![]() ![]() With radio, they’re playing the same 12 to 15 songs every three weeks because it increases efficiency for Clear Channel – while Viacom’s not even playing music on TV anymore. You need to be on the NahRight‘s, 2DopeBoyz, TheSmokingSection‘s, etc. While anyone can put out music on the Internet, there’s no guarantee people are listening. There is a limited amount of radio, TV, and internet spins. I bought the album, ’cause that’s my shit. It isn’t my concern that Apple won’t sponsor Slaughterhouse ’cause females don’t want to get laid on by Joell Ortiz. Priority Records likely still has shelves of Lil Zane tracks that prep school gangstas in New Jersey have been dying to hear. And if that’s what you want, they’ll give it to you. For this reason, Lil Wayne wants us to support his young boy, but what are we getting back? A light-skinned Canadian brother, with a couple mixtapes, a teeny-bopper sitcom, two left feet ( see here), and Blackberry “freestyles ” really, this is what I get for $13.99? More importantly, what am I giving up? By supporting Drake, you’re telling the industry you want more female-targeted, Trey Songz-driven, lyrically-challenged music. Drake can crossover to the Apple/ Blackberry type advertisers as opposed to the Boost Mobiles of the world targeting consumers in the market for bodega burner phones. The problem is that there aren’t as many companies who are urban targeted that can afford to associate themselves with subversive Hip Hop. Ide’s wanted Biggie, 2Pac, and the Wu-Tang Clan we wanted malt liquor, deal. Most of the time, we let it happen because the people co-opting hip hop gave us what we wanted. ĭiversity is cool, evolution is inevitable, but there’s a point when both just become straight jacking. Even though the Dipset basically moved Harlem to Atlanta and traded Sean John for Ed Hardy, people like Tru-Life dropped tracks such as “New New York.” Jay-Z now has “D.O.A.”. There’s a tension between keeping it real and growing the kingdom, but with Drake, have we thrown in the towel and finally let the industry win out? When southern Rap and Auto-Tune became popular, there was resistance. We’ve been mainstream for 10 years now, but there’s always been a push and pull. What people fail to realize is that we are still a subversive culture in the midst of an identity crisis trying to cope with success: mo’ money, mo’ problems. He represents the next easily reproducible archetype and that’s why there’s so much fervor. These guys are what I call “Original Works,” which Drake is not. Why don’t you have another 2Pac? Because no one represented the struggle, came clear with his emotions, and had something to say as powerful as him since. Why don’t you have the next Notorious B.I.G.? Because no one can spit like that. While he has Auto-Tune tracks, the sound is not formulaic. He’s one in a million and its intrinsic to him. Why hasn’t that happened with Kanye West, a genre bending act himself? Because it’s very difficult to reproduce the Kanye sound. Both were absorbed by the industry and became part of the standard fare. It was formulaic, easily consumed, and viral. The Bounce sound was proliferated, copied, and repackaged with various artists because it could be. An example of a localized Hip Hop good that penetrated the industry and forced its way into every region was No Limit Records and Cash Money Records. I personally love it, great contribution to the BBQ canon, but standard fare: no. Now, North Carolina, vinegar sauce on pulled pork, that’s a localized good which is clearly an outlier. Most prefer it with sauce, but dry rub only is neither alien nor novel. When you think BBQ, you think: spare-ribs, baby back ribs, pulled pork, brisket, all standard fare. There’s a difference between localized and market defining goods. Not because his act defies genre (as we will later address, he represents an old archetype), but because the industry has tried to pluck him from the pack and crown him as the standard. We’ve seen Drake, Soulja Boy, Kid Cudi, and many others build massive followings through the Internet forcing the industry’s hand to listen and pay attention. East, west, south, midwest – they’ve all had their say, but the latest movement has been from the sixth Coast… the Internet i.e. Like all great art forms, Hip Hop has been absorbed by various regions and localized. But even with liberal interpretations, everything is still something…right? With genre bending acts like M.I.A., Bobby Ray, Girl Talk, etc., the traditional boundaries of Hip Hop are constantly challenged. In the post-post-modern world, everything is everything. The views and opinions expressed in the following feature editorial are those expressly of the writer of this piece and do not necessarily reflect those of HipHopDX. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |