The ILP Karaoke Bar

[Jakob]

karaoke me this

[promethean75]

Raised on survival of the funniest.

indeed. there are some things that are so ridiculously confused and nonsensical that they can be neither taken seriously nor avoided; the comic is the one who can't get out, but can't commit his energies to correcting all the mistakes around him, and focuses his creative efforts in running a private gag reel of the things around him. a secret mocking language only comics speak and appreciate while everyone else asks 'why is he laughing... these matters are serious'. it must be the suffering the comic experiences while bearing witness to this fiasco. the crowd puts so much dire seriousness into things which aren't even real problems, while being completely oblivious to what real problems do exist... incidentally, those which only the comic knows most intimately.

a certain kind of humor in the face of the spirit of seriousness is the act of transforming the insult taken by the depreciation of matters truly deserving of seriousness and replacing them with trivialities instead. humor is a retort to this (sarcasm; one way it is voiced), a way of recognizing an impostor of suffering... one who suffers the least serious concerns while waving his hands all about as if he were being thrown into the most dire of circumstances. there is nothing left to do with such an insulting joke but to make a caricature out of it. the comic is the master authority in this. and it isn't that the comic isn't capable of taking serious... rather that he finds in the company of others that he can't take this or that seriously. problems of a lower rank which the comic pays little attention to, but toward which others invest the greatest amount of emergency. that is what evokes the energies of the comedian and brings him to life. the cheapening of what it means to suffer. the depreciation of the meaning of suffering... the silly spectacle of watching serious people rant and rave about what is of so little consequence. such people can only have value to the comic as the subject of caricature.

“The more one suffers, the more, I believe, has one a sense for the comic. It is only by the deepest suffering that one acquires true authority in the use of the comic, an authority which by one word transforms as by magic the reasonable creature one calls man into a caricature.” - kierkegaard

[promethean75]

The Promethean Chronicles, chapter 1

3:45 p.m., east manhattan, 34th and chambers st.

https://vocaroo.com/i/s19tJfMM5iLh

[Jakob]

Raised on survival of the funniest.

indeed. there are some things that are so ridiculously confused and nonsensical that they can be neither taken seriously nor avoided; the comic is the one who can't get out, but can't commit his energies to correcting all the mistakes around him, and focuses his creative efforts in running a private gag reel of the things around him. a secret mocking language only comics speak and appreciate while everyone else asks 'why is he laughing... these matters are serious'. it must be the suffering the comic experiences while bearing witness to this fiasco. the crowd puts so much dire seriousness into things which aren't even real problems, while being completely oblivious to what real problems do exist... incidentally, those which only the comic knows most intimately.

a certain kind of humor in the face of the spirit of seriousness is the act of transforming the insult taken by the depreciation of matters truly deserving of seriousness and replacing them with trivialities instead. humor is a retort to this (sarcasm; one way it is voiced), a way of recognizing an impostor of suffering... one who suffers the least serious concerns while waving his hands all about as if he were being thrown into the most dire of circumstances. there is nothing left to do with such an insulting joke but to make a caricature out of it. the comic is the master authority in this. and it isn't that the comic isn't capable of taking serious... rather that he finds in the company of others that he can't take this or that seriously. problems of a lower rank which the comic pays little attention to, but toward which others invest the greatest amount of emergency. that is what evokes the energies of the comedian and brings him to life. the cheapening of what it means to suffer. the depreciation of the meaning of suffering... the silly spectacle of watching serious people rant and rave about what is of so little consequence. such people can only have value to the comic as the subject of caricature.

“The more one suffers, the more, I believe, has one a sense for the comic. It is only by the deepest suffering that one acquires true authority in the use of the comic, an authority which by one word transforms as by magic the reasonable creature one calls man into a caricature.” - kierkegaard

Yes.

Nice track, too. Ill have to play it a second time at least, sound (beat and voice) is good and moody.

[Jakob]

ConSIStency yo.
Thats the trick. One song, one mood.

What Pezer doesn't pull off yet... when he isn't freestyling.

[Jakob]

So Pezer what do you feel about this white man using the word nigga?
You made sure to clarify to me how wrongful it is for a white man to use that word. I havent used it since. If only because you went the first of my friends who aren't all white to point this out to me with some urgency.

I find it normal when Brian uses it though. Perhaps because he is a comic.

[Jakob]

“They met each other. It wasn’t even like they had a conversation; they just started to laugh, clap hands—because there was an insane amount of respect for each other’s craft,” recalls the industry veteran. “You don’t really have to talk in those moments. I played the song; Jay [asked me to play] the beat for like 20 minutes. Jay goes in the booth and changes everything [from his previous version]. He goes, ‘You ready?’ Big is like mystified. I was like, ‘I told you: he don’t write no rhymes.’ And from that point, Big stopped writing rhymes. He’s like, ‘I’m not gonna be the guy that’s gonna be here writing when this guy can do that.’ Even though I told [Biggie] a bunch of times, ‘he don’t write his rhymes down,’ he thought it was impossible that he could say rhymes that good without writing them down.”

[Jakob]

I still think Biggie is stronger.

[Pedro I Rengel]

The Promethean Chronicles, chapter 1

3:45 p.m., east manhattan, 34th and chambers st.

https://vocaroo.com/i/s19tJfMM5iLh

That's fucking good.

Yeah, it never sounded right to me until I heard Zoot say it. I don't think it's because he a comic. Something to do with respect for the dirt.

I don't think Zoot is a comic at all. He isn't even funny. It's more a street slyness, I'm jokin at ya so I don't have to stab ya.

Anyway. Pins and needles here for the first song after the intro. All fucking around aside, that was good.

[Jakob]

It was better than his first, definitely. And better than yours. Because you were just screwing around.

[promethean75]

Fuck it. I refuse to do it again. You have no idea how many fuckin times I did this trying to get it right... and every time it turned out different. A muthafucka don't know how hard it is to write/do a rap until he tries it... and den he knows. If I spent any more time on this thing, my head would've exploded.

All I ever wanted was to be able to run that shit like an Eminem or a Snoop Dog, but I caint do it, man. I just caint do it. So fuck you.

https://vocaroo.com/i/s0UA0Uzie6g2

[Pedro I Rengel]

I actually do know. I recorded about 40 versions of my 2nd battle rap and eventually just gave up posted what I considered to be the least horrible one.

Facing a recorder is a real motherfucker. Singing in the shower syndrome.

Maybe it's like MF Doom says. The muses decide when it's on, not you.

Motivation.

One thing about Eminem, I think, one reason it was so on demand for him (also he spent hour upon hour practicing), is that his motivation wasn't s complicated. Look up his freestyle. "Jacking off in the parking lot."

What I heard in the one you posted before last was "I'm the best because this." I'd stick with that.

The fucking recorder. Because I guess the ghost of the audience begins to appear.

This is an issue I've been trying to crack for a while. Maybe what Nietzsche called the evil eye.

Yeah, I guess that would be my advice. Let the muses tell you when. But don't stand them up when they do. Sayn?

One reason my second rap wasn't good was that I really wasn't inspired by the context. I did it anyway out of respect for your gesture, I couldn't punk out. But it has to be some shit worth saying, the muses scoff at talent for talent's sake.

[Pedro I Rengel]

The first one was "I'm so great." The second one was "I dunno, this is what I do when I'm bored I guess." I would rather suggest "I went to jail son, this is what that was."

It's gotta burn, I guess.

My best lines so far still have been the ones I just kicked around with Jakob for a couple hours getting stoned. No rules. But that lack of rules created a rapper that still cannot exist. A world has to be created first that will accomodate him.

And along the way I probably will, probably already have, strayed. So fuck it, I'm aiming for producer now.

Maybe PZR failed to take off as a rapper because what Jakob liked wasn't what PZR liked. He liked the freestyles. Even if just as writting process. I liked when we wrote, swam in the abyss. 90% of it probably sucked, but I can safely say that my four favourite lines in rap were written by myself.

But one thing standing against J in rap, which is a problem you also have, is an avertion to being a fuck up. Remember that time? I was like "zoot is awesome, he's a fuck up like us," and you both were straight offended (you much more than Jakob). Rap is made up only of fuck ups. The golden toothed smile.

[promethean75]

for myself, the problem is not 'stage fright' or anything like that. it's not a serious enough endeavor such that a failure to do it right would be an embarrassment. the problem for me is finding words to fit the rhythmic meter i have in my head when i hear the beat. i can put a melody of notes over anything in my head... but fitting the melody with words of arranged syllables is a bitch. a rap is like a lead instrument, structurally speaking, but in addition to the physics of the form (proper time, flow, stanza, etc.), there is also conceptual form... which is a whole nuther level. so when you match your words to the lines of notes and figures in your head, you have to create something with semantic and syntactical substance. so there is geometric shape and direction in the meaningful content, as well as the physical content. that's what makes it difficult. it'd be no problem if you could just go:

buh da pop dop buh ditta
hitta witta pop nopita
de wopita, copita, dah litta

my biggest problem, besides this, is being unable to remember how a particular phrase/paragraph is to be rapped after i write it down. what happens is, i'll forget how i wanted it to be rapped by the time i get to it on the page, and then have to wing it. an example of this is when i stumbled here:

"the same threads that i get in
the same shit that i hit when"

what you hear is not what i wanted... because i forgot the specific way i had intended to say it, and i barely recovered it.

though i imagine like anything else, if you practice enough, you develop the skill. i've been an amateur rapper now for a week. but if i could rap as fast and clearly as the notes come to my mind when i hear a beat, i'd have a hot pink humvee and a summer home in fort lauderdale right now.

[Jakob]

But one thing standing against J in rap, which is a problem you also have, is an avertion to being a fuck up. Remember that time? I was like "zoot is awesome, he's a fuck up like us," and you both were straight offended (you much more than Jakob). Rap is made up only of fuck ups. The golden toothed smile.

You've got a point there.

I like this third Zoot rap, precisely because as he says he gets in overs head and is forced to swim in the infinity of choices that a rap that isn't written to embody its own particular rhythm will present whereby he is forced to reveal his own particular will to flow, his musical character. A few bars have this. Eventually theres the art of creating phrases about which there can't be any doubt as to how to rap them. Thats not something all rappers do in all their songs, its only the truly good verses where at the same time you're saying something completely original and it has an inevitable rhythm that didn't exist before. Thats where the geometry falls into place, only when the form and the content are the same instrument.

[Jakob]

This rhyme which I wrote in the cave is where I first found a way to do that in English. I liked the writing as well of course, its just your free styling was opening vast depths to the process.

I get riches
stack bitches
tossing midgets
like DiCaprio, all business

its hard to rap this properly because it only has one correct way.

[Jakob]

though i imagine like anything else, if you practice enough, you develop the skill. i've been an amateur rapper now for a week. but if i could rap as fast and clearly as the notes come to my mind when i hear a beat, i'd have a hot pink humvee and a summer home in fort lauderdale right now.

The game is the game.
Now you know.

[Pedro I Rengel]

This vocaroo really fucks up the eq.

[promethean75]

rap can be great for what it is, but what it is isn't great, if that makes any sense to you. as great as a rap may be, it's still only just a rap. the existence of rap, to me, lies somewhere between a harmless artistic activity and a magnificent travesty expressing one facet of the slow descent of western civilization and culture.

and i wouldn't be able to not see anyone who attributed so much greatness to rap as being part of this decline... and neither would i be able to explain any of this to someone who did so.

but check this one out. a well written rap to this groove would be epic. who among the ILP rappers shall have the courage to take up the mic? be warned; a song like this belongs only to the illest.

[Jakob]

rap can be great for what it is, but what it is isn't great, if that makes any sense to you. as great as a rap may be, it's still only just a rap. the existence of rap, to me, lies somewhere between a harmless artistic activity and a magnificent travesty expressing one facet of the slow descent of western civilization and culture.

and i wouldn't be able to not see anyone who attributed so much greatness to rap as being part of this decline... and neither would i be able to explain any of this to someone who did so.

but check this one out. a well written rap to this groove would be epic. who among the ILP rappers shall have the courage to take up the mic? be warned; a song like this belongs only to the illest.

Yeah, because Homer was a definite sign of the decline of western culture.

you need to get these nazis off your back hombre.


Fuck your dumbasss ideology. Praise your artistic abilities.

[Jakob]

You don't need do do anything. But the supremacy of the boringness you become when you're ideological is just something I don't like.

Pezer, I must have missed one of your raps. Only heard the one that starts with goddamn, the man came up with some rhymes. Wheres the other one?


On another note, Faust killed Iambiguous. Or had him confess, at least, that he has never believed any of the crap he was writing. For the first time ever, he confessed to having a perspective.
I just gave him the little nudge after Faust had broken his pride.

[barbarianhorde]

but check this one out. a well written rap to this groove would be epic. who among the ILP rappers shall have the courage to take up the mic? be warned; a song like this belongs only to the illest.

I gave it a shot.
https://vocaroo.com/i/s0RCT030DQkJ

[promethean75]

Bruh. That was pretty fuckin ill. Lemme talk to J Roc and Killaroo and see if I can get u in.

[Pedro I Rengel]

https://vocaroo.com/i/s1zEJrvM8r4E

Lol, well shit. Um. It's a beautiful beat.

I hadn't noticed the challenge before.

[Pedro I Rengel]

I listened to that Soldier song at least a million times when it came out.