The 90s: A Hip-Hop Cancer
2009 may be a return to form for hip-hop, with the eagerly awaited OB4CL2, The Blueprint 3, and The Ecstatic living up in some way to expectations. However hip-hop has become a retrospective music; there isn’t a single forum or magazine that is inordinate with discussions or letters discussing the “Golden Age” of hip-hop. And the albums mentioned above are just perfect examples of how stagnated the idea of hip-hop has become amongst its own community; Raekwon, Jay-Z and Mos Def all having their albums compared to their works of the 90s. The day of the great debut therefore will come to close if the community doesn’t galvanise against the disastrous effects of the commercialisation of hip-hop.
What I am saying is Hip-hop has become conservative movement. In the 90s Illmatic, Doggystyle and Ready 2 Die we all had debuts which showed diversity within the industry due to consumer making the music move in the direction it wanted. Now in the 00s we are seeing the truly experimental albums being significantly ignored; MF Grimm’s American Hunger, Q-Tip’s Kamaal the Abstract and The Renaissance. While these albums are held in high-esteem within the small knit hip-hop community, they are relatively over-looked in their commercial respects.
Why? Because the hip-hop fan is no longer willing to vote with their own bucks. The big global companies; such as Sony BMG and Universal therefore are unwilling to invest in distribution of any underground hip-hop and want to be able to package a rapper and sell it to the consumer at a cut rate, and make sure they will buy it. So the end of the day illegal downloading is forcing the movement underground. Now we have two options available to the community: 1. We can watch Lil’ Wayne, 50 Cent and other equally talentless rappers make their way into the charts and have their music played on the airwaves, and force the good/great music even further underground. Or 2. Go back to the way things were in the 90s: Buy, Buy, Buy, and make the industry stand-up and notice us actual fans.
And in the discussion of Hip-Hop is Dead, well if it’s dead we the fans killed it.
Read More Tags: 2009, Dead, Hip Hop, rap