[LEMONS] 2.19.2004
Hip-Hop is Corny. What's Next?
Hip hop is corny. Not to mention commodified, pre-packaged, corporate drivel. Sure, there's still great stuff out there. Fantastic albums that make you move, that make you think, that make you connect with the divine and the sublime. But when was the last time you heard a hip-hop song and thought, "wow, well that's something completely different"? Even the underground sounds vaguely like something I've heard before.Don't get me wrong. I still listen to hip-hop. I still enjoy hip-hop. I still buy a few hip-hop albums every year. Even the big stuff. Pass that Dutch, shake your stuff. And I have bona-fides. Maybe. I grew up listening to hip-hop. Two of the first cassettes I ever bought were "Kings of Rock" and "Radio." I saw NWA play live, supporting Straight Outta Compton. I saw Slick Rick. I saw De La Soul. I saw LL Cool J. All on the same tour. I listened and listened and listened, and never thought it was weird because I was white (though I never would have dared to make it myself).
But then MTV fucking killed it. They massacred it sometime around 1995, just after picking the last bits of flesh from the decomposing carcass of the 1980s indie/alternative music scene. Slate thinks Kanye West can save it. But then, Slate is written and read by a bunch of stodgy old white guys like myself, who prop up the status-quo rather than smash it.
I disagree.
Hip-hop is bloated and fat and old. It is, for the most part, nothing more than a commodity to be sold by the music industry to nimrods who believe that--like listening to hair metal in the 80s--they are somehow rebelling. Somehow different. Somehow cutting edge. That curse words, and gun references and staccato beats, banned fromm their parents minivans, give them a sort of street-cred by proxy. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Hip-hop isn't dead. Nor will it be any time soon. And every once in a while, revolutionary artists will come along and shake it up, make a difference, make a stand. Hip-hop hooray. But just as it became impossible for punk to regain its roots once Nirvana broke, so, too, did Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z detroy what DMC, BDP, PE, GMF and KMD had wrought. Even if only by the virtue of mastering that which they did not invent.
It's a natural cycle in popular music. A genre forms in the streets and small clubs. Grandmaster Flash and Television. The mainstream doesn't go for it, but it percolates with the kids and slowly grows. Whodini and Black Flag. As it begins to become known, a few artists breakout with crossover hits.Metallica and Run DMC. A few popular if semi-avant garde artists from other genres co-opt it, respectfully. Louis Prima and Blondie. Then the record companies and MTV get wise, and go on the hunt for artists. Blink 182 and Nelly. They look for archetypes, and only develop those who fit the mold. Warren G and The Everly Brothers and Ratt and Limp Bizkit. Artists who aren't easily categorized aren't signed, aren't promoted. ICP and Lightning Bolt. And pretty soon, it's pure TRL. It's happened to everything from rock and roll, to punk, to ska, to house, to metal, to, well hip-hop. For some reason it took hip-hop an unusually long time to follow this timeline.
And it always leaves me wondering "what's next?" What's out there now that I'm too old and too cranky to know about? (And it doesn't count unless I don't get it. Unless 16 year olds love it and 35 year old music snobs--feasting on Pere Ubu and Tortoise and Godspeed and, oh, I don't know, Mos Def--are utterly dismissive of it. Unless the old fart bohemians think it's banal and derivative and beneath consideration, it isn't art.) What are the kids grooving to and moving to that the critics are calling unlistenable and somebody, somewhere is already thinking of how to exploit? Or have we reached the end of genres? Is there nothing left, aside from a further splintering, melding, and remixing of what's already out there? What?
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