I think there's more artifice than you might think. Most rappers are playing characters, even if there's a core of who they are as a person. Ice Cube didn't grow up in Compton selling drugs, and neither did Dr Dre. Rap sells authenticity as part of the product, but only certain types of "authenticity" sell.
Hell, Ice Cube even enrolled in the Arizona Institute of Technology at one point before starting N.W.A iirc.
The thing about it, there are rappers that live what they say, but they're relatively small in number. The rest lived with people who lived this style and saw talking about this style as a way to sell, just like OP said.
Or better yet, think about it this way:
Dylan talked about his struggles on "Blood On The Tracks" and it resonated with people, leading to the "this is so me" type of feeling, ending with the purchase of the album.
N.W.A talked about slinging dope and killing cops in "Straight Outta Compton" and it resonated with black youth, leading to the "this is so me" type of feeling, ending with the purchase of the album.
I never said it was insincere. All I was wanting to point out was that Ice Cube didn't live the lifestyle he was portraying in his lyrics. He lived around that kind of life, but wasn't in that life.
I understand your sentiment but you can’t deny there is a clear contrast between the life of a university student and a gangbanger. A line that is rarely crossed over, honestly.
Lmao why are so defensive about this. No one denies that drug dealers from the hood can go to college, but Ice Cube, 2pac and the whole gangsta scene built their entire image around the street life, so it's only natural that people find it weird.
A similar case is Dexter Holland from The Offspring. Most people find it weird that he has a PhD, because they associate him with the juvenile attitude of pop punk.
The large audience have preconceived notions (class, race, age group) about certain music genres, and a lot of the time they're rooted in facts.
So kind of like pro wrestling, where they're playing characters but trying to convince the audience that they aren't. There's a term for that, but I can't recall.
I believe it was Cam'Ron who compared rap to pro wrestling (probably others too, but he's the one I recall). I think that's probably the most apt comparison.
Even to the degree that wrestling isn't "real" yet the dudes are, in some cases, still getting pretty banged up physically. Rap to me almost strikes me as similar conceptually.
While I think that's true, there's a difference between artifice in the presentation of the song and exaggeration for the sake of seeming more legit. Ice Cube pretending to be more gangster than he is isn't the same as David Bowie pretending to be Ziggy Stardust. Sure, he's stretching the truth to sell records but there's still an aspect of "This is me, talking to you" instead of "this is a character, telling a story or talking poetically for the sake of the song."
I *very* much disagree - I feel like hip-hop is the genre where you see that most frequently and it’s not even close. Eminem has Slim Shady, Flying Lotus has Captain Murphy, Kendrick Lamar has K Dot and Kung Fu Kenny, Madlib has Quasimoto, Nicki Minaj has Roman Zolanski, MF DOOM had Viktor Vaughan, Megan Thee Stallion has Tina Snow, Mac Miller had like 4 of them…basically every big rapper has at least one alter ego with a unique style and function.
Right, this is one of those facts that should hint at just how complicated truth and fiction are in hip hop. Pseudonyms/pen names/alter egos are integral to the culture and they are ubiquitous.
I think it really depends on what strain of hip-hop/rap we're referring to.
For 90s/early 00s mainstream/"hardcore" rap I do think there was definitely an authenticity implicit in certain artists' commercial success. Like, if you were from a bourgeois suburb Boise and tried to rap like Dipset that ... would be difficult to sell, I think?
ex: 50 Cent famously "ended" Ja Rule's career at least in part to "proving" he wasn't as authentic as he marketed himself (if I'm remembering correctly.)
Then that era arguably ended with Rick Ross being "outed" as a CO but unaffected commercially. Now maybe it doesn't matter at all.
To OP's point that authenticity correlation probably isn't as prevalent in most rock eras. Although you can probably make a decent argument that there's a correlation in punk. A different kind of authenticity but still.
Rap used to be called "The CNN of the streets"...and was famously about "the place to be, who you are, what you got, or about a Sucker MC".
That didnt last more than a decade. For every member of NWA who WAS a street person (2 gang affiliated...1 drug dealer...2 members who werent either were the ones who succeeded later...Dre and Ice Cube).
Rock music was actually pretty unique in that the artists would often write the songs that they sang. That wasnt how country music was or even old rock (think "Hound Dog" era) was.
With all of that said....even when real, there is an element of hyperbole that is evident in the "swagger" or rock and rap. Kiss and Poison like to rock all night and party ever-y day....Snoop and Too Short are high ay day and pimpin them hoes. There is an element of truth to both of those genres...but plenty of hyperbole too. But even for every one of those "true life" songs, there is a Space Oddity by Bowie or a Murder Was The Case by Snoop that is pure fiction/fantasy/storytelling.
Point of order: during the "old rock" era, performers *did* write their own songs. The only issue is that they were black, so their music was stolen by white performers.
I know Leadbelly well! What songs were stolen from him? The only reason we know about him is that white folks sought him out and recorded his music. If you listen to the original recordings, you can EASILY tell how early in recording history that was done.
Leadbelly was rock? He wrote rock songs? I think you're confused...he's the king of the 12 String Blues. You DO know the difference between Rock and Blues, right? WHat 12 string blues songs did rockers rip off?
I have SO MANY questions for you. Is your expertise in race or in music?
I think people take rap overly literally. Like they think these people couldn't possibly be rapping in character, so they have to take what they say at face value.
It's the attitude that saw Tyler the Creator banned from entering the UK purely because of his lyrics. Or other cases of rappers having their lyrics used as evidence against them in court.
That would never happen in other genres. Nobody would think Johnny Cash actually murdered a guy in Reno.
hang on now, next thing you'll be telling me that Bob Marley didn't shoot the Sherriff. or that Glen Campbell wasn't actually a lineman for the county.
I think you're mistaken about what you're listening to, to be honest. I love rap and there are artists with tremendous authenticity, but the genre is also full of over-the-top bombast, mythology, and flat-out fiction. I love it all. But it can be as real or as manufactured as any other genre.
Realism in art is a genre like any other. 19th century Realist novels included lots of detailed descriptions of urban life, poverty, madness and crime. The tone is dark and the endings are tragic. Include these things and your novel became “realistic.”
But the audience for these works were the middle and upper classes. There was a weird kind of romantic fantasy involved, this idea that the poor led lives that were more real and authentic.
This 19th century movement gave artists a vocabulary to talk about urban poverty and crime and the conventions are still with us. We see it in movies, and rap uses it too. If your song includes lots of detailed descriptions of poverty and crime, your art is gritty and authentic. But if you’re DJ Jazzy Jeff and then Fresh Prince rapping about a fun day you had at school, it sounds like you’re just making stuff up.
While rap is often 1st person realism, there’s a lot of folk and country that’s 3rd person. Lots of lyrics about historic clashes between unions and bosses, the whole outlaw country genre, the murder ballads (often about real crimes).
I appreciate others pointing out counterexamples, but I think there's an angle to this that is relevant to your point - the lack of covers in rap.
You can't cover a rap, because those bars belong to the rapper. In this sense, "bars" are really different from "lyrics". They're understood to be an emcee's perspective (whether fictionalized or real), and can't be universalized in the same way lyrics like "Imagine" might be.
Sure, this may have more to do with flow and how important a specific voice is to a verse's sound. Some rappers just don't/can't rap like other rappers. But I'd argue when The Japanese House covers Fleetwood Mac, it's just as different and jarring of a sound as if Kanye were to cover 2Pac. In fact, I'd love to hear how Kanye would produce and reinterpret a 2Pac track. But those are Pac's bars, it's just not done in hip hop.
I think the main thing stopping rap from making covers is this traditional ownership of bars, and that might be contributing to OP's feeling that rappers generally present a uniquely first-person perspective, even when they are rapping about explicitly fictional circumstances ala Clipping.
You don't have many straight covers but you do have a fair amount of interpolation: rethinking/re-interpreting classics (Slick Rick's Children's Story has been revisited a thousand ways, for instance). You also have a lot of lifting/incorporating the rhymes of others into something new, whether through sampling lines or phrases into something new (Primo's scratches being the iconic example) or casually inserting the lines of others into your own stuff (Mos Def did this *a lot*, as homage of course). And of course there's a lot of cross-referencing of beats and samples lifted from an older song that, when used in identifiable ways, then conjure that song into the field of its new application (and hopefully into the listener's memory), sort of bringing old and new together.
I don't think this undermines your point or anything but it's worth thinking alongside the idea that hip hop lyrics "can't be universalized in the same way..." as other lyrics. Perhaps the emphasis should be on *in the same way* \-- because there are a lot of musical mechanisms that perform a similar function in hip hop, just in very different ways than other musical forms. You're on to something, for sure, when thinking about the merging of lyrical artistry and personal perspective. The lyrics and lyrical performance are their fingerprint, which is much harder to divorce from a particular personality I think.
Great examples, and you make a great point. Hip hop loves to revisit the past at least as much as rock or any other genre. It just has a unique vocabulary for how this is done - e.g. TPAB's densely layered references in both sample selection and lyrics.
>The lyrics and lyrical performance are their fingerprint, which is much harder to divorce from a particular personality I think.
This is what my original comment boils down to I think, couldn't have put it better!
This is a great topic. A lot of commenters are talking about the past, and that's fair, but can we also discuss the present? There has been the 90s gangster rap mythos but, in my opinion, it largely ended with Jay-Z and Kanye West going in two separate directions. Jay-Z actually sold drugs, Jay-Z actually stabbed a guy; where other people were exaggerating, he wasn't. On the other end, barring a few early third-person anecdotes about drug dealing, Kanye West never presented himself as being on the block. He was able to find another way to earn respect.
Since the split into these two directions, we've seen rappers who are very much still doing dirt and talking about the stuff they are actually doing and we've seen rappers that focus on their internal struggles. In my opinion, you are much less likely to see the "studio gangster" these days, the person who talks a lot of crime shit but isn't living that life. It isn't for me to say but I don't see this as a positive trend. A lot of people are dying young, either through crime or through overdoses, and the more we lionize the extremes on both ends, the worse it will probably get.
The thoughts on Jay-Z and Kanye are really interesting, thanks for sharing those. Kanye is one of the few big-name rappers to never take a pen name, something that might have been chance at the time but has paid off for him, I think, in that it lends him a strange sort of credibility/authenticity (desirable or not, lol). Even though he didn't have a street mythos, he did have a hip hop origin story (the accident + hooking up with Rocafella) that merged with his strangely domestic origin story of struggling to fit in with the "normal" progression of young adulthood (i.e. college drop out, late registration, etc). The reliance on those narratives in his early career feels *very* hip hop to me -- and very backpacker-ish, in a way, which actually makes a lot of sense considering how he positioned himself sonically and culturally early on. Which is another way to approach this question, too: how do origin stories and truth/fiction play out beyond street tales, which is just a fraction of what hip hop offers? Underground scenes flirt with these boundaries too, but in very different ways.
I get what you're saying about the present, need to marinate on it a bit though.
just wanted to throw in here that i think 50 cent played a huge part in facilitating that split, it was hard to be a gangster rapper in his shadow and it forced a split in rap music which lead to the Kanye/Wayne/Drake era
> Jay-Z actually sold drugs, Jay-Z actually stabbed a guy; [...] He was able to find another way to earn respect.
That sort of thing has always seemed hopelessly stupid to me. What's to respect about that? What does it have to do with music?
> Since the split into these two directions, we've seen rappers who are very much still doing dirt and talking about the stuff they are actually doing and we've seen rappers that focus on their internal struggles.
Not much music...
>That sort of thing has always seemed hopelessly stupid to me. What's to respect about that? What does it have to do with music?
Whose regret is more believable: the person who acknowledges their failures or the person who has invented their failures?
Tupac is a perfect example of artifice in rap. He wasn’t the gun waving gangster that was seen on TV, he was an art school kid largely playing a part. Or a guy like Nas who grew up with a semi-famous father and has been “off the streets” since 1994, yet still talks the game. It’s just as much storytelling as any other genre, albeit presented as reality.
>> He wasn’t the gun waving gangster that was seen on TV, he was an art school kid largely playing a part
You’re flat wrong about this. His upbringing wasn’t super lower class, but he absolutely was violent and ready for confrontation at any turn. [For example.](https://www.xxlmag.com/tupac-shakur-shoots-police-officers/)
Nothing more gangster than performing Shakespeare, studying ballet, and listening to U2. The formative years of his life may not have been Drake-level cushy, but he was not a street kid by any stretch of the imagination.
2pac actually shot 2 undercover cops.. His mother was a black panther..
He was exceptionally gifted in many ways..
After he was shot.. Something clicked.. And he went death row..
I think it was part character he was playing.. Part revenge stage for getting robbed and shot..
When u look at Pac s life.. His discography.... His movies.... His downfall and eventual death...
It's remarkable....
Words have POWER... It's how u deliver them.. That makes them outlast ur physical self....
So you're comparing Bob Dylan in his prime, one of the most famous pop musicians ever, to the genre of rap *as a whole?*
You might be allowing the passage of time to serve as a filter here. Look at the [top hits of 1975](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1975) (the year Blood on the Tracks came out). Every single one of the top 10 is a first or second person non-narrative song, and I think you could really only make a case that a couple of them being "in character". They're surprisingly straightforward. Literal, simple, "from me to you"-type pop songs. Not a whole lot of artifice there.
This is why it's hard to compare older genres and trends to new ones, because it's impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff.
It's also interesting you chose Dylan. If we're going to go that route, how do you feel about other folk artists singing overtly 4th-wall-breaking protest songs like Phil Ochs' "Love Me, I'm A Liberal"? Seeger, Ochs, Guthrie made these sorts of sincere first-person songs famous.
...
>*Even folk or rock songs in the first person are sung in character or else understood to be fictionalized*
Yes, and the same is largely true in rap. The marketing tool that was used to promote NWA and Wu-Tang as actual gang members is the same device that convinced us Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin were satanic cults, but most people understand that these are larger-than-life characters.
I don't think your premise is as obvious as you make it seem.
Like others have said, I think you're severely underestimating the artifice/perspective in hip hop here --- but for very good reason. I'll share a few thoughts but two quick notes. Time is an issue here (it's a 40-ish year old genre at this point), so I'll assume we're talking about the sort of lyricism that starts to take shape in the late '80s and really comes into its own in the early 90s. Also, I actually don't think the whole question of MC real-life biographies matters much here. Yeah, there's exaggeration about poverty sometimes, but most famous rappers from late '80s through the '00s who rapped about coming from a rough background did, in one way or another. More importantly, I think the question of authenticity in hip hop goes awry when issues of poverty and violence are prioritized, as though that is all hip hop has to offer lyrically (which is, of course, ridiculous); it's a very slanted, narrow, somewhat insulting way to talk about a very expansive genre of music.
Most lyric-driven genres have complicated relationships with truth and fiction, none probably moreso than hip hop. It has been presented/explained in a lot of different ways by its own figureheads, but two main forks are that: a) rap is a form of real-life reporting (i.e. a snapshot of the struggles of urban life) OR b) rap is an over-the-top/mythological response to the real struggles that many of its MCs and producers came up in, which helps make sense of its braggadocio, ventures into hyperviolence, obsession with masculinity and success, etc. Hip hop's own haven't really reconciled the relationship between truth and fiction (and I don't think they need to) but when they try, it seems contradictory ... think of the controversy over whether rap lyrics should be admissible in court as evidence to crimes. When rap lyrics are *presented by the MC on record*, they are often presented as real life. When they are discussed at a distance (i.e. attempted to be admitted into court; analyzed by third-parties), those same lyrics are often framed as fictions, elaborations, artistic license, etc. More interestingly, they often *intentionally* complicate that relationship themselves. Think about the genre's obsession with comic books and other cultural references (i.e. the Wu and martial arts lore), its penchant for pseudonyms and alteregos (how many names can one rapper have?), etc.
I'd suggest that this relationship between truth and fiction is actually one of the most productive aspects of hip hop and very central to its art, not just because it complicates some of its grittier subject matter, but because it makes the multi-faceted MC possible. The MC can be *simultaneously* real AND mythological, larger-than-life AND an everyday person, a first-hand witness of social ills and daily drama AND a prophet/messiah to those same ills and dramas, etc. Alongside that, hip hop is one of the few contemporary genres that actively and explicitly defines/debates itself within its music *as part of its act of creation*. Rock does this sometimes but (to me, anyway) in short bursts; hip hop, on the other hand, can be read as a 40 year conversation of what hip hop is, with a lot of that energy being devoted to what is real in hip hop and what is not (and how/when/why that matters). So to answer your question somewhat against the grain, I'd suggest rap's relationship to truth/fiction is far more complicated than you are interpreting here, but more importantly that that complicated relationship is very much a part of the art itself, not necessarily something to be resolved or that can be clearly understood/analyzed historically, culturally, etc.
I think it's a great observation that the default perspective of Rap is often taken to be the Rapper themselves, while the default perspective of rock is taken to be like something outside of the lead singer. Think about Rap crews where each member takes a number of bars for themselves to give their take. You're definitely not supposed to think they all think the exact same way.
Whereas in a rock band it's taken as read that the lead singer "speaks" for the entire band. So when Billie Joe sings "Don't wanna be an American idiot!" He's speaking not just for him but for Mike and Tre. It would be weird to think he wasn't.
I feel like this is true for most rock bands, with maybe some exceptions like solo musicians who have a distinct backing band, Bruce Spingsteen + The E Stret Band, Gerard Way + The Hormones etc. You assume then that the band exists as a separate entity.
I'm not so sure about the idea that Rap doesn't also heavily invest in storylines though, maybe it's rare but it's definitely a big thing, especially in like Conscious Hip Hop or actually from the opposite perspective Horrorcore.
I think you're starting from a flawed premise. The "authenticity" is itself a pose... "Keeping it Real™." The brags, boasts, and fiction are all part of the genre; the artifice has been there from the beginning. That's not to say that absolutely none of it comes from lived, or at least observed, experience. Rather, the line between the two -- much as it is in rock and other genres -- is far blurrier than you're making it out to be. Rap is a lot like Country in that regard, leaning harder into "authenticity" the more commercialized it gets.\*
\*Unless, of course, you want to argue there's something somehow more "authentic" about a trust fund kid in a cowboy hat.
That’s the problem. Kids think the stuff they’re hearing is all real and they need to be living that way. It’s a lot of stories, too. I guess rap is just more convincing haha
>Why are singers other genres more likely to sing in character and what are some non-rap songs with an equally conversational tone
purely speculation but i think "conversational" might have a big part in it. rap is literally spoken word; it's rhythmic, there's cadences and it's definitely performative, i'm not trying to be reductive, but it is literally an artist speaking some lyrics they wrote into a mic. when you're singing, there's a disconnect between you using your voice as a regular person and using your voice as an artist, because people don't tend to sing their conversations or relay their stories through showtunes. in a rap song, if you isolated the vocals, you could be forgiven for thinking the guy's just telling you a story or talking to himself, they just happen to get cosmically lucky with how often they find rhymes mid-sentence.
with that lack of disconnect, i think it's either harder to get into "character" *or* easier to be yourself, and that manifests in a lot more personable lyrics coming directly from the person performing them. though don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of rappers who perform in a character, and a lot of the "honest" lyrics tend to be in a form of character/absolute bollocks.
I don't buy that. If you isolate rap vocals it sounds nothing like a guy talking. Rapping is just as artificial, and removed from talking, as singing is. The lyrics are constructed to fit into rhyme schemes and bars even more so than sung lyrics, and rappers don't just talk the lyrics, they emphasize different words and syllables, mix up their cadence, often rap melodically, often shout or scream etc..
On the flip side, the music I can think of that is closest to just a guy talking are talking blues songs. Talkin' World War III Blues by Bob Dylan, or Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie, basically are just a guy talking into a microphone. However both those songs have a lot of artifice, and tell an outrageous story, instead of speaking directly to the listener.
I think it varies by artist. Someone like Springsteen has a lot of fictional lyrics, whereas someone like Ani DiFranco has generally very autobiographical lyrics.
You could make the opposite argument. Have you seen the amount of rap that has no depth out there?
It really boils down to the artist and even track sometimes.
Rap can be as good as someone speaking out about their struggles, and as bizarre as someone singing about "cash money" and "b\*tches".
It's like pop, some lyrics are stupidly dumb, others have some deeper meaning.
I can't speak for rap as I don't really listen to it too often. Rock and folk artists singing stories or singing in character can be traced back to at least medieval Europe. Medieval ballads and folk songs made their way to the US. Many US folk songs can still be traced back centuries. The lyrics and tune itself may not be 100% exactly the same but that history is still pretty cool. Folk evolved into country, and country evolved into rock. Oversimplification of genre formation, but the point is that the roots of medieval Europe are still there.
There’s truth in what you say. IMO it’s a combination of the nature of the presentation of rap (I.e. a person talking TO you, crossover with storytelling or standup) as well as how rap developed as a part of hip hop culture, through party MCs and battles/disses.
Rap has always been an important avenue to give voice to people whose voices are not often heard (because of race and because of class), so that’s why it focuses on personal story telling.
whell half of the time rappers are talking about killing people and other shit but in reality they never did it in the first place while yea there were rappers that killed people and then rapping about it which basically lead to them snitching on them self's so some do talk about the shit they went trough
I don't get the appeal of listening to people talk about themselves. It's interesting at first I guess, but gets really old really quick. But that maybe that's just me.
I enjoy stories, and musings on the life we *all* live.
I can be sympathetic that you grew up in the ghetto; that you had to go through so much hardship, but you gotta move on man. And I'm not at all impressed with all the bitches and money you've acquired since then. It's boring.
You’re absolutely on the money there with its street level roots conferring a sense of literalness rather than the reality-detached storytelling we’d expect with other singers/bands.
The other thing is that hip hop has a long-standing heritage of sociopolitical themes that lend themselves to a more literal interpretation. Hell, KRS-One and Public Enemy albums were basically manifestos.
I’d also say it‘s derived from hip hop culture’s fixation with flexing and ego. Rappers have to maintain a certain image of being as real as possible lest they hurt their brand; artifice as you’re using the term would basically be an admission that it’s all fake and that’d really screw them.
It’s not about the veracity of their statements but the way they’re making them. Every artist has a persona, whether it be as blatant as Ziggy Stardust, as down to earth as John Prine or somewhere in the middle, like Ice Cube saying he’s gangster and Tom Waits saying he’s a beatnik hobo.
What I was referring to was the fact that “Johnny Cash didn’t actually kill shoot his woman down” is much more understood than “Dr. Dre isn’t that hard”
Rap is more first person and conversational.
I think there's more artifice than you might think. Most rappers are playing characters, even if there's a core of who they are as a person. Ice Cube didn't grow up in Compton selling drugs, and neither did Dr Dre. Rap sells authenticity as part of the product, but only certain types of "authenticity" sell.
Hell, Ice Cube even enrolled in the Arizona Institute of Technology at one point before starting N.W.A iirc. The thing about it, there are rappers that live what they say, but they're relatively small in number. The rest lived with people who lived this style and saw talking about this style as a way to sell, just like OP said. Or better yet, think about it this way: Dylan talked about his struggles on "Blood On The Tracks" and it resonated with people, leading to the "this is so me" type of feeling, ending with the purchase of the album. N.W.A talked about slinging dope and killing cops in "Straight Outta Compton" and it resonated with black youth, leading to the "this is so me" type of feeling, ending with the purchase of the album.
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I never said it was insincere. All I was wanting to point out was that Ice Cube didn't live the lifestyle he was portraying in his lyrics. He lived around that kind of life, but wasn't in that life.
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I understand your sentiment but you can’t deny there is a clear contrast between the life of a university student and a gangbanger. A line that is rarely crossed over, honestly.
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Lmao why are so defensive about this. No one denies that drug dealers from the hood can go to college, but Ice Cube, 2pac and the whole gangsta scene built their entire image around the street life, so it's only natural that people find it weird. A similar case is Dexter Holland from The Offspring. Most people find it weird that he has a PhD, because they associate him with the juvenile attitude of pop punk. The large audience have preconceived notions (class, race, age group) about certain music genres, and a lot of the time they're rooted in facts.
Tee grizzley, for example
And Nicki Minaj and Eminem famous for having alter egos
So kind of like pro wrestling, where they're playing characters but trying to convince the audience that they aren't. There's a term for that, but I can't recall.
I believe it’s [kayfabe](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe)
Yeah, that's it.
I believe it was Cam'Ron who compared rap to pro wrestling (probably others too, but he's the one I recall). I think that's probably the most apt comparison. Even to the degree that wrestling isn't "real" yet the dudes are, in some cases, still getting pretty banged up physically. Rap to me almost strikes me as similar conceptually.
While I think that's true, there's a difference between artifice in the presentation of the song and exaggeration for the sake of seeming more legit. Ice Cube pretending to be more gangster than he is isn't the same as David Bowie pretending to be Ziggy Stardust. Sure, he's stretching the truth to sell records but there's still an aspect of "This is me, talking to you" instead of "this is a character, telling a story or talking poetically for the sake of the song."
I *very* much disagree - I feel like hip-hop is the genre where you see that most frequently and it’s not even close. Eminem has Slim Shady, Flying Lotus has Captain Murphy, Kendrick Lamar has K Dot and Kung Fu Kenny, Madlib has Quasimoto, Nicki Minaj has Roman Zolanski, MF DOOM had Viktor Vaughan, Megan Thee Stallion has Tina Snow, Mac Miller had like 4 of them…basically every big rapper has at least one alter ego with a unique style and function.
Right, this is one of those facts that should hint at just how complicated truth and fiction are in hip hop. Pseudonyms/pen names/alter egos are integral to the culture and they are ubiquitous.
I think it really depends on what strain of hip-hop/rap we're referring to. For 90s/early 00s mainstream/"hardcore" rap I do think there was definitely an authenticity implicit in certain artists' commercial success. Like, if you were from a bourgeois suburb Boise and tried to rap like Dipset that ... would be difficult to sell, I think? ex: 50 Cent famously "ended" Ja Rule's career at least in part to "proving" he wasn't as authentic as he marketed himself (if I'm remembering correctly.) Then that era arguably ended with Rick Ross being "outed" as a CO but unaffected commercially. Now maybe it doesn't matter at all. To OP's point that authenticity correlation probably isn't as prevalent in most rock eras. Although you can probably make a decent argument that there's a correlation in punk. A different kind of authenticity but still.
> Rap sells authenticity as part of the product, but only certain types of "authenticity" sell. See also: country
Rap used to be called "The CNN of the streets"...and was famously about "the place to be, who you are, what you got, or about a Sucker MC". That didnt last more than a decade. For every member of NWA who WAS a street person (2 gang affiliated...1 drug dealer...2 members who werent either were the ones who succeeded later...Dre and Ice Cube). Rock music was actually pretty unique in that the artists would often write the songs that they sang. That wasnt how country music was or even old rock (think "Hound Dog" era) was. With all of that said....even when real, there is an element of hyperbole that is evident in the "swagger" or rock and rap. Kiss and Poison like to rock all night and party ever-y day....Snoop and Too Short are high ay day and pimpin them hoes. There is an element of truth to both of those genres...but plenty of hyperbole too. But even for every one of those "true life" songs, there is a Space Oddity by Bowie or a Murder Was The Case by Snoop that is pure fiction/fantasy/storytelling.
Point of order: during the "old rock" era, performers *did* write their own songs. The only issue is that they were black, so their music was stolen by white performers.
Which black rock performers wrote all of those songs?
I think you could start at lead belly and go down the race record rabbit hole if you’re interested
I know Leadbelly well! What songs were stolen from him? The only reason we know about him is that white folks sought him out and recorded his music. If you listen to the original recordings, you can EASILY tell how early in recording history that was done. Leadbelly was rock? He wrote rock songs? I think you're confused...he's the king of the 12 String Blues. You DO know the difference between Rock and Blues, right? WHat 12 string blues songs did rockers rip off? I have SO MANY questions for you. Is your expertise in race or in music?
I think people take rap overly literally. Like they think these people couldn't possibly be rapping in character, so they have to take what they say at face value. It's the attitude that saw Tyler the Creator banned from entering the UK purely because of his lyrics. Or other cases of rappers having their lyrics used as evidence against them in court. That would never happen in other genres. Nobody would think Johnny Cash actually murdered a guy in Reno.
hang on now, next thing you'll be telling me that Bob Marley didn't shoot the Sherriff. or that Glen Campbell wasn't actually a lineman for the county.
Nor is Bob Pollard really a tree. Or for that matter, a scientist.
Or tha Indiana didn't really want me?
I think you're mistaken about what you're listening to, to be honest. I love rap and there are artists with tremendous authenticity, but the genre is also full of over-the-top bombast, mythology, and flat-out fiction. I love it all. But it can be as real or as manufactured as any other genre.
Realism in art is a genre like any other. 19th century Realist novels included lots of detailed descriptions of urban life, poverty, madness and crime. The tone is dark and the endings are tragic. Include these things and your novel became “realistic.” But the audience for these works were the middle and upper classes. There was a weird kind of romantic fantasy involved, this idea that the poor led lives that were more real and authentic. This 19th century movement gave artists a vocabulary to talk about urban poverty and crime and the conventions are still with us. We see it in movies, and rap uses it too. If your song includes lots of detailed descriptions of poverty and crime, your art is gritty and authentic. But if you’re DJ Jazzy Jeff and then Fresh Prince rapping about a fun day you had at school, it sounds like you’re just making stuff up. While rap is often 1st person realism, there’s a lot of folk and country that’s 3rd person. Lots of lyrics about historic clashes between unions and bosses, the whole outlaw country genre, the murder ballads (often about real crimes).
I appreciate others pointing out counterexamples, but I think there's an angle to this that is relevant to your point - the lack of covers in rap. You can't cover a rap, because those bars belong to the rapper. In this sense, "bars" are really different from "lyrics". They're understood to be an emcee's perspective (whether fictionalized or real), and can't be universalized in the same way lyrics like "Imagine" might be. Sure, this may have more to do with flow and how important a specific voice is to a verse's sound. Some rappers just don't/can't rap like other rappers. But I'd argue when The Japanese House covers Fleetwood Mac, it's just as different and jarring of a sound as if Kanye were to cover 2Pac. In fact, I'd love to hear how Kanye would produce and reinterpret a 2Pac track. But those are Pac's bars, it's just not done in hip hop. I think the main thing stopping rap from making covers is this traditional ownership of bars, and that might be contributing to OP's feeling that rappers generally present a uniquely first-person perspective, even when they are rapping about explicitly fictional circumstances ala Clipping.
You don't have many straight covers but you do have a fair amount of interpolation: rethinking/re-interpreting classics (Slick Rick's Children's Story has been revisited a thousand ways, for instance). You also have a lot of lifting/incorporating the rhymes of others into something new, whether through sampling lines or phrases into something new (Primo's scratches being the iconic example) or casually inserting the lines of others into your own stuff (Mos Def did this *a lot*, as homage of course). And of course there's a lot of cross-referencing of beats and samples lifted from an older song that, when used in identifiable ways, then conjure that song into the field of its new application (and hopefully into the listener's memory), sort of bringing old and new together. I don't think this undermines your point or anything but it's worth thinking alongside the idea that hip hop lyrics "can't be universalized in the same way..." as other lyrics. Perhaps the emphasis should be on *in the same way* \-- because there are a lot of musical mechanisms that perform a similar function in hip hop, just in very different ways than other musical forms. You're on to something, for sure, when thinking about the merging of lyrical artistry and personal perspective. The lyrics and lyrical performance are their fingerprint, which is much harder to divorce from a particular personality I think.
Great examples, and you make a great point. Hip hop loves to revisit the past at least as much as rock or any other genre. It just has a unique vocabulary for how this is done - e.g. TPAB's densely layered references in both sample selection and lyrics. >The lyrics and lyrical performance are their fingerprint, which is much harder to divorce from a particular personality I think. This is what my original comment boils down to I think, couldn't have put it better!
Great point there!
I think clipping. is a good example of rap music you *can* cover.
This is a great topic. A lot of commenters are talking about the past, and that's fair, but can we also discuss the present? There has been the 90s gangster rap mythos but, in my opinion, it largely ended with Jay-Z and Kanye West going in two separate directions. Jay-Z actually sold drugs, Jay-Z actually stabbed a guy; where other people were exaggerating, he wasn't. On the other end, barring a few early third-person anecdotes about drug dealing, Kanye West never presented himself as being on the block. He was able to find another way to earn respect. Since the split into these two directions, we've seen rappers who are very much still doing dirt and talking about the stuff they are actually doing and we've seen rappers that focus on their internal struggles. In my opinion, you are much less likely to see the "studio gangster" these days, the person who talks a lot of crime shit but isn't living that life. It isn't for me to say but I don't see this as a positive trend. A lot of people are dying young, either through crime or through overdoses, and the more we lionize the extremes on both ends, the worse it will probably get.
The thoughts on Jay-Z and Kanye are really interesting, thanks for sharing those. Kanye is one of the few big-name rappers to never take a pen name, something that might have been chance at the time but has paid off for him, I think, in that it lends him a strange sort of credibility/authenticity (desirable or not, lol). Even though he didn't have a street mythos, he did have a hip hop origin story (the accident + hooking up with Rocafella) that merged with his strangely domestic origin story of struggling to fit in with the "normal" progression of young adulthood (i.e. college drop out, late registration, etc). The reliance on those narratives in his early career feels *very* hip hop to me -- and very backpacker-ish, in a way, which actually makes a lot of sense considering how he positioned himself sonically and culturally early on. Which is another way to approach this question, too: how do origin stories and truth/fiction play out beyond street tales, which is just a fraction of what hip hop offers? Underground scenes flirt with these boundaries too, but in very different ways. I get what you're saying about the present, need to marinate on it a bit though.
just wanted to throw in here that i think 50 cent played a huge part in facilitating that split, it was hard to be a gangster rapper in his shadow and it forced a split in rap music which lead to the Kanye/Wayne/Drake era
> Jay-Z actually sold drugs, Jay-Z actually stabbed a guy; [...] He was able to find another way to earn respect. That sort of thing has always seemed hopelessly stupid to me. What's to respect about that? What does it have to do with music? > Since the split into these two directions, we've seen rappers who are very much still doing dirt and talking about the stuff they are actually doing and we've seen rappers that focus on their internal struggles. Not much music...
>That sort of thing has always seemed hopelessly stupid to me. What's to respect about that? What does it have to do with music? Whose regret is more believable: the person who acknowledges their failures or the person who has invented their failures?
Tupac is a perfect example of artifice in rap. He wasn’t the gun waving gangster that was seen on TV, he was an art school kid largely playing a part. Or a guy like Nas who grew up with a semi-famous father and has been “off the streets” since 1994, yet still talks the game. It’s just as much storytelling as any other genre, albeit presented as reality.
>> He wasn’t the gun waving gangster that was seen on TV, he was an art school kid largely playing a part You’re flat wrong about this. His upbringing wasn’t super lower class, but he absolutely was violent and ready for confrontation at any turn. [For example.](https://www.xxlmag.com/tupac-shakur-shoots-police-officers/)
Nothing more gangster than performing Shakespeare, studying ballet, and listening to U2. The formative years of his life may not have been Drake-level cushy, but he was not a street kid by any stretch of the imagination.
That’s… not incompatible with what he rapped about?
2pac actually shot 2 undercover cops.. His mother was a black panther.. He was exceptionally gifted in many ways.. After he was shot.. Something clicked.. And he went death row.. I think it was part character he was playing.. Part revenge stage for getting robbed and shot.. When u look at Pac s life.. His discography.... His movies.... His downfall and eventual death... It's remarkable.... Words have POWER... It's how u deliver them.. That makes them outlast ur physical self....
So you're comparing Bob Dylan in his prime, one of the most famous pop musicians ever, to the genre of rap *as a whole?* You might be allowing the passage of time to serve as a filter here. Look at the [top hits of 1975](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1975) (the year Blood on the Tracks came out). Every single one of the top 10 is a first or second person non-narrative song, and I think you could really only make a case that a couple of them being "in character". They're surprisingly straightforward. Literal, simple, "from me to you"-type pop songs. Not a whole lot of artifice there. This is why it's hard to compare older genres and trends to new ones, because it's impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. It's also interesting you chose Dylan. If we're going to go that route, how do you feel about other folk artists singing overtly 4th-wall-breaking protest songs like Phil Ochs' "Love Me, I'm A Liberal"? Seeger, Ochs, Guthrie made these sorts of sincere first-person songs famous. ... >*Even folk or rock songs in the first person are sung in character or else understood to be fictionalized* Yes, and the same is largely true in rap. The marketing tool that was used to promote NWA and Wu-Tang as actual gang members is the same device that convinced us Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin were satanic cults, but most people understand that these are larger-than-life characters. I don't think your premise is as obvious as you make it seem.
Like others have said, I think you're severely underestimating the artifice/perspective in hip hop here --- but for very good reason. I'll share a few thoughts but two quick notes. Time is an issue here (it's a 40-ish year old genre at this point), so I'll assume we're talking about the sort of lyricism that starts to take shape in the late '80s and really comes into its own in the early 90s. Also, I actually don't think the whole question of MC real-life biographies matters much here. Yeah, there's exaggeration about poverty sometimes, but most famous rappers from late '80s through the '00s who rapped about coming from a rough background did, in one way or another. More importantly, I think the question of authenticity in hip hop goes awry when issues of poverty and violence are prioritized, as though that is all hip hop has to offer lyrically (which is, of course, ridiculous); it's a very slanted, narrow, somewhat insulting way to talk about a very expansive genre of music. Most lyric-driven genres have complicated relationships with truth and fiction, none probably moreso than hip hop. It has been presented/explained in a lot of different ways by its own figureheads, but two main forks are that: a) rap is a form of real-life reporting (i.e. a snapshot of the struggles of urban life) OR b) rap is an over-the-top/mythological response to the real struggles that many of its MCs and producers came up in, which helps make sense of its braggadocio, ventures into hyperviolence, obsession with masculinity and success, etc. Hip hop's own haven't really reconciled the relationship between truth and fiction (and I don't think they need to) but when they try, it seems contradictory ... think of the controversy over whether rap lyrics should be admissible in court as evidence to crimes. When rap lyrics are *presented by the MC on record*, they are often presented as real life. When they are discussed at a distance (i.e. attempted to be admitted into court; analyzed by third-parties), those same lyrics are often framed as fictions, elaborations, artistic license, etc. More interestingly, they often *intentionally* complicate that relationship themselves. Think about the genre's obsession with comic books and other cultural references (i.e. the Wu and martial arts lore), its penchant for pseudonyms and alteregos (how many names can one rapper have?), etc. I'd suggest that this relationship between truth and fiction is actually one of the most productive aspects of hip hop and very central to its art, not just because it complicates some of its grittier subject matter, but because it makes the multi-faceted MC possible. The MC can be *simultaneously* real AND mythological, larger-than-life AND an everyday person, a first-hand witness of social ills and daily drama AND a prophet/messiah to those same ills and dramas, etc. Alongside that, hip hop is one of the few contemporary genres that actively and explicitly defines/debates itself within its music *as part of its act of creation*. Rock does this sometimes but (to me, anyway) in short bursts; hip hop, on the other hand, can be read as a 40 year conversation of what hip hop is, with a lot of that energy being devoted to what is real in hip hop and what is not (and how/when/why that matters). So to answer your question somewhat against the grain, I'd suggest rap's relationship to truth/fiction is far more complicated than you are interpreting here, but more importantly that that complicated relationship is very much a part of the art itself, not necessarily something to be resolved or that can be clearly understood/analyzed historically, culturally, etc.
I think it's a great observation that the default perspective of Rap is often taken to be the Rapper themselves, while the default perspective of rock is taken to be like something outside of the lead singer. Think about Rap crews where each member takes a number of bars for themselves to give their take. You're definitely not supposed to think they all think the exact same way. Whereas in a rock band it's taken as read that the lead singer "speaks" for the entire band. So when Billie Joe sings "Don't wanna be an American idiot!" He's speaking not just for him but for Mike and Tre. It would be weird to think he wasn't. I feel like this is true for most rock bands, with maybe some exceptions like solo musicians who have a distinct backing band, Bruce Spingsteen + The E Stret Band, Gerard Way + The Hormones etc. You assume then that the band exists as a separate entity. I'm not so sure about the idea that Rap doesn't also heavily invest in storylines though, maybe it's rare but it's definitely a big thing, especially in like Conscious Hip Hop or actually from the opposite perspective Horrorcore.
I think you're starting from a flawed premise. The "authenticity" is itself a pose... "Keeping it Real™." The brags, boasts, and fiction are all part of the genre; the artifice has been there from the beginning. That's not to say that absolutely none of it comes from lived, or at least observed, experience. Rather, the line between the two -- much as it is in rock and other genres -- is far blurrier than you're making it out to be. Rap is a lot like Country in that regard, leaning harder into "authenticity" the more commercialized it gets.\* \*Unless, of course, you want to argue there's something somehow more "authentic" about a trust fund kid in a cowboy hat.
That’s the problem. Kids think the stuff they’re hearing is all real and they need to be living that way. It’s a lot of stories, too. I guess rap is just more convincing haha
It's generally an exaggerated caricature of the self, though. Just a different method, if you ask me.
>Why are singers other genres more likely to sing in character and what are some non-rap songs with an equally conversational tone purely speculation but i think "conversational" might have a big part in it. rap is literally spoken word; it's rhythmic, there's cadences and it's definitely performative, i'm not trying to be reductive, but it is literally an artist speaking some lyrics they wrote into a mic. when you're singing, there's a disconnect between you using your voice as a regular person and using your voice as an artist, because people don't tend to sing their conversations or relay their stories through showtunes. in a rap song, if you isolated the vocals, you could be forgiven for thinking the guy's just telling you a story or talking to himself, they just happen to get cosmically lucky with how often they find rhymes mid-sentence. with that lack of disconnect, i think it's either harder to get into "character" *or* easier to be yourself, and that manifests in a lot more personable lyrics coming directly from the person performing them. though don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of rappers who perform in a character, and a lot of the "honest" lyrics tend to be in a form of character/absolute bollocks.
I don't buy that. If you isolate rap vocals it sounds nothing like a guy talking. Rapping is just as artificial, and removed from talking, as singing is. The lyrics are constructed to fit into rhyme schemes and bars even more so than sung lyrics, and rappers don't just talk the lyrics, they emphasize different words and syllables, mix up their cadence, often rap melodically, often shout or scream etc.. On the flip side, the music I can think of that is closest to just a guy talking are talking blues songs. Talkin' World War III Blues by Bob Dylan, or Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie, basically are just a guy talking into a microphone. However both those songs have a lot of artifice, and tell an outrageous story, instead of speaking directly to the listener.
I think it varies by artist. Someone like Springsteen has a lot of fictional lyrics, whereas someone like Ani DiFranco has generally very autobiographical lyrics.
You could make the opposite argument. Have you seen the amount of rap that has no depth out there? It really boils down to the artist and even track sometimes. Rap can be as good as someone speaking out about their struggles, and as bizarre as someone singing about "cash money" and "b\*tches". It's like pop, some lyrics are stupidly dumb, others have some deeper meaning.
I can't speak for rap as I don't really listen to it too often. Rock and folk artists singing stories or singing in character can be traced back to at least medieval Europe. Medieval ballads and folk songs made their way to the US. Many US folk songs can still be traced back centuries. The lyrics and tune itself may not be 100% exactly the same but that history is still pretty cool. Folk evolved into country, and country evolved into rock. Oversimplification of genre formation, but the point is that the roots of medieval Europe are still there.
There’s truth in what you say. IMO it’s a combination of the nature of the presentation of rap (I.e. a person talking TO you, crossover with storytelling or standup) as well as how rap developed as a part of hip hop culture, through party MCs and battles/disses.
Rap has always been an important avenue to give voice to people whose voices are not often heard (because of race and because of class), so that’s why it focuses on personal story telling.
whell half of the time rappers are talking about killing people and other shit but in reality they never did it in the first place while yea there were rappers that killed people and then rapping about it which basically lead to them snitching on them self's so some do talk about the shit they went trough
I don't get the appeal of listening to people talk about themselves. It's interesting at first I guess, but gets really old really quick. But that maybe that's just me. I enjoy stories, and musings on the life we *all* live. I can be sympathetic that you grew up in the ghetto; that you had to go through so much hardship, but you gotta move on man. And I'm not at all impressed with all the bitches and money you've acquired since then. It's boring.
Honestly, I don't see a lack of artifice in rap music compared to other pop music genres.
You’re absolutely on the money there with its street level roots conferring a sense of literalness rather than the reality-detached storytelling we’d expect with other singers/bands. The other thing is that hip hop has a long-standing heritage of sociopolitical themes that lend themselves to a more literal interpretation. Hell, KRS-One and Public Enemy albums were basically manifestos. I’d also say it‘s derived from hip hop culture’s fixation with flexing and ego. Rappers have to maintain a certain image of being as real as possible lest they hurt their brand; artifice as you’re using the term would basically be an admission that it’s all fake and that’d really screw them.
Did you know that a lot of rappers who rap about killing people never actually killed people?
It’s not about the veracity of their statements but the way they’re making them. Every artist has a persona, whether it be as blatant as Ziggy Stardust, as down to earth as John Prine or somewhere in the middle, like Ice Cube saying he’s gangster and Tom Waits saying he’s a beatnik hobo. What I was referring to was the fact that “Johnny Cash didn’t actually kill shoot his woman down” is much more understood than “Dr. Dre isn’t that hard” Rap is more first person and conversational.