Birth of rap. (Moth talks about rap music because i love rap!)

Kendrick dropped!!!! It's not a gkmc or a tpab or a Mr. Morale. Three very important albums to me. Tpab getting me to accept myself as a black person, gkmc making me care more about black solidarity and politics and all that and Mr. Morale helping me cope with being not only a poc but also queer. It's not exactly a type of isolation i can describe, really. Especially here, poc are very traditional and then queer communities are predominantly white, it feels like there isn't a space for me in either but Mr. Morale helped with that. I do also want to say I really appreciate all my queer mutuals. You make me feel like I do have a space in the queer community. Much appreciated prayer hands emoji. 

Anyway! Kung fu Kenny! This album wasn't my favorite of his but it was still really good! I mean we had TV Off. Which had Kendrick screaming Mustard's name...ooooh gayyyyy... but yeah not as good. Instead of talking about this album I want to talk about my relationship to hip-hop and rap. It's a beautiful genre, poetry even. 

Over the past year, I've soured a lot on hip hop. There were a lot of releases I was looking forward to listening to but they just fell flat. My theory is that I listen to too much death grips so I come to expect something experimental with every release but recently I've been falling back in love with the genre. Partially due to Professor Skye on YouTube, he is a review channel who talks about music and how different albums intersect, his videos are mainly positive and recently, I was watching him talk about Ab Soul and Schoolboy Q (By the way, Blue Lips by schoolboy Q is one of the best albums of this year) and I was getting so excited for some reason. I didn't even get that excited when Lupe dropped. 

Luke Fiasco made Samurai this year and that's a rap album inspired by Amy Winehouse? It's weird, it's like her as a wrestler or something. Weird. I usually love music like that but I wasn't hot on it for some reason. Though professor skye isn't the only reason for me loving hip hop again... I was introduced to a certain rapper...

So I became mutuals with someone and she likes to send a specific gif of this rapper holding a rose and I asked one day "who is that??" It was Lil B. Lil B isn't just a rapper... he's a force! 80+ albums released and still going, most of the albums are over 1h30m and he's just a weird guy. He interests me like no other rapper has in recent times. He has a really really insane God complex. Like listen to 6Kiss. Listen to any one of his songs and it's like he could start a cult, he gives cult leader vibes. 

His songs are really good too to boot. He also has a weird relationship with homosexuality. He's 100% straight, he's mentioned that but he's always talking about how he's gay, how people think he's gay and all that and he says the f slur a lot. I Own Swag is one of his best songs and it ends with him kind of freestyling or 'freestyling'. Really it's just him saying "yeah! Bitch! Bitch! Fatty! Fatty! F4g!" Oh can i say that? Sorry. I CAN say that, I'm gay but I mean on this site, is that allowed? But it's so funny. He's not homophobic either. Weird guy. 

I talk about JPEGMAFIA too often but I have an odd relationship with him. If you HAVE social media, you know ragebait. Its content designed to make you angry. That's JPEGMAFIA's presence. He exists to make people angry and I started to really hate him. It sucks to hate one of your favorite artists. He's genuinely a musical genius and an inspiration to me but someone take away his internet access unless he wants to announce or drop music. He's a leftist who works with Kanye but then he released I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU and I liked it but it took developing a Marijuana dependency to truly understand it and uhh yeah. That happened.

Specifically the song Either On or Off the Drugs is so emotional. It was like nothing I've heard from him since Devon Hendryx days. Not in Sound but in subject matter. Peggy is not someone who confronts himself often but on that song, he does and it's a beautiful self reflection. He's really trying to appear like there's there's wrong with him, like he's not addicted but even he can't ignore it at that point. Amazing Song and album though, Veteran is better-an.

Speaking of Marijuana dependency... EARL! Contender for my new favorite rapper. I've been addicted to Some Rap songs and also I heard Solace for the first time yesterday. Damn. Nobody gets Introspective like him. I got into Earl because he has a really nice feature on Raally Doe by Danny Brown and okay lemme talk about Atrocity Exhibition for a second. It's a danny brown album which details his weird suicide attempt.

Weird because Danny Brown was an addict to... everything and at the time was depressed. So he thought what's the most Danny Brown way to go out? Drugs and partying! It details his endless party to death. He's not dead obviously and he got help thankfully. He's rehabilitated and off drugs. Earl's feature on Atrocity Exhibition's really doe is amazing. Let me explain that. 

Earl has also struggled with drug addiction and he's rehabilitated too, he's recovered and someone on the other end of the tunnel watching someone struggle through what he struggled through, he goes off. It's an amazing verse. It's kind of a roast but it also feels like some sort of a tough love intervention. He's really critical. It features Kendrick too and Ab Soul. So it really does feel like these friends got together to talk about Danny's worrying behavior. I want to share my favorite Earl lines from his feature.

And I'm the type of nigga it ain't never been an honor to judge

You a mouse that the falcon picked up

I was a liar as a kid so now I'm honest as fuck

And I never passed my mama no blunt, it kept my head straight

You've been the same motherfucker since 2001

Well it's the left-handed shooter, Kyle Lowry the pump

I'm at your house like, "why you got your couch on my Chucks"

Motherfucker

And he sounds so angry which is odd for him because he usually sounds half asleep and he's genuinely a chill dude. It's like getting yelled at by the favorite teacher. That last line I copy-pasted has such good delivery too. I want to hang with Earl honestly. 

Anyway, yesterday, I cried. To a rap song. Yk I'm packing wine out listening to this Arnand Hammer album. This last song on that album is 8 minutes long and it's titled Doves. Someone I know really loves that song and it was so so beautiful. That was when i realized I had fallen back in love with hip hop.

And yk, I'm gonna admit. Hip hop is an ignorant genre. That's a good thing because it evolves after recognizing its ignorance. Like look at hip hop now vs hip hop from the 90s. It was misogynistic, male dominated but it discussed larger systemic problems regarding race, as time went on it became more experimental, dropped the misogyny mostly, opened its doors to rappers and producers from all walks of life and its still growing. I think that female rap has an emphasis on oversexualized lyrics sometimes and yk female sexuality is good but like sometimes they have female rappers just to say something dirty but then you have rappers like doechii getting recognized for her amazing album and Lil simz and they can carve their own identity as well as queer rappers like Frank, Tyler or gender queer rappers Johnnascus, Backxwash who is a trans woman. My point is. The genre will keep evolving and keep growing and scaffolding. Its cool to me that some black, queer kid somewhere is going to listen to rap and feel included or inspired by the music that surrounds them. Ignorance is profound as professor skye says but what matters is what you do with it! Use Ignorance as an opportunity to grow and improve not just yourself but the genre. I can point to a million examples of the different ways rappers used ignorance to grow or to hinder the development of the genre. Like Killer Mike had his terrible land lord album. Don't listen to the new Killer Mike but then Mach Hommy's new release is very topical and speaks about serious subject matter that needs to be discussed. 

It's a beautiful genre and I'm happy to be able to appreciate it again! I just kinda needed to write that. After the Kendrick album I couldn't contain myself anymore.

Okay, let me recommend some interesting albums so maybe you can branch out and expand your tastes.

The Powers that B + Money Store + Bottomless Pit + Ex-military (not on spotify, go to their website to download don't listen to ex military on yt the upload is bad) by Death Grips 

SCRAPYARD - Quadeca 

By the time I get to Phoenix - injury reserve + the solo album by RiTchie

Veteran + OFFLINE! + SCARING THE HOES by JPEGMAFIA 

Stankonia + Aquemini by Outkast 

Doris + Some Rap Songs + Solace (Solace is on spotify as one Song under another handle) by Earl Sweatshirt 

Hiding Places + Aethiopes + We Buy Diabeetic Test Strips (also by Armand hammer and elucid I think?) by Billy Woods 

Pinata + You Only Die 1nce by Freddie Gibbs

Volcanic Bird Enemy + Mista Thug Isolation by Lil Ugly Mane

Tribe. Just the entire a tribe called quest discography 

Saturation (1,2 and 3) by brockhampton

Atrocity Exhibition by Danny Brown

Por cesàrea by Dillom 

Rodeo by Travis Scott 

#RICHAXXHAITIAN by Mach-hommy 

Gum + Black Pleasure + Man Plays Horn + Accompanied by a Blazing Solo by Cities Aviv

God's Father + 6Kiss by Lil B

Well that's a lot. If you want more recommendations, just message me. I don't mind, I really don't. If you want something in a specific sound I can also help with that. A lot of these are like "underground" in the sense that they're classified as underground but necessarily underrated. Anyway, I need to talk about music more, this was fun!