Just curious what people think about the newest subgenre of rap, given a really unfortunate name by Spin which I won't repeat here.
I guess the rappers that would typify what I'm talking about are those like Buck 65, Sage Francis, or Atmosphere.

Their music is:

1. generally narrative
2. devoid of east-west references
3. usually lacking rap posturing
4. introspective
5. sometimes banal
6. lyrically more similar in content to rock

Thoughts?

Well actually indie rap is just simply independent rap. That's been around for a while, nothing new about it. The whole Sage Francis breed of rap that we have nowadays is just the newest generation of indie rap. A lot of hip hop heads refer to it as "nerd rap," mostly because the rappers themselves are nerdy, talk about nerdy subjects, and most of their fans found them through the internet as oppose to tv or radio.

I like some of it, am indifferent to some of it, and hate some of it. MF Doom is one of my favorite current artists right about now, but I never could get into Sage Francis. It just seems to me that some of these new underground guys forget about the musical aspects of hip hop and go head first in to pure lyricism without any concern of flow or charisma. People forget that this is hip hop we're talking about and not poetry. The whole point of hip hop is to rhyme to a beat, it's what seperates hip hop lyrics from every other genre's lyrics and what makes hip hop lyrics harder to make in my opinion. When you sacrafice creative wordplay and smooth sounding rhymes where the syllables actually match up just so you can use big words and sound deep, you cross the line from good hip hop to good poetry.

Thing that always gets me about Sage Francis is he doesn't seem to care about flow, doesn't seem to care about rhyme schemes, doesn't seem to care about anything besides lyrics. And his lyrics are good I'll give him that, if I want to listen to some poetry or whatever Sage Francis is great but most of the time I want to listen to music, and music is supposed to sound good. I find that a lot of underground guys share the same problems as sage. Aesop Rock I like sometimes but most of the time seems like he muddies his own waters just to seem deep. Seems to be better on other people's songs a lot of the time.. he actually sounded really good on Poetry for Post Modern Decay from Zion I's new album. Atmosphere is pretty good for the most part.

There are a lot of underground artists I like such as Blackalicious, Murs, Zion I, MF Doom, Vakill, Mr Lif, Atmosphere, John Smith, Brother Ali, Eyedea, Del, etc. but theres also a lot of guys I don't care for like for example pretty much all of Anticon.

ah, good point. I'll use nerd from now on - the one that I was avoiding was "emo rap". I like Spin but sometimes I really don't know what the hell they're thinking.

I like Aesop Rock quite a bit, and atmosphere is pretty good tho he seems more traditional to me than others that are lumped in this group. Buck 65 is, by far, my favorite though I find his songs tend to get painfully repeative if you listen to a whole album at once. The music varies a lot, but his voice is always the same - very little variation.

I guess this subgenre is probably best suited to those like myself that are fans of rock in general, particularly the lofi sound you get with a lot independent acts - there's a certain shared asthetic I think.

Well to me it's all hip hop ya know. I mean I don't really divide hip hop into little sub genres and stuff I just know it's called nerd rap because people always call it that in an attempt to insult it. I definitely respect the guys in the underground who do what they do because they do show a lot of respect for the genre whether they make music I like or not. I still respect Sage Francis whether I'm a huge fan or not because he makes music for the sake of making music. Duee doesn't have a sick flow but he doesn't have some bullshit image either, he does rap for the sake of doing rap.

It adds balance to hip hop too cause they bring in a lot of rock fans like yourself and they also lash out towards the record companies and MTV who sell sex appeal and pop hits. I dunno even though I may not like rappers like Sole and whatnot I still am glad they do what they do because it add diversity to rap and I feel it's not a vital part of the genre. You need to have an extreme left and extreme right.. we need the Sage Fracises on one side and the Nellys on the other in order for the genre to be completely balanced... if that made any sense.

Is there such a thing as the Indie Rapper League?

is Dizzee Rascal indie rap? I like him... and Dose One is quite good too... most hiphop I listen to, is of the instrumental kind though...

he he, I'm not sure if Rascal is independent, but he has that sort of asthetic - I also (don't hit me) like the Streets a lot. Well, at least the first CD.

don't worry I like the Streets as well...

and yeah Rascal doesn't to be one that the masses will like a lot...

I'm not too familiar with Dizee Rascal's work but The Streets is some UK form of hip hop called "Garage." Really not my thing.

Dizzee Rascal is much different from the Streets. The latter are (is actually, only one man) fairly accessible and I've heard someone complaing here on RM (might have been you, don't remember) that the guy rather just speaks than raps, which isn't entirely untrue...

Rascal is much darker, raps really and has a weird, but enthralling voice... they call his music "grime" (they have to give every little offspring of a genre a name, don't they?)