The Current Hip Hop Situation

A

anaeli

New member
I listen to pretty much anything you can throw at me, but the one thing i haven't been able to listen to for a few years now, is the newer Hip-hop. Personally, the direction that it has went puts a sour taste in my mouth. I know there are rock banRAB that have taken it back to the earlier days of rock, like The White Stripes and The Black Keys to name two. If new people did that in Hip-hop, i could definitely listen to it. I'm talking all the way from Kurtis Blow to N.W.A. eras. How many feel the same?
 
Hip Hop is more of a technology based genre of music, so as the technology improves, so will the way the music is created. I personally love the hip hop that has come out in the last decade, probably some of the most innovative and genre defying stuff to date. With the rise of the Independent scene, hip hop in whole is losing the gangsta personification that plagued it throughout the late '80's and '90's. Also if you look at people's profiles on sites like Last.fm, you'll notice that a lot more people who listen exclusively to rock or metal, are starting to open their minRAB and ears to hip hop. Could you give some examples of the newer stuff you've heard?
 
There's so many different things going on with hip-hop that it's hard for me to give much of a response to this question. I mean, yeah, I think a lot of top 40 hip-hop is garbage but there's still tons and tons of great stuff out there.
 
I'm partial to the older hip hop myself, but there's some great modern hip hop, particularly alternative/underground stuff like Madlib, El P, Mos Def, MF Doom and Danger Mouse.

Lil Wayne, 50 Cent and all that stuff is pretty horrible.

Kayne West is overrated, he had a good tune or two, but I hate how processed his vocals are and that seems to be the problem with most modern hip hop and pop music. Not to mention how much of a colossal douchebag he is.
 
I still listen to a bit of the hip-hop, but by and large I tend to keep my interests in older material. I think the tricky thing these days is finding an artist who uses the current technology to enhance what's already there, instead of going overboard on production and then just throwing some lyrics together.
 
In general I just don't really care for hip hop, one of the main reasons though is the lack of lyrics with any real meaning to them. However, I picked up the a cd released by First Avenue, which is a music venue up here in Minnesota. The cd consisted of bootlegs record over the past 35 years at First Ave, and one of the tracks was "Woman with Tatooed HanRAB" by Atmosphere, and it's absolutely amazing.
 
meh not everyone is deep into the world's problems and knowledgeable about it

People that say they don't listen to rap because of the lyrics the same argument could be said for whatever music they are listening to. Each genre has artists that don't go into very deep lyrical content.\

Most rappers write songs about things that they know or that's around their immediate self. There are a few that like to be creative and do some story-telling but most mainly rap about where they live and how proud they are that they made it out of where they came from. So if you can't relate the how they used to live or how they are living now then you won't like a majority of their lyrical content.

For example , I really like Maino's Debut album because he basically goes through and gives you a story about his life over all of the tracks. He actually starts the album with the first track talking about the end and then on the next track he goes and starts from the beginning.
 
It's hard to give one generalized statement about where Hip-Hop is today. Of course, the majority of people hear the Top 40 "hip-hop" and that's where most generalizations come from. But there's so many artists out today that are very good at what they do, and keep Hip-Hop alive. (i.e. P.O.S., Dessa, Tech N9ne, Krizz Kaliko, Del The Funky Homosapien, Slug [of Atmosphere], Murs, etc)

There's a lot of GREAT Hip-Hop still being made today. You just have to look for it. Nine times out of ten, it will not be on the radio.
 
Hip-hop is still in a state of finding itself. Like most genres it is very hit or miss. I can understand the desire to for hip hop to return to its roots, but hip-hop is very much evolving into something that will surpass anything we've heard from the genre so far. its best days are yet to come.
 
Personally i have to agree that technology plays a huge roll in the development of this genre. There are so many more creative options available to songwriters and producers that ithink we will hear music and new things that have never been done befor. Hip-Hop is not my nuraber one choice in music but the things im hearing are really starting to sound cool (from a producers position)

Bond
 
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