A look at some of the most tasteless, and terrible music fashions to have been inflicted on us during the decade of the 90's.
The Death Of Tupac Shakur & Biggie SmallsNo other musical genre has lamented the loss of it’s fallen stars quite like Hip Hop. Along with Big L and Big Pun, Tupac and Biggie were talismanic stars within the world’s biggest selling musical movement.
They lived and breathed the art of real Hip Hop, and were suitably admired by all, even people who disliked this style of music.
I think the reason so many people, to this day, still love and mourn these two fallen stars is that they were gateway artists. Their overwhelming popularity afforded them exposure to people who’d never even heard of someone like Kool G Rap, Rakim and even Wu Tang, who were all immensely popular within the rap community at the time.
But, all this interest in Hip Hop that came from the Suge Knight fuelled West coast versus East coast feud has done nothing but harm the genre. People realised that conflict sold records, the traditional beef in Hip Hop had come a long way since Lolita Shante assumed the role of Roxanne, and dissed UTFO, over their own beat, in answer to their record “Roxanne, Roxanne”.
“Now everybody wanna be ‘pac, till they ass really get popped,
And they die on the third day”
(Jadakiss “Mighty D Block” From the Sheek Louch Album “Walk Witt Me”)
I’m not sure about other Hip Hop fans, but I really don’t want to hear references to dead rappers in every other verse. If it’s not 50 cent or Ja Rule proclaiming to be the reincarnated Makaveli, it’s fledgling rappers such as Joell Ortiz and Big Lou penning entire tunes dedicated to the memory of their idols.
“If I could turn back the hands of time,
I’d bring Biggie Smalls back just one more time,
I’d make Big Pun and Pac drop one more line,
If I could turn back the hands of time, I’d make the clock rewind”
(Big Lou “Spiritual Metaphysics”)
The thing is with all this adulation, everyone in rap mistakenly believes they can be the next Tupac or Biggie, and go out of their ways to involve themselves in as much controversy and beef as possible, mainly when it comes down close to releasing records.
I think they should just concentrate on becoming better lyricists and keeping their artistic integrity, as there are a hell of a lot of rappers around these days who sell millions on the back of the hot beats they buy from skilled producers. If they had to rely on the bargain basement beats that Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambataa, Big Daddy Kane and Slick Rick rapped over, they’d be fucked.
Cry Baby Rock Music
Some of the greatest and angriest music ever was birthed by the Hardcore movement of the 80’s and 90’s. Hardcore is the white man’s version of Hip Hop, full of anger and tales of political injustice, and an overall feeling of persecution at the hands of the police. Hardcore is truly a man’s genre, entwined with gang culture, and sung by musclebound, tattooed skinheads. Bands like Madball, Agnostic Front, Biohazard, Knuckledust and 25 ta Life still exemplify this genre, with real men kicking the absolute shit out of each other at their gigs, all in the pursuit of a good night out.
Hardcore went from this:
“Why you turn your back
On the crew
We always had your back
We'd die for you
You ratted on your boy
Something you never do
Now his life is over
And yours is too”
(Madball – “Down By Law”)
To This:
“Someday they’ll see, someday I’ll be
Unwanting of somewhere to hide
But for now I’ll take shelter
Deep in the back of my mind
Can it wait? can’t you wait?
’cause I ain’t ready to lay it on the line
I still shake, I still shake
From this chill in my spine”
(Life Of agony – “Through and Through”)
The Life Of Agony lyric is taken from the album “A River Runs Red”, a concept album about the diary of a suicide. I personally love the album, it is musically one of the best Hardcore albums ever released, but it is also this album I blame on bringing about the concept of cry baby, self pitying rock music. The album had plenty of references to wanting to die, and to self harm, and it seems a lot of recent bands who claim to be playing hardcore seem to have adopted this suicidal stance in their music.
Even harder edged bands such as Caliban, Bullet for my Valentine, As Hope Dies and Everytime I Die seem to have made their career out of selling to music to pathetic little goths who wear tight jeans and black eyeliner so thick, it makes the seam on their grandmothers nylons look invisible.
Unfortunately, Emo, as Hardcore now wants to be known, is breeding a generation of bully fodder, genuine wimps, who go out intentionally looking different, to supposedly challenge popular culture, only to whine when they are persecuted for looking “different”. The thing that get’s me about these fringe cultures, is everyone makes such a big deal out of being an individual, but when you go to a gig by, let’s say My Chemical Romance, where everyone looks the same and then they proceed to call you a trendy cunt for wearing normal clothes.
“Erm, I’m the only one who looks out of place, who is following the trend?”
And don’t even start me on about the (emo) hair……
The Early 90’s Black Metal Controversy
Metal never needed much fuel in order to create a stir. Since it’s inception, it’s had such luminaries as Ozzy Osbourne, drug crazed and biting the heads from small animals at gigs, fuelling the protests from religious zealots to have it banned. Satan has always been an ally to heavy metal, it creates the necessary religious fervour, that no amount of paid promotion could serve up, with the most controversial bands selling the most records. Bands like Motley Crue, and Bon Jovi used explicit sexual imagery to stir up the ol’ religious nutters during the 80’s.
During the early 90’s, mere provocation and bible basher baiting wasn’t enough for a small circle of friends based in the Oslo, Norway metal scene, they had to go one step further, you know, in the name of pushing musical extremity even further. Death metal was no longer the average head banging, morbidly obsessed metallers music of choice. Their reasoning was that death metal had become lazy and wore tracksuits during gigs, as opposed to full leather and spikes, and that death metal bands did not live the life that they preached in their music. In their opinions, to sing about death, meant to totally immerse themselves in it.
A small group of Norwegian and Swedish musicians took this concept to it’s ultimate conclusion resulting in a crimewave of which could never be repeated ever again.
All of a sudden, ancient stave churches all over Norway began burning, in the name of black metal national socialism. They could not have been very well educated, as many of the buildings burned were Viking heritage sites, having been built by the very culture they were fighting to preserve, and later taken on by the Christian church.
Like I said, the main players in this Scandinavian saga sought to purge Judeo Christian influence from their homeland, but only shot themselves in the foot, as many of the buildings they torched, were built by the ancestors whose culture they were seeking to reintroduce.
This was not yet the worse to come.
A darker part of the “Black Metal Crimewave” hit Scandinavia, and even Germany in a copycat murder.
In 1993, Varg Vikernes, of the one man black metal project Burzum, murdered Oystein Aarseth, guitarist of the legendary band Mayhem. Vikernes viciously stabbed Aarseth 23 times, in what is rumoured to have been either an argument over royalities from record sales (Burzum was signed to DSP, Aarseth’s label), or it was an act of oneupmanship, merely committed to outdo the stabbing of a gay man, in Lillehammer, the previous year at the hands of Bard Eithun, drummer of the band Emperor.
These were not the only black metal murders to have hit black metal, in 1993, Hendrik Mobus of the NSBM band Absurd led his band members to kill Sandro Beyer, a student at the school the band had attended.
In his years in contact with the band, Sandro Beyer had proved himself unpopular, being a nuisance to all who had contact with him. Sandro had, after being rejected from the bands social group, threatened to expose band member Sebastian’s affair with an older, married christian woman. This was too much, and the band lured Sandro Beyer to an abandoned log cabin, with the aid of a female correspondent, to murder him.
In addition to these crimes, a number of suicides have happened in black metal circles, most famously Per Ohlin, or Dead of the band Mayhem. Upon discovery of “Dead’s” corpse, Euronymous is famously said to have kept bits of his skull on a pendent, and allegedly cooked up parts of his brain in a soup.
Another high profile suicide was the tragic loss of Jon Nodtveidt, of the Swedish band Dissection, he had simple had enough of the attention his involement in a Swedish murder he had commited had given him, and took his band on a final “goodbye” tour, then took his own life. In my opinion, he was the most talented black metal musician of all time, one listen to the album “Storm Of The Light’s Bane” will confirm this to anyone who doubts me.
Chopped & Screwed and Crunk
Quite simply, the most awful styles of music to ever have happened. They are the bastard children of dirty south Hip Hop, Crunk is a rowdy, basic form of Hip Hop, mainly with it’s roots in “Reppin’ Yo Set”, crunk joints usually comprise of abrasive beats, with almost chanted simplistic lyrics. In most examples this simplicity relies on the origin of the word “Crunk” meaning to be drunk and rowdy, most people when they are drunk don’t want to listen to anything too intelligent, thus, this is mainly a clubbing type of music.
Funnily enough, Websters Dictionary lists only Outkast and Lil Jon as proponents of crunk, I’d say Outkast were better than 99% of all Hip Hop out right now and would not class them as Crunk at all.
Chopped and Screwed is, by far, the most annoying genre of Hip Hop culture. Originating in Houston, Texas, and pioneered by the late DJ Screw, it basically comprised of regular Hip Hop joints, mainly by southern artists, slowed down. The reasoning behind this slowing down of music was attributed to the consumption of “purple syrup” or “sizzurp” a mixture of codeine and alcohol, which funnily enough, the over use of this potent potion, was attributed to DJ Screw’s premature death, by heart attack.
Let’s hope this genre dies a similar abrupt death!
Karaoke
Karaoke can be a laugh, if everyone knows it’s a only for fun. Not everyone takes it as that though. Eeeek, I’ve seen people make complete fools of themselves on Karaoke nights, at local clubs and pubs all over London.
Everyone knows the old saying “If you can laugh at yourself people will laugh with you”.
Unfotunately, I’ve seen people get laughed off stage, because they actually believed they could sing, all down to Karaoke.
At a nightclub in Kingston Upon Thames, McKlusky’s, there was a regular Karaoke night, not sure about now, as I haven’t been in a while, but the last time I was there, I saw a down syndrome boy and girl combo get booed offstage, after a botched attempt at Cuttin Crew’s “(I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight”. It may have been slightly cruel, but pissed people just don’t have any kind of sentimental reasoning.
Karaoke is one of the worst things to happen in music, it gave birth to shows like “Stars In Their Eyes” and “The X Factor”, and is responsible for millions of broken hearts the world over (as well as shootings in the Philipines).
It’s just tasteless.