Reply To: Music or Lyrics?
i'm kind of the reverse of what bry said in his first post in this thread. the first thing i'm attracted to, or not, is the music. generally i find that in the long run lyrics carry more weight, but i can almost never make them out the first time i hear a song. so i get hooked in by the music and then listen to it a bunch and once i decipher the lyrics i will either keep listening to it or not.
i feel like i've discussed my feelings about "flashing lights" by mr. k. west in this forum before but either i am wrong or my search-fu is inadequate. in any case, it is a very catchy little number, moreso if you are familiar with the bizarre music video, but then i noticed that he described the collapse of his relationship with the implied woman as being "like Katrina with no FEMA". he goes on to say of the paparazzi, "I hate these n****z more than a Nazi". yes, i do understand that hyperbole is a dramatic device used to express intensity, but this is just irresponsible. it is Aggravating.
so, i don't like that song or particularly mr west anymore.
incidentally i feel like this orientation may be one of the factors in my historical aversion to hip-hop. the music is often very basic, so it fails to catch my interest long enough to get to the lyrics comprehension stage. in support of this theory is the fact that after playing gta: san andreas, i developed somewhat more of an interest in the genre. when you are being pursued by 30 ballas with submachine guns, you don't always have time to change the radio station when you jack a car, and in any case if i'd only listened to one radio station for the entirety of the 80+ hours i played of that game, i'd of lost whatever remnants of my goddamned mind are still clinging desperately to the insides of my skull.