XinfiniteX said:
BonsaiK said:
...If it's a MySpace link...
Hey mate, I've been watching this post and have decided to throw out some of my stuff for you to have a quick look at
I've been making various hip/hip related stuff for a few years now, but never really done anything in terms of sending out demos etc. Most my stuff has just been for my mates and just for fun. It's pretty hard to make anything from music in Australia (especially Hip Hop) so I haven't really been pushing it.
Anyway I've put 2 tracks of mine (the 2 most finished I guess) up on a makeshift MySpace page for you to check out. The page is pretty ugly but on the plus side it'll take no time to load!
Unfortunately I haven't recorded any solo stuff so both these tracks have featurings on them.
The first track (If You'd Be Mine) I only have 1 verse (which is the first one) but will be recording another soon to replace the current second verse. On the second track (Boiling Point) I'm verse 1 and 3 as well as doing parts of the hook. The production of the second track is still a bit 'meh' but hopefully I'll get some time to finish the beat and clean up the vocals this weekend. For both of these tracks I wrote my verses, the hooks and also worked with a mate in making the beats.
So let me know what you think! Here's the link: http://www.myspace.com/555798423
Cheers!!
The only band that makes decent money making this sort of music in Australia is Hilltop Hoods. Almost everyone else still has their day jobs, or is living off pizza money. Rap is far and away the very worst currently popular style of music to get into if you're interested in making money, which is a pretty interesting irony when you think about it. In fact even more ironic is that the success of Hilltop has given lots of other Australian rappers false hope that they can follow a similar path, when in fact there's probably only room for one band like that in the Australian marketplace at a time.
That doesn't mean you can't rise to the challenge of course. With regard to MCing firstly, if you think of all the very successful MCs and what they all have in common, it's a very instantly recognisable delivery and force of personality. Right now there's nothing horribly
wrong with your delivery (except that maybe if I was a girl and I heard the lyrics on that first track I'd be exceptionally creeped out) but you're not very distinctive either. You just sound like... some Australian guy.
I guess the beats are pretty mundane, but unlike benzooka I don't think writing good beats is even remotely difficult, and the only reason why I don't write beats and sell them to Australian rappers myself is that it means I'd have to start a business relationship with Australian rappers and I'd really rather do just about anything else than that. (I did write some beats for a film producer once though, but nobody was going to rap over those.) Mind you hardly anyone seems to be able to do it so maybe it really is hard to them, but I sure as hell never found it hard. I think a lot of rappers find beat-writing difficult because those people often don't have the required background to write a decent beat - rapping doesn't tend to appeal to people with the
musical engineering background required to create something like this:
This isn't a rap song by any means but I've posted it because all the usual hip-hop production tricks are here, and
highly exaggerated, so hopefully you notice them. Specifically, shitloads of compression is important. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, listen to the ride cymbal in this song, and how it has this weird oscillating sound, like the volume is being periodically sucked out of it. That's because the volume
is being sucked out of it, by a compressor which is tied not just to the ride but to other parts of the kit, and when those other parts hit hard, the compressor clamps down on the entire kit mix, which includes the ride, resulting in rapid relative volume decrease of the ride vs the rest of the kit. However
overall kit volume stays constant, because that's what a compressor does - compresses volume. If I've lost you by this point, you need to do some reading on compressors, compression ratios, and how they work, if you want to get some good beats going. If you can't do it yourself, hire someone who can.... but not me. Cheers.
Rap is highly processed music and the dynamic range of it, when produced correctly, is basically nil once the beat kicks in. There's a reason for that - it's supposed to work "in the club", and club DJs don't like it when they take one platter off, put another one on and there's a volume variance or some quiet airy-fairy shit going on. A few seconds is okay, any more and people are getting bored and leaving the dance floor. Nothing is ever quiet on a rap record, even in the "quiet" parts.
Your two songs are at loggerheads - people who listen to that "for the ladies" rap generally aren't the same ones who would like what you're doing on Boiling Point. My advice would be to pick a specific direction to head in, and stick to it. Don't worry
too much about being fashionable - anyone who ever did anything worthwhile in rap was looking forward, not sideways. However, you want musical as well as ideological consistency, and socincally it has to be
strong which means you need to project more personality into it somehow, so you sound less like some random Australian guy who can rhyme pretty well and more like... I don't know, something else.
benzooka said:
Just quoting you as a courtesy so you know I replied. For the record I think interludes
can work, they just don't work here, because they also require a peculiar personality of delivery.
