I come to y’all with a lot to say about the current state of Hip-Hop. Defending the music is by far the most annoying part of being a Hip-Hop fan. I love the Hip-Hop culture, I love the music, the different styles and everything beautiful about it. But Lord knows I am TIRED of defending this genre. I don’t want to come off sounding like an old man, but it’s hard. There’s a lot of things that seem to be wrong with the game that seems to go overlooked or downright ignored because nobody wants to say anything about it.
We’ve reached a point in time where a lot of the music sounds the exact same, where you can’t tell who is who and what is what (I’m not saying any names but you know exactly what and who I mean…). When I enter a discussion with a friend or follower about the current state of the game, it always seems as if it takes longer and longer for me to find examples defending certain sounds styles. We’ve gotten to a point where our major sites and magazines are ignoring all of the nicest in the culture in favor of whoever makes the “hottest” music. Last year’s cover of XXL’s “Freshman” magazine was a travesty, a sham and a mockery of the culture. I believe in different strokes for different folks, but talent should speak and a lot of those cats on the cover didn’t deserve it (I’ll let you figure out which ones I mean). The sites and the channels that were once in favor of the culture have turned a blind eye to all of the well-deserving talents that don’t get the shine they’ve earned. Truthfully this type of stuff has me dumb hot, and I speak for a lot of people echoing this same sentiment. I believe that at one point there were gatekeepers of the culture who stopped a lot of trash juice music from getting in and infiltrating the sounds we love so much. At some point, these guys seemingly disappeared and now anyone with any trash sound can get in the game.
Recently while tweeting I was told that I care way too much and that I should let the music be music. I may care too much, or maybe that person just doesn’t care enough. We’re far too deep into the problem now, and I really can’t bring myself to ignore this. We’ve reached the level of complacency that has hurt our culture to the point of no return. It may be too late. I’m just a man of the culture who’s very concerned about the future. Admittedly I can say that at one point I attempted to ignore the problems with today’s music hoping that it would just go away. Really I’m just afraid of the further damage that can inevitably be caused to the culture that I love and care about way too much.
