It's alive and well in the houses of myself and almost everyone I
know....A common misconception seems to be that Hip-Hop is a form of
music and that, as a form of music, it is dying. This is factually
impossible...Hip-Hop as a music doesn't exist. Hip-Hop is a
CULTURE....it is represented most visually through Rap MUSIC and thus
the confusion. Hip-Hop involves a lot more than just a beat and a
rapper....D.J.s, break-beats, B-Boy's, live crowds, the fashions,
rappers, instrumentals, samples, beat-makers, promoters (often crooked
or clueless), venues (ones which support it)....all those things and
more I'm probably forgetting are HIP-HOP....the music we derive from all
these people's effort is RAP; whether it be "Gangsta", "Pop-Rap",
"Folk-Rap"...etc....!
The problem is that people's imaginations are dying. This is only my
opinion, but when rap came to the forefront in the late 80's and early
to mid-nineties it captured people imaginations and showed them ways to
open doors into a world they would never had otherwise paid attention
to. A lot of "emcees" now are so focused on their "swag" or whatever,
that they forget what they're supposed to be doing when writing a track.
You're trying to make people connect with you, you want them to feel
how you felt at the moment you describe it; I don't see a lot of rap
geared towards that these days. I think that's why people are losing
interest; they're not hearing anything different anymore and they are
bored with that. People want to have a favorite song, they don't
pre-decide what that song is going to be...they just want that "one"
song that perfectly describes their life at some point, either past or
present. Nostalgia is a poweful thing....as is tapping into the depth
of human emotions....
The Culture AND the Art Form are evolving; moving forward and adapting
as they must to survive, the real question isn't who killed it and it
never was; it's: who's keeping it alive? What are WE as ARTISTS doing
to ensure that we aren't harming the very thing we claim to love? How
are WE going to raise the bar? It's not up to the Jay-Z's and Nas' of
the world to further hip-hop any more...their time should have been past
a long time ago. We have to pick up the torch, WE have to RE-CAPTURE
those imaginations and show people how fresh this thing can be...IT'S ON
US!!! We can either re-structure the art or regretfully watch it
actually start to die, but we do HAVE to do something.