people around here (at least in my part of california) have made it “cool” now to be into “underground” music. particularly “underground rap” and techno. the funny part is tho, underground to these kids is like immortal technique(who is real cool, don’t get me wrong, but you can now find his CD’s in pretty much any store that carries a variety of music, whereas i have to order alot of music online if i want it, or go to special stores).
this could be good however, because prior to me noticing this, i’ll introduce someone to a new song, qn5 oriented or even some other less popular stuff, and kids will just brush it off for the most part, because they’re simply into fads and don’t want to exert the effort to comprehend the lyrics, or they merely don’t have the ability to do so. to the point where i generally don’t try anymore, unless i got some friends over i’ll play some, and i always got some good songs on my myspace.
people just want a hot beat and some meaningless lyrics, that is labeled as underground. the upside tho, is that maybe people will eventually get on to some of the realer music, not some wack lyric, mainstream “underground” bullshit.
once again, don’t get me wrong, that once something becomes more known, i can’t like it anymore, that’s not what i’m saying at all. i just find it cute.
I don’t bother questioning or disagreeing with someone’s reason for listening to the music they listen to. Honestly, I’d just be glad that they’re listening to good hip-hop in the first place. Not everyone who gets into it as a “fad” is going to abandon it once it’s not cool any more.
Besides, more money in the pocket of good MC’s = more music from them, so I can’t complain.
Yes, it gets a lot of deserving artists shine and sales, but it also means that you get a lot people fronting just to be stylish. I would rather have people listen to underground rap because they actually enjoy and respect it as an artform, not because it’s “cool” or “popular”.
But, that’s asking too much of most people these days.
Stereotypical “Underground heads” generally don’t take to QN5 well.
Many of them listen to “underground rap” simply because its the antithesis of whats on the radio and they have some friends that are into it so they aren’t completely alone.
So…whats the opposite of super clean, crisp beats with rappers with little to no substance but great flow and charisma rapping about rims?
Super muddy, overly-wordy, poorly delivered raps about science over crusty boom-bap…so thats what they go for, regardless if its dope or not. Many “underground heads” are just as much sheep as your average pop radio listener, truth be told…and your average underground rapper is just as much of a gimmick as their mainstream counterparts. If you’re biggest selling point is “you ain’t like that mainstream shit” you need to stop rapping immediately.
QN5 is crusty BUT clean, substance-filled BUT not TOO over-your-head, charismatic but not ALL swagger. Complicated lyrics but…pop-worthy hooks? It makes your average “followers” head explode, honestly.
QN5 appeals to people with their own personal tastes who simply like good rap music, period. Not many of those left.
well, i guess if it is a form of trying to be different and go against the grain, i’d prefer that, as opposed to kids cutting themselves and worshipping jeffrey star. it’s just obnoxious when you observe this occurring, for myself as well as i’m sure people making real music.
I think there is a different reason that people don’t take well to QN5. When I was first getting into underground rap I did it on my own (as many do) so I was first exposed to the underground juggernauts, so to speak, rather than any of my friend’s personal favorites. Because of this, the first artists I heard about were Immortal Technique, Jedi Mind Tricks, MF Doom, Atmosphere, Murs, and Aesop Rock. They’re typically regarded as the “elite” underground artists, in a sense. They’re the 50 cent’s and eminem’s and Jay-z’s of the independent hip-hop stratosphere. In fact, the only reason I even found QN5 was because I stumbled across Tonedeff on Peruvian Cocaine.
So, when people are first getting into underground hip-hop they tend to find these artists and cling to them. I personally remember casting aside a few artists that I came across because they were either “too small” or just didn’t sound that different from what was on the radio (as kno said). Because of this, I stuck to the more abstract field of hip-hop before digging into some of the other stuff out there. After I got over my initial “UNDERGROUND IS KOOL CUZ ITS NOT ON THE RADIO WOO!” phase and really started listening to it just because I enjoyed it I found some other artists such as the crew at QN5 as well as cats like Brother Ali, One.Be.Lo, Wordsworth, Blackalicious, Cannibal Ox and others.
However, I think there are a lot of people who never really dive beyond that initial handful of the biggest stars in the indie scene and, because of that, you almost have a gray area where the biggest “underground” rappers are semi-mainstream rather than truly underground. Hell, I just saw Atmosphere’s video on MTV2 the other day. Personally, I don’t give a fuck how famous someone is… music is music. I do think it’s pretty unfortunate, though, that some people never dive beyond those 6 or 7 artists that you come across just by scratching the surface and, because of this, you have indie hip-hop artists with 200,000 fans and then you have other indie hip-hop artists with 20,000 fans or 2,000 fans.
Since my initial sampling of underground music, I’ve come to realize that I’m not sure what I liked about certain artists in the first place and realized that the further you dig, the more dope shit you find. I’d imagine that others can relate.
edit- case in point, I was looking through this one guy’s iPod at school the other day and noticed a handful of “underground” tracks. I put it in quotations because the only underground rappers on his iPod happened to be tech n9ne and Jedi Mind Tricks. I heard him talking later about how he hates mainstream rap and I just thought to myself
I have to admit, when I first got into underground rap, I adopted the whole “mainstream is complete shit, underground reigns supreme!!!” mindset ops:
But, thankfully, I’ve since dropped that mentality completely, coming to the “good music is good music, regardless of label” idea instead. I think it’s extremely common for most people who first dive into the underground scene to go through the same process, but unfortunately, many never go farther than “mainstream is terrible!”.
I guess I’m old enough to remember when you could turn on YO! or Rap City and see a wide variety of music played. Hip hop was hip hop, no designated classes. Some shit was wack some shit was fresh, but ultimately, it was up to the fans to decide. I explictly remember seeing Brand Nubian competing with Dr. Dre for the top spot on the Rap City countdown. I don’t want to get too nostalgic about this but I do miss that aspect of hip hop.
gangstasmurf06 said:I think there is a different reason that people don’t take well to QN5. Immortal Technique, Jedi Mind Tricks, MF Doom, Atmosphere, Murs, and Aesop Rock. They’re typically regarded as the “elite” underground artists, in a sense. They’re the 50 cent’s and eminem’s and Jay-z’s of the independent hip-hop stratosphere.
Well, this really is just an extension of what I said except some artists have the means to make their case to kids looking for the “opposite of mainstream” by having ads in magazines, videos on MTV2, $3000 per month publicists, video publicists, street teams, appearances on late night talk shows via big name booking agencies, etc.
While theres nothing wrong with that and we’d do it in a heartbeat if given the opportunity, I’m moreso talking about fans who do hear us and choose not to listen for their own reasons…not people who didn’t see us on Jimmy Kimmel Live (cus we were never on it) or MTVU so they don’t know we exist.
I hear ya. QN5 definitely doesn’t fit the typical mold of what indie hip-hop “should” be. Obviously I fucking love what you guys are doing but a lot of cats are just in it to be different, as you said.
Kno said:Stereotypical “Underground heads” generally don’t take to QN5 well.
Many of them listen to “underground rap” simply because its the antithesis of whats on the radio and they have some friends that are into it so they aren’t completely alone.
So…whats the opposite of super clean, crisp beats with rappers with little to no substance but great flow and charisma rapping about rims?
Super muddy, overly-wordy, poorly delivered raps about science over crusty boom-bap…so thats what they go for, regardless if its dope or not. Many “underground heads” are just as much sheep as your average pop radio listener, truth be told…and your average underground rapper is just as much of a gimmick as their mainstream counterparts. If you’re biggest selling point is “you ain’t like that mainstream shit” you need to stop rapping immediately.
QN5 is crusty BUT clean, substance-filled BUT not TOO over-your-head, charismatic but not ALL swagger. Complicated lyrics but…pop-worthy hooks? It makes your average “followers” head explode, honestly.
QN5 appeals to people with their own personal tastes who simply like good rap music, period. Not many of those left.
In a similar vein, that reminds me of a “discussion” that was had on ughh.com a few weeks back about the White Tang Clan—La Coka Nostra.
The video those dudes had has a sample Jay-Z rocked, and all the lyrics are of the same “I got drugs” variety that “underground fans” claim to hate out of the mainstream/mixtape rapper (read: black?—sorry, gotta take it there) scene. Read any internet conversation about the state of music in the eyes of these kids, and they’ll claim that the drug rap is a poison. They’re always trying to show that they fell into underground music while trying to get away from the mainstream bullshit; when really all they wanted was a cheaper imitation.
Underground fans fall for marketing strategies just as easily as the MTV crowd. They’ll buy into a press release that compares a group to the Tribe Called Quest of 2008, just as easily as another kid applauds MTV for callin Lil Wayne Top 5 of the decade, or whatever list they just made.
So basically, word to what you said—the majority of fans for Qn5, or at least those that post here are people that enjoy the music simply for what it is, in its rawest form. It’s probably why there’s always been so much debate here between some fans who might really like Paul Landry and those of us who legitimately enjoy Cam’ron… and anything else in between. Qn5 is the common ground for the fan that decides for themselves—not the fan that can run through the gamut of flavor of the month indie artists.
Kno said:Stereotypical “Underground heads” generally don’t take to QN5 well.
Many of them listen to “underground rap” simply because its the antithesis of whats on the radio and they have some friends that are into it so they aren’t completely alone.
So…whats the opposite of super clean, crisp beats with rappers with little to no substance but great flow and charisma rapping about rims?
Super muddy, overly-wordy, poorly delivered raps about science over crusty boom-bap…so thats what they go for, regardless if its dope or not. Many “underground heads” are just as much sheep as your average pop radio listener, truth be told…and your average underground rapper is just as much of a gimmick as their mainstream counterparts. If you’re biggest selling point is “you ain’t like that mainstream shit” you need to stop rapping immediately.
QN5 is crusty BUT clean, substance-filled BUT not TOO over-your-head, charismatic but not ALL swagger. Complicated lyrics but…pop-worthy hooks? It makes your average “followers” head explode, honestly.
QN5 appeals to people with their own personal tastes who simply like good rap music, period. Not many of those left.
In a similar vein, that reminds me of a “discussion” that was had on ughh.com a few weeks back about the White Tang Clan—La Coka Nostra.
The video those dudes had has a sample Jay-Z rocked, and all the lyrics are of the same “I got drugs” variety that “underground fans” claim to hate out of the mainstream/mixtape rapper (read: black?—sorry, gotta take it there) scene. Read any internet conversation about the state of music in the eyes of these kids, and they’ll claim that the drug rap is a poison. They’re always trying to show that they fell into underground music while trying to get away from the mainstream bullshit; when really all they wanted was a cheaper imitation.
Underground fans fall for marketing strategies just as easily as the MTV crowd. They’ll buy into a press release that compares a group to the Tribe Called Quest of 2008, just as easily as another kid applauds MTV for callin Lil Wayne Top 5 of the decade, or whatever list they just made.
So basically, word to what you said—the majority of fans for Qn5, or at least those that post here are people that enjoy the music simply for what it is, in its rawest form. It’s probably why there’s always been so much debate here between some fans who might really like Paul Landry and those of us who legitimately enjoy Cam’ron… and anything else in between. Qn5 is the common ground for the fan that decides for themselves—not the fan that can run through the gamut of flavor of the month indie artists.
Funny because I never thought of this as an issue before, but I can kind of see what you mean.
I never could afford cable, so I never watched music television; most of the time I just rocked whatever cds I owned, which were almost always things that my friends had shown to me first. I didn’t actually have internet until 2004 or thereabouts, and all I’d heard about it was that viruses could fuck up your computer so I avoided downloading. What I’m trying to say is, I’ve always had limited exposure to media, not just the mainstream media. I guess at some point in my high school career I must have sounded like a pretentious twat who was rebelling against The Man: “I don’t watch TV. I don’t listen to radio.”
It was probably good for me though, because what I did listen to was just shit that I heard somewhere that I thought was hot and it resonated with me at the time. There were some epic misses (Linkin Park - shut up, I was an angry anguished kid), but there were some pretty big hits (I heard k-os somewhere in the T.O., asked who he was and, with my shiny new paycheck, copped his album after only having heard one track).
It was after I got internet that I became acquainted, kind of, with QN5. My friend F. sent me a couple of tracks that somebody had sent him, Love Ain’t and Lynguistics. The problem was they were badly tagged as Cunning Linguists and Linguistics, and I didn’t think to use Google so I was just pissed off that I couldn’t find anymore. I listened to those tracks religiously until I was smoking sesh at someone’s place and they threw Southernunderground on. It was then that I, rather excitedly, discovered the true identities of the folk I’d been listening to for months. From then on it’s just been like a rabbit hole that’s brought me all over hip-hop and music in general, underground and mainstream.
Since discovering how the internet works, I’ve followed samples, cameos, name drops, to the furthest reaches until I can safely say that I’m musically affluent.
Maybe a bit of a selling point that I use when I’m introducing friends to QN5 is that QN5’s not like that mainstream shit. I don’t think that’s a bad thing in this case though - when you’re trying to get suburban Russian kids to listen to their first hip-hop album, you’re entitled to use whatever tactics that work, including contradicting their common, misinformed perception of what hip-hop is.
Either way, don’t hate the labels, I say. Work with them. Do your damn hardest to make QN5 seem “underground” enough for these trendies to wear to their anti-prom or whatever it is they’re into.
”...it becomes a cynical, negative movement, and people bond over what they hate instead of over what they love. I’ve been saying that forever. The quote-unquote ‘underground identity’ is full of shit.”
”...it becomes a cynical, negative movement, and people bond over what they hate instead of over what they love. I’ve been saying that forever. The quote-unquote ‘underground identity’ is full of shit.”
I know we’re on the page because of your previous post, but I find this particular quote ironic.
For every person that blindly embraces the “underground identity” as an adversarial response to “the mainstream,” there’s going to be another that embraces the “anti-underground” as a counter-position to “the underground.”
This type of thinking spawns people who will hear a song on the radio, hate it—perhaps for legitimate reasons, but then force themselves to like it because they don’t want to sound like an “underground elitist.” Because they’re “above being full of shit.”
There’s no difference here. They’re further entrenched in the same cycle. Both types of people derive actualization from being an opposite, and place emotional value into that which is (supposedly) valueless. They give their reference points weight.
I love music to the point that hearing work that is (1) sonic garbage, and (2) lacking in honest artistic effort literally hurts the soul. It kills. I’m tired of feeling the aftershocks of work that does not, and should not, concern me.
A few weeks ago I came across this piece of dialogue while rereading an old book. It’s not philosophically profound or whatever. And I don’t agree with everything the author writes. But it simply makes sense:
The Fountainhead said:“Howard, there’s something wrong, something very terribly wrong in the world if you were given your greatest job - as a filthy joke”
...
“When will you stop thinking about that? About the world? When will you learn to forget it?”
It isn’t about denial, it’s about acknowledging the value of your energy and being responsible about where you allocate it.
i don’t understand the “only trendy people listen to artist x, only people who wanna wail against the mainstream listen to artist y, only nazis listen to this guy, only girls who wanna dance listen to so and so” way of thinking…i just don’t…
i’ve never felt comfortable telling someone “oooh you only like that song cuz your brainwashed by commercialism” or that anyone listens to anything for any reason….i can see middleschool and high school kids gravitating towards certain movements in an attempt to be popular….but beyond that, is there really widespread occurances of people convincing themselves that they like a particular sub-genre or group of artists?
is it inconcievable that some people sincerely don’t enjoy anything on the radio? are self esteems so shot that any decent marketing ploy will completely reshape a persons taste or lack thereof? I’ve always felt like the average person isn’t going to be so into music that they go out of their way to find shit they really love, therefore their casual listening habits are dictated by whatever they hear without much effort. And its not cuz their brainwashed zombies in the majority of the cases, its just that they’re perfectly content with whatever limited music they’ve attained cuz its just not that important to them.
I have no idea what point in the thread I think i’m addressing…word
A lot of people I know don’t enjoy music to the point that they constantly seek out new artists. Like Wrist was saying, they are content with whatever they are fed through the radio and MTV. However, one must not mistake being content with being brainwashed by the media. Some people simply judge one song from the radio by whatever else is on the radio. In my opinion, they are missing out, but I don’t think they are brainwashed in any sense. Lazy, if anything.
NicK the NiNjA said on Mar 25, 2008:
QN5_Fan said on Mar 25, 2008:
NicK the NiNjA said on Mar 25, 2008:
Inferno said on Mar 25, 2008:
houstonz said on Mar 25, 2008:
artistKno said on Mar 25, 2008:
artistQN5 said on Mar 25, 2008:
IronGrrl said on Mar 25, 2008:
NicK the NiNjA said on Mar 25, 2008:
Ankur87 said on Mar 25, 2008:
The Trashman said on Mar 26, 2008:
QN5_Fan said on Mar 26, 2008:
Inferno said on Mar 27, 2008:
ill_spec said on Mar 27, 2008:
artistKno said on Mar 27, 2008:
QN5_Fan said on Mar 27, 2008:
Amen said on Mar 27, 2008:
ill_spec said on Mar 28, 2008:
The Scribe said on Mar 28, 2008:
Electri said on Mar 28, 2008:
artistKno said on Apr 06, 2008:
amplifya said on Apr 06, 2008:
Monotonous ONE said on Apr 08, 2008:
The Trashman said on Apr 08, 2008:
deStructuralized said on Apr 08, 2008:
Amen said on Apr 10, 2008:
TheCrob said on Apr 11, 2008:
houstonz said on Apr 11, 2008:
The Wrist said on Apr 16, 2008:
Blazer_Nation said on Apr 16, 2008:
NDub said on Apr 16, 2008: