Rap why. Master SHEF feat

Marshall Mathers has revealed whether he considers himself a "Rap God".

What does "The Marshall Mathers LP" mean to you?

Not a damn thing (laughs). In fact, this album just brings back memories of that time.

When did you decide that the new album would be a sequel?

When I started recording the album, many of the songs evoked people's associations with those times. This was what I was going for initially, but the fact that it stood out to others only made it easier to choose a title for the album. I'm returning to some themes from "MMLP". But at the same time, it is clear that now everything in my life is different. So I wouldn't call this album a "sequel" because a sequel would just be a continuation of that album.

What specific topics do you return to?

I need to think about whether I can adequately answer, because I’m a little crazy. On the first "The Marshall Mathers LP" I talked about personal things, which I've now returned to to close those topics. This is not "Recovery", where I was inspired by personal experiences. And I'm not talking about drug addiction either. This album is, in a sense, a return to the roots of hip-hop.

Retrospective: Xzibit, Eminem, Dr. Dre, 2000.

While working on "Recovery" you recorded about 100 songs, most of which went to the trash bin. How much material did you produce this time?

I have never worked on music as much in my life as I do now. The only time I spent more energy was when we were recording The Eminem Show and doing 8 Mile. Now I gave about the same amount of effort, only this time it was all directed towards music.

On "Recovery" there were a lot of very personal moments, but there you spoke exclusively about addiction, on the first "Marshall Mathers LP" your personal life was a priority. How much more comfortable do you feel about bringing up these topics now that you've dealt with your problems?

I spent most of my career being open about my life. These were quite personal things, and I didn’t even think about it. “Damn, what if I was wrong? How willing am I to share myself with the world around me?” - Now such thoughts come to me. On the one hand, you want the fans to understand you and feel a connection with you. But then you realize that you have nothing personal left.

How long has it been since you last listened to "Kim"?

I don't think I've listened to The Marshall Mathers LP at all lately.

This track is incredibly personal, yet it is terribly strange and dark. Listening to this song now, do you feel any discomfort?

I haven't listened to songs from there for a long time. But many things are already crammed into my head: the music and themes of each album. Playing songs like "Kill You" refreshes your memory. Like I said, it was a different time in my life and a different time in rap, period.

By giving the album such a title, you automatically raised the bar of expectations. Did you take this into account?

I don't want to say that that album was that great, but I was aware that an album with that title would have to meet certain standards.

Why did you dye your hair again?

This is Paul Rosenberg's idea. When we just started recording the album, I had similar thoughts myself. When the concept for the album became a little clearer, Paul and I discussed it and decided, “Why not?”

Did returning to the old image help with the recording of the album?

No. Because at that time most of the album had already been recorded. I have no idea how long I go through with hair like this. But I think at the moment this is what I need.

One of the main themes of "MMLP" was the struggle with increased attention from others. This theme comes up again on "Rap God" and a couple of other songs from the new album. You talk about how far fewer people are looking at you now.

I still feel under the scrutiny of others, even if everything is not as scary as before. It's a gift and a curse: on the one hand, I can spend as much time as I want in the studio and create music for fun, but at the same time, I understand that I have to protect my family.

Previously, they paid much more attention to me and clung to every word. Now, of course, everything is different, so I'm wondering: can I afford a little more, since I'm not the center of attention? People are used to me, and this also plays a certain role.

At what point did Rick Rubin join the album?

When the album was a third of the way through recording, something like that. I've always had a lot of respect for Rick and his work. His ability to jump from genre to genre and not lose quality haunted me for a long time. Paul Rosenberg said Rick would be interested in working with me. Well, when Yoda wants to see you, you go straight to Yoda. Paul and I flew to Los Angeles to see how things worked for him.

That day we were supposed to meet and I was a little nervous because I've always been a fan of Rick. Yes, I was nervous and flattered that he wanted to work with me. But he was so calm and pleasant that we quickly found a common language: after a short conversation, we immediately headed to the studio.

We've all seen Rick on the couch at Jay-Z's studio. Tell us what it's really like to work with him.

He does three things: guides you in the right direction, tries new things and works on drums, constantly asking for your opinion.

Rick always says, "Try everything." No matter how crazy the idea was, Rick kept saying, “There’s nothing we shouldn’t try. If it turns out to be crap, we’ll know right away.” We were on the same wavelength and almost simultaneously understood if something didn’t work out for us. We had almost no quarrels. “Let everything take its course,” that’s roughly what Rubin thinks. So once I said I didn't like his idea, 9 times out of 10 Rick would take it out of the song. And that's another thing that makes him great.

I started producing songs for the first time in a long time. I didn't do anything on "Relapse" and literally a few tracks on "Recovery". I was excited to be able to hang out in the studio with Luis Resto and make beats from scratch. It's great to feel like a producer again.

A lot has changed in hip-hop since you started producing. Are you influenced by modern music?

Don't think. I just do what feels right to me. It is clear that I keep my finger on the musical pulse. But I never wanted to do what everyone else was doing. Let others make "modern music". I don’t want to say that my work sounds outdated, it simply cannot be compared with anything, it is different. I think I haven't fallen behind the times.

Did you hear Kendrick's verse on "Control"?

Heard. The first thing I thought was, "Holy crap," and then, "Wow, that was very clever." I think Kendrick - I'm sure he would say the same thing - was inspired by the era that I came from, Royce and Canibus came from. Kendrick was very smart because no one does what we did back then. And he brought it back to rap.

What do you think about your place in hip-hop?

It's difficult for me to answer this question. I think it's more important where people see me. And I can only hope that they see me as an ordinary rapper. I don't need more. I know how people react to crossover hits that suddenly hit the radio: "What the hell, this isn't rap anymore." But I don’t control this process. It doesn't matter what the song is about, I always put 100% into the lyrics. I will never be driven by the commercial side of the issue: I do not write music so that it sells well or sounds on the radio.

Do you feel like a rap god?

Everything changes very quickly for me: from hour to hour, day to day. The concept of the track "Rap God" seems very contrived to me. I ask myself: Do I want to be a rap god? Sometimes yes. But again, this applies to anyone who raps for sport and wants to be the best. That’s why Kendrick’s verse caused such a resonance: he said out loud what others have been thinking for a long time. If you don't want to be the best, why rap at all?

An important part of the history of rock music is protest. It was the basic element that set the genre apart at the time of its birth. The culture of the 60s gladly captured new and free music, which in different ways, but still protested. Against the state, against the war, against the contented life of the parents.

There were many ways to express such a protest: from directly attacking the Queen of Britain to comparing the military system with black witch masses.

Rock, of course, over the decades of its dominance in the musical mainstream, has been understood in different ways and has gone through rethinking and transformation. But anarchic humanism was always somewhere in his subconscious: from Woodstock to Metallica.

The current total popularity of indie music and post-punk with their conscious retreat into reflection and endless love suffering is an indicative trend. This behavior can, of course, be considered an internal protest. But even in this case, a very convenient vector for “rollback” was chosen.

Without crossing anyone’s path, you can safely blame yourself for all your sins and pass for a sage. Only now postmodernism is already over, and the games of soul-searching would not have lost anything if they had stopped with Cobain’s suicide.

Rap was also created along with the culture of struggle. And this culture is as convenient as possible for the genre. Here, most often, the musician is left alone with his text, so it’s not possible to hide behind muddy emotions or a guitar solo. We have to speak directly.

And if you are an idiot who doesn’t know anything other than “regional concepts,” it will be immediately noticeable.

If you don’t like the country’s politics, you won’t be able to remain silent either. And no matter how much modern American punks splutter in attempts to diss Trump, Eminem will still do better.

Rap is more popular

Another very important feature of rock, which made it the main music of the second half of the last century, is popularity.

Led Zeppelin gathered Wembley with their most complex music, multi-minute improvisations, strange symbols and images. Then millions came to watch these difficult performances.

Which rockers are filling stadiums now? Either those who are valued only for the merits of the past (hello the Scorpions with their endless farewell tour), or those who blur genres and play something in between pop, electronics and... rap (hello the rock stars from Imagine Dragons).

Rap packs stadiums based on its current merits. And accusing him of stealing eclecticism is stupid - he is creating genres right now.

Rock chases hype and loses face

Many super-popular groups like Linkin Park, Hollywood Undead or Limp Bizkit exist at the intersection of genres and actively adopt rap culture, music and style. This is not to say that this is bad. We can say that this is a long-lasting trend throughout the 21st century. Some musicians “justify” their transformations with “creative vision,” while others are openly chasing popularity. It is difficult to find out the truth here.

It's the same in Russia. The most popular rock musician (after Shnurov) is Noize MC. Actually, he is popular precisely because he skillfully combines different genres and gathers an almost polar audience: either with tearful songs about the swimming pool, or with a vivid destruction of modern culture.

This is all quite organic and correct for the new cultural eclecticism. Another issue is commercialization and an attempt to attract a crowd of screaming girls using the brand of stadium rock stars. Hence all the old-school complaints about the already mentioned Imagine Dragons, Coldplay or Maroon 5.

It’s clear that you can’t fool anyone with fairy tales about pop rock. The departure from the classic rock sound now reads as too obvious a musical trend.

Rap is freer

Rock music is mired in controversy and convention. Who are considered rockers and who are not? What can you sing about and what can’t you sing about? Who can you copy music from, and who should you despise and hate?

Fans, journalists and musicians have been studying, discussing, dissecting and adoring rock music for more than 50 years. Therefore, to her theoretical horror, she, from the mouthpiece of freedom, became part of the conservative machine.

Rap is (for now) free from this, because it is already initially and quite consciously built into mass culture. There are no restrictions, if you want to compare your penis to a burger and get ridiculous tattoos on your face, you’re welcome.

Rap is more democratic

Everyone listens to rap, and more importantly, almost anyone can do it. Culture organically fits into the world of the future, with the Internet, round-the-clock media consumption and explosions of popularity on YouTube.

While conservative rock music rejected digital and snobbishly turned up its nose towards real creativity, rap took over the world. And this does not mean that the world is going to the bottom.

When I was seven years old, I already knew who Tupac Shakur was, by eight I could name several names of rappers from the East and West Coast, and at the age of 11 I knew the words to Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” by heart. I barely remember life without hip-hop, and this does not mean that I am a wildly advanced listener or a devoted connoisseur of the genre. Hip-hop has long entered the mainstream; since the mid-1980s, the expansion of the genre has not stopped for a second, but in the last couple of years it has taken on truly impressive proportions.

Just ten years ago, the stage and the hearts of young music lovers belonged to pop icons, and competition for the title of best-selling artist of the year took place within the same genre: Britney Spears competed with Christina Aguilera, Ricky Martin competed with Chris Martin. Taylor Swift has completely different rivals - she has to fight for views with Iggy Azalea and Nicki Minaj, and Kanye West has no equal at all. It must be said that Taylor herself, despite her status as a pop princess, builds her hits on flirtations with hip-hop in one form or another.

Open any influential music publication - The Fader's front page is Tyler, The Creator, Pitchfork's top track of the week is Azealia Banks' "Ice Princess", and Noisey is publishing a documentary about a 13-year-old rap prodigy. All in all, hip-hop is definitely ruling the music world. From time to time we wonder: when will the rap craze end? We turned to professionals for the answer.

Oleg Sobolev

musical critic

The fashion for hip-hop to expropriate pop music will end exactly when hip-hop itself ceases to be popular. That is, given hip-hop's innate ability to mutate over time, never. This is an old story - white people have always been attracted to black music. Just think of The Rolling Stones, who played black R&B covers early in their career, or, to go even further, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the first recorded jazz group in the world made up entirely of white people. R&B and jazz eventually went out of fashion, but hip-hop is much more tenacious - and as long as it lives, it will be in great demand in the context of pop music.

As for things more general, extra-musical, it seems to me that these are very domestic American matters. There is now a black president, a bunch of notable black celebrities, a huge increase in the popularity of local sports, in which the rules are also dictated by black athletes. The incredible growth of political activism and civic engagement on the part of blacks - remember the story with the city of Ferguson. In short, it is now black people who rule America in every way. That's why culture strives for black things - sports, for example (even Taylor Swift is photographed with the New York Knicks). In England, for example, it’s a little different: if we take music, then their most important pop stars - Adele or Sam Smith - also live in black music, but from the 1960s, and are infinitely far from the current state of American pop culture .

Andrey Bukharin

music reviewer

It seems to me that this is an incorrect formulation of the question. Hip-hop was introduced into the mainstream by Malcolm McLaren in 1982 with his first solo album. The fashion for it began towards the end of the decade, at the same time the first white rappers appeared (Beastie Boys and such a funny character as Vanilla Ice). In the 1990s, rap began to flourish, it occupied MTV and even then became mainstream, and its elements began to be used with might and main in pop music and new dance music. Even in Russia, hip-hoppers appeared (“Bachelor Party”, Bad Balance, Mister Maloy, Bogdan Titomir). What is happening at the current stage is not called fashion, it is simply widespread - rap is read in Kapotnya and the slums of Madras, in Cape Town and Bucharest - in all languages of the world. Hip-hop is the folk urban music of the world, the easiest to produce and does not require any special talents. Here, hip-hop also penetrates everywhere and booms in every car, replacing for the boys in the area the old chanson that was left to the older generation. When will it end? Whether we like it or not (I don’t like it at all, although I used rap during its heroic period), this is clearly not going to end soon. In any case, until something so simple and effective for self-expression of a simple guy who has no other chance in this best of all worlds is invented.

Andrey Gorokhov

The question “when will the widespread fashion for hip-hop end?” put me in a stupor, as any leading question should. Answering this, I want to start making excuses that, excuse me, I’m catastrophically behind fashion and life and I don’t really see the fashion for hip-hop, especially everywhere around me (in Berlin, Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk - in the cities where I was in the last three months) there has been no fashion for hip-hop. You can complain about a stupid question, but I will speak as a cultural nerd. In 100 years, hip-hop will most likely exist in some other form, but even that I doubt. It is quite possible that the wave of hip-hop will move between ghettos in third world countries, like an eternal echo bouncing off the walls. Hip-hop is a global phenomenon, and it doesn't go away, even if your neighborhood has recovered from it. When will blue jeans go away? What about football? What about black metal and punk rock? What about heartfelt songs with guitar? What about thrash? What about porn?

In my memory, that is, over the past 15 years, only in Germany there have been several waves of hip-hop that are different from each other: aggro-hop, that is, aggressive macho rap with criminal twists, is something different from indie hip-hop , and hip-hop with beats is completely different than hip-hop with acoustic guitar or minimal electronics. And I wouldn’t be surprised if in Stuttgart or Hamburg a couple of dozen people still wear huge ports at half-mast and listen to homemade mixtapes. And from there a wave of “new” sound can come again. These are viruses, and viruses do not spread in waves.

Alexander Kondukov

editor-in-chief of Rolling Stone Russia

In fact, there is no trend for hip-hop, there is a trend for making money. Hip-hop is an illustration of all the commercial endeavors a musical artist can undertake. Hip-hop stars have always been after money, they advertise everything from supermarkets to sneakers. Therefore, in modern business, when nothing really sells, everyone consciously reaches out for money. A similar story happened when commercial hip-hop first emerged as a trend. I feel like there's something new happening in alternative hip-hop right now. There are more collaborations between artists than ever before, everyone supports each other very closely, they record on each other’s albums. There was no such unity in the 1990s. Therefore, everyone instinctively approaches the hip-hop camp in order to stick together against the background of monstrous musical processes, which lead to the fact that musicians make money exclusively from corporate performances and tours, but not from sales of musical media.

Now there are no canonical hip-hop stars who can be idolized and put on the cover without beating. Try to compare Tupac Shakur with Drake - they are completely different people. I don't think Kendrick Lamar would have become famous in 1995. The then LL Cool J would have dwarfed him. Now there are no dominant, super-powerful people on the scene, so all the laurels go to those who have minimal charisma. What can we talk about if the main rock band in the world remains U2? There hasn't been any significant progress. If you go through iconic rock bands in your head, you will again be inclined towards Radiohead and The Rolling Stones. Therefore, angular rappers look brighter against this background, and those people who want to make money somehow go for collaborations and work with them. Although I'm sure no one has any absolute knowledge of where commercial music can lead. That's why these crazy deals are happening in connection with the purchase of the U2 and Beats album by Apple. In a general crisis, everyone tries to be the first in some segment, because no one knows what will actually happen. Anything can shoot, I hope it won’t be Russian rock or the new album of Boris Grebenshchikov and a tribute to Bashlachev.

Covering with secrets, the wind carries away words.
According to calculations, there are a lot of rappers.
You storm the sea, not knowing history,
Drawing a carbon copy of the style of Western heroes.
Frowning your eyebrows, what are you hiding under your glasses?
Your facial expressions are like rough stone.
Not noticing the edge with answers in interviews,
The jackal demonstrates the snake in life.
I know you, I make you angry, breaking the stage under you.
A forced smile, you have committed treason.
Got into the topic and sold it with giblets
To the clowns who make up the hit parades.
Having gained fame, dumb as a dead planet,
You revolve around hip-hop, but there is no truth in you.
Your lyrics are nonsense, you are a manager, not a rapper.
There is no need to write texts, just write estimates.

Why do you wanna rap? Why do you need rap?
So why do you wanna rap? Why do you need rap?

Why do you wanna rap? Why do you need rap?
So why do you wanna rap? Why do you need rap?
You are no MC, you all I see is a manager.
The streets don't accept you, you're a manager.
Why do you wanna rap? Why do you need rap?
So why do you wanna rap? Why do you need rap?
Stop act to the fool, better grab a zoo.
The tie and suit suit your face.

Modeling the rise, you, like a pivot table,
I figured out how to get through the ladder of fame.
Crystal sparkles, scandals rock.
They call you a famous rap artist.
But you're not a rapper, you're a manager and you know it.
You get ten percent of the contract.
Here's the thing: the dough comes out very little,
But your sting wants to get advertising.
The flames are burning around, you are the face of the magazines.
Movie premieres, glamorous dates.
Rivers of recognition in cheap television series.
You fill the wallets of golden sheep with rap.
The colorful screens play very weak rap.
Dead planets in show business through connections.
I consign your images on the posters to the fire.
If I need to go further, I'll go there too.

Other titles for this text

Master CHEF feat. Mr. Simon - Why do you need rap?!
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CHEF - Why do you need rap?! feat. Mr. Simon
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CHEF - Why do you need rap?! feat. Mr. Simon