Word: rapping
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...years old, he’s still diseased. With three LPs and dozens of awards to his name (or rather to his apt stage alias, Eyedea) the Minnesotan lyricist has become a symbol for a burgeoning underground hip hop movement that places improvisation over production and references old school rap with a lively philosophical twist. The future, according to these hip hoppers, replaces gun waving and gold-encrusted excess with surrealist word games and existentialist crises...
...underground rap circuit Eyedea is no pushover. The confidence he brings to talking up strangers at the bar is matched onstage by a gusto for witty improvisation that has flattened MCs on both coasts. Before he’d even graduated from high school, first-place trophies from countless freestyle tournaments were taking up bookshelf space next to James Joyce and A Brief History of Time. After winning the famous World Blaze Battle in 2000, broadcast on HBO and judged by rap extraordinaire KRS-One, Eyedea hung up his gloves because there wasn’t anyone left to fight...
Besides, he moans, since leaving the fray, the art of freestyle dueling has gone downhill. On today’s rap battlefield—as seen on MTV and in the Eminem film 8 Mile—cruelty often trumps sheer ability. “Now, I feel like there’s no flow, there’s no rhythm there anymore,” he says. “Show me how to rap. Yeah, you can make fun of me, but what’s it really about?” While he subsequently gave up verbal...
...Slug, whose own music has become more one dimensional and rock-oriented—and more popular. “The reality is [Slug’s] bringing in people who not only don’t know, but really don’t give a shit about rap. [They’ve] never seen a rap show and they’re like, ‘this shit is fucking awesome...
After tossing off some of his current rap favorites, Eyedea tellingly gives major props to a slew of reluctant mainstreamers, including Outkast (“the most important people in rap music”), Radiohead (“the best band still alive”) and the work of Beck and Sigur Ros. Like these artists, Eyedea wants to achieve success without personal compromise, a feat that may require not just building great songs but reconstructing the entire hip hop playing field...