Black Eyed Peas
Elephunk

wow.
don't agree, but a damn fine review making a good point.

'Where Is The Love' elicits the same reaction as 'We Are The World', or the endings of most Hollywood films... cheesy, saccharine etc.... but I was glad that an anti war song was such a big hit in the US. However.. it stands out from the rest of the album as a slightly incongruous cheese moment. Since Gangsta was born in the early 90s, the best way to sell records to teenagers is to try to piss off parents, and that Dre/Eminem formula is 'the game' that US artists are told by their record companies that they must play in order to sell. BEP prefer to play the pop game, the song game...which is the only other way to break in the US... do I like pop, and songs?...yes I do... prior to buying the BEP album I bought 'Toxic' by Britney, 'cos it's a great song. Perhaps I've taken slightly the wrong tack in the review by approaching the record as a hip hop album with a lot of musical and artistic depth... when it may be better viewed as a pop album built from first class bricks. It's difficult to know what tack to take, as prior to this record, BEP were as credible a hip hop act as you like. As to my profile... it's great songs that stay with me forever... and ironically that includes the daddy of Gangsta songs..'Straight Outta Compton', just as much as it includes 'Me Myself and I' and 'Fight The Power'

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=260

I think this is an interesting article regarding the experimental value of the Roots et al. I have no intention of rehashing its content, but it's often the case that the more 'old-skool' influenced artists that you cite are the least innovative in hip-hop. And for all intents and purposes, groups such as the Beastie Boys are Old Skool. As much so as De La Soul.

But whatever - being traditionalist doesn't mean that a band is devoid of merit. Innovation isn't everything. Though I've heard the Black Eyed Peas just fell off with their latest record and that they used to be more funky and less 'CHRISTIHATETHISSONG!', you know? I don't. I'm going to make a sandwich.

As an aside, I can only think of two skits on S\TLB that dragged. But then, I didn't listen to Andre's disc all that much.

"The Roots do not represent a “saved” hip hop. They represent hip hop hopelessly compromised by rockist values. Perhaps the Roots are the best possible outcome of this scenario – they don’t make horrible music, although much of it is bland and boring. It’s safe: despite a reputation for experimentation, The Roots never push hip hop to its limits. They merely show how hip hop can easily conform to Rolling Stone’s version of valid music. Common’s latest album, Electric Circus does the same: getting all psychedelic in Hendrix’s studio isn’t the future of hip hop, or any other music. I won’t call it selling out, because Common and The Roots sell far fewer albums than 50 Cent (although Common’s making plenty of really real riches for that travesty of a Coke jingle). Nevertheless, this vanilla hip hop is being billed as Chunky Monkey, even though it’s obviously bereft of fudge and nuts. If you like that stuff, fine, just don’t pretend it’s adventurous because you threw a few stale peanuts in there.


The future of hip hop has nothing to do with rock. Rock isn’t the future of music. If anything is, it’s dance music. Hip hop has not been loathe to appropriate dance music’s synthy sound palette, club-based distribution, or designer drugs, and the move has brought the style great success – financially, but also creatively. A competitive singles-based market keeps MCs and producers constantly forging ahead into new sounds and new styles. Punjabi-language MCs burning up American charts? Dancehall a radio staple? This sounds like the future to me, a future I couldn’t have envisioned a few years ago. The only thing that needs saving in this climate is Common’s career."

(from the Stylus article)

It's a good point, and probably does account for one reason why a musician like me would gravitate toward any hip hop act that actually plays it's music on instruments, rather than use a DAT. It's also, by the sound of it, a point made by someone who thinks electronica is more innovative than electric or acoustic bands, or that DIY began with dance music (it was the basis of Punk in the late 70s) If I'm to be honest, then there is fuck all that's really NEW going on in either camps. Can any machine musician really claim that what they're doing wasn't previously done by Kraftwerk/Eno/BBC radiophonic workshop/Prince/Aphex Twin or the weirder techno artists like Richie Hawtin?

All the musical spirits, wines and liquers have pretty much been already invented... all that remains is different peoples cocktail recipes. I like the way BEP have taken the choppy R&B vocal style pretty much pioneered on the first Destinys Child album and integrated it into a hip hop album. It's a cocktail than doesn't taste like any other I know.

I think there is a similar divide in hip hop as there is in guitar music, in the way some people are Beatles while some are Stones... those who want to be seen as great musicians vs those who want to be seen as the biggest rock stars, The Roots vs 50 Cent.

I like this album a lot, some hate this album a lot . Part of the evangelical tone of the article is because I think that many of those who fall into the latter camp haven't HEARD the whole album... just 'Where Is The Love'. It's made as many people in the UK NOT buy the BEP album as 'Hey Ya' made people BUY the Outkast album.