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  • » Name: Amanda Bassa
  • » Location: VA
  • » Member Since: 09/21/07
  • » Bio: student, future change maker, and everything you wouldn't expect me to be.
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The Undisputed Truth

The Mandatory Hip Hop is Dead Blog


October 11, 2007 | Tags: none


I got so sick of the “Hip Hop is Dead” concept. The subject got played out to death on damn near every hip hop related website known to (wo)man. But being that this is a new day, I’ll be different (and [not so?] fashionably late) and bring it back. I mean, really now. What kind of blogger would I be if I didn’t do a post about my thoughts on hip hop’s mortality at some point in my life?



So about a month or two ago, I found myself in the midst of welcome week on campus (it’s relevant, I promise). For those that might not have hit up college yet, all welcome week consists of is a bunch of shit put on to make a nice little show to convince you that the rest of the semester won’t be hell and might actually end up being somewhat fun. Don’t fall for it. In a month you’ll be pulling all nighters and praying for the end of it all. Anyway, after some of the festivities were said and done one day, a stage devoid of human presence, but still filled with audio equipment, remained. The next few hours would consist of music being blasted from the speakers in the middle of campus and pissed off professors coming out and complaining that it was too loud. But between the complaints and odd looks from some people when the most random songs imaginable filled the air, a beautiful thing happened. I’m tempted to say that it was the fact that they were giving out free snow cones, as I am a lover of all things free, but it wasn’t.



Towards the end of the span of time that the music was being blasted, the person in control of the music was getting on a sort of “fuck all of this figuring out what to play next” mode. Solution? Just play an album the whole way through, start to finish. Why not, right? Well, next thing you know Common’s “Finding Forever” was acquainting itself with the ears of passersby. By the time “I Want You” came on, I noticed something. I think it gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling in my soul. Well…maybe that was the 90 degree heat and the fact I had been baking in it for a good two hours and I was probably beginning to cook my own internal organs. Whatever. But all of a sudden people started coming up to us and asking things like, “is this that new Common album? That shit is hot! I’ve been meaning to listen to this!”, and “are you playing that album the whole way through? Go ahead with that.” Not only was this a pleasant change from the complaints about disrupting classes, but in my eyes it answered that now played out question: is hip hop really dead?



Man, it never even got close to dying. It’s still alive and kickin’. Sure, stylistically it has evolved since its birth due to changing times, technology, and the gradual maturing of your favorite lyricists and producers, but the same can be said for any other genre as well – rock, country, classical, etc. It’s still alive. What really died was just people’s tastes. For some reason people started buying into the straight doodoo stanky music that was coming out moreso than they did the decent music. Yes, contrary to semi-popular belief, high quality, non-dance tracks were, and are, still being put out. You just have to look a little harder for it sometimes. Perhaps people have simply gotten too lazy to put the effort into searching out artists worth their brain cells. However, if this was the case, everybody would end up like me – still listening to that good ol’ 90’s era music and not really caring much about what’s coming out today.* So yeah, the majority of consumers’ tastes changed, and people just allowed themselves to be force fed crappy tunes.



What happened that day on campus though, with the random people asking about Common’s album, gave me hope.  That consumer taste for quality music that seemed to fade (and is still questionably shitty, considering Soulja Boy’s debut at #4 on the charts) may not be dead after all. It’s coming back. Slowly but surely I’m seeing a greater amount of people seek out a more sophisticated sound in their music. I’m seeing people diversify their musical interests. I’m seeing people demand more than what the radio gives them. And all of that, in my eyes, is hope for the future of hip hop. A culture that never died, is still thriving despite the current hate towards it from certain media outlets, and will surely be around for decades to come. The catch is that we have to keep the desire to keep the culture powerful and productive alive. And what better time than now? With people like Oprah and Bill O’Reilly shitting on hip hop, it’s even more important that the consumer support the music that promotes the positive growth of the culture. The more we support the shitbag music, the more we’re solidifying the points that people such as those I mentioned before are trying to hold against hip hop.



Nothing is dead. The music is still very much alive. It’s the desire for quality that I was worried about. But you know…I think it might not end up so badly after all.



 



*I have since made a conscious effort to overcome this personal flaw and check out newer artists of the present day and age. I have been pleasantly surprised, I might add.





The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the writer and not necessarily those of HipHopDX.com or Cheri Media Group.

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