oh, i get very much that people are "listening" to it.
justifying it's merits based on influence to do so.
"enjoying it"? i'm not so sure...

i watched that jay-z/justin timberlake "official visual" on youtube.

jay-z has to don a ball cap and button his collar button to make people forget the fact he's 46 years old today...

but how does he approach making music being that his life is so far removed from a) anything remotely rap-related, b) anything remotely relatable to the common man, c) anything remotely relatable to anybody in the 20's?

the answer is a form of low-denominator cliche/crutch lyrics that have become far too pervasive in not only aging rappers, but young rappers, pop-singers, and every other genre of music with lyrics... commercialized or not.

people writing songs using cliches and phony sentiment exclusively to cater to an already established idea.

i suppose like anything music-industry related since the onset of the 21st century... to diminish "risk"... in art. lol.

most of the time in rap, it's a description of a lifestyle that is so flamboyantly decadent and opulent that the only real people who might actually be able to relate are soulless oil heirs in the middle east.

not anyone's individual day to day exploits.
but just touching on the same concepts, ideas to communicate their inclusion in the "tribe".

...complete now with lyrical product placements.

the common man still indulges it as "their" music, despite having absolutely nothing to ground it to any sort of emotional or personal impact in their own day to day lives.

and on the flipside?
well, remember that song "i need a dollar"?

aloe blacc using 1970 songwriting devices to describe poverty 40 years removed.

i don't know... it was a cool song for the times, "well-executed", attempted to adhere to a few standards long forgotten... but contrived, impersonal, emotionally unmoving and more of a novelty than anything else.

and that's what i'm getting it.

the lyrics in today's music are far too cliche, illusionary.
there's almost a total absence of personality or somebody injecting something THEY feel and want to say that might genuinely alienate someone else in any sort of non-"rebellious to be cool" way.

this absence is part of why this music of this century is here today gone tomorrow, out of sight - out of mind.

it used to be people would use literary devices to try to add depth to their songwriting.
somebody like macklemore, explicitly states his intentions of his message in the song.

i like to believe that once upon a time, people were too intelligent to palate such shallow, obvious pandering.
...maybe i'm wrong.

but henceforth, a thread i made a long time ago that got some mod so angry they deleted it to try to hurt my feelings questioning if music could even be deemed a form of expression any more.

sure, music could ALWAYS be a form of expression.

but when you remove all of the desire to express something and use it as a means to generate capital and do so in the most superficial and translucent way possible while calculatingly pandering to societies least intelligent... where exactly is the expression?

how far away are we from a songwriter just saying, "i wrote this one for you to buy..." at the beginning of the song and nobody batting an eye?

and i mean when you look at what's happening in society on a cultural front everywhere else: is it any surprise that lyrical songwriting is devoid of any genuine, individual sentiment and just a hodge-podge of unmoving cliches, trends, crutches.

like impvcl said: we have soulless music for soulless times.

it's just so unfortunate that we aren't documenting our times accurately.

our experiences, private OR collective, to any real effect in the music that will ultimately represent our times...