Who ruined hip-hop the most in the late 90's?

[TraceOneInfinite]

I stole this topic from another forum.....


I think Jay-Z, Ja Rule, DMX... those are the cats that ruined hip-hop in the late 90's. Because they all claimed to be street, and claimed to represent true hip-hop, etc., etc., but they were all fake, and they were all just products of Def Jam's magnificent marketing machine.

The reason I didn't say Puffy and Mase is because they were linked to Biggie. And Biggie was a true artist. The farther we get away from the passing of Biggie, the less we hear about Puffy. So really I just link those cats to Biggie, and Biggie was dope.

The reason I didn't say Master P is because Master P was just doing what he knew. He was just a businessman coming in the game with all that street energy and he took it and beat everybody at their own game. No Limit never claimed to represent the essence of hip-hop, they never claimed to be great lyricists.

... Why I say Jay-Z and those cats ruined hip-hop is because Jay-Z claims to represent the essence of hip-hop. And if you follow his carear and follow the singles he's put out and the image he portrays, he's robbing the culture in my opinion. In my opinion hip-hop was not just an artform, but a tool created to elevate the consciousness of oppressed people in America.

[BigBDrugStores]

master p

[GangstaBoogy]

Jay-Z
Timbaland
Master P

[white Boy]

nobody.

[Sikotic™]

For me it was Master P. He brought forth a trend of bullshit into the game.

[Darksider]

DMX ruined Hiphop??? lol........

[eS El Duque]

DMX - Born Loser

that was ill shit 

[Trauma-san]

I don't think you can really run it to one person, I think basically hiphop became a joke because you had a lot of people who misunderstood what the fuck was going on.  Basically the entire "Gangsta" Rap movement was a precarious thing, everyone knew NWA, Dre, Cube, Eazy, etc. weren't REALLY Gangsters, and they were saying just incredibly outlandish things, but somehow they balanced that and pulled it off, where even though you knew Ice Cube had never killed anyone, you enjoyed listening to him rap about killing people.  It's really pretty weird.

After a few years of that, everything got strange, Rap started getting more and more negative, people took the shit seriously, started killing people, started judging whether people were 'real' or not on whether or not they were in a gang or were 'hard', all that shit, THAT is when hip-hop went bad.

You can't pin that shit on Master P, or P-diddy, because they were just doing what they do.  It's the assholes who were running around killing people and taking shit to the next level that I would blame for hiphop falling to what it is today, that might not sound right, because generally hiphop's more mellow now than it was then... but they ruined the entire Gangsta Rap scene and just fucked all the creativity that was going on there, all the intelligent inspiration these cats had, and fucked all that up, ruined a whole musical movement, made everything super-negative, and now all that's left is the bubblegum-rap, which was always there anyways.  I'd blame it more on Tupac than I would Master P, I'm serious.

['EclipZe]

DMX ruined Hiphop??? lol........

idd lol...

I think those cats who are in murder inc (not ja rule but all the others) sucked ...

[-Euthanasia-]

gotta be chip fu

his refusal to release a 3 cd solo album was a tremendous detriment to the genre

[M Dogg™]

What ruined hip-hop in the late 90's, that's simple, it was all the lable mergers. Since in the early 90's the establishment could not get ride of hip-hop, it bought it.

Def Jam was merged with Island and Russell Simmons sold his part. Def Jam went from the lable of Public Enemy and Slick Rick to JAy-Z and Ja Rule, but a more commerical Jay-Z and Ja Rule. Jive Records, the home of some of the greatest acts in hip-hop history like Boogie Down Productions, began releasing poppy boy bands. Suge being in jail made Death Row fall apart, Dre selling more chunks of Aftermath to support Chronic 2001 gave Interscope TOO much power over Aftermath, Ruthless dispite having a groupe like Bone Thugs N Harmany could not stay as a major lable, no matter how much money they raped Bone Thugs out of. Cash Money and No Limit came out with that southern music that people liked, and the southern sound was taking over, which I don't see as a bad thing. BUT, Universal controlled Cash Money and Master P was lucky he caught the same deal out of Priority that Eazy E did with Ruthless. The problem, Priority was not releasing anyone else, and raped Ras Kass. Lables like Rawkus, which hip-hop was build on lables of it's kind, could not keep up in terms of money. Independent lables in the Bay were being drowned out by big lables paying money to have their artist played on the radio. At the same time many radio stations were becoming part of huge nation wide chain of stations that were all sister stations. Local radio which played local acts were becoming a rearity and the diversity of music played on stations was shrinking.

In short, hip-hop was bought off and those with money survived. Had Jay-Z not sold his soul with the hot singles formula, he would not bee see as a legend, and he still represented the culture. He was the middle guy, someone who the lables could like because he sold, and someone real hip-hop people could like. The problem was that real hip-hop people used him as a poster boy for everything that was wrong with hip-hop at the time. If it was not Jay-Z, it would have been Nelly, or someone else. So who ruined hip-hop, no one, but finally the big lables grapped control of the situation, and the radio stations grapped control, and pushed what was hip-hop out, and replaced it with the trash we see today.

[ColdManey]

everyone knew NWA, Dre, Cube, Eazy, etc. weren't REALLY Gangsters, and they were saying just incredibly outlandish things,

The rest of the post was on point but the shit they were talkin about was not outlandish. It might not have been shit that they dealt with first hand, but the things they were talkin about were things that were really goin on on the turf.

[Leggy Hendrix]

gotta be chip fu

his refusal to release a 3 cd solo album was a tremendous detriment to the genre

lmao

[Kill]

stupid wiggers not realizing what the culture´s about at all?

[Don Seer]

2 Pac.. people stopped being innovative and tried to fill the void he left..

Jay-Z too.. just coz I ain't ever liked him