Chicago rapper Common once said something along the lines of "I used to Love her". I know how he feels. I grew up listening to hip hop and rap music, and I loved it. In my heart I suppose I still do. It was some of the awesome hip-hop concerts I went to growing up that made me love music. I remember the cold of the night air outside the(gone but not forgotten)civic arena back in Pittsburgh, waiting to get in to see Kid n Play, Heavy D, and BBD(not a rap group so much, but they had the swag of one). I remember the damn near unbearable heat in the basement of the(also gone but not forgotten) syria mosque the night my brother Kenny and I went to see Kool G Rap & D.J. Polo, Kid Capri, The Genius, Biz Markie, and Masta Ace. Nights like that are the reason that I grew to love hip-hop in particular and music in general.
I wonder if fans today have the same feelings aabout the music they listen to. That rush of hearing and seeing voices face to face that only weeks days or hours before had only been electrical signals coming out of a pair of speakers in your room. I hope so. I really do.
I still have that nostalgic love for hip-hop, and every once in awhile I still feel that same feeling, when I randomly hear a song from Redman's Dare iz A Darkside, or Scarface's The World is Yours. I don't know if fans today feel the same way because it all seems so processed and packaged and.....typical. I don't remember the last time I heard a rap artist that made me think to myself, "this is something that was missing from the landscape. This was needed!" Does anyone ever feel that anymore?
In the early nineties, Chuck D of Public Enemy was quoted as saying that Rap is CNN for Black People. I understood what he was trying to say, but I always felt he was only partially correct. More accurately rap was a whole cable package. Public Enemy was definitely CNN. But Digital Underground was Comedy Central. DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince was Nickelodeon. N.W.A. was HBO. that was the golden age though, and it lasted for a big chunk of the 90's but then a huge shift happened at some point in the late 90's and lasted for quite awhile. At that point,everything, EVERYTHING was gangster rap. You had some holdouts; the Roots managed to stay pretty viable no matter what, and there were a few others, but for the most part, everything was g-thing this pop-a-cap-in-that ass that, as if all of a sudden every channel was playing Scarface on a neverending loop. That persisted a long time, and then after awhile, some channels started showing a live feed from in a club, where everyone was poppin' a bottle or shakin' that ass on the dance floor. As I've said before, this isn't necessarily the fault of the artists. If you can't get a deal making music that doesn't sound a certain way, I can see that it would be tempting to make music that sounds that certain way. Of course the question is once again, is it the fault of the public for only supporting one kind of artist, or is it the label's fault for only giving one kind of artist to the public? Once again, here come the vultures of Culture mentioned in my very first blog post, circling around the pathology.
Now, hip hop seems to have recovered a BIT of diversity. You got Kanye and Will.I.Am, B.O.B, and a few others who are expanding the sonic palate. But even new more outside the box rap artists seem somewhat contrived and insincere(Yes Nicki, I'm talking to you). I'm wondering if this art form will ever get back to a place of both diversity and purtiy. I doubt it.
I'm not even saying that there's no place for aggressive or angry hip hop, or for partying "bottle poppin'" Hip hop. It just always feels so unbalanced. There was a time when you could flip the channel and get a different feel or flavor. Personally, I'm at a point now where I usually don't even turn the TV on anymore.
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