The question--Is hip hop really dead?
Hip Hop music these days are not what it use to be, because of the digitization of musical tracks that make the genre fake or less creative. Also the genre is changing due to the new up incoming artist that use auto-tune to enhance their vocals to make the track or song more attractive and listenable. Nowadays, teenagers and early 20 year olds' listen to the degraded hip hop genre due to peer or media influence. When your friends listen to hip hop tracks that consist of auto-tuning you will automatically listen to it, because people are influence by each other. I have to admit, I am a person that listen to lyrical contents within a track and I argue with my friends about how I am not going to listen to hip hop that have integrated auto-tuning, but I was to quick to admit i won't. Eventually, I have given in to my friends' obsession of the new auto-tune hip hop and gave it a shot by listening to it. I am not going to hate on the track, because the track definitely is catchy, but I will hate on myself if I see myself listening to it all the time. Besides being influence by peers, the media plays a big part on what hip hop tracks we listen too. Our media will only play the hip hop tracks that are catchy and poppy, which defeats the purpose of calling it hip hop, because in actuality its infused hip-hop/pop.
Hip hop in general shouldn't sound poppy like you will hear from a pop track, the art form of hip hop music is to exert creative lyrical writing and relevant beats. Although, in order for the music corporations to make money they need to extract the most important part of the hip hop music and infuse digital vocalization into the track. That to me is just wrong, the music industry shouldn't change the way artists put together their music.
Just take it for example, My favorite artist right now is Lupe Fiasco who has immense talent in making legitimate hip hop tracks and he doesn't deviate his style to fit to the music industries' generic infuse hip hop/pop. Although Lupe Fiasco keeps it real with legitimate hip hop, the other portion of mainstream hip hop world has infuse itself with poppy beats to make money and appeal to the general public. To further understand this change in hip hop, Keith Kawaii has written an article that gets expertise's opinion on the changes of hip hop.
An article by Keith Kawaii reiterates on Sasha Frere Jones' and Simon Reynolds' (an iconic rap/hip hop artist in the 80's) rant about how hip hop has lost its "Blackness" in the current hip hop arena. Simon Reynolds being an iconic rap/hip hop artist himself states that "hip-hop has simply dropped the innovation baton, losing it's taste making position in the broader culture."--http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/hip-hop-really-dead
This reinforces my opinion on how hip hop has not been the same and how it mutates the original style to fit to the broader culture like pop fusion. But the question is still up in the air, "Is hip hop really dead?"
Well, according to Reynolds, he explains that hip hop is dead, but he also states that the death of hip hop isn't a bad thing, because it needs to die in order for something new to emerge. "According to Reynold, yes, though he says the death of a genre isn't necessarily a bad thing, just a necessary step in order for new styles to emerge." In a sense, hip hop is not dead, but undergoing the stage of reincarnation. Hip hop can never die, because its always changing and constantly adapting to the social changes in the music industry.
In order to get a good sense of hip hop changing, the following two music videos gives you an audio example of the transition from lyrical orientated hip hop to pop/R&B/ hip hop infusion.
The follow video is one of Lupe Fiasco's original track on his album "Food and Liquor" which has encase his true creativity and talents of poetic writing.
This track from Lupe Fiasco has 90,000 views worldwide. Which is a very small portion of the world who uses Youtube. Now, let's take a look at another hip hop artist who has been up incoming in the music industry. His artist name is Waka Flocka Flame. Waka Flocka Flame is part of the reason why hip hop is changing. The follow video is called "No Hands" which has a catchy chorus and a tone that is fit more for the nightlife.
You can tell by just listening to the track that there is substantial difference in lyrical content and in-depth meaning between these two hip hop songs. This shows us that hip hop is on a path to reinvent itself to adapt to the zeitgeist. Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual,ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeist
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