When will rap music be less mainstream?

TPREAVES,

Yep, got it all down - even the bi-amping. Piece of cake in the end. Still working on room treatment issues though.

No, don't point me in the direction of any new gear, enough is enough and I am too easily tempted.

Thomastrouble...Glad to hear that.This stuff can de daunting sometimes.BTW,you might want to look into a 12-step program to help out with that rap addiction that is haunting you!!!!!!!!!!!! I heard of a clinic in Canada that will put you on a 24/7 dosage of Tiny Tim and Yoko Ono that is guaranteed to wean you off that rap nonsense.Of course listening to Tiny Tim and Yoko Ono 24/7 might make you want to stop listening to music all together!!!!!!!! Then you can sell all of your equipment on A'gon for half price to help pay for the treatment!!!!!!
Okay,enough's enough,I gotta go listen to my Gregg Allman and Cher album.Later.

Tpreaves

Tiny Tim - now there's a blast from the past! I will give the treatment a miss though. Hip-hop accounts for probably 20% of what I listen to these days, I don't actually have a favorite genre at all - good music is good music whatever the genre and however it's made. If I wasn't so open-minded then maybe I would take you up on the treatment thing. Have you ever thought about checking yourself in?
I really don't understand why so many people on here have a fly in their ear over hip-hop. What I do suspect though is that something else is coloring their judgement (no pun intended) and it has nothing at all to do with music.

If I went through your music collection I am sure I would like a great percentage of it, maybe even latch onto some of the styles that normally wouldn't float my boat. I consider myself lucky in that sense. Obviously, some of the stuff I would pass on, but I could never see myself reacting towards it with out and out hatred like some of the above posters. Put it this way - if I was offered a night out, free beer all night to hang out with any 3 or 4 guys on this thread for a great time, fun conversation and a good old laugh I would have a hard time selecting more than three or four drinking buddies from the thread (don't worry Bongofury, the barmaid said yours is coming right up). What I am saying is, these reactions say more about the whole person than simply their taste in music.

Back to the original question - Digable Planets - Blowout Comb - Bar none the best underground hip-hop album of all times. Lyrics, beats, samples and scratching, all A1.

That said. MC Hammer? If you like MC Hammer try listening to Rick James, Super Freak. It will sound very familiar...

That said here are some recommendations some may have already been provided by others above:

- Tribe Called Quest (from New-York not LA) all there albums are great, my favorite is midnight marauders.
- The Pharcyde, best tracks are runnin'(beat is based on Stan Getz Samba sample) and passin me by.
- De la Soul
- Common the album Ressurection, specifically the scratching on the title track, plus various samples throughout from Roy Ayers' "everybody loves the sunshine"
- People Under the Stairs
- Mos Def

And the list goes on... wait one more!

MC Solar, his two first ablums are his best, preferrably the first "Qui sème le vent récolte le tempo", the Track Caroline, is the finest heart-break hip-hop ballad of all times... Only French rhymes can accurately portray the emotional heart break you feel when you find your girl sharing a cigarette with another man in the subway. Truly poetic.

What makes hip-hop/rap good. IMHO, good poetic lyrics, not just words that rhyme. Rappin' about b!tches and hoes should be a crime... (pun intended). Original musical beats, not simply slowing down or speeding up or reversing James Brown's Funky Drummer. Samples that are relevant and credited to the original artists from who composed them. And DJ that can Scratch (Turntabalism).

One more point, if I were to listen to only hip-hop/rap I wouldn't need hig-end audio system. Generally, there are no "musical instruments" used, so the detail, emotion sound stage isn't there. So whether listening on an IPOD or $50k system the marginal difference would not warrant the investment.

But without hip-hop I would not have not learned to appreciate much of the Jazz, Funk and Soul which I enjoy on my system daily.

Finally, it was my passion as a Dee-Jay which has given rise to my interest in the this Audiophile hobby (or is it an addiction?).

Thanks Nick, you have now joined the united front of Thomas, Shadorne, Dark Mob and myself. Remember, always outnumbered but never outgunned. Thomas is suggesting we meet for beers. I am down with it.