What Happened To Rap Music?

The other day I was enjoying M.O.P.’s latest album, Foundation, when I realized something - there are very few artists out there making rap music today. There are plenty of people claiming to be hip-hop artists, but very few rappers. Being someone who likes good rap music, this disturbs me, but taking a look at things, I can see exactly where it’s coming from and sadly, hip-hop is in large part to blame. That’s right, Hip-hop is doing what the government in the 80’s tried so hard yet failed to do, it’s killing rap music.

A little back story to explain this; somewhere between the early 90’s and today rap became a dirty word in hip-hop circles. People tried to differentiate rap music from hip-hop. Most of the time it ended up an exercise in an individual talking about what they liked, dubbing that hip-hop, versus what they felt was wack, calling all of that rap music. Even though those kinds of categorizations caught on, they were never actually true. All they really did was work to push rap music, and people who called themselves rappers, into a corner. Ironically, it was that same corner rap music was originally put in by older folks and a government that wanted parental advisory labels on albums and age limits on who could buy such albums. So in a very cruel twist of fate, hip-hop has become the tool the government never had back in the day to shut rap music down.

Now we have a bevy of hip-hop artists, some of whom are very talented individuals that I happen to like a lot, but a large number of those claiming the title aren’t talented at all. In fact, whenever I read a press release about a “dynamic new hip-hop artist” my first thoughts are that the artist can’t rap and the beats are going to be too artsy for their own good. Sadly, nine times out of ten I’m right (that’s how the assumption developed!). Oh, and “hip-hop artists” can’t stand to be called rappers. To be fair, many hip-hop artists don’t know how to rap, but that’s not why they shun the classification. They shun it because of the negative stigma associated with the title. The negative stigma that they themselves helped create. According them rappers supposedly aren’t as talented as “hip-hop artists.” Hmmm, doesn’t that sound dangerously similar to the “it’s not real music” argument many of the elitists had about rap music back in the 80’s? Once again, we have become them.

The worst part about the loss of rap music is the way hip-hop opens itself up for a type of commercialization that rap music never did. Most people would agree that commercialization, while bringing money to a handful of artists, hasn’t been good for the culture. Rap music would rarely pop up in advertising back in the day, but now a toned down version of it, a toned down version that’s been brought to us by “hip-hop artists,” is in damn near every commercial we see. Major corporations would never think of touching rap as a way to sell a product (except Sprite. Old school heads know!), but hip-hop? Hip-hop is easily approachable thanks to a breed of artists who are, for lack of a better term, cuddly. Mos Def will always be allowed in company that wouldn’t ever dream of letting NWA through the door and a large part of my issue with hip-hop today stems from the fact that said company are the types of people that NWA would have never wanted to associate themselves with. Now, however, too many artists are looking to be in those circles and it’s hurting the music, badly.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have a decent percentage of our artists with a foot in the door of mainstream society, but far too many have a goal to be there. Because of this the intense emotion that I hear in M.O.P. is becoming harder and harder to find. The social commentary that was once so scary to a nation has been made palatable for a much wider range of people and while that’s great for getting a message across, and we do need artists who can do that, where are the artists who want to follow in the footsteps of the great rappers of the 80’s and get in people’s faces about what’s going on in America today? Where are the artists who want to craft the best possible rhymes and wow people strictly with their words? Where are the artists who don’t care about mainstream society?

The culture of hip-hop wasn’t built on assimilation, but for some reason over the past 15 years we’ve done an amazing job of doing just that. Our music is played alongside Miley Cyrus on pop radio stations and featured in mainstream publications. The majority of artists no longer have that same lust to throw their words in the face of authority and cultural norms, they want to be the cultural norm, and that’s no way to make a real impact.

So while I do have love for what some hip-hop artists are doing, I think we need a balance. We need good rap music to make a comeback. Without it we’ll lose the edge that created the culture in the first place, if we haven’t lost it already.