WTF Happened To Hip Hop
Today’s formula of popular mass marketed hip hop seems to be the glorification of violence, guns, misogyny of women, drug culture, prison culture, and excessive materialism. It is almost as if hip hop has become a one dimensional genre whereas once before it was multi-dimensional. This dominant form of hip hop has been controlled by corporations and receives vigorous marketing. Because there are limited choices that are easily available to the hip hop subscriber, whatever songs are in heavy rotation on the radio becomes popular. It was inevitable that hip-hop became commercialized but along the way our power got taken away. Now you got the same 12 records on radio being played over and over again. Lil Wayne, Jay Z ain’t hot, it’s just they’re programmed so many times people are brainwashed.
The golden era of hip hop had something to say. artists like KRS1, A Tribe Called Quest, and De La Soul were significant in the genre because of their ability to make being positive a cool thing that young people wanted to listen to and be a apart of. “Those rappers took positivity and made it cool. Has hip hop lost its artistry? Has it lost its way? Is the current state of hip hop a part of a natural progression or has it been high jacked by corporations? The 90's was one of the biggest turning point in hip hop music, and ultimately American society. The industry was different back then. Since technology and media weren’t accessible to people like they are today, the industry had more control over the public and had the means to influence them anyway it wanted. Record companies invested in a very profitable industry which could become even more succesful. Record companies had invested millions into the building of privately owned prisons and believed that their positions of influence in the music industry would actually impact the profitability of these investments. These prisons were built by privately owned companies who received funding from the government based on the number of inmates. The more inmates, the more money the government would pay these prisons. Now that major record companies had become silent investors in this prison business, it was now in their interest to make sure that these prisons were filled. Their job would be to help make this happen by marketing music which promotes criminal behavior, rap/hip hop being the music of choice. This would be a great situation for major record companies because rap music was becoming an increasingly profitable market. As time passed, rap music had definitely changed direction. Rap acts that talked about politics or harmless fun were quickly fading away as gangster rap started dominating the airwaves. The ideas of using hip hop to incarcerate had been successfully implemented. It was as if the order has been given to all major label executives. Rap music was climbing the charts and most companies were more than happy to capitalize on it. Each one was churning out their very own gangster rap acts on an assembly line. Everyone bought into it, consumers included. Violence and drug use became a central theme in most rap music.
I was an avid listener of hip hop and an active rapper before the change and when asking the opinions on the new trend among record execs i was told repeatedly that it was all about supply and demand. Sadly many of them even expressed that the music reinforced their prejudice of black people. In 2014 rap has got worse. After researching you will have a better understanding of how private prisons operate, and what i am saying would make much more sense. I see how the criminalization of rap music played a big part in promoting racial stereotypes and misguided so many impressionable young minds into adopting these glorified criminal behaviors which often lead to incarceration. Rappers and fans of rap music don't realize how they’ve been used for the past 2 decades. It's more than fair to blame the music industry and mainstream media for bombarding you with a steady diet of rappers talking about drugs, sex and violence for over two decades.
Blame MTV, BET, and other networks for trying to redefine what Hip Hop is in order to sell it and shove it down the throats of unsuspecting consumers. It’s easy to blame simple minded rappers for promoting negative messages and images while multi billion dollar companies and shrewd businessmen who market these artists are free from criticism. It’s easy to blame someone like Chief Keef who becomes the obvious poster boy for mindless rap while Jimmy Iovine, the head of Interscope Records, keeps a low profile and avoids having to address his part in promoting “death through entertainment”. It’s easy to protest rappers like Trinidad James who raps about Molly,, while Def Jam’ execs proclaim it their new discovery as “the cutting edge of what’s happening in the culture today.” It’s easy to blame talentless top 40 rappers for dominating the airwaves of so called hip hop radio stations like L.A.’s Power 106 or New York’s Hot 97 while president of programming isn’t held accountable for his part in broadcasting filth to millions of listeners. Time and time again, the real decision makers get away with murder while rap artists are projected as the embodiment of everything that is wrong with Hip Hop and young Black males. Kind of how gangs are perceived as the lone cause of urban violence while those who bring guns and drugs into the community remain anonymous. Kind of how so many young Black men are written off as criminals and sent to prison in disproportionate numbers while the system that causes this tragedy is profiting from growing incarceration rates. Kind of how Black students are labeled as troubled underachievers while school districts across the nation, including Philadelphia and Chicago, continue to close down schools in predominantly Black communities to save money. And all of it devalues the lives of Black people in exchange for financial gain. So is Hip Hop really destroying Black America? Nope. White Supremacy is. The challenges facing Black America are much bigger than Hip Hop. But for what it’s worth, when untainted by outside influences and corporate vultures, Hip Hop in its purest form is about empowerment, unity, culture, creativity and hope. And God knows we need it.
