What Iz Real?
The question comes up all the time in hip hop. Who and what is real? and Who and what is fake?
The answers to some are simple, if you lived it you are real, if you didn't then you are fake. But is it really important to live everything you rap about? 2Pac made his career by rapping and THEN living out the things he rapped about. N.W.A. made a career rapping about what they saw as if they were doing it, when in fact none of them were in a gang, nor did any of them kill people. Yes they may have carried guns, but they weren't drug dealers or gang members. They simply REPRESENTED what was around them, as a voice of the community. A politician who is running for office will discuss plans to eliminate problems in the city, such as crime. This politician probably didn't kill anyone so what gives him the right talk about killing people? A minister will tell his church a story about a brutal murder in order to try to get his community to stop the violence. Does that minister have to be a victim of, or a instigator of, violence in order to talk about it. Does he have to be that brutal murderer in order to tell the story of that murderer.
Chuck D (who I believe to be the realest member of the hip hop nation) said it best when he said that rap music is like the black CNN. A journalist reports the news to either a television station, newspaper, or other source, who then relays it to the public. A rap artist reports the news to a record label, who then relays it to the public. The journalists who are out reporting the news (crimes) are not the ones doing the crimes, they are simply reporting what they are seeing. Therefore the rapper that reports what he SEES, not necessarily what he DOES, is real.
What constitutues "real" is also the ability to be diverse. If you sell drugs, great, I get it. At this point I think everyone knows the process of buying and selling drugs. We all know how to cook up crack and we all know that your money goes to cars and jewelry. We also know that in the process of selling drugs sometimes you encounter violence and the gun that you keep on you at all times will add to that violence. The drug dealing rappers that only rhyme about selling drugs are the ones that don't make it. It's the people like Jay-Z who flourish because they bring other subjects to the table.
Another trait of being "real" is, as strange as it might seem, being sensitive. Let's go back to Jay-Z for a second. Look at "Regrets" and "You Must Love Me". Pretty serious stuff for someone who is supposed to be a "hardcore street rapper". The man tells it like it is, the ups AND downs. He speaks on personal matters, detailing bad decisions in his life. Nas wrote a song for his mother when she died. Again, very personal. It gives the listener a chance to connect on another level with the performer. How many people can say they connected on a personal level with Soulja Boy? How many people can say they feel his pain? The ability to share those personal life-changing experiences is what rounds out a rapper as being "real" because it takes them down off of that "holier-than-thou" pedestal.
Consistency is also "real". This comes into question with rappers who have changed their style in order to compete with the market. A perfect example of this is Lil' Wayne. Love him or hate him, he is successful. Now my question to those people who are riding his train, what do you think of "The Block Is Hot"? Haven't heard it? Didn't think so. The album is his first, from many years ago when Cash Money Records was on top of the game (and they say that southern rap is just now getting its shine). To save you the traumatic experience let me just say that the album in question sounds absolutely nothing like his current releases. Now the excuse is of course that he "grew up" and in doing so, completely changed his style. My question is what was wrong with his original style. What was wrong with what he was doing about 6 years ago? Did it not sell records? Oh ok, it's about album sales, I get it now. Now I can already hear the retaliation...Gang Starr changed after album one, Tribe changed after album one. They didn't change, they grew. They didn't completely change what they did, they simply added on to it to create a better sound. Dr. Dre didn't change his style from N.W.A to The Chronic. He grew on what he was already doing and made it better. He didn't change it. Lil' Wayne changed how he rapped, changed his image, and now presents himself in a completely different manner than he did with his debut release. I question his realness.
So what rappers are "real"? Personally I believe that Chuck D is the realest person in the culture. He has never changed what he believed, changed his stance, altered his methods to reach a bigger audience. He makes records and even if the sound changes over time, the message and the intensity is there each and every time. He knows who he is in hip hop and he continues to be that person even though Public Enemy hasn't had a national success since 1998. He doesn't care because he is still making the music that he believes in. In the same breath is Jay-Z. He is real because he is a businessman and he has never strayed from that belief. Jay-Z has said that he didn't see himself having a career in rap because it came too easy to him and his mother always told him you have to work hard to succeed. He rapped because he was good at it and he made records as a way to make money. He has always stood by the fact that he is a businessman and he does what he has to do to make money. Fuck Cassidy, Jay-Z is a hustler. He knows how to make money. He is also real in that he may be a businessman but he represents what he is, not what people want him to be. How come he hasn't dropped an album like Reasonable Doubt again? Because his life is completely different now than it was back then. He's not a drug dealer, he's a CEO. He makes CEO rap. He makes rap that represents his age and place in life. So does Nas.
Rappers that aren't real? Well that list is a mile long and a huge argument so I won't list names but I will say this....
If you are worried about being "real", then you probably aren't. If you tell me, as a rapper, that you "keep it real", then you don't. And for fans, if you think realness is defined by a criminal record then you are wrong. Realness is defined by staying true to yourself and rhyming about what impacts your life. Whether it impacts your life from a direct personal involvment, or from outside looking in, the perspective is all the same as long as you give YOUR account, not what you think will sound cool. What would you think about Nas rhyming about going to a country hoedown and riding a bull in a sports bar? You'd call him crazy. By the same token I don't want to hear a redneck from Texas, while wearing a confederate belt buckle, rhyming about selling crack in the streets. But I would listen to that same redneck rhyme about his experiences at the bar riding the mechanical bull because at least it would be real, and original.
What about those gimmick rappers? or concept albums? Well gimmick rappers are just that, gimmick rappers. Insane Clown Posse might be great at what they do but they are not to be taken seriously. By the same token, concept albums are just that, concept albums. The rapper is typically playing a character and then encompasses that character for the album, like Kool Keith or recently MF Grimm. Is there anything "real" to playing a fake character? Yes, the realness is the dedication to the idea, and the ability to relay that idea while letting the listener know that this is a STORY. No one ever complained that Al Pacino wasn't a real cocaine dealer. He also never said he was a cocaine dealer, it was understood that he was playing a role. Just like a rapper announces that in a concept album, he is taking a role, and just like the movies, if the rapper sells the role well then the audience will enjoy it.
So in closing I'd like to explain why you should even read my judgments on realness. It's because I am real. My position in hip hop is real. I have never faked anything, represented myself incorrectly, or tried to be something I am not. I speak a lot on hip hop because I have a great deal of knowledge on the subject. I write rhymes that relate to what I have seen or done, or what I believe. I speak, act, and dress in a natural way. I present myself as the person I am, not the person I want to be or am trying to be.
I AM WHO I AM AND THAT IS WHAT MAKES A PERSON REAL.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
Essay No. 3 - Hip Hop As A Teenager
I would like to stray from the constant hate that hip hop is getting these days and focus on the some of the reasons why it might be looked at in such a bad way. I myself have helped spread the hate while i'm listening to The Sun Rises in the East wondering, like many of you, "what happened and why does everything suck now?". I touched on the subject last time by describing the franchise of hip hop. I would like to pose a different theory this time and see what type of reaction this one gets. After this i will tackle an entirely new topic in the hip hop world rather than continuing to focus on where hip hop was versus where it is.
Hip Hop is a teenager.
Now what exactly does that statement mean? We all know hip hop is pushing 30 years old so how can it be considered a teenager? Well time periods don't age at the same rate as people. This is a culture we are talking about, a large group of people and ideas and traditions. These things take time to get into place and therefore at 30 years old hip hop can definatley be acting as though it is a teenager and I believe it is.
In order to explain it's teenage status we must first look at its childhood years and then that will lead us up to it's current young adult status. Since we all know where and when hip hop started i won't rehash information everyone already knows but instead i will focus on its life as a child. I will refer to the child as "it" for two reasons. The first being not to place a gender on hip hop and the second reason being of course that hip hop is not male or female and therefore the only other appropriate pronoun in this sense would be "it". When a child is young it has no cares and worries. It does not stress over things, it simply lives as it wants to live (aside of course from some parental rules) but it does not have humiliation. The child is rarely embarassed and does what it wants to do, regardless of what anyone else thinks. We laugh at children for their strange activities and while they may notice our laughter they typically continue the activity if it makes them happy and it doesn't bother us. This is parallel with the hip hop of earlier times. You had everyone doing their own thing, from pimps to prophets, boastful to concious, partiers to fighters. You would see them all together, happy to be around one another, all while doing completely different things in completely different ways but with the same goal, to make good hip hop music. While there were beefs, those beefs never left the playground and at the end of the day everyone was friends again (who just did an album together?...hint...bronx meets queens). To clarify, it is not that the Real Roxanne and Shante were chillin on the stoop together or out together getting drinks at night but at your average block party MC's would battle, i mean really chew each other out, then eat together at the same table once the food was ready. Kids at recess might get into a fight but back in class everything was always fine, or maybe the next day shit was back to normal. That's how young kids act, they don't take anything too seriously because they know at the end of the day they are all in it together. They all gotta take that history test together and they all gotta get the same minimum grade to pass. Biz Markie never gave a fuck what people thought of his crazy style. X-Clan preached quite seriously while wearing the most African of outfits. Run-DMC, on the other hand, wore Adidas and partied hard. It was a time of discovery, everybody was learning about everyone else's uniqueness and style, just like you learn about your classmates throughout grade school. But then as all kids do, hip hop grew up, and around 97 it hit the pre-teen years and about the turn of the millenium it became a teenager.
So why is hip hop a teenager today? Well let's first look at the attitude. What is the attitude of most teenagers? That they are better than everyone else and that they know everything there is to know. Their biggest concerns are what clothes they wear, how their friends perceive them, and where they are going to party that night. Everything else is meaningless to them. They don't have any real direction, or focus. They just wanna live and be left alone to do their thing, however they want to do it. You can't tell a teenager how things are because they don't wanna hear it. You try to teach them and they don't care. Teenagers are also notorious for following whatever trend is popular at the time. Right now male teens are growing their hair out longer than they used to. Back when I was in high school the thing to do was to have short hair, now the thing to do is to have long hair. Everyone of them follows, for the most part, the same trend. If Abercrombie & Fitch is the popular brand then they all wear it. If Polo becomes "cooler" than they all wear it. How many teens did you see rocking a pink polo after Kanye dropped College Dropout in 2004? Teens follow trends, unlike young children who, when asked to pick out their own clothes, end up with a completely mismatched outfit that to them looks cool. I have a few nephews and recently their grandmother let them decide what they wanted for lunch. One of them decided to have a bowl of Rice Krispes topped with peanut butter. Now most of us would think that is crazy, but he loved it and i think we can all agree it was certainly an original meal. But you ask a high school kid what he wants to drink and it's all red bull and other energy drinks. Why? Mountain Dew has close to the same amount of sugar and caffeine, yet since all the other kids drink energy drinks then that is what your typical answer will be from a teenager. Let's look at hip hop in that sense. Record labels are looking for certain types of talent, a certain look, a certain sound. If you sound LIKE what they want to hear then you will get signed. This is why when a trend catches on it just blows up and artists mimicking it come out of everywhere. We had a few southern artists back in hip hop's childhood years. Most popular were Scarface and Outkast. I think we can all agree both Scarface and Outkast had very individual styles copied not only by no one else in their region but no one else in hip hop in general. Now you get Mike Jones putting out a record and Paul Wall does the same thing, followed by all their affiliates doing same-style records. Once a style catches on everybody has to follow it. What's sad is that some of the real rappers are accepting it and buying into it. Now Jay-Z did a track with Rick Ross and dropped the southern flow. Some argue that was genius that he proved he could do it, others might say it proves that originality is dead in hip hop (there's your Nas album). Jadakiss dropped a "south paw" punchline and while it was humorous, I ask the question - Why should people switch their style up? Recently 50 Cent and Kanye went head-to-head in a record sales battle and Kanye West came out on top. However my ears are hearing that the streets feel the 50 Cent album a whole lot more than Kanye's. Now the argument can certainly be made that 50's album has much more of a "street" sound than Kanye but still, wasn't it the same streets that was bumping "Award Tour"? That ain't the most "hardcore" record. Kanye's album, whether liked or hated, is an absolutely original and unique sounding record. It does not follow a formula, it takes chances. 50's album, whether liked or hated, follow a formula for modern day street rap, it's "safe" to market to the audience it is targeting. So even the streets seem to be a part of hip hop's teenage years by only wanting to hear what already exists. The arrogance also follows the teenage attitude with how everybody is really just rapping about what makes them great. They got big cars, big jewelry, everything is BIG BIG BIG. They all drive the most expensive cars and wear the most expensive clothing. Rappers will floss on their first single, da fuck is that? How you gonna tell me you're this incredibly sick rapper that's mad rich when i don't even know who you are? You gotta pay dues, everyone knows that. These rappers don't pay dues, they get signed based off of a nice hook and then get handed all this money. By the way, don't be fooled into thinking any of that stuff you see in the videos is actually theirs, it is all rented, in fact there is a huge business in renting out nice cars for music videos. These rappers have no sense of respect for the culture as they blatently exploit it before they even make a first album. Teenagers will spend their whole paycheck on something that is way beyond their living means just as rappers live beyond their means without realizing that at any moment that money could be cut off and now they are back on the street.
So my solution is that hip hop needs to grow up. Now this is where the mystery comes in. In some cases a person can tell what their teenager is going to grow up in to but in a lot of cases you can't. You see them graduate high school and either go to college or enter the work force and these days they change careers many times before truly settling in. It's hard to tell when a teenager will mature or what process it will go through to get there. Therefore I am saying that time will work itself out, hopefully, and hip hop as a culture and a movement will grow and mature. At this point we will again be happy with where it is. However the counterargument for that is that hip hop has always been a youth oriented entity and therefore it will always be dumbed down because the people who come into it now are young kids who want the teenage crap.
Either way, right now hip hop is an arrogant, ignorant, rude teenager. And what do you do with an arrogant, ignorant and rude teenager dissuade their behavior? You ignore them because without attention they don't act up. The good teenagers don't demand attention because they know they are doing good and they just keep doing it. The bad teenagers demand attention and act out to get it, hence the commercial rappers we all love to hate. Instead of spreading the hate, ignore them and they won't act out as much, they will instead look for love instead of just trying to spark controversy.
Hip Hop is a teenager.
Now what exactly does that statement mean? We all know hip hop is pushing 30 years old so how can it be considered a teenager? Well time periods don't age at the same rate as people. This is a culture we are talking about, a large group of people and ideas and traditions. These things take time to get into place and therefore at 30 years old hip hop can definatley be acting as though it is a teenager and I believe it is.
In order to explain it's teenage status we must first look at its childhood years and then that will lead us up to it's current young adult status. Since we all know where and when hip hop started i won't rehash information everyone already knows but instead i will focus on its life as a child. I will refer to the child as "it" for two reasons. The first being not to place a gender on hip hop and the second reason being of course that hip hop is not male or female and therefore the only other appropriate pronoun in this sense would be "it". When a child is young it has no cares and worries. It does not stress over things, it simply lives as it wants to live (aside of course from some parental rules) but it does not have humiliation. The child is rarely embarassed and does what it wants to do, regardless of what anyone else thinks. We laugh at children for their strange activities and while they may notice our laughter they typically continue the activity if it makes them happy and it doesn't bother us. This is parallel with the hip hop of earlier times. You had everyone doing their own thing, from pimps to prophets, boastful to concious, partiers to fighters. You would see them all together, happy to be around one another, all while doing completely different things in completely different ways but with the same goal, to make good hip hop music. While there were beefs, those beefs never left the playground and at the end of the day everyone was friends again (who just did an album together?...hint...bronx meets queens). To clarify, it is not that the Real Roxanne and Shante were chillin on the stoop together or out together getting drinks at night but at your average block party MC's would battle, i mean really chew each other out, then eat together at the same table once the food was ready. Kids at recess might get into a fight but back in class everything was always fine, or maybe the next day shit was back to normal. That's how young kids act, they don't take anything too seriously because they know at the end of the day they are all in it together. They all gotta take that history test together and they all gotta get the same minimum grade to pass. Biz Markie never gave a fuck what people thought of his crazy style. X-Clan preached quite seriously while wearing the most African of outfits. Run-DMC, on the other hand, wore Adidas and partied hard. It was a time of discovery, everybody was learning about everyone else's uniqueness and style, just like you learn about your classmates throughout grade school. But then as all kids do, hip hop grew up, and around 97 it hit the pre-teen years and about the turn of the millenium it became a teenager.
So why is hip hop a teenager today? Well let's first look at the attitude. What is the attitude of most teenagers? That they are better than everyone else and that they know everything there is to know. Their biggest concerns are what clothes they wear, how their friends perceive them, and where they are going to party that night. Everything else is meaningless to them. They don't have any real direction, or focus. They just wanna live and be left alone to do their thing, however they want to do it. You can't tell a teenager how things are because they don't wanna hear it. You try to teach them and they don't care. Teenagers are also notorious for following whatever trend is popular at the time. Right now male teens are growing their hair out longer than they used to. Back when I was in high school the thing to do was to have short hair, now the thing to do is to have long hair. Everyone of them follows, for the most part, the same trend. If Abercrombie & Fitch is the popular brand then they all wear it. If Polo becomes "cooler" than they all wear it. How many teens did you see rocking a pink polo after Kanye dropped College Dropout in 2004? Teens follow trends, unlike young children who, when asked to pick out their own clothes, end up with a completely mismatched outfit that to them looks cool. I have a few nephews and recently their grandmother let them decide what they wanted for lunch. One of them decided to have a bowl of Rice Krispes topped with peanut butter. Now most of us would think that is crazy, but he loved it and i think we can all agree it was certainly an original meal. But you ask a high school kid what he wants to drink and it's all red bull and other energy drinks. Why? Mountain Dew has close to the same amount of sugar and caffeine, yet since all the other kids drink energy drinks then that is what your typical answer will be from a teenager. Let's look at hip hop in that sense. Record labels are looking for certain types of talent, a certain look, a certain sound. If you sound LIKE what they want to hear then you will get signed. This is why when a trend catches on it just blows up and artists mimicking it come out of everywhere. We had a few southern artists back in hip hop's childhood years. Most popular were Scarface and Outkast. I think we can all agree both Scarface and Outkast had very individual styles copied not only by no one else in their region but no one else in hip hop in general. Now you get Mike Jones putting out a record and Paul Wall does the same thing, followed by all their affiliates doing same-style records. Once a style catches on everybody has to follow it. What's sad is that some of the real rappers are accepting it and buying into it. Now Jay-Z did a track with Rick Ross and dropped the southern flow. Some argue that was genius that he proved he could do it, others might say it proves that originality is dead in hip hop (there's your Nas album). Jadakiss dropped a "south paw" punchline and while it was humorous, I ask the question - Why should people switch their style up? Recently 50 Cent and Kanye went head-to-head in a record sales battle and Kanye West came out on top. However my ears are hearing that the streets feel the 50 Cent album a whole lot more than Kanye's. Now the argument can certainly be made that 50's album has much more of a "street" sound than Kanye but still, wasn't it the same streets that was bumping "Award Tour"? That ain't the most "hardcore" record. Kanye's album, whether liked or hated, is an absolutely original and unique sounding record. It does not follow a formula, it takes chances. 50's album, whether liked or hated, follow a formula for modern day street rap, it's "safe" to market to the audience it is targeting. So even the streets seem to be a part of hip hop's teenage years by only wanting to hear what already exists. The arrogance also follows the teenage attitude with how everybody is really just rapping about what makes them great. They got big cars, big jewelry, everything is BIG BIG BIG. They all drive the most expensive cars and wear the most expensive clothing. Rappers will floss on their first single, da fuck is that? How you gonna tell me you're this incredibly sick rapper that's mad rich when i don't even know who you are? You gotta pay dues, everyone knows that. These rappers don't pay dues, they get signed based off of a nice hook and then get handed all this money. By the way, don't be fooled into thinking any of that stuff you see in the videos is actually theirs, it is all rented, in fact there is a huge business in renting out nice cars for music videos. These rappers have no sense of respect for the culture as they blatently exploit it before they even make a first album. Teenagers will spend their whole paycheck on something that is way beyond their living means just as rappers live beyond their means without realizing that at any moment that money could be cut off and now they are back on the street.
So my solution is that hip hop needs to grow up. Now this is where the mystery comes in. In some cases a person can tell what their teenager is going to grow up in to but in a lot of cases you can't. You see them graduate high school and either go to college or enter the work force and these days they change careers many times before truly settling in. It's hard to tell when a teenager will mature or what process it will go through to get there. Therefore I am saying that time will work itself out, hopefully, and hip hop as a culture and a movement will grow and mature. At this point we will again be happy with where it is. However the counterargument for that is that hip hop has always been a youth oriented entity and therefore it will always be dumbed down because the people who come into it now are young kids who want the teenage crap.
Either way, right now hip hop is an arrogant, ignorant, rude teenager. And what do you do with an arrogant, ignorant and rude teenager dissuade their behavior? You ignore them because without attention they don't act up. The good teenagers don't demand attention because they know they are doing good and they just keep doing it. The bad teenagers demand attention and act out to get it, hence the commercial rappers we all love to hate. Instead of spreading the hate, ignore them and they won't act out as much, they will instead look for love instead of just trying to spark controversy.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Essay No. 2 - Hip Hop Franchised Itself
I would like to continue upon my first essay regarding the state of hip hop and people "wanting 94 back" as I put it. I hope to continue to write these essays at least once a week to discuss some thoughts on hip hop, past present and future.
This week's essay deals with a concept I feel might be able to explain why the hip hop market is flooded with sub-par music while the classics are few and far between these days.
I believe hip hop has franchised itself.
In explaining this concept I would like to go back to the 80s when hip hop was still young and fresh (I know it didn't start in the 80s but the MC became large in the 80s and that is mostly what this discussion revolves around). During the 80s hip hop had still not reached a mainstream audience and had not yet become a marketing tool for record labels to exploit. Major labels were not yet putting out the "next rap superstar". Basically the people who released hip hop were the artists themselves, or labels run by people who were in the hip hop community. Every rapper seemed to have a friend that was somewhat business minded. Your labels came about by people who loved the music and wanted the world to hear it. Best example of that is Russell Simmons. Not only the brother of Run, he was someone who truly loved what hip hop stood for. He was at the shows soaking up the environment of hip hop. He started a record label to promote the music and the scene that he loved.
I will divert from this for a second and come back to it after making another point. During this time originality was the biggest quality that made an MC great. You had to have an original style and flow to make it. Never did you hear someone say "dude sounds like KRS-One" as a positive statement. If you sounded like someone else you were a biter and your career was over. I'm sure there were plenty of artists who followed the formula of someone else but we don't know them because they never made it.
So originality is key. But there were other ways to get put on. Affiliates were being brought up by more well known artists. You had Q-Tip on Jungle Brothers and De La records. O.C. was heard on Fudge Pudge. Most famously, Nas debuted on a Main Source track. Knowing someone in the music who felt your shit was a great way to get into the industry because they would give you a guest verse on a track in the hopes that you would shine (uh, yeah i'd say Nas did aight on Live at the BBQ) and in turn get a deal and become big.
Now what does all this have to do with "franchising" hip hop?
Go back to the idea that the people who ran the labels, promoted the albums, "scouted" the artists and put them all. These people were all hip hop fans before they were business men. They grew up experiencing the creation and growth of early hip hop. They were there when Kool Herc was rocking parties. They went to the Kurtis Blow shows. They saw first hand what hip hop was doing to the people, mostly uniting them and giving them a place to express their opinion in a crowd who appreciated what the MC was saying. These were the people who decided if you were good enough for a record or not, and it's safe to say their opinions held some water based on their personal experiences of the scene.
I know a lot of people say that back in the 80s/early 90s that hip hop was all good and that every MC that dropped was nice, there was no bullshit, no "filler". I believe the reason for this was that because hip hop was so new and it was hard to convince anyone, especially white america, that it was worth listening to, so if you sucked you weren't getting put on. New York and L.A. ran hip hop. 99% of hip hop was coming out of these 2 areas in the early days. If you sucked, no one was gonna sign you and put out your record. You simply sucked. If you sounded like the next dude, no one was gonna sign you and put out your record. The labels were looking for someone original. Biz Markie, Native Tongues, Rakim, EPMD, Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy, Whodini, Kool Moe Dee, Poor Righteous Teachers, Digable Planets...all these artists/groups were original and therefore made it because it was all hip hop but it was all different so everyone could relate to at least one.
Now of course you have shitty artists sounding just like the next dude. I could listen to Rich Boy, MIMS, and Baby Boy Da Prince all in a row and other than already knowing based on the singles, i could never tell the difference. The problem is that record labels instead of saying "what can you bring to hip hop that is new and original?" they are saying "who do you sound like so we can market you right?". I won't even get into lyricism, just sound itself. The more you sound like the next dude the better your chances are of making it today.
Also rap labels are no longer run by people in hip hop. They are run by business men in suits, some of whom have never even heard a Rakim record i'm sure. They know what sells and they know how to sell it and that is the bottom line. They don't necessarily want the audience to hear something GOOD, they just want them to hear something catchy and easily marketable.
This brings me to the franchise argument. When a company franchises itself it allows other people to purcahse factions of it's original label and market it on their own. Many rules are in tact, however the owner of the franchise is allowed to make their own decisons, hire their own employees, and follow some of their own practices. This is what hip hop has done. Back in the 80s you couldn't get a record out unless someone in hip hop said you could. You weren't on the radio unless a DJ played your shit, a DJ being someone who was close to hip hop and its artists and most importantly its CULTURE. Nowadays the label will "sell" your shit to the radio stations and arrange a deal for how many times it gets played an hour/day/week. By the way, the guy "selling" your song to the radio stations is probably a dude in a $1000 suit, sitting behind a huge desk, bumping Nickelback in his iPod. Back then it was Russell Simmons up in the studio saying "play my artist's shit, it's fucking hot". Rap has grown and branched out in so many ways that the originators are no longer in control of what makes it and what doesn't. Is this a bad thing? Yes and no. It's good because obviously a few people can't hear everything and different sounds make different people feel good. However it is bad for some reasons.
You have an artist like Nelly. Now i'm biased and will say he sucks. I'm only using him as an example however so feel free to put in your own artist to this equation. Now back in the days i would like to think that Nelly would not have made it. Maybe he would, maybe not, like I said put in your own artist here to make this work. So Nelly makes it, perhaps the "old school" way by being original but I'm sure there were plenty of original artists who never made it because they sucked and therefore didn't get put on or make their own label since it was an expensive venture. Anyways, Nelly makes it. Big rap artist, label finds a good single they can market and he explodes. Little kids who have no real rap knowledge love it, intelligent people think he's wack. But big business suit label guy wants to put out Nelly. Nelly now has money and wants to put his dudes on, the St. Lunatics. They release a single that creates a buzz (Here We Come). That leads to an album. Now we have 2 medicore hip hop releases. Next Nelly decides that all his friends are good enough for solo albums (Murphy Lee, Ali, probably the other dude). Now we got 5 rap albums which are better served as weed plates. All this based on 1 artist who came to be because some business suit thought it would sell. This business suit had a franchise in hip hop, his own part of hip hop that he could sell and market and he hired his own employees (Nelly and St. Lunatics) and set up shop with his business. Many patronized it and some came back for more.
Everyone has their own label now, most under major labels. But still they sign their own artists and put out all this crap material. This wouldn't happen if hip hop was where it was in 87 when the people who ran it made all the decisions and kept the crap in the dumpster. Now anyone can put out a rap album and therefore the market is flooded with garbage.
So to those who think that hip hop should be back where it was, or miss the old times, it is because of the growth and worldwide exposure and popularity that hip hop has become what it is. When a culture or an idea manifests, the beginning is always the best because it is the people who believe in the cause that are promoting it and the amount of material is limited to those originators. Once it becomes popular it becomes infected with people who have the wrong motivation, or simply just don't get it. Now usually this is a result of growth. Growth is good but it can also be bad. Hip Hop got too big for itself and therefore started franchising itself out because it couldn't handle finding the best southern artists and putting them on, or the best midwest artists and putting them on. Shit hip hop can't even weed out all the shitty New York artists and just keep the good ones. Too many people have a hand in hip hop now because it franchised itself out to too many people. It's like having five 7-11's on one block, it's too much to support all the patrons, you only need two stores that have everything instead of five stores that have varied products.
I understand that it is a good thing to see people succeed in hip hop and I'm not saying that nothing new should be released. I'm saying people need to be original and the labels need someone who knows hip hop to say "look this sucks, don't poison the young minds with this garbage, give them someone good".
I can't offer a solution because what is done is done. I'm just reflecting on why these things have happened and trying to offer an explanation for those upset with what hip hop is going through.
Thank you for reading, I don't have a topic yet for next week as these things usually come to me the night before I write them but if anyone is interested in discussing this more I greatly accept all comments on this theory.
Again thank you very much,
C-Dub
This week's essay deals with a concept I feel might be able to explain why the hip hop market is flooded with sub-par music while the classics are few and far between these days.
I believe hip hop has franchised itself.
In explaining this concept I would like to go back to the 80s when hip hop was still young and fresh (I know it didn't start in the 80s but the MC became large in the 80s and that is mostly what this discussion revolves around). During the 80s hip hop had still not reached a mainstream audience and had not yet become a marketing tool for record labels to exploit. Major labels were not yet putting out the "next rap superstar". Basically the people who released hip hop were the artists themselves, or labels run by people who were in the hip hop community. Every rapper seemed to have a friend that was somewhat business minded. Your labels came about by people who loved the music and wanted the world to hear it. Best example of that is Russell Simmons. Not only the brother of Run, he was someone who truly loved what hip hop stood for. He was at the shows soaking up the environment of hip hop. He started a record label to promote the music and the scene that he loved.
I will divert from this for a second and come back to it after making another point. During this time originality was the biggest quality that made an MC great. You had to have an original style and flow to make it. Never did you hear someone say "dude sounds like KRS-One" as a positive statement. If you sounded like someone else you were a biter and your career was over. I'm sure there were plenty of artists who followed the formula of someone else but we don't know them because they never made it.
So originality is key. But there were other ways to get put on. Affiliates were being brought up by more well known artists. You had Q-Tip on Jungle Brothers and De La records. O.C. was heard on Fudge Pudge. Most famously, Nas debuted on a Main Source track. Knowing someone in the music who felt your shit was a great way to get into the industry because they would give you a guest verse on a track in the hopes that you would shine (uh, yeah i'd say Nas did aight on Live at the BBQ) and in turn get a deal and become big.
Now what does all this have to do with "franchising" hip hop?
Go back to the idea that the people who ran the labels, promoted the albums, "scouted" the artists and put them all. These people were all hip hop fans before they were business men. They grew up experiencing the creation and growth of early hip hop. They were there when Kool Herc was rocking parties. They went to the Kurtis Blow shows. They saw first hand what hip hop was doing to the people, mostly uniting them and giving them a place to express their opinion in a crowd who appreciated what the MC was saying. These were the people who decided if you were good enough for a record or not, and it's safe to say their opinions held some water based on their personal experiences of the scene.
I know a lot of people say that back in the 80s/early 90s that hip hop was all good and that every MC that dropped was nice, there was no bullshit, no "filler". I believe the reason for this was that because hip hop was so new and it was hard to convince anyone, especially white america, that it was worth listening to, so if you sucked you weren't getting put on. New York and L.A. ran hip hop. 99% of hip hop was coming out of these 2 areas in the early days. If you sucked, no one was gonna sign you and put out your record. You simply sucked. If you sounded like the next dude, no one was gonna sign you and put out your record. The labels were looking for someone original. Biz Markie, Native Tongues, Rakim, EPMD, Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy, Whodini, Kool Moe Dee, Poor Righteous Teachers, Digable Planets...all these artists/groups were original and therefore made it because it was all hip hop but it was all different so everyone could relate to at least one.
Now of course you have shitty artists sounding just like the next dude. I could listen to Rich Boy, MIMS, and Baby Boy Da Prince all in a row and other than already knowing based on the singles, i could never tell the difference. The problem is that record labels instead of saying "what can you bring to hip hop that is new and original?" they are saying "who do you sound like so we can market you right?". I won't even get into lyricism, just sound itself. The more you sound like the next dude the better your chances are of making it today.
Also rap labels are no longer run by people in hip hop. They are run by business men in suits, some of whom have never even heard a Rakim record i'm sure. They know what sells and they know how to sell it and that is the bottom line. They don't necessarily want the audience to hear something GOOD, they just want them to hear something catchy and easily marketable.
This brings me to the franchise argument. When a company franchises itself it allows other people to purcahse factions of it's original label and market it on their own. Many rules are in tact, however the owner of the franchise is allowed to make their own decisons, hire their own employees, and follow some of their own practices. This is what hip hop has done. Back in the 80s you couldn't get a record out unless someone in hip hop said you could. You weren't on the radio unless a DJ played your shit, a DJ being someone who was close to hip hop and its artists and most importantly its CULTURE. Nowadays the label will "sell" your shit to the radio stations and arrange a deal for how many times it gets played an hour/day/week. By the way, the guy "selling" your song to the radio stations is probably a dude in a $1000 suit, sitting behind a huge desk, bumping Nickelback in his iPod. Back then it was Russell Simmons up in the studio saying "play my artist's shit, it's fucking hot". Rap has grown and branched out in so many ways that the originators are no longer in control of what makes it and what doesn't. Is this a bad thing? Yes and no. It's good because obviously a few people can't hear everything and different sounds make different people feel good. However it is bad for some reasons.
You have an artist like Nelly. Now i'm biased and will say he sucks. I'm only using him as an example however so feel free to put in your own artist to this equation. Now back in the days i would like to think that Nelly would not have made it. Maybe he would, maybe not, like I said put in your own artist here to make this work. So Nelly makes it, perhaps the "old school" way by being original but I'm sure there were plenty of original artists who never made it because they sucked and therefore didn't get put on or make their own label since it was an expensive venture. Anyways, Nelly makes it. Big rap artist, label finds a good single they can market and he explodes. Little kids who have no real rap knowledge love it, intelligent people think he's wack. But big business suit label guy wants to put out Nelly. Nelly now has money and wants to put his dudes on, the St. Lunatics. They release a single that creates a buzz (Here We Come). That leads to an album. Now we have 2 medicore hip hop releases. Next Nelly decides that all his friends are good enough for solo albums (Murphy Lee, Ali, probably the other dude). Now we got 5 rap albums which are better served as weed plates. All this based on 1 artist who came to be because some business suit thought it would sell. This business suit had a franchise in hip hop, his own part of hip hop that he could sell and market and he hired his own employees (Nelly and St. Lunatics) and set up shop with his business. Many patronized it and some came back for more.
Everyone has their own label now, most under major labels. But still they sign their own artists and put out all this crap material. This wouldn't happen if hip hop was where it was in 87 when the people who ran it made all the decisions and kept the crap in the dumpster. Now anyone can put out a rap album and therefore the market is flooded with garbage.
So to those who think that hip hop should be back where it was, or miss the old times, it is because of the growth and worldwide exposure and popularity that hip hop has become what it is. When a culture or an idea manifests, the beginning is always the best because it is the people who believe in the cause that are promoting it and the amount of material is limited to those originators. Once it becomes popular it becomes infected with people who have the wrong motivation, or simply just don't get it. Now usually this is a result of growth. Growth is good but it can also be bad. Hip Hop got too big for itself and therefore started franchising itself out because it couldn't handle finding the best southern artists and putting them on, or the best midwest artists and putting them on. Shit hip hop can't even weed out all the shitty New York artists and just keep the good ones. Too many people have a hand in hip hop now because it franchised itself out to too many people. It's like having five 7-11's on one block, it's too much to support all the patrons, you only need two stores that have everything instead of five stores that have varied products.
I understand that it is a good thing to see people succeed in hip hop and I'm not saying that nothing new should be released. I'm saying people need to be original and the labels need someone who knows hip hop to say "look this sucks, don't poison the young minds with this garbage, give them someone good".
I can't offer a solution because what is done is done. I'm just reflecting on why these things have happened and trying to offer an explanation for those upset with what hip hop is going through.
Thank you for reading, I don't have a topic yet for next week as these things usually come to me the night before I write them but if anyone is interested in discussing this more I greatly accept all comments on this theory.
Again thank you very much,
C-Dub
Essay No. 1 - It's Time To Move On - A Statement on the Current State of Hip Hop
Welcome to Hip Hop Essays.
This site will feature weekly writings on hip hop: past, present, and future. It will take an extensive look at the culture and history along with presenting ideas and thoughts about where hip hop has gone and how it got there. I will start with by addressing a common theme I continue to see throughout the hip hop community and that is the theme that hip hop should go back to the way it was in the 80s/early 90s. People think it sucks now and they wish it was the way it used to be. To those people I would like to say this ---
IT AIN'T '94 NO MORE!
Look I love hip hop as much as the next person, in fact more than most. I, like most, also feel as though hip hop has never been the same as it was in the early 90s. With that said, I think we all need to move on and stop focusing on this fact.
Hip hop will never be the same as it was back then. For starters it wasn't mainstream back then. Yes you had artists like Dre and Snoop, Biggie and Nas, who were commercially successful, but it wasn't mainstream in society in general. Nowadays hip hop is everywhere and it is being spoofed more than any other stereotype. How many TV commercials have hip hop in them (as far as clothing, speech)? How many movies have that hip hop style white boy character (Can't Hardly Wait really started this)? How many people in mainstream society use hip hop terms (bling bling, ice, holla)? I mean shit even Hillary Clinton used the word "diss" when talking about George Bush's stance on social security. Hip Hop is the most popular form of music and also the most popular form of satire. Every time i turn around I see some character in the media that is a spoof on the hip hop stereotype. White people saying "yo yo" and wearing "hip hop" clothing is everywhere. Shit they even have "hip hop" dance classes for little girls.
Back in this "golden age" of hip hop, society was not hanging on every move that these rap artists made. Singles weren't mass produced for millions of people. The grunge movement was still big and hip hop was confined to a select few who chose to appreciate it. Adults did not know hip hop and wanted nothing to do with it. Now they not only know about it but they make fun of it by referencing certain aspects of it (mainly the clothing and the speech). When I was in second grade I can remember wearing my pants low and my teachers asking me if I didn't have a belt. They were confused as to why I would want to wear my pants low. They thought maybe the pants were tight around my waist, or maybe the pants were too big. Basically they didn't understand the style because they had never seen it. They questioned my Naughty Gear sweatshirt (remember that insert from 19 Naughty 3, i didn't have the bedsheets but damn did I give those mafuckas a lot of lucci). As I grew up and hip hop became part of mainstream society the comments went from "why are you wearing your pants low" to "pull up your damn pants, you kids these days......". That is a perfect example of hip hop's progression through the 90s.
The music and the artists were different back then because even the biggest rappers (again Dre and Snoop) were still somewhat underground. They may have had a top 10 hit but no one like Newsweek or 60 Minutes was interviewing them. They didn't have articles in the New York Times or reality shows based on their life. There was no one tracking their every move and there wasn't a legion of suburban white kids with their parents never-ending money supply buying every possible thing related to their favorite rap artist. You were lucky if you got a 2 page poster of your favorite rap artist in Word Up!
Also the coverage that hip hop was getting was almost solely by people who loved hip hop and who were involved in hip hop themselves. The writers reviewing the material and deciding what was classic were people who had been listening to Rakim and Public Enemy all along. They remember Eazy-E before N.W.A. They remember the impact that The Message had on communities of people. Now most people reviewing rap are shirt-and-tie upper-middle class reporters who go from reviewing Common's album to reviewing the newest Nickelback record. They give the "big" stories on hip hop to people who have never even heard an Ice Cube record other than "Put Ya Back Into It". Therefore the entire world of hip hop is twisted.
Think about this, when Lord Finesse entered a studio no one paid attention. No one documented his time inside and no one followed him when he left. He didn't get stopped by hundreds of people in the mall asking for his autograph, wanting pictures, introducing their parents to him. He never got a call from MTV asking him to perform on the music awards, get interviewed by Serena Altschul, and then do an appearence on TRL the next Monday. He didn't get asked by Pepsi to be in an ad that exploited his image as a "rap superstar" by making him wear fur coats while pouring champagne on hot scantily clad black chicks. There was no Yahoo or Google that would have a front page featuring his picture with links to download songs. Record stores didn't have HUGE posterboards advertising his HUGE release featuring the RADIO SMASH SINGLE. He just made his albums, pleased his fans, and did it again a year or two later. The hype was there but only throughout the hip hop community, which was very small at the time.
Does anyone remember when the hip hop bin at your record store was like 2 rows? Now it's an entire aisle. I remember going in once a month and buying the maybe 3 new hip hop tapes that dropped. Now there are at least 6 hip hop albums released every week with maybe 1 a month being worth the listen. The reason why we are all so disgusted and wish it was 94 again is because back then you could almost guarantee that any hip hop album you bought was going to be sick. Now there is so much crap that you have to weed it out and find the good stuff instead of just taking a chance on that Little Indian record knowing that it was probably gonna be hot. There is also the point that singles used to be something exciting to grab because of the remixes and bonus tracks but we won't get into that here. Basically the record industry did away with singles because it was no longer worth charging $2.99 for something that you could get on the album 2 weeks later.
Anticipation, artwork, originality....all these things are lost, they may not be gone completely, but they are certainly scarce, an endangered species if anything.
In conclusion I would like to say that I still love hip hop, today and yesterday. I got the new Kanye record bumping nonstop for like 3 weeks now in my whip. But right next to that i got the D.I.T.C. record and when I'm feeling real nice I bump Taste of Chocolate (Put Ya Weight On It is easily my favorite Kane track next to Young, Gifted, and Black). The music is still there but it's classic to me. The way Led Zeppelin can be played at the highest volume with everyone around knowing that we will never hear rock music like that again, but we can still enjoy those legendary cuts. I LOVE hip hop and my love of this music will never die. It keeps building as great albums keep coming out. I just have to realize, like everyone else, that what was then is no longer but the memories will always be there. Even though a lot of great records are out of print we have access to them through the internet and the few mom-and-pop record stores that haven't gone bankrupt yet. We can always keep the spirit of hip hop alive through both new releases and the classics. We just have to remember that a classic is just that, a classic, "a work that is honored in its definitive field", as defined by the dictionary. Another defintion being "something noteworthy of its kind and worth remembering". We can hold these classics up high and praise the legacy that they leave. Then we must move on and dig through the new release crates for more classics as they come to us, maybe few and far between but with the amount of rap records that get released these days it is much harder to find those classic albums.
Thank you all for your time and I hope you enjoyed reading this piece. I encourage comments but please let's keep it a mature discussion as opposed to a sling of shit throwing.
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