album #12

raising hell (run dmc)

This album never really made a big impression on me. I can respect it; I can tell how they fused rock and rap in ways that had never been done before; I can tell that they were hip hop pioneers. And a lot of the tracks are fun, acceptable tracks. But their sound is not a sound I would excitedly search out to listen to again. "Peter Piper" is a lot of fun, "It's Tricky" is a classic, a nice track for a party (pretty sure I've heard it at Meghan's or somesuch before.) "Walk This Way" is good. But that's the thing, everything is 'good,' nothing really astonishes me. And the lyrics are thematically a little redundant, a lot of it is 'we are great!' Which is cool in the sense of, that old school MC bravado is still fun, but again, good not great.

The key thing is that their beats are pretty minimalist, and I need good, melodic hooks in a beat to really get into a rap song.

The most fun or interesting aspect of this album I generally found was, the lightness of their tone. There are fewer than five swear words in the entire album- there's references to McDonald's, Adidas, Dog Food; at different points the lyrics touch on 'don't steal,' 'don't do drugs,' 'stay in school,' 'don't be promiscuous,' and some very earnest, (I don't mean this pejoratively) middle-school style black pride. "You Be Illin" and "Dumb Girl" are pretty light and silly. "Raising Hell" was generally one of their darker, more exciting songs.

Cool stuff, I like it, don't love it. Glad I listened to it.