to clarify my statement, this is relative to its praise. meaning i just like it a lot less than the enormous praise it gets. whereas i like a lot of modern pop more than its usual praise. i'm not actually suggesting that some of the pop acts i've talked about (Kesha, Nicki, NSYNC) are better than The Beach Boys. and to be fair, its a completely different style of music to begin with. but as far as pop songwriting, Brian Wilson is about the best there is. i just am not nearly as attracted to all the harmonies as most people are i think.

Maybe passion isn't the right word, and I'm certainly not suggesting that passion alone is enough to produce worthwhile music. But, to my ears - and this is purely subjective - Bowie sounds like a very skilled and competent musician who was too concerned with image and style and creating a facade of a framework within which his songs hold meaning but without which they are lifeless.

In any case, All I Want > Heroes.

Check out the Chrono Cross soundtrack (play the game first if you haven't). Better than the Trigger one, even if the Trigger one has a few more memorable tunes. Yasunori Mitsuda is a brilliant soundtrack composer.

I'd certainly say Mos Def and arguably Talib Kweli and Big Pun are as good of emcees as Nas, but Eminem and Common? Just, no. And I like Common.

Tom Waits is so much better than the Beatles though /fanboyism

And yeah, what, Bowie is incredible.

Bowie is my favorite solo musician (along with Bjork), he may not be the most emotionally ressonate musician (and that's a common criticism made of glam rock in general, and I'm also into Roxy Music, T.Rex, Sparks and the like) but he made brilliant music that could cover a wide range of colors and moods.

I love him as a performer and also for his amazing ear for talent, he sadly overshadows the musicians he works with but the Spiders From Mars was an underrated ensemble of musicians as was his 76-80 band, and the brilliance of his collaborations with Eno, Fripp and Pop go without saying.

"Style over substance" is a criticism I hate with a passion... except when I can use it to describe music I don't like and then it's ok.

i think Nas and Em actually have a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses imo. both have incredibly complex rhymes and a large vocab, and both are guilty of corny punchlines/insults ("Ether" is full of stupid shit like "Gay Z and Cockafella" and "i rock hoes, y'all rock fellas"). and having large chunks of cool rhymes without any real content going on. but there are some things i just really like a lot more about Em, mainly his storytelling (although Nas got better after Illmatic), his voice, the vocal layering, better production (significantly better production). and i'm always bothered by how much Nas tries to jump back and forth from street poet to gangster. he's clearly intelligent and thoughtful, but then he starts threatening to get out his gun and put people in coffins like he's Scarface or something. it always sounds phony to me.


anyway, to me it comes down to personal preference. i actually don't see how anyone can say any of the emcees in that group are clearly a step below the others. i just don't enjoy Nas as much (i still enjoy him A LOT, though).

if i may ask, though, what separates Em and Common imo? cause i honestly don't see any reason to place Big Pun in a level above Em. the biggest strength of Pun's is the same strength of Em's (the extremely complex wordplay/rhymes). Pun may be slightly more complex than Em, but every other strength that an emcee can have would seem to clearly favor Em in a comparison between the two imo.

as for Common, its early Common that is truly great. later Common is kind of meh sometimes. Resurrection is all-time great imo.

I think Bowie actually sounds more emotional in his...later years? Everything after the '90s. That being said, his early '70s output is some of the best rock music ever recorded. Although, Ziggy's appeal is 50% Bowie 50% Ronson ("Moonage Daydream" hoo lawdy). I get what Tudwell is saying, to a certain extent, even though "Five Years" and "Changes" kind of prove him wrong, but Bowie's music isn't about heart-on-the-sleeve passion or whatever. It's about competence, arrangements, songwriting, and most important, it's about David Bowie. There are certain artists where their personality alone (Bowie, PJ Harvey, a lot of hip hop artists, etc) can carry a song, or in some cases an entire album. I guess it just depends on whether you buy into that or not. But what I want you to do Tudzy is to give a close listen to Ziggy. Get high quality mp3s or vinyls or whatever you do and spend some time with it.

Nas got better AFTER Illmatic? I think Nas and Talib are both in a league of their own as far as pure mic skillz go. Level under that would probably be Eminem, Big Pun, Mos Def, even Busta and recently Kendrick Lamar (although in time I think he might go into the god tier). I haven't figured out what it is about Common that bothers me so much but I can't stand any of his records.

I pretended to like David Bowie for quite awhile, but overall I would say that for me his is really a Greatest hits kind of artist.

Eminem relies far too much on gimmicks. His little sound bites and voice imitations, and his not-so-witty jabs at certain figures in popular culture etc. Underneath that he has plenty of talent as an emcee, but he disguises too much of it with bullshit, not to mention his "emotional-ballad" type songs that are really just his senseless bitching about his wife or whatever. Most of these are just personal grudges and subjective reasons for why I'd never have him in the same tier as Pun or Mos Def.

Pun's rapid fire delivery more than makes up for his poor breath control, and his rhyme schemes are more intricate than Eminem's from what I can tell. Of course most of his lyrical content is the whole gangster facade, but a lot of great rappers fall into that category (Raekwon being a serious offender with his mafioso bravado, but he's still an incredible emcee and a favorite of mine).

Mos Def's uniqueness, "consciousness", and complex rhyme schemes put him above Eminem for me. Eminem has a similar uniqueness but he abused it.

I just don't see Common as much of an emcee. He's a great story teller, but his rhymes are usually simple, his delivery and flow aren't anything special, and some of his rhymes seem awkward. He does well over a great beat, but without support from production he just doesn't hold his own as well as the other guys.

Nas is certainly not as big of an offender of switching roles between street poet and gangster as much as 2Pac. Ridiculous when on the same album 2Pac will rap about the love for his mother and to respect all women, and the very next track is claiming that bitches are shit that only belong on his dick. Or how he's an advocate for world peace and wants a better world, but then he's shooting 35 niggas in the next track. Some pretty dramatic mood swings. I do think Nas and Illmatic can be a tad overrated (especially production-wise), but to put all of those guys above him seems criminal.

Nas and Mos Def are great.

2Pac was good but overrated and I agree with Jew's points, I personally have no interest in his music.

Eminem is easily the most overrated rapper of all time and Jew's criticisms are spot on, though much softer than how I would put it.

Now that that the 2000's are over, it is difficult to see how either The Strokes or Arcade Fire were the messiahs they have been proclaimed as.

Arcade Fire were overhyped but that shouldn't overshadow the fact that Funeral really is a great album, impressive considering that 99% of indie from the 00s is a flaming bag of dog shit.

PS. It was more like 89% in the 90s, to be fair.

who ever proclaimed the Strokes to be messiah?

Everyone?

Every music magazine in publication from 2001 to 2003.

Every music network on the air from 2001 to 2003.

Every music website running from 2001 to 2003.

Seriously how old are you? 10?