The Guest Rapper Killed The Guitar Solo

FelineGuitars

This is something that I have ranted about for a long while - how songs used to have a killer 8 or 16 bar killer solo or even a simple guitar line that supported the song or lifted it to somewhere nice (quite often) and this was across many musical genres including soul, disco and funk s well as rock and blues.

Then it became a popular thing to have some rapper come in and rap about (usually) what a sexy MF he was and how he was gonna do this or that.

To my delight one of my favourite parody YouTube acts : The Key of Awesome wrote a piece on it...

Enjoy..

Nitefly

Wonderful!

holnrew

Solos are boring

Garthy

holnrew said:

Solos are boring

But not as boring as listening to PitBull, Sean Paul, Nicky Minaj or Iggy Azalea repeat their own names 20 times interspersed with just how fucking good they think they are and that half their words need a radio edit. Almost every song these four appear in would be better without them.

Winny_Pooh

I partly blame guitarists, if they were less inclined to mindlessly wank all the time (especially in the 80's) there would be more "cool factor" associated with good playing. 

Edit: FWIW, I really enjoyed the Darkness' first album, but they really are the exception that proves the rule for radio play.

Sporky

Winny_Pooh said:

I partly blame guitarists, if they were less inclined to mindlessly wank all the time (especially in the 80's) there would be more "cool factor" associated with good playing. 

Exactly - the guest rapper is no better or worse than this.

There were good guitar solos - even I won't deny that - but then there's all the crap like Jump where the guitar solo is so bad that the keyboard solo is unquestionably the better bit of playing and composition. Which is shocking.

RocknRollDave

The guest rapper didn't kill guitar solos, that's just nonsense.

EricTheWeary

I guess the guitar took over from the sax in this role which had taken over from the clarinet and the trumpet. Perhaps it's surprising it hung on as long as it did. 

Maybe be for the Quite Interesting Discussion this but Rapture by Blondie is usually considered to be the first rap video played on MTV. Seems quite twee now for what became arguably the biggest form of popular music in the world. 

ICBM

Anything where the same formula gets used too much in the same way becomes boring quite quickly.

A long time ago I went to see the 1940s vocal group The Inkspots - can't remember if there were any original members by this point, probably not but it doesn't matter - and *every single song* had a baritone spoken-vocal break three-quarters of the way through. I think there's a special name for this but I forget what it is… although when you put it in *every single song*, the word is probably either tedious or laughable, since it did become both after a while.

Reverend

I've been a fan of rap for a long time (over 30 years) but the guest rap spot has always been a bit naff. 

Gassage

ICBM said:

Anything where the same formula gets used too much in the same way becomes boring quite quickly.

A long time ago I went to see the 1940s vocal group The Inkspots - can't remember if there were any original members by this point, probably not but it doesn't matter - and *every single song* had a baritone spoken-vocal break three-quarters of the way through. I think there's a special name for this but I forget what it is… although when you put it in *every single song*, the word is probably either tedious or laughable, since it did become both after a while.

I agree.

I always found this song very formulaic

lustycourtier

Are the current popular phenomenon that is 'feat.'

english_bob

EricTheWeary said:

I guess the guitar took over from the sax in this role which had taken over from the clarinet and the trumpet. Perhaps it's surprising it hung on as long as it did. 

Exactly. Nothing killed the guitar solo, it just got really, really old and died.

Or maybe it got its head stuck up its own arse and asphyxiated.

Either way, guest rappers are just what goes in that little eight bar gap now*. We've replaced men dressed as women waving giant wooden penises around with men talking about how good they are at talking (and at being rich and doing sex with girls and that), which is sort of the same thing. Grit your teeth and bear it. They'll be replaced with something else eventually. 

My personal favourite pop music instrumental from recent years is the autotune-y, whammy pedal-y sax solo in Katy Perry's otherwise shite "Friday Night" song. Skip to 3:54 if you're not feeling very Friday Night-y:






* except when there's a super-white ethnically cleansed Radio 2 mix of the song that takes out any rappy bits that grandma would tut and roll her eyes at and replaces them with... a gap where the guest rapper went. Jessie J, I'm looking at you.

english_bob

Reverend said:

I've been a fan of rap for a long time (over 30 years) but the guest rap spot has always been a bit naff. 

In some circumstances it's a good way for unknown rappers to get exposure to an established artist's audience- the benefits to the guest spot person are obvious, and the established artist gets to be the guy with his finger on the pulse of what's new.

That's how it's meant to work, but a lot of the times you hear it on the radio the featured artist is someone in no need of exposure, and there are no "hip tastemaker" points to be scored by putting Nicki Minaj on yet another bloody song.

duotone

I'm struggling to think of a guitar solo I really like from music that came out during this year.  

mellowsun

The tragedy is that rap in the RunDMC and Public Enemy days was brilliant and thrilling.

Now it is the musical equivalent of mindless graffiti 'tags'. The rhythm might be good but the content is execrable.

Deijavoo

duotone said:

I'm struggling to think of a guitar solo I really like from music that came out during this year.  

Meshuggah. In fact, absolutely ripping solos over exceptional music, released this year.

UnclePsychosis

mellowsun said:

The tragedy is that rap in the RunDMC and Public Enemy days was brilliant and thrilling.

Now it is the musical equivalent of mindless graffiti 'tags'. The rhythm might be good but the content is execrable.

This is a really weird comment. Its like saying "there are no good guitar players in 2016" or "there are no good jazz musicians anymore". Why on earth would you make a generalisation on this scale? Bizarre.  

 

Bidley

There's plenty of great music with great guitar solos coming out thick and fast; the only difference is it isn't shoehorned into whatever Top 40 bollocks is floating around. Which I can't say I'm too cut up about.

Bucket

Friendly reminder that Nuno Bettencourt still exists.

Whammying it up at 3:50:

breakstuff

Bucket said:

Friendly reminder that Nuno Bettencourt still exists.

Whammying it up at 3:50:

I know Nuno plays with her live,but wasn't it Alex Delicata who played it on the recorded version?