he said all that about hip hop but then appeared all over lil jon’s crunk juice record telling the hos to get lower than low

and saying he wanted to be “the friend that’s fuckin you in the ass, bitch”

hypocrisy.

much like some of the bizarre respoonses to this piece.

though i love that carla shouted heavy d

who is making a comeback!!!!

big up Bomani for stating what should be obvious to everyone who claims to have a love for Hip-Hop.

Common, Mos Def, Talib, Native Tongues, Public Enemy, KRS One and many of the giants have lifted us up but dont sell as much do they.

I wrote a long invective on this in my own website and this problem is not just limited to music but goes much deeper. R&B and dancehall are also guilty of playing to this twisted stereotype.

I ain’t too bothered though as many of us still love our black women, for richer or poorer.

On the one hand, I can’t stand when older rap fans offer false dichotomies about current rap music as compared with the rap from “back in the day.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say “today’s rap is just materialistic, violent, and misogynistic, when it used to be all about fun or used to be ‘the black CNN.’”

Bullshit.

It’s like when older folks say “R and B used to be about love; now it’s just vulgar sex.” These are the same people who will throw on some Marvin in a heartbeat!

Though I hate the revisionism, they are right that rap is not as good as it used to be. The subject matter is not really the issue. There are tons of great rap music about drugs, violence, etc. The range of subject matter and acceptable persona, maybe, but not the subject matter per se.

To me, this is purely an aesthetic thing.

Name me 5 (hell, name me 1!) classic rap album in the last 5 years. Throughout the late 80s, through about 96, there were several dozen quality albums per year, and sometimes nearly 10 classic albums in a single year.

Plus, everybody who’s really good is around 30, if not 40. I am not that interested in what a 15 year old has to say, but that this state of affairs doesn’t bode well for the future. Plus, underground rappers, who are supposed to be relatively free from the corrupting influence of the major labels, are just as lame as the mainstream, though in a different way.

It sounds like the grumblings of a bitter-old man, but damn if it’s not the truth.

Not all rappers are poets, but not all writers are journalists. Art is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? I mean, do art critics feel the same way about all eras of oil paintings?

It’s east to generalize rappers today, especially those in the mainstream, but variety surely doesn’t lack. Perhaps the exposure is what lacks variety. Needless to say, most businesses are in the business of making money. Today, 80% or more of the people who buy rap albums are white, do you think they really want to hear about how badly they’ve treated blacks and minorities in this country? Or would they rather listen to something that gives them energy and something to dance to?

How come it’s artistic to nominate violent series such as The Sopranos and movies like Goodfellas for respected awards, but to blast the rap culture for violence, guns and crime? If you want to talk about double-standards, should we start there?

No? Just me?

You hit on a very important point. Back then it was a little harder to tell if a rapper was spitting his heart and soul on a beat or just sayin what he had to say to get radio play.

When you hear a Laffy Taffy, or a Pop, Lock, and Drop it you instantly get that they’re just trying to sell some records. However, there is a concept, I learned in Marketing about giving the customer not what you know they need, but what they perceive they need. When people are riding around going or leaving that job they hate or want to escape the normalcy of regular life…they turn to songs that take them away from that. They turn to things that don’t make them think hard. They turn to simplicity which is what a lot of these Top 40 songs are — simple.

I can’t ride with YOUR BOI, Whitlock, at all. He doesn’t really come off as someone who gets it to me. Rap music is what it always has been. It’s just converting to work along side everything else in our conforming microwave society.

Really all I want is a new MF doom album/mixtape every month.

I agree with you.. Must music I listen to now is either oldies, regional (bay area) stuff that I grew up on but feel sort of guilty about the subject matter at my age, and other guilty pleasures that don’t correlate to my life at all, like that new prodigy or styles p. Using those two artists as examples, I will say that they are poets, even if they’re talking about trife/foul/repetitive shyt.

sometimes it bugs me out to go from listening to some “something or other, the gat, blam!” and then I de-Ipod, ride up the elevator and get to working on a multimillion dollar transaction.

As far as these Icebox, I’m a flirt, lip gloss type songs, they’re another kind of guilty pleasure. I usually dl them for the wife, and then end up somewhat digging the little sing song ditties myself.. Whatareyagonnado?

Discuss..