howdy there folks!

there's been a new breed of rap/hip-hop coursing through the industry in recent years. some songs riding the wave up to the crest in the industry, and gaining some popularity, some artists intermingled in major controversy, and most relevantly, a lot of really sad late-millenial-early-gen-z kids getting together to cry in the dark, hug each other, dance until their bodies hurt, and get absolutely fucked up.

this wave, as you can tell by the title of the post and my ceaseless, shitty, un-asked-for poetry, is that of

#emo rap.

(edit: as i was writing this i realized that i started to write for a really long time, so i'm just going to leave this at chapter one for now. if you want me to keep going, or if you saw any big ol' lies in here, feel free to let me know in the comments downstairs!)

chapter one - sprite. the crisp history of emo rap.

the modern evolution of emo rap is a lovechild of two unexpected homes - the montagues and the capulets. (sorry.)

the first origin source is from exactly what the name of the genre suggests - emotional rap. in the 90s, the world of rap was vastly different than it is today. rock music was very much still the cultural zeitgeist, most kids daydreamed of being rockstars, and rap lyrics could be seen bouncing between the usual subjects: struggles of racism/classism, or bragging rights over the monetary, the loud, and the beautiful. the quality of life in the inner cities or housing projects, who had the best shooters, gang representation (east side / west side), or just how damn good weed is.

it goes without saying that, since the birth of the genre, rap has had the capacity to be very introspective and reflective on the lifestyle and living conditions of the artist who'd penned the track. however - it, to my knowledge, was not all that common to see artists focusing on internal struggles, the pressures they faced to succeed financially for the sake of themselves and their families, the pressures they faced to perform well under their labels.

very early examples of these more self-reflective types of songs come from the big dogs themselves.

"Trapped" x Tupac Shakur speaks very much on the idea of being "trapped" inside of his neighborhood. this very politically charged song gets right into the perspective of Pac himself, and more importantly, the raw emotion flowing through his head as he looks around his day to day.

"Suicidal Thoughts" x Notorious B.I.G Biggie himself coming out with one of his most vulnerable tracks he'd ever produced. this relatively short song proves to be very dense and curt, with the man himself talking about how he doesn't believe he's fit to get into heaven, how he believes his mom would have rather aborted him, and contemplating the effects that his death would have on those around him.

tracks like these set the stage for the next wave of introspective rappers to take the stand, and interestingly enough, our three biggest culprits all seemed to be involved in some form or fashion in the music of the others.

jumping from the nineties to the naughts, we see our next field of rappers entering stage right - kanye west, kid cudi, and drake.

one of the first major albums to set the stage for the emo rap that we very well could see carrying the rap torch into the next decade, was none other than kanye west's "808s and Heartbreak". with features from kid cudi, we see kanye exploring a lot of heartbreak, loss, and loneliness on this record. for example, we've got tracks like "Bad News" where it seems like ye recants moments of his finding infidelity in the girl of his dreams, with lyrics like

Didn't you know
I was waiting on you
Waiting on a dream
That'll never come true

...

Oh you just gonna
Keep another love for you
Oh you just gonna
Keep it like you never knew

over the next two years after 808s' release, we see cudi come out with a series of small records under his "man on the moon" project, featuring absolute earworms like "Day N' Night" and some of his deepest work like "Soundtrack 2 My Life". over the course of the project we hear cudi very often speaking on topics like depression, the death of his dad, and lots of drugs that were used as a means of escape from his own head.

and in the next year, drake drops what (i would) consider to be his big-break record "Take Care". after his debut album saw a good deal of commercial success, and got drake a good amount of fame for himself, "Take Care" as an album serves as a bit of cathartic introspection for a young drizzy - often touching on topics like failed relationships, materialism, and loneliness. (mostly though, a lot of heartbreak. i think this is the album that gained drake a lot of negative attention in the rap community for being "soft", and "a bitch". i disagree, but hey, toxic masculinity, what ya gonna do.)

the most notable songs off of take care came to be "Marvin's Room" with lines like

Guess she don't have the time to kick it no more
Flights in the morning
What you doing that's so important?
I've been drinking so much
That I'ma call you anyway and say
Fuck that nigga that you love so bad

and of course, the title song of the album "Take Care" featuring topics of trust, heartbreak, and this yearning for someone's heart, at the expense of your own emotional wellbeing.

'Cause that truth hurts, and those lies heal
And you can't sleep thinking that he lies still
So you cry still, tears all in the pillow case
Big girls all get a little taste
Pushing me away so I give her space
Dealing with a heart that I didn't break

and with these tracks leading us well into 2012, it's officially been made socially acceptable for rap to reach this level of introspection. yes, you will still catch shit for being "soft" (though less-so nowadays i find), but with absolute industry influencers like ye, cudi, and drizzy, it would be hard to argue that there's no place for this kind of music or these kinds of lyrics in the modern rap scene.

the tone has been set, and we look onward to the next six years of rap music. what's to come of it? will there be more heavy r&b influence like we saw in Take Care? will electronic beats like we saw in 808s, or futuristic production styles like we had in Man in the Moon take charge? will these trendsetters who have now allowed rap to get interpersonal, raw, and introspective in a new field be paired with some new, unexpected style and add a brand new face to the game?

join us next time for chapter two: dirt.

bishop.

• Article from Times of India: ‘Gay sex is not a crime,’ says Supreme Court in historic judgement

• Video from Times of India: LGBT community celebrates across the nation

• Article from NDTV: Section 377 Verdict Live Updates: "History Owes Apology To LGBT," Says Supreme Court

• Article from CNN: India's top court decriminalizes gay sex in landmark ruling

Our current plan is to stay in Oxford for three days, and "go with the flow" for the next four. In Oxford, we have a few plans, but still a lot of free time. For the remainder, we have no fixed plans other than to do the WB studio tour in London. Mobility wise we are pretty much entirely free, though ideally public transportation as opposed to renting a car would be good.

Do you have any suggestions for what we should do in those free days?

• The BBC announcement: It's about time...

• Some discussion at Radio Times about the change of day: Doctor Who to move from Saturdays to Sundays for new era

• Programming difficulties at the ABC in Australia: Doctor Who finally gets UK air date, throws ABC programming into spin

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

In all of the recent talk about incels, gender differentials in home tasks, and domestic violence, there's been little discussion about what makes a good relationship - sexual, psychological, experiential or other compatibilities. There's a great deal of "Psychology Today" material on what makes for successful relationships, but it seems facile and the product of research on young WEIRD participants.

So, dear Tilders, if you have or have had a partner(s) you've been genuinely happy and satisfied with, and felt like your relationship was healthy, please discuss what made you so...

bishop.

i want to go to colorado
by the fire with a bottle
of champagne with a little
marijuana and a pillow
tired of looking out the window
every tree a weeping willow
done with dying in this riddle
i just wanna live a little and

i might wanna try skiing
down the slopes but
i don't wanna fall
grab a friend and
hit the snow just
try to vibe it off
can't feel my face
i'm feeling better
bad shit can't recall
snowball fights
my heart is racing
til the night falls

been sober dreaming of chicago
off the loop we're eating tacos
you made a ring out of a napkin
and proposed on south financial
my cheeks on rubies oh like marco
to the hotel that we called home
slept on each other on the green line
highland park right by the water

i might wanna try skiing
down the slopes but
i don't wanna fall
memories got
me all dark, just
try to vibe it off
can't feel my face
i'm feeling better
bad shit can't recall
snowball fights
my heart is racing
til the night falls

In keeping with Tildes' general philosophy of supporting budding technologies that have the potential to reform large domains of the internet for the better, I think you should look into Flattr (www.flattr.com).
A Flattr subscriber reserves any set amount of money per month which will then get automatically distributed to content creators on the web, in proportion to an algorithmic estimate of how much the user has used that particular site or resource.

First-tier support for Tildes on Flattr would be as simple as registering an account and connecting the tildes.net domain to it. From then on, a percentage of the reserved amount would automatically get transferred to Tildes' account for every Flattr user who uses the site (I myself have generated 64 "Flattrs" on this site as of this moment, which would lead to a significant portion of my reserved $5 to be transfered to Tildes for this month).

For sites that host content creators, like Twitch and YouTube, Flattr offers a deeper support, where Flattrs go toward individual content creators as well as the host site in itself. An intuitive way to connect Tildes to this feature would be to have each upvote of a Tildes post generate a Flattr for the poster. I believe the money would then be divided between the user who was upvoted (if they have a Flattr account) and Tildes' own Flattr account, but I am unsure about the exact fraction that would get routed to the individual poster as opposed to Tildes itself. I'm sure Flattr's tech support can answer this in detail, though. Flattr is currently owned and maintained by the company behind AdBlock.

What do other users think? Is Flattr's model good? Are there other sites or providers that offer a similar service? A notable difference between for example Patreon and Flattr is that Flattr is indirectly based on a "pay what you want" model, which marks a pretty significant shift in economic control from producers to consumers. This will obviously have both advantages and drawbacks. Personally, I think the model has a lot of potential on an arena like the internet, where the sheer number of potential consumers can make microtransaction-based models like Flattr really powerful.

I was wondering if there were any fellow Waves that enjoyed dressing in a way that might confuse others on your gender, and if anybody had tips for others on how to blend masculine and feminine styles/presentation.

Definitions and sources on Genderfuck:

Genderfuck
Some nonbinary people may choose or need to present a 'clashing' combination of gender cues that are incongruous, challenging or shocking to those who expect others to fit the gender binary. For example, combining a beard with makeup and a padded bra. This practice of transgressively breaking the rules of gender presentation is known as genderfuck, genderfucking or sometimes genderpunk.
https://nonbinary.miraheze.org/wiki/Nonbinary#Genderfuck

Gender bender (also known as genderf*ck) is an informal term used to refer to a person who actively transgresses, or "bends," expected gender roles and presentation. This is usually achieved by combining masculine and feminine attributes in unexpected ways.
http://gender.wikia.com/wiki/Gender_Bender

Hey! Since it's a small community at the moment, I think we can have a very genreral thread about anything regarding tooling: interesting technologies you use at work/home, your editor, plugins, themes, bruh let's even share some screenshots. I find this kind of shit exciting and know more people like me exist out there :)