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Comment by okwubodu | Hacker News Reader

> That doesn’t negate the fact that hip-hop is a lyrical artform, with the emcee being the star since the 1980s.

I don’t think this is true. Instrumentals in hip-hop are largely first class citizens. Lyrics are at the forefront, yes, but consider that rappers are judged more on their technical ability to navigate the beats they choose.

It’s the only genre where artists are regularly deemed unworthy of their own instrumentals.

The author’s example is ironically the best example of this. It’s N.Y State of Mind by Nas (regarded as one of the best beat selectors of all time), on Illmatic (one of the best hip-hop albums of all time), and produced by DJ Premier (one of the best producers of all time).

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Fully agreed.

Given my background, I was (and am) mostly listening to German Hip-Hop (but of course it’s born out of US Hip-Hop, which I appreciate as well, including Illmatic and pretty much anything with “primo beats”), but the same thing applies.

I do value good lyrics of course, but for a track to be really good, it primarily has to have a really good beat, and really good flow in how the lyrics are presented. Then, even next-to-nonsensical lyrics can still make a good track on that.

But conversely it’s rather hard for a track with even fantastic lyrics to be really “good” (in my mind of course), if it has bad beats and sub-par flow.

It is still music after all, and not just poetry.

for english-as-a-second-language people it comes no suprise you'd have an adjusted ear for the music vis-a-vis the lyrical end of the songs. if youre not putting together the words fluidly, youre not getting the 'solo opera singer on the stage' attention to the movie that the words provide.

when the words fail you, its important to have good production values to fall back on and enjoy in the song.

i believe most the people in the US however are words above all listeners, and will accept subpar production, because theyre focused on the 'opera singer and the movie.'

I don't know how that follows from what I said. I was talking about German Hip-Hop, where I do understand the words just like a US-native listener would in US Hip-Hop. And for that, "it primarily has to have a really good beat, and really good flow in how the lyrics are presented" is true for me. I don't know why that would be different in a different language.

(By the way, I've been in the US long enough that the same is approximately true for US Hip-Hop by now, but that's neither here nor there.)

> i believe most the people in the US however are words above all listeners, and will accept subpar production, because theyre focused on the 'opera singer and the movie.'

That's what I dispute. Obviously I have no hard data, but just at a cursory look it seems to me that, in US Hip-Hop as well, good beats and flow with subpar lyrics tend to do better overall than good lyrics with subpart beats and flows.

This is no different from any other genre of music.

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