Is gangsta rap spiritual?

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Bluto

That Kate Bush recreation sounds truly dystopian by the way.

It is. They did the same thing the Heart's Alone, too. I think they just look for the best things in the 80's for a good catch, just as Black Pink reduced Paganini to a riff.

However, it's not to say Rap is bad or not liking it. It's just a matter of tastefulness, and what they did to Kate Bush, Heart and Paganini is distasteful.

I can't say anything bad about rap as a generalisation because there are a few that have interesting compositional elements, and some is very poetically moving, but I think they might dumb it down for the sake of mass production and distribution. I mean, it happened to everything else, like the craft of cabinet making became IKEA.

It makes me think of Eminem's 8 Mile classic lose yourself, which is a good song, but the backing is robotic and the drum track is a constant monotonous loop. Since it starts out as an empty gesture, like IKEA, it can't really be desecrated. Instead of desecrating it, when Kasey Chambers covered Lose Yourself, she paid respect to it, and not only lived up to it, but held it a aloft.

When a cover glorifies a song, it works the other way.

Rap is good and it can be used tastefully, for a purpose. For example, Falling in Reverse used the style in Watch the World burn, utilising different rap styles from spittin' to flow, and ranging in reminiscence from Slim Shady to Drake, with a flash of metal for spice (it has expletives so I won't link it, but the rap is outstanding and it's worth a look). Similarly, When FiR covered Papa Roach's Last Resort, they took it soaring.

It's not as if you should like Chamber's rendition. It's reasonable to prefer the original, but it's obvious that Chambers did something good, as opposed those who covered Running Up That Hill and Alone, and Paganini no less, that have no respect for the art and mass reproduce cheap imitations.

Covering a song is a tribute of respect that is hard to live up to.

[Altair]

Originally Posted by Joe Mc

Yes, fair enough, I heard an argument years ago, 30 years ago at least, so hopefully outside the incendiary debates of Wokeness etc., that gave a kind of hierarchy to music and an art in general,

Wokesters have their own hierarchies, it's usually the reverse, with quality at the bottom and rubbish at the top. Whether that concerns music, art, or architecture. They can't look at quality without seeing royalty or upper class enjoying it or having paid for it, so their response is to either do away with it or transform it into something completely different. These days they do it with shows and movies too, just redoing the old with new 'values'. Wokeism stems from revolutionary thinking and idealizes imagined ''oppressed'' people and puts them on a pedestal.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Joe Mc

Is it that Eva Cassidy's Songbird resists other 'shocking' translations because of it's tempo and clarity of lyric and guitar playing ?

It's because Eva respects the original artists and has a lot to live up to.

Her orchestral version could make a grown man cry. It's strange because the strings have a light almost happy tone, like a little brook, whereas the voice is happy, but painfully.