w  rd 2 the woss

Those who love Hip Hop are getting mad at Hip Hop.

 

They do not understand the general direction that rap is taking, or has been taking, in terms of its subject matter. My personal observation from recent popular rap records is that the artform is going more towards blunt conversation. I say this because the songs in the genre that are more popular, be it Future (gangsta/trap rap) or Logic (conscious rap), tend to have a very casual feeling to them. Good examples of these types of lyrics include "we don't stand in line, foreign shoes hurt your feet" from Young Thug and "I just talked to Farrakhan, that's sensei" from Kanye West. Lines like these might be beginning to become more popular in different ways, and this is alright as it is simply people who are talking about things taking place in their lives that interest them.

 

 

These songs are an honest representation of their lives, and hip hop as a genre, is based off of honesty. Whether it has taken place a day ago, or ten years, hip-hop for the most part is about telling honest stories. It is not about gangs and drugs and sex, as people who do not understand and generalize it might say. Those stories are only prevalent in rap music, because a lot of rappers come from places of poverty.

 

 

However, not everyone agrees. I have a friend who is mad about the current state of Hip Hop, and he tells me exactly this: that all they talk about is sex and drugs. It may initially look that way because these are things that the general public cares about. We ought to be glad that Hip Hop in terms of lyricism is more than just about being “better than the competition”, although it is still in its core.  If this genre had just been about braggadocio since 1970, then it would not have lived to see a decade past the eighties. It would have ended similar to Disco Demolition Night in 1979. At the end of the day, rap music is only a reflection of the current times. The nineties were about diversity in music, and the oughts (2000s), well, they were weird. The rap music of the 2010s are mostly about turning up (having fun), which does have connotations to sex and drugs.  

 

 

Is this a bad thing? Maybe, as it does imply that the public has more of a desire to escape reality than ever. I have noticed more and more that rap music is becoming satirical, as if they are trying to say that maybe the lifestyle being portrayed is not that great after all. This is great for people to notice if they actually listen to some of the lyrics (which I doubt; Kendrick Lamar's "Swimming Pools" was definitely played at parties where people got drunk and worse).

 

The fears about the directions that hip-hop is taking goes way back; Those in the Hip Hop community may know of HOT 97/Beats 1’s Ebro Darden. In a recent interview he had with Logic, he mentioned when even the Wu-Tang Clan was criticized in the early nineties for its subject matter. People didn’t understand why they had so many references to Japanese Samurai films within their music, and didn’t understand the connections they were making to their environment. The issue definitely goes far and wide, and we need not worry. Even if rap does go down, and the genuine spirit gets removed and the genre simply becomes a novelty, it would be like the start of any artistic movement. When something loses its greatness, something better always takes its place.