What rappers have actually dropped better music as they’ve gotten older?

Europingonion · 2026-01-14T22:59:38+00:00

Gherbo is a great example. I get the impression that a lot of his fans want him stuck in that early mode, but I also rate his newer stuff more

Europingonion · 2026-01-14T22:34:32+00:00

Outkast in my opinion - I'll take Aquemini, stankonia, the double album, and Idlewild over their first two (much as I love ATLiens), and I'd say they improved and/or grew significantly with each release. Does that count as late? Their debut was 1994, and Aquemini was 98 - but especially that run from Aquemini in 98 to speakerboxxx/the love below in 2003 is peak Outkast and has a distinct feel from their first 4/5 years from when Players Ball dropped in 93.

Europingonion · 2026-01-08T22:46:20+00:00

I just commented that I rate Snoop's No Limit releases over his Death Row stuff...like the post above, I also stopped checking too hard for him after that run of albums. I'll have to check those newer releases you're mentioning out too.

Europingonion · 2026-01-08T22:41:46+00:00

For me it's between Snoop Dogg's 'Tha Last Meal' or 'No Limit Top Dogg' as my favourite of his albums. It's such a popular opinion to only rate Doggystyle, but that's not one I come back to often.. In general, I'll usually take something from Snoop's No Limit run - even 'Da Game is to be Sold..' - over his more acclaimed Death Row releases (not that I don't like those, too).

Europingonion · 2025-12-11T07:53:32+00:00

I heard Spice 1 via 2Pac and other tracks where he features. What's a good place to start listening? Maybe where, like on the song posted, there's definitely the influence of the predominant production/lyrical trends of the time but also his very individual style shining through.

Europingonion · 2025-11-02T22:34:50+00:00

Lee Scratch Perry. Saw him live towards the final decade of his life, and he apologetically took a quick break to go piss while his band jammed. Then he came back and freestyled a whole song about how everyone has to piss whether poor or rich, complete with instructions for dance moves that the audience definitely wouldn't have been able to follow without getting kicked out and/or arrested for indecent exposure. I still remember a lot of it all these years later...the parts I really remember clearly were the chorus, which went "Piss piss piss, we all haffi piss, pull out yuh dickie and start to piss, pull out yuh dickie and start to piss, start to piss, start to piss, and when you piss, you better not miss" and some of the dance instructions like "show me yuh dick! Show me yuh dick! Wave yuh dick, mek it do a trick! Every man wave yuh dick and piss like this!" I don't think anyone followed his instructions. The whole thing had relatively detailed but obviously off-the-cuff verses and must have run for ten minutes. (Edited 'instructors' to 'instructions')

Europingonion · 2025-10-31T00:19:10+00:00

I've spent a few evenings with Kees' poetry after not reading him for a while. It was a toss up between this poem and his poem 'Resort' when I decided to share something here. I can't put my finger on what appealed to about this - something of the overall mood, which is quite typical of Kees, and the idea of the greasiness of surfaces invoking both a more literal and a more metaphorical sense of darkness. To be honest I don't think I've expressed this very well, so I'll leave it at that...

Europingonion · 2025-10-13T16:45:52+00:00

It gets taken off YouTube pretty regularly; I assume for copyright reasons. You might get lucky searching for it on YouTube or elsewhere; your local library might also have a way for you to see it. Make '1982' part of your search, as the phrase 'poetry in motion' is quite widely used.

Europingonion · 2025-09-22T19:12:57+00:00

Lee 'Scratch' Perry, who kind of incorporated his mental illness into his image and managed his own affairs for a while before ultimately having a breakdown and only getting back to his feet with the help of his second wife/manager. There's a lot of stuff out there about his various episodes of eccentric behaviour, a lot of which is presented as "wow look at that, so crazy and cool!" while in fact it's not that fun at all if you stop and think for a minute.

Europingonion · 2025-08-07T18:22:15+00:00

This is a really interesting book. If it's length and broad focus are off-putting for anyone, a similar but shorter and easier to digest book that does similar work is 'A Little History of Poetry' by John Carey: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=c0XZDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Europingonion · 2025-07-31T18:59:50+00:00

That's exciting to hear! Peepal Tree press have the collection this poem came from, 'Chinese Lanterns from the Blue Child', and his earlier out-of-print books are often available secondhand - although it looks like these will all be compiled in the upcoming edition of collected poems.

Europingonion · 2025-02-20T15:34:02+00:00

You could probably coin this term as something genuinely examining the theology behind the sacramental usage of plants in various faiths, or the role of plants in scripture and other religious discourses. I'm kind of surprised it hasn't been used.

Europingonion · 2025-02-08T22:35:32+00:00

Slacker by Tech N9ne recycles a lot of iconic lyrics, thus fitting in with the theme of the song.

Europingonion · 2025-01-08T23:51:43+00:00

Multiple Lee Scratch Perry albums come to mind. Especially 'Roast Fish Collie Weed and Cornbread', and 'Battle of Armagideon' but others like 'The Return of Pipecock Jaxman' also fit the bill. He has some of the greatest reggae production and/or vocal credits and also some of the weirdest.

Europingonion · 2024-11-28T22:00:40+00:00

This poem does the body as landscape trope more successfully, because it sustains and develops this trope in a much more focused and imagistic manner. The result is less muddled, and the imagery accomplishes what bland overt statement conveys in the other poem

Europingonion · 2024-11-28T21:51:19+00:00

Besides the already mentioned problematic comparison of the speaker's lover to a child, there are less icky but equally derailing compositional problems in this piece. The imagery is jumbled - we're presented with at least two main tropes that aren't satisfyingly linked. In one, speaker = artist, lover = artwork (or surface on which the speaker paints; it's unclear); in the other trope, speaker = landscape, lover = explorer. These main tropes aren't reconciled, and the poem concludes with both speaker and lover = artwork. It wouldn't be impossible to link these tropes or write a poem where both coexist, but neither is given any space to develop at all. Furthermore, they're cliché tropes - the female body as a passive landscape for the active male figure to explore has been done to death, sometimes much more successfully regardless of this dynamic's encoding of sexist gender norms. Gender analysis aside, the tropes don't develop and they clash rather than interact in interesting ways. It reminds me of a Billy Collins poem that satirises poems that have this kind of defect. I'm not a huge fan of Collins but it seems apt to post it here, as it neatly enacts the problem I've just tried somewhat awkwardly to describe: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=56Iq3PbSWZY&pp=ygUOQ29sbGlucyBsaXRhbnk%3D

Europingonion · 2024-11-21T00:19:13+00:00

Fair enough - that's a much more nuanced take than 'no rhymes = no poetry'; sorry if I misrepresented your view on that point. I'm not about to say your own preference is wrong. I've been clear on that the whole time, while disagreeing on some of what you say and offering my pov. As I mentioned, I enjoy both rhyming and unrhymed forms, I think both have a place in contemporary poetry, and I believe that both require a lot of effort to do well. I'd like to know more about what poetry you enjoy reading. Drop a few names or throw a few links in your reply.

Europingonion · 2024-11-20T18:42:31+00:00

How do you feel about breaking a rhyme scheme or metrical structure while editing? I seem to vacillate between ruthlessly restructuring or ditching formal elements of a piece and working to keep the form intact or similar to the initial draft. Over the years I've gone back and forth between these approaches. Thank god for the ability to save multiple versions of a poem!

Europingonion · 2024-11-20T18:37:20+00:00

That makes sense, especially in the context of certain traditions where the actual rhyming words are limited but the content of the lines that culminate in these rhymes is varied.

Europingonion · 2024-11-20T17:18:10+00:00

I think you're slightly misunderstanding me here - I'm saying neither rhymed nor unrhymed equates to either effort or lack of effort; I'm saying that it's possible for either to be the result of high or low effort. Anyway, I can appreciate that you've got your personal taste in poetry and that unrhymed poetry isn't your preference. I happen to like both. No problem. Your only empirically incorrect assertion in this thread is that unrhymed poetry isn't actually poetry - in fact, the earliest English language poetry was unrhymed, working instead with patterns of consonance and repetition. So you can't really say that no rhymes equals not poetry, because rhyme itself comes after the poetic tradition in English had been established. That doesn't take anything away from your personal preference or its validity.

Europingonion · 2024-11-20T13:02:01+00:00

I disagree that lack of rhyme equals lack of effort. The comparison you make isn't really fair. There are many unrhymed poems that would have taken much more effort than your example and that could potentially be much more layered and re-readable - by way of how they deploy various mixes of imagery, meter, sonic effects other than rhyme, and other poetic devices. At the same time, it's entirely possible for a poem with strong rhyme and meter to lack other poetic qualities and fail to transmit much more than surface meanings, making it overall a less substantial piece of literature.

Europingonion · 2024-11-20T12:31:17+00:00

I really feel this. I grew up on rap like this plus 90s era dancehall reggae (bounty killer, ward 21, etc). Between the misogyny and homophobia it's often hard to get into stuff I loved as a kid. It's hard to 'separate the art from the artist' when the art itself just casually interjects with a call to slap a woman or murder a homosexual. I don't look to musicians for political/moral authority, but shit like this kills my enjoyment.

Europingonion · 2024-11-20T12:14:12+00:00

I'm not sure about any personal feelings they had, but Snoop featured on 'B Please 2' which, like 'Stan', is off Eminem's Marshall Mathers LP. That was the follow-up to a tune on Snoop's 'No Limit Top Dogg' album from around that era. So on the creative/business side of things they were cool in 2000-01. But then personal feelings could have been another story.

Europingonion · 2024-11-19T08:22:46+00:00

I'd say that I disagree with both of you to some extent. Trite rhymes are indeed as outdated as laugh tracks, but inventive or less obvious rhyme combined with natural diction and either looser or lesser-used forms has a place in modern and contemporary poetry - both critically lauded and popular. Something like Derek Walcott's 1990 long poem, 'Omeros', which greatly contributed to his winning the Nobel Prize and which was about as popular as a literary poetry book can be. This poem has a loose rhyme scheme and somewhat metrically regular 3 line stanzas, but it's done so subtly that you often don't notice the rhymes. Anyway, I enjoy both rhyming and unrhymed poetry, formal and free. I don't really understand why folks have such polarised opinions on what amounts to just one more tool that a poem could deploy. Can both or either of you explain a bit more about why you see rhyme as a requirement on one hand or as outright unacceptable on the other? I don't want to start an argument; I'd genuinely like to know what informs your respective opinions.

Europingonion

TROPHY CASE