I've been planning to make this thread for a little while now but I can't seem to start it the right way, map it out and all, so fuck it, I'm just gonna freewrite it and see where it goes.
This thread is not meant to present me as the guru of music fans (even though I am) or as a saint among sinners but I just want to throw some ideas out with the intention to maybe improve your listening experience when it comes to Hip-Hop and all. I'm also not saying that these are all facts, but they're rather opinions and attitudes that have been very beneficial to me as I've gone through different stages of being a rap music fan.
As you grow older it's only natural that you mature and continually improve and improve until you hit your prime and expand on it while making it last as long as possible. The implication of that is that as people grow older they should grow cooler and smarter. However, if you think about it, how many 40-50 year old guys are there that you say to yourself - I would like to be like that when I'm 40? Probably not that many, right? See, it's because, the mind is like a muscle so if you don't work it out and use it, the shit will end up retarded. However, if you do use it it will only grow stronger and even if you regress in physical shape and mental sharpness, you'll still have plenty of wisdom and compensate that way.
So anyway, my point is that just because it's only natural to expect that rap fans will grow out of retarded stages it's not necessarily going to happen, and I know a lot of fans who are over 30 and 40 (mostly on Facebook groups) and many of them are still that little bitch that irritates the shit of you. With that being said, we'll now go through couple of types and then lay out some pointers that can improve your listening experience.
The Happy Kid
This is one of the coolest and most joyful stages, it's when you first get into Hip-Hop and many of us were there when Em and 50 destroyed shit. It's the stage when you are in love with this whole new thing that resonates so well with you, it's like when you first get into sports, and you probably have an artist or two that you're hardcore stanning, and nobody can tell you nothing.
The YouTube Retard/Hip-Hop Newbie
After a while many fans may get to the place when they've been introduced to the "real shit", the "real rap". It may happen on a forum or through any social circle of Hip-Hop "purists" where the Happy Kid's opinion gets clowned and the kid's not so happy anymore. Upon being bombarded with a list of artists ranging from Big L to Immortal Technique or whatever, the kid realizes he knows shit about the culture and since the Hip-Hop purist is deemed to be more knowledgeable, their opinion is more valued and the kid questions his confidence and taste in music ("If I was wrong about this and this, what else I might have been wrong about?"). In a shaky state like that, the kid's choice is to "surrender" and memorize a bunch of artists and then is ready to preach the message.
That same kid will probably go around his less knowledgeable friends or random peers and brag about how they don't know about this whole other side of rap and he'll try to impose his opinion through the same namedropping and stuff which empowers him in a shitty way. The kid will probably even get to know the music of the real rappers. This can actually be good because when an album or an artist has a social proof of people who big him up, a person is more likely to like it and since he assumes it's good and he's supposed to like it, he may as well force himself to do it and the emotions follow through. Of course, there's the other side which usually appears in later stages, and that's when a rap fan goes strongly against most Hip-HOp mantras so if Illmatic is said to be extremely great, the fan can say it sucks just so that he comes off as being different.
A hard-case newbie is the YouTube retards you see posting comments of how Hopsin is the new 2Pac, every Eminem song is the greatest shit ever, or the Golden Age Era dick-sucker who says U-God is a better MC than Kendrick Lamar, while some other idiot thinks Big L's freestyles are actually off-the-dome and not pre-written etc.
I also need to include and make the division of a rap fan who's just a rap fan, and the rap fan who actually gets into rapping. The latter is more likely to learn shit about mutlies and all, not that the former can't, and they can become elitists in the sense they dick-ride technicality so instead of looking at overall songs they criticize the lack of more advanced rhyming and stuff, but we'll get more into that later.
On a side note, we can list a subset of rap fans/retards such as:
Golden Age Era Bitch - It's all about the 90's and the Old-School, fuck this new shit. Hip-Hop is Dead. Btw, where is Nas so I suck dry his balls.
Underground Kings Bitch - Duuude, Tech N9ne, Diabolic, Vinnie Pazzzzz, Jay Z - Daaaamn - did you see the Illuminati sign, that camel face sell-out, it's the one eye Masons, but maybe it's the cum of Rugged Man in my face that blurs my vision. shitttttt
Modern Era Bitchy Boy - Kendrick, Ab-Soul, SchoolboyQ etc etc Fuck all the dusty motherfuckers I can't stand KRS-One, who the fuck is he, dusty ass ni*ga
Left Field Retards - It's the arttt, the abstract ishhh, what is life bitch? RIP Nujabes, I'll jerk off to your posters till the day I die and we meet again in the pink realms of heaven and the dry sky that feeds my soul with Eva's gold that Adam gave to her when he put his dick in her mouth. Oh yeahh babbyyyyy, I watch ANime porn, yaaah
So what are the underlying processes that lead to all of this? We need to dig a bit deeper for that and see how the ego and things of that nature get involved. Some basic psychology I guess, but it does come to that. I may not be clear with what I say next but you'll get the picture till the end of the thread.
Problems arise when a person's emotional state is all over the place and when you don't treat yourself nicely, the pursuit of happiness becomes a bitch, and since it doesn't even have to be a pursuit in the sense of obtaining this and that we may easily get addicted to those small and often pity highs that may serve as emotional spikes of some sorts.
But before we get further let's lay some points:
- Imagine that a person's emotional state has a center and more often or not we get higher than that center but lower as well. The higher we go the happier we are, and the lower we go the sadder. If your center is high that means that your usual state is rather happy and vice verse, if it's lower it means you're usually sadder. A depressed person has a rather low center.
- The best way to raise your center is to accept who you are but also to work on improving yourself and become the person that you want to be. Now in order to improve you gotta have some things to do and basically build an ecosystem of positivity. This may include all sorts of activities and things to do, as well as socializing in a good way i.e. being around people you love and who also love you back etc. Being positive like this is good because again it's rooted in that center of emotions, while things like buying new shoes or fucking a model are more of an emotional high that isn't sustainable; so if you go at it like pursuing the highs and not taking care of the center, your center will be low and you'll feel bad most of the time. And also, you'll get disappointed after each high basically, because it won't be what you expected, it won't FIX things.
*It's also good to remember that when you go lower and come back, the center is stronger each time.
With that being sad, people can search for highs in all different areas of life and try to get them as if it is a drug indeed. Music and in our case - Hip-Hop can be a rich source for highs. For instance:
Waiting for your favorite artist to drop something - The wait is awesome, the thought that somewhere in the future there will be something new is awesome. And when it drops, it's that emotional high (which is really good actually) and we do need to get more of those. However, if you put too much pressure on it, the expectations will be too high to meet and instead of a high, you'll get a low because it didn't turn out to be what you wanted it to be. That's like a junkie saving money for heroin and then not getting a high off it. He'd be fucking pissed and probably kill the dealer, or maybe beat up his junkie girlfriend.
This is also a problem because it can make us not thankful enough. Like, if we take Em, he's already given us a lot of classic material but that shit has lost value in a way (because we're back to center) so now we want a new version of that. But even if we got it, it'd still lose value or not actually lose value but we would go through the process of hedonic adaptation/treadmill which off wiki:
"is the supposed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. According to this theory, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness." (i.e. what I've been blabbing about this whole thread)
So yeah, if you don't seek a permanent gain like that then you're better off. But again, waiting for new music is awesome and the experience of listening to it for the first little while is even more awesome, but we need to set up ourselves better and put us in a position to enjoy it as much as possible. That's not to say that listening to that music afterwards is bad; in fact listening at later times can provide nostalgia, familiarity, and refreshing of the memory, so all stages are great. It's like a relationship with a girl, the beginning is maybe more energetic but the beauty can live on in different ways.
Being Better Than Others - Oh shit this is bad, and it's a form of a more stable highs hunting. You see it with sports, when instead of appreciating skills people are more about my team shits on yours and when there's winning there are tremendous emotional highs. It's crazy. Same with rap. In a way, it's about not being sure in the quality of the music you like which is UTTERLY RETARDED. I repeat - utterly retarded and INSANE. Your favorite things don't have to be the best things as well. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't rate albums and artists, it's awesome for the sake of discussions and making the fan experience more interesting, and of course constructive criticism is a positive thing. It can serve as a way for things to get improved which would obviously be better for everyone. It's also nice to see how people perceive different things differently and to see what you may be missing and possibly gaining new cool insights.
However, the problem is when Agreeing To Disagree doesn't get established and it's about Winning an argument and putting other people down. Like, if other people admit that you're right, you suddenly get approval for your opinion, but music is subjective so you cannot be fucking wrong. If you like it you like it, and while, yes, a lot of things can be objectively better than others, you can still win or lose an argument in a better way. Even if the 2 sides agree on a winner it should be with no hard feelings and looking down at one another. Though then again there are the YouTube retards so you can be an asshole once in a while
I don't think I should break this down further because I find these 2 sets to be explanatory enough.
So what's the overall point? - The point is that if you drop the resistance and the need for stupid ego gratifications you can enjoy music much more. Like, if you aren't worried that rapper/album X are better than you favorite rapper/album Y you will be more open-minded towards the rapper/album X and consequently increase your chance to have a new piece of music/art to love and get good feelings from, which is obviously a great thing.
The point is that if you don't expect for upcoming project X to heal your emotional wounds but rather to see what the artist has to offer, and he is more likely to offer something HE loved which means an authentic project (which is better than making what he hates but what you love), you increase your chances of again having a new piece of music/art to love and get good feelings from. That one is big too. Remember that artists would never be able to please everybody, and their best chance is to please themselves, and then who likes it likes it. You HAVE to Respect that and understand that even if you didn't like the project, at least it is an authentic project and appreciate the fact that the artist stayed true to his inclinations.
The point is that we as fans in general could greatly benefit if more people were more about spreading love and positivity rather than doing the opposite. That was Hip-HOp's initial goal to begin with. Take a look at your like-minded Hip-Hop fans who you consider buddies (either online or real live), isn't it awesome when the two sides share interactions, or at the very least observe each others thoughts? It damn is, and that circle could increase in the way that there can be many smaller or bigger circles/tribes of fans, who are interconnected in one big world of Hip-Hop fans, so if the majority are cool like that, HIp-HOp as a whole would be MUCH better and in return the fans will feel even that MUCH better. So in other words, what an upward spiral would that be, huh?
One Love Y'all! Thanks for reading.
However, I may make some thread that would get more into that.
