hip hop is funny

dear lord.

i spent the better part of last night methodically cataloguing hundreds of accapellas on my hard drive. most of the accapellas i have are hip hop and R&B. while these genres can be exceptionallly handy to have as accapellas (because they layer well over anything without needing to match pitch and melody) they are also incredibly boring to filter through. at least with pop or dance accapellas you can listen to various sections along the track and get an idea for what the vocal sounds like (usually it's just a bunch of loops or a repeating song structure anyways). with hip hop i need to listen to pretty much the whole thing to identify small chunks i might want to sample for a remix. this equates to me spending about 4 hours listening to faceless hiphop with no beats.

by about halfway through i was actually starting to count the number of times each song referred to accumulating money and/or degrading women. i'd like to avoid getting into a tirade here about how this content clearly cashes in on serious problems in our society (and arguably amplifies them) but in all honesty, i almost always steer clear of that kind of rubbish when i mix. it's just boring. everyone has heard the stereotypical 'cash and hoes' theme done over and over again. the only way i will give that kind of lyrical content any play is if it is so over the top and ridiculous that you can't possibly take it seriously. which actually equates to about 1 in every 1000 hip hop tunes. at any rate, i was a bit crazy by the time i was done listening to all that but at least it's done now and i have a wealth of new material to drop into my new mix.

also, we are being hit with more snow today and if everything goes to plan we will be going tobogganing this evening. this is going to be fun especially since it will be a first for carole. hopefully i'll have pics and a few good stories for you tomorrow.