me to pay more that will go to the artist. I’ve been using Bandcamp for years but was wondering what other options are around in 2024?

I’m not opposed to buying direct from artists, I just would like a little ease of use while building my music collection back up.

Edit: I’m planning to store on my NAS so I’m less worried about platforms disappearing (provided the files are DRM Free)

Every couple years or so I give it a listen. I then find it pleasant but forgetable.So recently I was out and about and heard the King of Carrot's Pt 1 and was shocked at how much I liked the ambience and am considering giving it a listen again.

I am endlessly exposed to praise for that album and I don't really get it. Some people praise it for have a ragtag orchestra going on, but on my most recent relisten all this made me want to do was listen to Beirut's debut. Some people seem to really like the lyrical content, but other than the meme of "semen stains the mountain tops!" these don't stick out to me either. This is not to say it's a bad album

What I do think has happened that it's become a meme with a mythology around it. Someone posted about how great it was and gave the creator a J.D. Salinger persona. People generally like the album and because it was relatively obscure people in music corners latched on to it. The connection with Elephant 6 sealed the deal. The album has now found it's way to elevated in music canon.

That being said, I am thinking of giving it a relisten? Is there something I should listen for or you want me to know that would enhance it for me?

I tend to listen to only the vocals and lyrics of a song and that makes the song boring so then I'll listen to another instrument but then I focus too much on the instruments and forget what the vocals are and it just ends up being a mess.

I don't know if I have a peanut brain or what but I don't really know how to listen to music. Are you supposed to take it in all at once? Are you supposed to focus on the lyrics or are you supposed to treat the voice as another instrument.

I feel like this dilemma really affects my enjoyment of music so please let me know what you all do!

edit: I realized I constantly shift between instruments but have a bit of a hard time taking all of it in as one

Ok so I've always been curious what's the difference between glorifying drugs and just talking about them. Like the person I listen to who just talks about it is juice wrld in fact in multiple of his songs he talks about how he'll probably die from them and you some of his songs he talks about how he'll live forever so for me I see the evolution there. Also what are some artists doesn't have to be rappers that are more mainstream and known that glorify drugs. And who are some more that just talk about their experience with drugs rather than glorifying them. If you could also recommend me songs to look at so I can compare and contrast or just give me two song examples and tell me the different lyrics they say in it and why you believe it is or is not glorifying drugs. I don't listen to much future but from an article i remember people saying he glorify drugs I wouldn't know much but I remember also reading something about juice into lean because of future

Maybe an unpopular opinion and I'm all for letting yourself go at a concert, but I'm just there trying to enjoy the music (and often with my 5'2" girlfriend who doesn't stand a chance in any mosh pit), and could do without being smashed about by sweaty men and distracting from the performance. And often in prime viewing/listening location too

Curious to know if others have similar opinions.. Maybe I am too old (28 lol) or not cool enough for the shows I like to go to

I recently watched "The Idea of You," a middle aged female wish fulfillment fantasy on Amazon Prime. It struck me as archaic in two ways. One, Coachella is cool. And two, the male romantic interest is part of a boy band headlining the festival.

Which made me realize that in real life, I don't think any English-speaking boy band has broken out in the last decade. The last one I can recall is One Direction. There are boy bands touring the US this summer, but they're all from Korea or 1990.

Am I missing something? Is there some singing, dancing, five piece boy band in the anglosphere that my middle aged social media feed is not aware of?

Or are boy bands yet another industry that's been outsourced to Asia? And if so, why? What are the cultural and economic factors behind this shift?

This is completely anecdotal but every experience I've had reinforces my belief in the idea that there is a major difference in how these generations consume music and it is indicative of a deeper difference between the two.

In short: Boomers will listen to the same, most popular songs over and over again with no curiosity for the deeper cuts, and Gen X is all about exploring, looking for the deeper cuts of popular bands and even searching out the obscure bands of popular genres.

And each of the two generations does this like it's a badge of honor.

I have nothing against boomers for the record, but...

Boomers will be so proud to love whatever the 4 most famous songs are from CCR, or Eagles. They will never mention the other songs on a bands most popular albums. They will almost brag about how good a certain rolling stones song is as if it weren't the most well known song in the genre. I say this as a Gen Xer who loves Boomer era music (but I consume it like an X'er - I probably know more about 60's and 70's music than my dad lol).

Gen X'ers on the other hand will make friends with a person based on knowing the same obscure thing. It creates a natural affinity between people who have this mindset.

It's kind of late for me and maybe I'm not explaining this too well, but I believe this strongly.

It may account for how little attention is given to Gen x - we are hard to market to because we don't all want to hear the same monoculture over and over again. A classic rock station can play Stairway, Won't get Fooled Again, and Paint it Black on repeat and boomers will never get sick of it, but finding the off the beaten path Husker Du track or whatever isn't so easy for a corporate media company.

Yes, of course there are plenty of X'ers who will still talk about Nirvana or the Smashing Pumpkins, but even lovers of the most popular bands of the 90's will differentiate themselves as "real fans" by having a favorite song that is not the single. Boomers do not have a "real fans like (insert obscure cut from popular band)" mentality.

Again I feel this is indicative of a deeper thing within the whole mentality of the generations. Boomers maybe appreciated being the center of attention when they were young and will proudly memorialize the moments where they were at the peak of the attention economy? Whereas the mainstream was well established by the 80's and 90's (when X'ers were teenagers) and it was uncool to like the most mainstream stuff because at that time corporations had a huge handle on how to manipulate popular media - so in search of the authentic, to be truly cool Xers had to find stuff that the corporate media companies didn't know about yet? I truly believe the mid 80's to mid 90's were a golden age of independent media breaking out of stale mainstream institutional media practices (which is also absolutely true for the 1960's-early 70's).

I don't even know how Millenials and Zoomers consume music - they seem uninterested in albums as a group and are more into a steady and ever changing stream of individual songs. I follow some modern rappers like Gunna and Young Thug and they release random songs all of the time that are not tied to any album.

Curious what other people's takes are on all of this.

I think that some bands like Alvvays are straight up pop writing masters - that is, I think their songs stand shoulder to shoulder with any pop song on the radio in terms of melody, hooks, harmonically etc.

I'm on a 'dreampop banger' binge lately and am collecting songs that are 'dreampop' enough to for the indieheads but are also 'pop' enough for the popheads.
listening to a lot of songs that fit said criteria got me thinking - how pop really is in 'dreampop'? a lot of new dreampop today feels more 'dream' than pop to me; that is, it leans more into atmosphere and aesthetic than into pop songcraft (not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation) but i'd love to hear more opinions on this.

Talk about whatever you want here, music related or not! Go ahead and ask for recommendations, make personal list (AOTY, Best [X] Albums of All Time, etc.)

Most of the usual subreddit rules for comments won't be enforced here, apart from two: No self-promotion and Don't be a dick.

I have just been fascinated by the decline of rock music in mainstream culture. In 2005, you would've had no problem hearing a rock song on Top 40 radio every now and again. By 2010, it was almost completely gone. But, where did the audience go? There were a lot of rock fans in the 1990's and 2000's; they couldn't have all just disappeared.

One theory that I have heard many times is that a lot of the rock audience started listening to country music, and specifically bro-country which was starting to rise at the same time that rock was falling. On paper, that makes sense. But, at least from my experience in the rock crowd in the 2000's, rock fans HATED country music. It wasn't just that they didn't listen to country then, it was actively offensive. Country music was a punchline. How did country win over so many rock fans who were initially hostile to the genre?

Steve Albini’s death had me thinking about this, let’s say I was a college student at a local WalMart, Kmart, or Barnes and Noble, would I be able to find a copy of Surfer Rosa by the Pixies? Or would these types of releases only be in dedicated record stores? Did big box stores only carry bands from major labels? Would any mainstream rock station play tracks from a band not signed to a major? I remember Kurt Cobain saying he changed Rape me to Waif me because he got a lot of his music from Walmart/Kmart, but he I doubt he was referring to the more punk rock records he included on his top 50 albums.

Nowadays with the internet, everything is available and there are no boundaries. Artists can remain independent if they so choose to. So I’m interested to hear how things were back then.

Just out of curiosity, not seriously trying to "both sides" it. I'm sure they don't care.

Some of my favorite artists talk about their disdain for the music industry and/or record companies. They're great songs in their own right, lovely scathing lyrics.

Here are just a few I love:

• Billy Joel - The Entertainer
• A Tribe Called Quest - Show Business
• Heart - Barracuda
• diehard DIY indie artists like Ani DiFranco (The Million You Never Made) and Fugazi (Target)
• GZA takes a few shots in the last verse of Wu-Tang's Protect ya Neck

I just did a quick search and found this list of "fuck you" songs to the music industry. So many!

Has anyone ever actually tried to vocalize a defense? Would love to hear that lol.

I grew up with Northern Mexican, and country music that was popular in the 90s and early 2k, I had cousins that showed me rappers like T.I and SPM. Which was awesome and rebellious for those days especially with how i grew up.

Then later i would listen to bands off video games and movies like Korn, Disturbed, and Red Jumpsuit. My little brother and I would replay entire level or customize video game playlists just to here that same song(this was before the internet was in every houshold)

Now a days(as in sense 2015) I've added asian and Irish folk to my lists. Asian as in Kpop, Pop, anime OP, and the acoustics of Irish folk and shanties are just great in the ears. Being an anime nerd helped with the first part and being Mexican pushed me to the other (there was a lot of jokes about mexicans and the Irish when I was growing up)

There's obviously artist that I prefer in different languages or genres but with my growth I became one of those. "Don't seperate the art from the artist" kind of people. David Draimon and his views grind my gears. The communities of most metal bands aren't very welcoming either, and the punk scene these days is very gatekeepy ironicly. Not to mention country music having the history it does. These days I found the "punk" version of country often called "outlaw country". Its great and it stays on theme with me.

I guess the question is, what got you to where you are in your music listening journey? Where did you start and what pushed you to this point?

Iconic engineer and musician Steve Albini passed away at age 61. He has always seemed larger than life: recorded great, genre defining albums (and also an album by Bush), knew an absurd amount about how to capture music to tape, was a tournament winning poker player, and of course, had an acidic tongue and was an almost mythical shit-talker.

Let's talk about your thoughts on Big Black, Albini's production discography, his greatest insults, and whatever other personal stories you would like to share.

The sound, the different types, the history, etc.? How to make it?

I’ve become interested because I love occasionally hearing what I think is that music and wanna incorporate it into my art/make some of my own. The sound is so enchanting and soothing.

All I know is that in western music theory the closest you get to it is by specific combination with phrygian dominant, I sometimes compose in that scale on an acoustic guitar, trynna immitate that sound.

This song sounds like it was in the drafts for a really long time but undeniably slaps. It's Catchy and it is no surprise it went otherworldly viral on TikTok. Yes, otherworldly it is basically inescapable on the app. Not that I'm surprised. The song is ridiculously catchy and almost in a "I kissed a girl" Katy Perry way(yes it is that catchy.) Artemis did a good job at getting it in your head and it never coming out.

I strongly do recommend it. I think it's a banger but some may disagree. Anywho what is your opinion?

I've seen people talk down on artists who do a lot of remixes/songs on instrumentals that have already been used. I've seen artists dismissed with the statement "he can't make his own songs he has to remix other people's work"

I think this is stupid because music isn't supposed to have rules like this. Two artists can make vastly different music on the same instrumental. Labelling an instrumental as "used so now nobody can use it" removes a lot of musical/stylistic possibilities. Music should have as many possibilities as possible.

Luckily sampling is still respected, but I think using the same instrumental 1:1 should still be more accepted.

There are so many possibilities with this and we're missing out on a lot. There are many times I've heard an amazing instrumental and imagined what _____ would sound like on it. Sadly I'll never ever get to hear that because people are so set on coming up with something unique for every piece they make