I think Kendrick Lamar has it all as a rapper: amazing technique, great ideas and ways of putting them and loads of feeling for the music. He's also an intersting person with a gangster and a sensitive side.
Sex, I like your post saying it feels like you're in the hood when you listen to Good Kid, M.A.A.D City. I think the albums gives such a multifaceted portait of Compton, showing the hoodlums but also family life, religion, relationships... Great production as well.
I think the artists highlighted in the OP's post are the reason rap and hip-hop are pretty much dead because they made the genre too commercial.
I started listening to rap in the mid-eighties, Schoolly D, EPMD, Eric B and Rakim, Leaders of the New School, A Tribe Called Quest, Ice Cube, De La Soul, BDP, that was the great era for me, I stopped listening to it after The Wu Tang Clan's disappointing second solo albums.
Rap can now be loosely divided into commercial "club rap" and "underground rap". If you listen to the underground stuff you might be pleasantly surprised. On the other hand the OP mentioned Notorious BIG, if you didn't like his stuff then I'm not quite sure what to say
Sorry for bumping an old thread but just been listening to Public Enemy's, It Takes a Nation of Millions to hold us back. That album is just art - fantastic!
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Sex, I like your post saying it feels like you're in the hood when you listen to Good Kid, M.A.A.D City. I think the albums gives such a multifaceted portait of Compton, showing the hoodlums but also family life, religion, relationships... Great production as well.
I did a mashup of Kendrick's Money Trees with Alt-J's Intro. I'd love to know what you guys think: http://soundcloud.com/julius-hinks/in-trees-money-trees-by
I heard this song on Love and Hip-Hop(my guilty pleasure
Rap can now be loosely divided into commercial "club rap" and "underground rap". If you listen to the underground stuff you might be pleasantly surprised. On the other hand the OP mentioned Notorious BIG, if you didn't like his stuff then I'm not quite sure what to say