Word: rapped
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...savvy readers voted Odelay the Album of the Year; rival music magazine Spin selected Beck as Artist of the Year. Says Michael Greene, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences: "(Beck) crosses so many genres and creates so many emotions. He can be poppy; he can fuse rap and rock. He's a pretty remarkable...
...whole musical outlook. Odelay deftly mixes folky acoustic-guitar riffs with atmospheric lyrics and hip-hop samples and beats. One song, the hard-driving Devils Haircut, attacks America's culture of physical vanity as suffocating and inescapable; another, the smooth Where It's At, pays tribute to rap's roots by praising its resourceful spirit...
Beck says the low-tech nature of rap and folk is what initially attracted him. All rappers need, to paraphrase Where It's At, are two turntables and a microphone; all folk singers need is a guitar. "I always wanted to play music as a kid, play guitar, but it just seemed impossible to me," says Beck. "You turn on the radio, and they'd be playing, what, Huey Lewis or some superproduced '80s music. That music--it was so professional--there didn't seem any way to be able to do that...
...Mixing rap and folk, however, seemed doable, even natural. After all, Beck's family was artistically eclectic: his father was a bluegrass musician; his mother, who raised him in Los Angeles, played the occasional gig as a singer; and his maternal grandfather, Al Hansen, was a pioneering multimedia artist and colleague of Andy Warhol's. As a teenager, Beck traveled to New York City and got caught up in the music scene; later he hooked up with hip-hop producer Karl Stephenson and cut Loser. The song became an unexpected hit, he was signed by Geffen records...
...Best Theater of 1996" is Rent as an updated opera, then American culture has indeed taken a dive. And as far as music is concerned, what happened to the brilliant performances of Wagner's Ring at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, or other noteworthy performances? How can watered-down rap as performed by the Fugees define what our culture should aspire to? Taste notwithstanding, you have completely ignored whole artistic genres. Your selection of the best should cover more than just pop culture. ALEXANDER J. WAYNE Chicago...