Why the F*@K Would You Listen to Rap Anymore?

I am a man of many hatreds. When Russ asked me to write a lil' sumn-sumn about music from time to time, I thought about all the things I wanted to say about music. Then I realized that a lot of what I have to say is about what's wrong with music. Like I am the only person that knows how music should be. So I decided I wouldn't be that guy. You know, the guy that tells you that this generation of kids is screwed up, how music doesn't mean what it used to. The back-in-my-day guy. The kids-don't-know-real-music guy. Basically, the get-off-my-lawn guy. I used to hate that guy. But what if that guy is right? Is being a bitterman justifiable when your bitterness is tangible? Or does that just make you a hater?

Well, I'm both. What makes it worse, is that I hate that I'm right. Not all the time, but I especially hate when I'm right about the destruction of the things I love. Like when the Verve broke up. Or when At The Drive In broke up. Or when the MotherScratchin' Bulls eliminated my Bad Boys in 4 games in the last Eastern Conference Finals that Zeke, Joe D, and Laimbeer would ever participate in. Now add to that list the destruction of hip-hop.

See, the rap game has been under siege for years. Rap has closely mirrored the meteoric rise of computers and the internet in the 90's. Once it proved that it was commercially, and therefore financially viable in the mid 90's, it was only a matter of time before the effects of big business stripped from it everything that gave it soul. Now look at it. After 15 years of assembly line rap production, replete with regurgitated misogyny, doctorate-level knowledge of narcotics, and idle threats from wanna-be thugs, rap has completely lost its edge. When is the last time you heard a rap song that had an original thought? An original beat? An original concept? When was the last time you you winced from the realness of the lyrics? Or felt compassion after hearing the criminal's side of the story through rap? (On a side note, I completely remove The Roots from this argument. That group is the antithesis of everything negative that I say about hip-hop in this blog entry.)

So, the question is why the f*@k would I listen to rap anymore? Why would anyone, when the radio waves are saturated with unimaginative drivel? I hear songs now and I feel disconnected from the genre. Maybe it's that I'm 36 years old with a steady job, a family to be responsible for, and obligations like bills and taxes. I think that we as music lovers forget that music is a medium of the moment; it's only relevant to the feeling of the artist at the time the artist feels it. Ice Cube railed against all things caucasian in his first album Amerikkka's Most Wanted and his collaboration with Da Lench Mob on Guerillas In Tha Mist. A quick listen through either album and you can hear the most hateful, dark, xenophobic language in any album. At the time, it was dangerous. Dangerous because it exhibited not hatred for whites, but the underlying feeling of helplessness against forces out of your control. Seeing the "American Dream" all around you and not being given the tools to obtain it. Being defenseless against a system built to strip you down and make you conform to ideas, lifestyles, and cultures foreign to anything you've experienced. But that was the way Ice Cube felt in 1992. That is not the Ice Cube of 2011. In a quiet moment, away from cameras and voice recorders, I'm willing to bet that even Ice Cube would admit that his lyrics were the bullshit babblings of an ignorant twenty-something. The same establishment he raged against is all of a sudden his ally. He has been lucky enough to see certain breaks and favorable situations while simultaneously working hard to make sure he was in the right place at the right time with the right skills to take advantage of it all. While complaining about never seeing the American Dream, he was realizing it. Now, much like Ice-T, he enjoys a career greater than he ever imagined by leaving behind the things he did to start his career. You know, my kids, until this year, had no clue where Ice Cube got his start. They only know him as a movie star! Damn, I'm old!

In the 80's and 90's rappers at least tried to stand for something, however uninformed they might be. Rap served as the megaphone and the mirror for young, black America. In rap, we saw how other blacks lived throughout the nation. we stood in awe at our similarities and took pride in our differences. Rap was an audible black bulletin board. A place were we could discuss why we were what we were and where we should be headed. Quite often our pontifications on what it meant to be young and black ranged from narrow minded (Paris), to do-you-even-know-or-believe-what-you're-saying (Digable Planets, X-Clan, Camp Lo). But rappers at least wrestled with expressing their varying realities of life in America. Rap was always evolving; finding ways to better itself through sharper lyrics, more innovative sampling, even live instrumentation and singing.

Now, rap is stuck on stupid. Everything is party rap. The formula is simple: take some kid that is barely literate and borderline retarded, let him/her spew forth nonsensical gibberish for a catchy hook, insert generic synthesized beat and/or autotune, purchase airtime and advertisements. Wash, rinse, remix. The artists are too stupid to realize that they are dooming themselves to one-hit wonder status because they never developed a sound or style all their own. This is most desirable to record companies, because rappers aren't capable of sustaining their meteoric success, and thus never have leverage to get bigger contracts based on a consistent track record. Of course Jay-Z and Kanye seem to defy this logic, but they are exceptions to the rule. They provide the bell curve that everyone else gets graded up on.

So tell me, why do you listen to rap anymore? I still listen because I know where to go to get the good stuff. I haven't listened to the radio for an entire song in approximately 8 months. Don't need to. But every once in a while I'll test the waters and let the fm tuner do its thing, only to be disappointed to hear horseshit flow freely from my speakers. However, the further hip-hop slides away from anything worthwhile, the harder it gets to justify the effort it takes to wade through the pile of manure in order to get a smidgen of gold.

3 artists I'm listening to now:

Jay Rock - Follow Me Home - 4 stars

Phonte - Charity Starts At Home - 4 stars

9th Wonder - The Wonder Years - 4.5 stars