The state of Modern Hip hop

I was mulling over this today since I have a few friends who are unsigned rappers. Passionate MC who is just RAW with his flow and Juan Deuce who I knew since he was a little kid and he's like an Italian Beastie Boy. Passionate MC has opened for Hopsin (Somebody I don't really care for) and Juan Deuce has opened for Talieb Kaweli (Who is a personal favorite)

I really had to think about it. Drake is TERRIBLE TERRIBLE. Meek Mill is too busy with drama. The elder statesmen still put good stuff out The only people to recently emerge that I like are J Cole and Kendrick Lamar and it took me a VERY long time to like Kendrick. But for every Kendrick Lamar there are 50 Lil Waynes.

Maybe I'm spoiled having been a teenager in the 90s and having seen the rise of Nas, 2pac, Wu Tang, The Roots, Snoop, Dr Dre's the Chronic dropped when I was 11. Cypress Hill, Fat Joe, The late Big Pun, Jurassic 5, Mos Def, The Beatnuts, House of Pain, Run DMC, A Tribe called quest and I could go on and on and on.

 

Current Rap/Hip-Hop is horrible. Really derivative and low-grade stuff. Kendrick is amazing, though. good kid M.A.A.D City is an amazing album. I still need to check out his newer one. There's always Tech N9ne? Friend of mine goes bananas for his stuff.

 

To be honest, I'm surprised hip-hop and rap are still around. I've always felt those genres were filled with lazy and/or obnoxious garbage. Jazz and R&B is where it's at.

 

I still need to make a video showing off my Jazz collection.

A lot of people point me to Random or Mega Ran. But I ask this, if he wasn't rapping about Video game shit would anyone care? My answer is No, noobody would. Nerdcore rappers are only noteable because they rap about geek shit, and Del the Funkee Homosapian was doing that in 1998/99.

 

Can't Believe OP didn't mention Smif N Wessun. I generally agree with your thesis, but I also consider Lil' Wayne to be one of the greats. And Kanye West and Jay-Z. Think Kendrick is a bit overrated. He's good, but not that good, just better than average.

 

Rookie underground type freestyle can be pretty good. Live on-air battles on some of the bigger market rap stations can be cool too. K-Hop can also be surprisingly good at times.

Lately, it seems like a lot of the pop hip-hop stuff has this uniform, tinny rolling cymbal beat that's mastered for phone speakers. Maybe it is the successor formula to "let's auto-tune everything", I don't know. Different vocals, nearly identical beat in every song (much like Reggaeton), very soulless and artificial.

One plus is that we have it pretty good! The internet is a gold mine for new music.

 

Mostly because I had never heard of him I'll have to keep and eye out or ear.

There is only ONE Lil Wayne track I like and it's from a mix tape (Wasted) "I don't like to brag cuz my bitches brag for me" is a classic line. Here's the track



LOVE this track.

Kanye has released nothing but classics until Yeezus which is TERRIBLE absolutely terrible outside of Bound 2. College Dropout, Late Registration, Graduation, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. ABSOLUTE CLASSICS. Kayne is cheapened by his Ego it's hard to get past how full of himself he is when you listen to his music. Jay-Z I'm give or take on. I won't be spinning him on the turntable.

 

It has been crap for a while now. 44 hip-hop nation use to be my go to station on XM. Now I hardly ever even go to that station. Everything is so angry now. I miss the 2000's when everyone was rapping about getting drunk in the club and getting laid.



Seriously, what the fuck is this. How does this baby voice sound gangster or even cool? Makes me cringe everytime...

 

Sounds like somebody having a stroke rather than a rap song. Hell the album I made in 2004 is better than that and I suck.

 

Smif-N-Wessun is a group of Smif and Wessun. Both of them are part of a group called Bootcamp Clik. Their only good album is Dah Shinin', but it's really good. I've linked to it above. You should definitely check it out.

 

I will.

I'm rocking this right now



I need to locate Strictly Business on Vinyl.

 

That's nice, bumping it on my phone know.

Here's a nice track by 50 cent, way before he was famous
http://picosong.com/fyip/

 

Reminds me of Onyx.

Many Men wish Death was my Shit for a good year and a half. I was never a huge fan of Fiddy outside that track though.

 

I loved Yeezus, but I do recognize it's easily his worst work. The double edged sword was MBDTF. It was so good anything following up was "Bound 2" to be not as quality. For some reason I really liked Yeezus. For me it's easy to blow 40 minutes listening to that whole album. I enjoy the direction he took.

 

At least Kanye too changes while everyone else is complacent.

 

TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT

 

New Kanye West album = February 11th.

Incredibly excited. He needs to pick a damn name for the album, though.

 

Hip Hop has always been shite. Some of the very early stuff was interesting... but even Grandmaster Flash just gets out a Macbook and puts on a playlist now. Not worth going to see.

Yeah, give me that jazz any day!

 

Every track I've heard from it sounds really good too. Seems like a return to form for him.

 

Said it was going to be a "gospel album with cursing." While I'm not too heavy into gospel, I think that could be a nice change of pace for him. Once again, doing something he hasn't done extensively before. It's also been said that there are flares of Yeezus, which could be either good or bad. Hopefully those flares are toned down enough to make it less alienating than Yeezus was for many people. I anticipated the album coming out today, as albums typically do, but you know him. Gotta be different haha.

New album = T.L.O.P

We get to guess what that means.