Not sure if serious, but if you want to have a serious musical discussion, rap is actually one of the most rhythmically sophisticated genres of Western music...
What's really sad, is there's probably some people out there that actually think that...and that remedial math uses really hard equations..and finger painting is the toughest form of expression to master...But seriously..You got any examples? I didn't think they even sampled anything very sophisticated... To be fair...I recently saw one of those drummers that regularly play one of the late night Jimmy shows (Kimmel or Fallon) who I guess I'd only seen play hip hop before..But he was actually showing some promise playing something with Elvis Costello IIRC
You are so right H37 and as for, "if you want to have a
serious musical discussion, rap is actually one of the most rhythmically
sophisticated genres of Western music..." this has to be a lame attempt at humor. The people at the Stadium who are running the sound system need to be more aware of their audience. T_O_B
And
Hercules...I really mean it about giving us an example…
Ok. You guys want to talk music? I don't know sh#t about football compared to music. Prepare for my thesis:
Here are your examples. I took the tune you seemed to like by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which, given its release date, isn't that bad rhythmically (lyrically, on the other hand…). We'll compare that to "Underground," the last track from
Relapse by Eminem.
There are many different ways to create rhythmic complexity or sophistication - in these two pieces, we'll look at polymeter, syncopation, hemiola, and motivic development.
These are the first four measures of the first verse. The vocal rhythm is ridiculously repetitive - almost the exact same rhythm every bar, and there's always an accent on beat 4. It's not remotely syncopated (it always emphasizes the beat), and it stays that way pretty much the whole song. It hardly ever changes, and when it does, it still emphasizes beat 4.
Really, the vocals are comically bad, but it was in 1991, before "Illmatic" was released and changed the way everyone rapped. All rappers sounded pretty square back then. The drums are also repetitive and pretty dull - this song was saved by the bass and guitar player. That's where all the syncopation is, and that's what makes it groove. The guitar is really the only voice in the entire band that actually varies a little bit from measure to measure.
Now, check out Eminem's
Underground. The excerpt I wrote out happens towards the end of the last verse.
This song starts with the chorus, but it's in a 5/8 time signature. When the verse starts, the bass/bass drum continue in 5/8, while the hi-hat cymbal, guitar, and Eminem are in 4/4 time. The snare drum is the only voice that connects those two time signatures - they always line up at the snare drum on beats 2 and 4. This use of polymeter, all by itself, makes this song one of the most sophisticated songs you'll find in commercial music.
On top of that, the hi-hat rhythm and guitar rhythm, which just repeat each bar, are both syncopated figures (as opposed to emphasizing the beat, they emphasize the "a" of beat 2, and the "and" of beat 3.
Then there's Eminem. Here's a rapper that has perfected the use multi-syllabic rhyme schemes and internal rhyme sequences to create incredibly complex rhythms in his music. Just one example of this comes in the phrase transcribed above. Eminem takes "sanity," a three-syllable sound, and rhymes it with "can it be," "vanity," (hu-)"manity," "fantasy," and "amputee."
Unlike the Red Hot Chili Peppers, he's not just rhyming everything on beat four. He strings them together to create a hemiola (3 against 2. 16th notes come in two's, so grouping them in three's like Eminem does here is dope). Doing something like this would add a lot of rhythmic sophistication to a song in any genre, but Eminem's doing it in a song that's already written in two different meters.
And as if that weren't enough, he takes that 3-syllable rhythm motif and develops it at the end. Notice that "arm and leg" and "amputee," which are both grouped in 3's, are actually slightly different rhythms than earlier 3-syllable phrases, like "fantasy," and "can it be."
This is just two measures of Eminem's vocals. While the Red Hot Chili Peppers vocals are almost exactly the same every bar, Eminem changes where he accents, and instead of always ending at the end of the bar or at the end of two bars, sometimes his phrases spill over into the next bar, which creates even more layers.
That is sophisticated.
