The State of Hip-Hop
For those who didn't get the Notorious B.I.G. quote in yesterday's post [well, it was yesterday's post until I screwed it up while mucking with it tonight and had to delete it, then repost it today], it was from, uh, "Things Done Changed" on his classic "Ready To Die" album of 1994. Thinking of that quote made me pull out the CD to listen to on my way to go running last night. And listening to the CD pulled me back to '94 and moved me to comment on The State of Hip-Hop, as I see it.
My exposure to 'rap' began with Public Enemy's "Yo! Bum Rush the Show" and Eazy-E's "Eazy-Duz-It" around 1988; I was 12 and in 6th grade. I used to spend my time after school skating with a few friends, and one of them starting playing these two tapes as we skated. I remember he even got our bus driver to play the PE tape one morning on the way to school over the bus stereo! I had never heard this kind of music; I was familiar with rap, but only along the lines of the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC. This sound was entirely different: these guys were angry! It felt rebellious, and I loved it.
I remember joining BMG Music Service around the same time and suddenly being deluged with tapes of Tribe Called Quest, Brand Nubian, Diamond D, Big Daddy Kane, Eric B. & Rakim. I started reading The Source and watching Yo! MTV Raps, back in the days before they both went to crap. The beats and rhymes resonated with me, in a way that rock had never done. And I was fascinated by the tales of life so different from my own.
By about 1990 I was fully consumed by hip-hop; it was all I listened to. I knew all the local college stations' hip-hop show schedules and would record every one, and I was buying tape after tape after tape of new music. Around this time so-called 'gangsta rap' caught my ear. I'd always been an NWA fan, but now I was checking out groups like Compton's Most Wanted, Ice-T, South Central Cartel, DFC, Spice 1, Kool G Rap, Above The Law. Again it was the gritty [apparent] reality of the music that grabbed me.
The last three years of high school (92-94) brought so much classic major-label hip-hop that I thought it would never end: Black Sheep, Tribe, De La, Nas, GangStarr, Ed OG, OC, Ice Cube, Public Enemy, Brand Nubian, LONS, Naughty By Nature, Kam, BDP, D-Nice, Redman, Wu-Tang, Outkast, Del, Souls of Mischief, Pharcyde ... and a hundred more. You could hear so much good stuff on college stations, and occasionally mainstream stations, and see the videos on MTV, that the impending doom was completely unthinkable.
There had always been garbage out there: particularly from the west coast (E-40, Too Short, DJ Quik) and the south (Eightball & MJG to name one, and anybody else who flaunted shiny rented cars or gold fronts on their album covers). But it wasn't until the coming of Master P that I remember things clearly starting to go downhill. '94 was still a good year - Notorious BIG among others - but it was only going to get worse from here. The next year I instituted what I now jokingly refer to as the iron-fisted "Hip-hop Purity Purge of '95", where I summarily lined up and sold every last CD I owned that didn't quite meet my standards for quality. In retrospect, I was too harsh and I've had to buy back more than a few CDs since then.
Within a few years, lots of the groups I'd grown up listening to, and really respected, had either changed their sound to grab mass appeal or had just gotten lazy and become boring to listen to: Tribe, De La, KRS-ONE, Ice Cube, Ice-T, Wu-Tang, they were all guilty. Eazy-E had died, 2Pac and Biggie had been killed, and Ice Cube and Ice-T were now actors. Things done changed.
It was around this time that I discovered independent labels, thanks to the almighty Soul Controllers Mix Show on WMUC at the University of Maryland (Soul Ceez represent!). Nothing was more important to me than catching the entire show from 6 to 9 on Friday night, and I taped it every week. Van Dan and The J gave way to DJs Stylus, Book, and Mr. Elite, with Bushhead Ed and A-Double (Aaron McGruder, the guy who created The Boondocks) handling the non-DJ duties of the show. The guys used to play all kinds of independent records, and it was through this show that I found my way out of the trainwreck that major-label hip-hop was turning into. As Puffy and Jay-Z led the devolution revolution, I began finding new independent artists on the internet, ordering CDs and records directly from them, and slowly weaning myself off the increasingly commercialized and radio-friendly garbage being pushed by the majors.
Since about 1998, I've pretty much abandoned the major labels. Artists I used to listen to now rarely put out anything I'm interested in. There was a time when I'd buy anything by Nas, Ras Kass, Ice Cube, Wu-Tang, Tribe, Redman, KRS-ONE, etc.; now I don't even bother checking out samples of their albums. Some have sorta lost their way and thankfully come back - Common and The Roots are good examples.
But overall, at this point I'm completely and totally removed from the world of radio/commercial hip-hop. I hear various garbage being played in people's cars occasionally, or a bit on the radio, but that's about it. For me, independent hip-hop is where it's at, and sadly I don't see that ever changing. Luckily, there is a lot of quality material still being released regularly; you just have to look harder for it. These days I listen to Aceyalone, People Under the Stairs, Blackalicious, Lyrics Born, Sage Francis, Aesop Rock, Paris, T-K.A.S.H., stuff that would never get play on commercial radio.
The thing I often wonder is, what brought this on? Is it the record companies' fault? Is it the fault of the buying public? Are the artists themselves to blame? I'd say it's got to be a combination of all three. I think there's been a general lowering of standards on everyone's parts. And what about kids today, starting to listen to hip-hop, do they ever get exposure to quality music? Do they even know there was a history before Jay-Z, Lil' Jon and YinYang Twins?
My exposure to 'rap' began with Public Enemy's "Yo! Bum Rush the Show" and Eazy-E's "Eazy-Duz-It" around 1988; I was 12 and in 6th grade. I used to spend my time after school skating with a few friends, and one of them starting playing these two tapes as we skated. I remember he even got our bus driver to play the PE tape one morning on the way to school over the bus stereo! I had never heard this kind of music; I was familiar with rap, but only along the lines of the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC. This sound was entirely different: these guys were angry! It felt rebellious, and I loved it.
I remember joining BMG Music Service around the same time and suddenly being deluged with tapes of Tribe Called Quest, Brand Nubian, Diamond D, Big Daddy Kane, Eric B. & Rakim. I started reading The Source and watching Yo! MTV Raps, back in the days before they both went to crap. The beats and rhymes resonated with me, in a way that rock had never done. And I was fascinated by the tales of life so different from my own.
By about 1990 I was fully consumed by hip-hop; it was all I listened to. I knew all the local college stations' hip-hop show schedules and would record every one, and I was buying tape after tape after tape of new music. Around this time so-called 'gangsta rap' caught my ear. I'd always been an NWA fan, but now I was checking out groups like Compton's Most Wanted, Ice-T, South Central Cartel, DFC, Spice 1, Kool G Rap, Above The Law. Again it was the gritty [apparent] reality of the music that grabbed me.
The last three years of high school (92-94) brought so much classic major-label hip-hop that I thought it would never end: Black Sheep, Tribe, De La, Nas, GangStarr, Ed OG, OC, Ice Cube, Public Enemy, Brand Nubian, LONS, Naughty By Nature, Kam, BDP, D-Nice, Redman, Wu-Tang, Outkast, Del, Souls of Mischief, Pharcyde ... and a hundred more. You could hear so much good stuff on college stations, and occasionally mainstream stations, and see the videos on MTV, that the impending doom was completely unthinkable.
There had always been garbage out there: particularly from the west coast (E-40, Too Short, DJ Quik) and the south (Eightball & MJG to name one, and anybody else who flaunted shiny rented cars or gold fronts on their album covers). But it wasn't until the coming of Master P that I remember things clearly starting to go downhill. '94 was still a good year - Notorious BIG among others - but it was only going to get worse from here. The next year I instituted what I now jokingly refer to as the iron-fisted "Hip-hop Purity Purge of '95", where I summarily lined up and sold every last CD I owned that didn't quite meet my standards for quality. In retrospect, I was too harsh and I've had to buy back more than a few CDs since then.
Within a few years, lots of the groups I'd grown up listening to, and really respected, had either changed their sound to grab mass appeal or had just gotten lazy and become boring to listen to: Tribe, De La, KRS-ONE, Ice Cube, Ice-T, Wu-Tang, they were all guilty. Eazy-E had died, 2Pac and Biggie had been killed, and Ice Cube and Ice-T were now actors. Things done changed.
It was around this time that I discovered independent labels, thanks to the almighty Soul Controllers Mix Show on WMUC at the University of Maryland (Soul Ceez represent!). Nothing was more important to me than catching the entire show from 6 to 9 on Friday night, and I taped it every week. Van Dan and The J gave way to DJs Stylus, Book, and Mr. Elite, with Bushhead Ed and A-Double (Aaron McGruder, the guy who created The Boondocks) handling the non-DJ duties of the show. The guys used to play all kinds of independent records, and it was through this show that I found my way out of the trainwreck that major-label hip-hop was turning into. As Puffy and Jay-Z led the devolution revolution, I began finding new independent artists on the internet, ordering CDs and records directly from them, and slowly weaning myself off the increasingly commercialized and radio-friendly garbage being pushed by the majors.
Since about 1998, I've pretty much abandoned the major labels. Artists I used to listen to now rarely put out anything I'm interested in. There was a time when I'd buy anything by Nas, Ras Kass, Ice Cube, Wu-Tang, Tribe, Redman, KRS-ONE, etc.; now I don't even bother checking out samples of their albums. Some have sorta lost their way and thankfully come back - Common and The Roots are good examples.
But overall, at this point I'm completely and totally removed from the world of radio/commercial hip-hop. I hear various garbage being played in people's cars occasionally, or a bit on the radio, but that's about it. For me, independent hip-hop is where it's at, and sadly I don't see that ever changing. Luckily, there is a lot of quality material still being released regularly; you just have to look harder for it. These days I listen to Aceyalone, People Under the Stairs, Blackalicious, Lyrics Born, Sage Francis, Aesop Rock, Paris, T-K.A.S.H., stuff that would never get play on commercial radio.
The thing I often wonder is, what brought this on? Is it the record companies' fault? Is it the fault of the buying public? Are the artists themselves to blame? I'd say it's got to be a combination of all three. I think there's been a general lowering of standards on everyone's parts. And what about kids today, starting to listen to hip-hop, do they ever get exposure to quality music? Do they even know there was a history before Jay-Z, Lil' Jon and YinYang Twins?
posted by GregP at 7:18 PM
1 Comments:
It wasn't really a secret, I just was so lax in maintaining it that I didn't bother spreading the word taht much. I signed up with Blogger just so I could post comments on B's site. But recently I decided to make this space a bigger priority for me, particularly because in the past few months I've been feeling a need to express some things I'd been thinking about.
As I said to B, I'm still in the 'blog-honeymoon' phase, and intending to update it every day, but we'll see how it goes.
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