It’s a degenerative cycle too. All those rappers pushing the idea of “hustle” and the need to get money by any and all means, have helped create an audience that only values the trappings of perceived financial success. Hustle culture isn’t hiphop’s fault but the two have fed each other for decades to reinforce a terrible system of exploitation at every level.
When the only people in your neighborhood who ever have money are pimps drug dealers and hustlers what do you think you’d grow up to want to be?
Rappers aren’t a reflection of rap they are a reflection of their environment and neighborhoods.
As a shorty I looked up to the dope man
Only adult man I knew that wasn’t broke, man
This is a point I wish more people understood. People say rap glorifies this street stuff (and it does) and that is why there is so much street violence in some places. But art doesn’t create reality, it reflects it. People make art about what they know and what they see, so of course they rap about it.
There are exceptions, dudes who didn’t grow up in that life rapping about it, but that is again a reflection of their life. These are guys who were big in to Hip Hop who created art mirroring what they grew up with, which is rap about a violent life style. They are also the exception, not the rule I feel.
Canibus said it well back in the day:
" Hip Hop has never been the same since '88
Since it became a lucrative profession there’s a misconception
That a movement in any direction is progression
Even though the potency of it lessens
Big money industries writing checks to suppress the question
And nobody gives a fuck no more "
Rappers today be moving like Corey and Trevor from trailer park boys
Drinking thinking I’m stupid but deep in my heart I knew it
Money and fame could lead to emcee murder
You think you can escape but you can’t take it any further
You call it writer’s block
But you stop cause the vine is empty
Hip hop’s not dead, it’s really the mind of the emcee
Thanks for sharing these links
Yup, just wanted to spread the… love
Heh, I am coming from the days BDP, Jungle Brothers, lateron Dela and the Tribe, Digable Planets and others gave me insights to social and emotional problems I felt back then. Also a new sense of musical creativity, education in emotional intelligence, deviation from the norm. It was really something else, and as Questlove says we will never have it back. To me mid 80s to early 90s was the golden age of hiphop music.
Yeah, can’t expect something to stay in one point of time forever. If it did everyone would get tired of it because it stagnated. I will contend that there is a lot of really good indy hip-hop out there, however, since the move to the internet, some people find it harder to wade through the crap.
That time for hip-hop was what introduced me to it, and it will always probably be my favorite because of that. However I have to accept the changes of time and either learn to move with it or just lock myself away from trying anything else. The older I get the more it takes for me to listen through a bunch of stuff I will end up not liking though.
The same could be said about nearly every industry.
I think it’s amusing that we have gone full circle on Soulja Boy… I remember Ice-T had an entire mixtape dissing Soulja Bay more than a decade ago. I don’t listen to much newer music but I think that some of the older artists in any genre like to hate on some of the new guys.
That and almost every genre leads to pop.
