The Wu Tang Clan

Today we listened to the Wu-Tang Clan's first album. A question came up that was "What is the difference between Wu-Tang Clan and NWA's music?" We talked about it for a little while and the ultimate answer was that the Wu-Tang Clan had more aspects of jazz and they rapped more slowly, while NWA had more aspects of funk in their beats, rapped with an angrier sound, and rapped more quickly. The Wu-Tang Clan was more dangerous than NWA because they said some worse things, and they actually carried out the things that they talked about. One thing that I liked a lot about the Wu-Tang Clan, was that they had a lot of euphemisms. They were really good lyricists and I thought that added a lot to their music if you listened well. I also liked that there were many members of the group, so there were many interesting stories being told and many different voices, so that the listeners wouldn't be bored. I though that was very strategic from the label. Overall, I liked the Wu-Tang Clan because they never made me bored, they had good beats, and they had great lyrics.

Nirvana

In class we listened to a Nirvana album. Prior to this in class, we had watched a movie about them recording a live album for MTV. I have heard many Nirvana songs before, because they 're a pretty well known band, and my dad used to listen to them. I recognized multiple of the songs we listened to or watched the music videos of. I personally liked the album that we listened to. I liked how they could have a loud and pretty fast song, but then the next song be slow. I thought they did that really well. I thought the songs were well written, but I couldn't understand Kurt Cobain, because he sounded like he wasn't fully pronouncing his words. I also thought he sounded angry a lot, but besides that I liked the album and the music a lot.

Movie

In class, we watched a movie about LCD SoundSystem's last performance and the day following that. The movie showed the view of the lead singer's, David Murphy, last day and the day following it. At first, the band never really wanted to play an arena, they always wanted to play for parties or people having a good time. Over time, they began to become big, and then they said they wouldn't tour. Ends up, they toured. They played an interesting style of music that had a lot of electronic aspects, but had a rhythm, and also had a lot of singing. The audience in the pit was going crazy. They were jumping and dancing for all that we saw, and although they were touring, they had a party-like atmosphere that kept true to what they said they would do. I liked some of the songs that were played, and others I didn't like so much. David Murphy, to me, looks like he should be a an opera singer of some sort, not the kind of music that he played. That caught me by surprised, but none the less, I liked it. I thought they sent out a good vibe, and the documentary was interesting. I thought it was extremely unique how they just stopped making music, didn't want to be known as LCD SoundSystem, and then just started living normal lives. There are very few instances where anyone or group in anything just quit, while they were at the top, making a lot of money, just because they wanted to stop making music. I admire that a lot.

The Beastie Boys

In class we listened to The Beastie Boys. They used more developed beats and there was much more going on in the background of they're songs, than in N.W.A's songs. They, along with N.W.A., had pretty good writing. They didn't curse very often either which was cool to hear. They got an edgy topic and edgy style of music by without cursing, which was much different than music by N.W.A. Prior to listening to The Beastie Boys in class, I had only heard "Fight For Your Right" and a few other songs of theirs. I liked their music.

N.W.A.

Last class, we listened to N.W.A This was the fiercest type of rap we've listened to thus far. The ton was much angrier than the earlier style of hip hop. It was also the edgiest. The members included Ice Cube, Eazy-E, and Dr. Dre. Dre did most of the writing for the group. The writing was very well written, even though they were cursing a lot. The beats were also really good. Over all, I liked what we listened to, even though I'm not a huge fan of rap.

Early Hip Hop

In the past class we listened to Early forms of hip hop. I really enjoyed this because I did not know that much about early hip hop. The songs were much longer than today's rap, because of how big the records were. They could fit around six minutes of recording on to each one, so each song would be about that long. At that time, the music video concept was becoming pretty large, and we watched some of Run DMC's music videos. First of all, the audience was different and the clothes they wore were different. They were wearing jump suits so that they could dance or do moves in more easily, preferred to the Hair Metal clothes. I liked learning about early hip hop a lot.

Hair Metal

Today in class, we listened and watched hair metal videos. Before the class, I had already thought that this type of music was annoying, and by the end of the class I had my hands over my hears because of the noise. I personally did not like it at all. When you listen to song after song after song, it all starts to sound like loud, annoying noise. To make matters worse, all the videos were almost mere images of each other. The members of the bands also had extremely long hair, really tight clothing, sometimes had face paint, and did dance moves that males should not be able to do. The songs had meaningless lyrics and the chorus was played close to five times each song, so that people would remember the lyrics. Out of all the music we've listened to this year, this was probably my least favorite. Here is a video: