Nas pretty much sums it up with his album "Hip-Hop is Dead"
So I'm a hip-hop DJ and therefore I'm always keeping up to date with the new music being released, and I'm forced to listen to and play all of whatever people nowadays consider "cool" and "catchy", which is rather unfortunate. I mean, I've been thinking about how hip-hop has been going downhill since about 5 years ago, and I'm almost positive that the instigator was Lil Jon. C'mon, I know a bunch of guys who can yell really loudly and rhyme one syllable words. If Lil Jon can become famous in hip-hop, I really don't understand why people like AZ, Talib Kweli, Q-Tip, and a bunch of other fairly well-known artists who are not as recognized aren't considered to be hip-hop gods.
Anyways, What inspired me to write on this topic was not just the fact that there has been a steady decline in the quality of hip-hop in terms of the beats and the lyrics, but rather, one line I heard in the song "So Fly" by Slim of 112 in which Yung Joc says, "she can tell I'm a G, I got Gmail." This one line single-handedly encompasses the decline of hip-hop. Does Yung Joc even know what Gmail is? I use Gmail. Some of my professors use Gmail. I wouldn't be surprised if a good 1/3 of people who use the internet have a Gmail account. I personally have several Gmail accounts, so does that make me more of a G than Yung Joc? What ever happened to rhyming about stuff that matters or stuff that's culturally significant?
Well, thanks to Yung Joc, rap has reached a new level of stupidity that even I - being a serious critic of mainstream hip-hop - thought was unattainable. Maybe this is an idea for a continual post: if I happen to stumble across a line in a mainstream hip-hop song that people like, which demonstrates the lowering of standards by todays hip-hop community, I'll write it down and once I get a good number of them I'll post them up with some commentary.
anyways, be safe yall, don't go too crazy on new years ;)
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