Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

According to a recent article in Time Magazine, Hip-hop’s Down Beat, Hip Hop and Rap are becoming outmoded and unpopular:

According to the music trade publication Billboard, rap sales have dropped 44% since 2000 and declined from 13% of all music sales to 10%. Artists who were once the tent poles at rap labels are posting disappointing numbers. Jay-Z’s return album, Kingdom Come, for instance, sold a gaudy 680,000 units in its first week, according to Billboard. But by the second week, its sales had declined some 80%. This year rap sales are down 33% so far.

This can be directly attributed to the painful, rehashed crap coming out of the hip hop / rap music industry. For example, let’s take a look at these newcomers to the rap scene, and some of their lyrics:

Mims: Music Is My Savior
	I’m hot cause I’m fly You ain’t cause you’re not This is why This is why I’m hot
Sean Kingston
	They say we’re too young To get ourselves sprung Oh we didn’t care We made it very clear
T-Pain
	Teddy paine was born to flirt now u can’t down that Now i’m flirt with her whether i’m in or out of town That’s why they call me teddy bend her ass down
Soulja Boy
	Super Fresh, Now Watch Me Jock Jocking On Them Haterz Man When I Do Dat Soulja Boy I Lean To The Left And Crank Dat Dance
Yung Berg
	Oh, and damn right baby girl’s a diva but everytime she out with me she blowing reefa in the coupe looking better than mona lisa tuning into my songs thinkin ’bout features

The lack of clever or constructive lyrics pervades not just the newcomers rapping about women, money, drugs, women, and cash in a thoroughly tired and worn-out way, but also some of hip hop and rap’s greatest artists who think releasing new “music” as fast as possible is the key to success:

50 Cent / Justin Timberlake
	She always ready, when you want it she want it Like a nympho, the info, I show you where to meet her On the late night, till daylight the club jumpin’
Akon
	I’m sorry that it took so long to speak But I was on tour with Gwen Stefani
will.i.am
	Baby where’d you get your body from? Tell me where’d you get your body from? I got it from my mama I got it from my mama
Timbaland
	When timbo is in the party everbody put up their hands I get a half a mill for my beats you get a couple grand never gonna see the day that I ain’t got the upper hand
Fat Joe
	Yeah im in this business of terror Got a handful of stacks better grab an umbrella I make it rain on them hoes

If you’re depressed, there’s still some good hip hop left. Some of the stuff coming from Talib Kweli, Young Buck, Chamillionaire, and Lil’ Wayne is quite good. The real gold is Kanye West, especially his song Can’t tell me nothing and it’s brilliant alternate video. Who do you think is still good in hip hop?

If you follow trends in music, or music videos, you’ve undoubtably noticed the design trend of three horizontal bands of video each showing different action, or three different shots of the same subject. The first time I noticed this was in a Kanye West music video for Gold Digger (w/ Jamie Foxx, director Hype Williams) where the action occurs in a wide-horizontal strip, leaving the top and bottom for meta information and overlays:

Although the top and bottom are not used explicitly, I feel they’re enough distinguished to justify naming this technique after the song. A better example might be Beyonce’s (w/ Slim Thug, director Hype Williams) Check on it, where we get to see Beyonce glittering on a strips of pink fabric top and bottom, or a three-way shot of smoking Slim Thug:

Then, there’s Jamie Foxx’s Unpredictable video (director, Hype Williams), where we see the same Hype-Williams effect:

Wikipedia, if you go check out his entry, has a blurb describing this:

For most of his more recent videos, Williams creates a letterbox effect by having a main image in the middle (where a film would be in letterbox format) and having a second image behind it, split by the first image. As he had done in the past, Williams continues to front each video he directs with a title sequence, which presents his name, the name of the music artist(s), and the name of the song in a stylized format matching the video clip to follow.

For some more examples, see Pharrell Williams’ (of NERD) Angel:

Or the Robin Thicke (w/ Pharrell Williams) song Wanna love you girl:

If we go check out Hype William’s latest videos page, we’ll see the videos we’ve listed, and more. So, although I’ve dubbed it the “Gold Digger” technique it could easily be called “Hype Williams’ 1-hit-wonder.” I would prefer to reward creativity and diversity over repeating the same theme at least five times in the past year. Aren’t you getting tired of seeing this?

You never knew Flipmode records did news, did you? Busta Rhymes reports in his own videocast about a hopping party that was interrupted by a crashing Ferrari, complete with jabs at the police on the scene. “That s[tuff] is crazy:”

Please note that this documentary is not for children whose parents are concerned about them hearing foul language. Busta Rhymes is hood, and he swears like a sweating donkey. He does have that nice song with Mariah Carey, though!!