The State of Hip-Hop

I never really thought I'd say this, but I can't stand hip-hop right now. People have been complaining about mainstream hip-hop for years, but I've never been one of those people. I loved Cash Money Records and dudes like Young Jeezy and Lil' Wayne. I actually liked listening to the radio. But now I find myself listening to This American Life instead of the new Lil' Wayne single, which totally sucks by the way.

And it's not like my tastes have changed. I still listen to the songs that were popular two years ago that were playing on the radio. And people are still making music like that (The Fixxers out of LA), it's just making its way to the radio.

It all started last June, maybe last May. This was around the time T-Pain was getting really popular. I started liking the songs that were on the radio less and less. I thought, surely this is just a phase, some new joints will come out soon and they'll stop playing this crap. Even a friend of mine, who isn't particularly into rap, said the radio was going through a major drought. Then Soulja Boy came out and things managed to get worse.

The first time I heard that song I thought it was a joke. What pisses me off the most about that song is that the beat was completely ripped off a J-Money song that had come out the previous summer called "Peanut Butter Jelly." I consider that song to be a classic and it enjoyed a full three months as my Myspace song. Juicy J gives it a shout-out on the Three 6 Mafia song "Doe Boy Fresh" (that song never made to the radio). I thought that the similarities between Soulja Boy and Peanut Butter Jelly may have been a coincidence until I found out that Soulja Boy is from Mississippi. J-Money is also from Mississippi, and there's not enough hip-hop coming out of that state for it to be a coincidence.

Soulja Boy has always baffled me. His song wasn't an instant hit, either. It was on the radio a full two months before it really took off (the ultimate sign of a rap song going mainstream is when it gets played on 106.1 alongside the likes of Kelly Clarkson). Then all of a sudden it's everywhere and getting played every 15 minutes. And I never saw it coming. I thought, surely, people are not this stupid.

And I don't think people are that stupid- I think kids are though. The music that's being played now is so ignorant and the kids are eating up. Once, at an FC Dallas game, Soulja Boy was played on the stadium speakers an hour or so before the game started. There were a lot of kids around that day because we had given a bunch of youth teams discounts on tickets. Within half a second of the first note being played, these kids next to me started doing the dance from the video (the soulja boy was actually a dance long before Soulja Boy appropriated the name). Then I look around the stadium and every kid is doing it (mind you these are affluent sub-urban kids from Frisco and Southlake). Every last one of them. There was this one kid in one of the groups who was a little heavier, wearing glasses and some DC skate shoes I remember. He was looking right into his friends eyes while they were doing the dance, in that way that kids do when they want to make sure they're getting it right. It was so weird.

So why are radio stations, BET, MTV and the rest of the music industry catering to kids? Because kids buy records, young adults don't.

The state of hip-hop is the sort of thing people who listen to "real" hip-hop complain about all the time. But those people don't buy music, they steal it. So why should the industry cater to them? Complain all you want, but maybe next time you should put down that American Apparel hoodie that all your friends are wearing and pick up a Mad-Lib record instead.

Coming Soon to a PC near you

I'm currently collecting my thoughts about the current state of hip-hop, and my next blog will be primarily focused on Atlanta rapper Lil Scrappy. There's something about him that intrigues me. Is it his masterful lyricism, with gems such as, " them things twinkle in the light bright/ I don't know I just twinkle in the lime light/Got a Chevy same color as a can of sprite"? His dedication to the hustle? No, it's not that. Peep this video.

Advertising, Hip Hop.

It's really weird, I always hear Pepsi products getting mentioned in rap songs. The one I hear the most often is Aquafina (Aquafina clear, Aquafina flow, etc.). I've also heard Young Dro and Young Jeezy say they have Tropicana orange cars. Never Minute Made, never Dasani. But Sprite is getting mentioned more regularly now, so maybe Coke has a deal with Grand Hustle. Of course this isn't true, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was.

I think stuff like that is one of the reasons I listen to rap so much. After a while you pick up on little nuances like that. They can be talking about the most inane and vulgar things, but use imagery from popular/ consumer culture that everyone can relate to. And very complicated rhyming schemes. This one right here is my favorite right now:

Paint the Chevy all kinda sour apple colors
Diamonds up in my charm look like piney- apple suckas
Tech 9 for some, mack nine-ty for others
Lethal Weapon on Ducati’s, I got on my Danny Glovers
Nah this ain't the movie but I shot “Four Brothers”

Ducati is a brand of German motorcycles, and Four Brothers is a pun. That's also that movie with Mark Wahlberg where those four adopted brothers avenge their foster mother's death. You know you can't come up with anything that clever, so stop saying rappers have no talent.

I think rap music is just an extreme representation of American culture. Everyone says that rap is a terrible influence on young people, which it of course is, but what about all the filth that white people put on television and the radio? "Rap promotes materialism." What about The Apprentice and Donald Trump? Being rich, living in a big house, and driving a fancy car is what most people consider to be the American Dream. White men who own corporations don't pay women as much, and women are regularly discriminated against in the business world for top positions. Football commentators are in Hooters commercials. No one watches the WNBA. And what do people in other countries say about American movies? They're too violent. Parents buy violet games for their kids. Country music promotes ignorance and "Southern" (backward and racist) values. And Sports Illustrated still has a swimsuit issue.

So in case you were wondering, that's why I listen to rap music.

Now about me.

I'm doing very well in school this semester, and I'm working on 3 projects. Only one of them is for school though, the other two are real life. I'm helping one of the people I'm shadowing at a recording studio with his marketing, since he has none. I've got my school project, an Ad Campaign for Zodiac Vodka, but none of my work there will ever really get used. I joined the Sports Marketing Association at school, and we're partnering with FC Dallas (where I will be interning very soon in the marketing department) to get more people to go to a game in April. We're gonna do a lot of non-traditional marketing, and the coolest thing is that they're actually giving us ads to put up and promotional materials to use. So it's not like a PowerPoint presentation that no one in class will pay attention to, it's a real life marketing project. My house is very clean, despite it's 5,000+ sq feet.

Also, my friend Frenchy is starting a fashion blog.