Thoughts on Hip Hop Music

Is Hip Hop dead? The question has been asked and answered a thousand times, but regardless of the answer, here I am writing about it and there you are reading about it. I think a more important question in regards to the music and culture, is "What is Hip Hop?"

Is Hip Hop the flashy mainstream get money attitude we see on MTV, or is Hip Hop the kids working out of their basement and spitting freestyles in a back alley or shitty apartment building?

There's even a distinct sound difference in both of them, with the cleaner, pop-influenced hooks and minimal slow beats hitting the charts, and the grittier dirty sounds of tape-saturated drum machines dominating the underground.

The relationships of both are also complicated and intertwined, with the mainstream guys saying they're still part of hip hop but they just hit success, and the underground guys, not quite jealous, but annoyed that someone who all they talk about is rims and bling considers themselves Hip Hop.

There's no denying that it's all big business now, but hopefully with the advent in the internet we're going to see the market shift to a more balanced equation, with the lesser known cats getting a chance to compete with the big boys in the buildings downtown. As someone who spends their days reviewing and listening to all sorts of tracks, I'll put my vote in towards the indie guys having a fair chance to compete with the mainstream artists given a level playing field.

These new MC's, the young ones of 16-18 years old that are just starting to come up, bring in the old-school flavor and poetics but with a new mindset. These guys are university students, some of them studying to be doctors and lawyers, and now we're getting not only a "Streetwise" dialog on various subjects, but some really educated ones as well, which is bringing to light issues like poverty, racism, consumerism, etc. in an easier to understand but almost deeper way, I find.

I'll be doing some interviews with some local guys who are movers and shakers in the hip hop world, and see what they got to say about this, so look out for that soon.

If any of YOU guys and gals got any opinions, feel free to send me an email or drop a comment, it'll be appreciated for sure, and knowledge is power.

We're humans, lets communicate.