Hip Hop was good..
“In fact I snap back like a rubber band, I be Sam Sam I am And I dont eat green eggs and ham..”
You know there was a time when Hip Hop was good. A time predating the glamour and glitz of today’s Hip Hop. Way back when there was no My Humps, a dude called “The Game” and the Wu-Tang Clan was still …a clan.
Maybe it was the whole East/West -coast thing, but damn good hip hop was been created back then. Talking early 90s to before the ’00 timeframe. From Nas’ illmatic to the Wu’s 36 Chambers, it was dope sounding crap man. It was the raw uncut Hip Hop essence at its finest. So what happened?
I blame MTV. Now I know everybody needs to get payed, and reaching a more mainstream audience surely helps to build a steady cash flow, but then the whole “selling out” process begins. There was a time when the Black Eyed Peas sounded good, and that sound didn’t involve making club-friendly-songs. Nor was Fergie, “I pee myself on stage”, in the group. And seriously..lets get retarded? Check out their Behind the Front album if you wish to hear some good BEP material.
Perhaps is the whole marketing that takes place once you reach mainstream. You know you gotta have Snoop on your CD because it so happens that his CD is dropping 2 weeks after yours, so 2 tracks with Snoop a must. Want radio play? Neptunes/Timbaland/Dre produced track a must. And so everybody starts sounding the same, because everybody is aiming to please the same demographic. Music starts to be fabricated and is no longer an artistic expression. Its gets made with a generic Pop formula in mind, thus assuring Mass-market appeal. The selling out takes place.
We are living a period of artistic sold outs. Not just in the Hip-Hop genre, its wide spread. Yet we consume this prefab. music like there’s no tomorrow and we demand for more. I don’t claim to be the voice of independent/underground music, but I can’t help but noticed the watered-down/essence-lacking Hip-Hop that we have today all because it sounds good to the MTV kids and it saddens me.
I don’t follow the current Hip-Hop scene anymore, I lost interest. I shifted to the Electronic music scene since some time ago. It has that underground/selected few appeal. Something that in other genres of music went missing long time. You won’t see Hernan Cattaneo dropping Warsaw on TRL anytime soon. Is TRL still going on? Is Carson Daily still alive? Damn it has been a while since I have watched MTV.
Filed by sebaz at July 24th, 2007 under Music
