How Drastically Hip-Hop Has Changed in 6 yrs.

[Political Gangsta]

(I left out 80's hip-hop to make this discussion more current)


Take a look through a Source magazine from 1996 and you may be shocked at how drastically hip-hop music, the voice and expression of today's generation, has changed indefinitely and taken on a new, more sensationalized look that is insulting to the fans intelligence.  The reality, dignity and integrity has been swallowed up somewhere in the transition from 2pac to Puffy, to Master P, to Nelly.  Hip-hop in the media is simply becoming a mockery of what it once was.  

Westside Connection, Bone, Wu-Tang, 2pac, Snoop, Dr. Dre, Nas, back in the mid-90's they were setting trends, and establishing new codes of ethics for hip-hop.  Nas changed the lyrical landscape and challenged artists to be better poets with his 94 classic Illmatic.  Snoop, a former Rolling 20's crip put gangsta rap in the forefront like no other before his time.  Bone's tongue twisting flow meshed harmony with more success then ever before.  2pac made hip-hop real, he always let it be known that if you were going to project an image on record, you better be willing to back that image up.  He kept the game in check, after he died, a great change began to develop in the ebb of the undercurrent.

If you read a hip-hop magazine, or even listen to a record from the mid 90's and then fast-forward to today, you'll become aware of a growing aversion to the song being sang in today's media platform.  Back then, gangbanging, drugs, guns, ignorance, were all described in a negative light, or as a necessity, or phase that the artist went through to get where they are going.  Today, it is described as the end all conclusion, as the destination, rather then a ditch or rut in a traveled road to liberation.  Rap music has been oversexualised to the point where it isn't even about the music anymore.  Some feel that need to take a hint from the past and understand that sometimes less is more.  Yet, if they did downscale their video's and made them similar to the days when it was cool to just film a video in the park, it wouldn't fit into today's crowded market.  The stations wouldn't play it.

Hip-hop music is a disillusioned rembrant of what it once was.  There are still artist looking to expand and build on the art form.  But the listener must weed through 90% of the rap game to find those artists, or continue to listen to the same artists from back in hip-hop's glory days to recapture the nostalgia of old.  Artists need to take a hint from the past and understand that sometimes less is more.  Peace to the pioneers.  1.

[Juice]

Back then, gangbanging, drugs, guns, ignorance, were all described in a negative light, or as a necessity, or phase that the artist went through to get where they are going.  Today, it is described as the end all conclusion, as the destination, rather then a ditch or rut in a traveled road to liberation.  Rap music has been oversexualised to the point where it isn't even about the music anymore.

You on point! I agree.