While listening to modern so-called Hip Hop, all I can do is quote the late great Marvin Gay “What’s going on”, because what I’m hearing has no resemblance to what I know to be Hip Hop. My children blast this stuff in their head phones and from the PC’s in the house and for the life of me, I thought I was hearing the same song repetitively, “I would be wrong”! I was actually hearing different artist (and I use that word reluctantly) using the exact same flow and beat. Now, I give props to the pioneers of these modern flows, Meek Mills, Drake, J Cole, and Kendrick Lamar, but how is Hip Hop supposed to survive if the diversity in creativity isn’t there. Like, Snoop never attempted to sound like Jay-Z, and Nas never tried to sound like Biggie, so I say again “What’s Going On”!
The most difficult aspect of what use to be an original sound, style, and culture that was about creating a unique sound and dress to match, has turned into a bunch of carbon copy cat’s, and I won’t get into the below disrespectful consistent message in the music toward, our women and ourselves (the ourselves, I speak of refers to us folks from the hood), because most of these cats are lying about their street credit -which is below 500-, and the money they hold. They need to stop lying to my sorties in the hood, having them chasing these false images of street life, as if the disenfranchised people on the face-of-the-earth need any more lie told to them, to encourage them to continue to behave in such a fashion that just compounds the problems, of incarceration, and fatherless children.
Listen, I’m not neglecting the fact that my generation ushered in NWA, Biggie, The Alcoholics, & Little Kim -I get that, but their message wasn’t the only one being played across the airwaves, we also had Public Enemy, Mos Def, The Roots, A Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah, Common, & Slick Rick, and not only did these groups not sound alike, they talked to the hood about turning our lives around, and with songs like Self Destruction playing on the radio, many people had a different mindset about what it meant to be a minority in the hood, most importantly, there was an alternative path to the dirt, death, and dope.
So if Hip Hop isn’t dead (as Nas claimed years ago) then this new Hip Pop has her breathing on a ventilator, so to the “Big Heads” still in the game (Jigga, Nas, Dre) I beg of you to revive the love of my life, because she’s dying. But I do believe that myself, along with the rest of the Hip Hop Nation (big ups to Ed Lover on Backspin) have the power to keep her alive, because I’m Hip Hop for Life. Peace