Quote (J-Breakz)
I was hoping you'd get what I was trying to say but I guess I didn't present it clear enough. There's not too many rappers that have cats actually breaking down each one of his lines for each and every one of his songs. It's not that his verses are confusing, but they are very in depth. He does this purposely because he wants his listeners to actually pay attention to what he's saying. I'm not saying Blu is bad, but he isn't as talented of a rapper as lupe, he just keeps it real. It's difficult to use extended metaphors to the extent lupe, gza, etc., do. I respect blu and he can make hot shit, tho i don't kno wat ur talkin about he has a superior beat selection. A lot of his beats are fuckin borin as hell. The same old alternative west coast hip hop i'm used to hearing.
I dunno what track you're talking about when you say "it's another 'i'm smarter than you so that's why i'm hot'".
i'm talking about the track you presented! he's talking about the same old "i don't get airplay because i'm too complex" that he does in every track. there's no true substance to him being deep, and his "extended metaphors" (which is a term you would know that you aren't using correctly if you actually studied Greek poets like Homer who used them extensively and pretty much invented them) are not really that hard to break down, but the average rap fan can't wrap their heads around them because they are used to the Soulja Boys and Lil Waynes of this rap shit. that is why he gets people breaking down all his shit. he's the anomaly -- the intelligent cat that actually broke through in a major way even though he's not even close to one of the best -- and so people who aren't accustomed to intelligent rap because outside of Lupe, to them, it just doesn't exist, are going to buy into it and feed off of it and break his lyrics down because they've never heard anything like it before and think nothing like it exists. if i want to listen to something i have to break down and decipher in hip hop, i'll listen to Saul Williams or Aesop Rock before i listen to Lupe, because at least the rambling of coded language arrives at a point almost every time.
when it comes to a Lupe and Blu comparison i draw an analogy to poetry. Robert Frost is considered one of the greatest poets of all time, but hardly ever do you hear Frost make his poetry so complex that the common person cannot understand him, and still his name, in literary circles, is as big as TS Eliot's, James Joyce's, and others who are extremely complex writers, and there are many far more complex writers who fail to gain the fame that Frost had because their writing styles championed complexity over purpose and style. here is, quite possibly, Frost's most famed poem he ever wrote:
1. The Road Not Taken
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20
i'm sure everyone here knows this poem. it is simple, yet to the point, and it is considered one of the greatest poems ever written, and with good reason. i've seen far more complex poems that were utter garbage, especially compared to this.
now, to drive my point further home, i will analyze the following line by Lil Wayne:
"i'm an extension cord, i'm a lightning rod/
i'm a lion, roar! i'm a dinosaur/
i'm a sinus minus the nose/
i'm a cold"
the first part was him using a metaphor to say that he was fire (extension cords and lightning rods start fires). the second part is him talking about being a beast (lions and dinosaurs are beasts). the third part is him talking about being sick (he's equating a "sinus minus the nose" to being a cold and when you have a cold you are sick).
this is basically the same way the guy at the link you posted was analyzing Lupe's track and i could do the same for just about any Lil Wayne track, even though i fucking hate Lil Wayne and don't think he's worthy of licking Lupe's balls. much of Lupe's music is complex for the sake of being complex. that is pseudo-intellectualism at it's most obvious. dude uses intellect as a gimmick. i like him though. i just prefer his tracks where he is talking on some real shit that is simple to tracks where he's trying to get complex for no reason. i'd throw on "Superstar" or "Kick Push" (mainly because it makes me reminisce because i used to be a sponsored skater) over "Dumb It Down" or the track you posted any day. those songs are wack to me. those, to me, are actually Lupe's pop, sellout tracks, because he's so obviously employing a gimmick in those tracks, but in "Kick Push" and "Superstar" he's being sincere. you don't have to weed through Blu's discog in this way like you do with Lupe.
btw, i understand that some of Blu's newer beats are boring, but name one beat off of "Below The Heavens" that was boring. i know i can't.
