Hip-hop no longer cool sez white dude on Salon.com

"Of course, similar arguments could be made about all the popular music of this era... But somehow the degradation of hip=hop seems much sadder. Well, we still have The Beastie Boys..."

i usually find threads like this to be really pointless and redundant but this is fucking awful

PS - if more American's danced, maybe we'd spend less time at war. And we'd be in better shape. Think about that!

^keeping it positive

Before I leave, an excerpt from the comments (emphasis mine):

The theory goes that sometime in the late nineties or early 2000s, record executives started pushing up and coming talent to back off of more topical issues (like say, fucking tha' police), to make the albums more sellable to the rest of the population.

o_0

this is like 1958---1967 in reverse, or something

A poster above referred to Matt Taibbi's piece on this subject in Rolling Stone, and I agree with Taibbi's assessment 100%. Modern "Pop" rap and hip-hop is a minstrel show: white music executives hawking a nasty, debased parody of black culture to white kids in the burbs.

by which i mean it looks like exactly the same old day the music died bullshit except flipped if that makes sense

"Hip Hop died in the '90s. The last real hip-hop record was the first Wu Tang record. Everything else is just bullshit - including Jay-Z, Biggie Smalls and everything that Nas has done since Illmatic. And anything that's not from New York doesn't count - because it's not hip-hop anyway. It's just rap."

ha i suspected him of BSing about being a farm kid from IA, but hubbard IS fkn tiny

Hey Pipecock posted a letter:

"I agree with you for the most part. Though I'd chart hip hop's demise to Puffy in 97 with his insipid "Every Breath you Take." The rhymes he and Mase put over that wildly popular track set the bar lower than ever before. Next, comes Master P, who finsihed off what Puffy started and truly retardidized hip hop.

We must remember that just before this, in 95-96, the Pharcyde, Tribe, and De La Soul all released phenomanal albums (all sharing the same prodcuer, JD, for many of their best tracks.) I consider that a high water mark."

we still haven't mentioned his assertion that ludacris "begat" cash money

Forth from his loins

we still haven't mentioned his assertion that ludacris "begat" cash money

-- J0rdan S., Monday, May 12, 2008 4:55 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

OH NOES KIDS R DANCING HIP-HOP IS DEAD

"Atlanta (Outkast and Ludacris mostly) begat the Cash Money Millionaires of New Orleans (think Juvenile and Back That Ass Up."

paul wall as an example of real lyricism contrasted with lil boosie fat joe and lil wayne

"when did young black men become so lame?"

-- and what, Monday, May 12, 2008 4:44 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

actually i just remembered the most appropriate response to this nonsense

Hip-hop is no longer cooler than me
It's a sad day when a farm boy from Iowa can say that about a musical genre he once loved. When will the YAHH TRICK YAHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Soulja Boy? He sees what's hot at the nearest elementary school and calls it his own.

this is whole thing is a giant FAIL and redundant etc but this is just a basic lack of understanding/grasp of the situation/stupid white old guy bullshit

Thanks, Soulja Boy!

http://www.virginmedia.com/images/soulja-boyxmas-400x300.jpg

also a song's worth is based on how long it takes to make

if only DJ Shadow hadn't hung himself

"The problem with the dances of hip-hop -- and with the genre as a whole -- is that these artists are in fact choosing to do what they're capable of. This is their best, people."

A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And, maybe, theyd be happy for a while.

my bad ethan

point being, his opinions are fucking stupid and pretty CHALLENGING but not really all that uncommon, it's that he's basing those opinions on incorrectness assumptions of "fact" that is most infuriating

he should have read wikipedia

J0rdan getting angry about this is pretty silly.

i'm not actually mad at this dude or this article just that these people exist in general

lol @ at these people in general

Paul Kix is an associate editor at D Magazine. He grew up on a farm in Iowa, graduated from Iowa State University, interned at ESPN the Magazine, and spent a year in Phoenix and a year and a half at the Dallas Observer, where he was a staff writer. He has in his office a remote-controlled Cadillac Escalade. It has spinners.

hey did he mention if he was a white dude from the midwest or not

he grew up in the ghetto in los angeles, & has in his office a remote-controlled john deer combine. it is equipped to harvest corn.

http://i1.tinypic.com/n2o8sy.gif

looooooooooooooool perfect time for that .gif

lol @ deeznuts as well

for me the giving a damn aspect comes from the fact that this moron gets paid to write this shit

define "paid"

financially compensated in some way

I doubt if he gets paid too much.

By Salon anyway, I can't speak for Boston magazine.

Hip-hop is no longer cooler than me
It's a sad day when a farm boy from Iowa can say that about a musical genre he once loved. When will the YAHH TRICK YAHHHHHHHHHHHH!

-- J0rdan S., Monday, May 12, 2008 4:58 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Beat me to it, you asshole!

"Hip Hop died in the '90s. The last real hip-hop record was the first Wu Tang record. Everything else is just bullshit - including Jay-Z, Biggie Smalls and everything that Nas has done since Illmatic. And anything that's not from New York doesn't count - because it's not hip-hop anyway. It's just rap."

-- Alex in SF, Monday, May 12, 2008 4:53 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

otm

this man has the exact opposite taste in hip-hop from mine

Young black men, arbiters of pop culture, raise your chains and fight!

70% of rap/hip-hop sales are to white folks

98% of ilx comments on rap/hip-hop are made by white folks

mtv is mostly owned by white folks

white people are people too

i like wu-tang better than soulja boy

http://www.impawards.com/intl/australia/2006/posters/book_of_revelation.jpg

i like wu-tang better than soulja boy is a popular new dance, I believe

crank dat i like wu-tang better than soulja boy

Oh ffs, this is apparently now an Internet Talking Point:

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/05/is-hip-hop-over.html

"Easy-E's bemused inventiveness"?, "the oeuvre of Biggie"?
Could you be more annoying?

-- maxban
[Read maxban's other letters]Permalink Monday, May 12, 2008 05:34 AM

something about the poll at the bottom of that article is hilarious.

xpost

i'm v curious about the comments but i have a strict lol fuck salon policy

"Its dances are silly, its beats infantile, its rhymes lazy"

It was always like that. A disgrace to the genius of black culture. Compare its best to anything by Gil Scott Heron and the Last Poets, its chief inspirations. And that's the 70s, not a great decade for anybody's art. Go farther back, say to the second Miles Davis Quintet, John Coltrane or Ornette Coleman, and you'll really feel sad. Want decent rhymes? There are generations of great black writers and poets. For great songwriting, check out the R&B movement of the 40s.

lol stanley crouch

anyone who still reads salon deserves this shithead

I am sorry to report this, but hip-hop is no longer cooler than me.

This guy sounds like he's been waiting to "report this" all his life

haaaa

and ya

what people said about... SALON.

Please let me be as cool as hip hop, please let me be as cool as hip hop, please let me be as cool as hip-hop... YES!!!

And that's the 70s, not a great decade for anybody's art.

So much RONG.

I mean, all over this article and everything else cited here, too.

Hispanics/Conservatives fite article is OK.

Funny that most/all of the letters that rate "editor's choice" or whatever are dissing the article.

hahaha there but for the grace of god

I don't know the moron who wrote this article to care about his opinions, but I know a lot of y'all well enough to be kind of disappointed that you can still entertain yourselves with threads about articles like this every 6 months.

are we grounded?

anyone who's doomed to willingly repeat the same thread this many times doesn't need further punishment.

i cant be arsed to read all of that article - seems so predictable but cant say i disagree that most new hip hop leaves me cold/bored. i like crank dat, low, etc etc as much as the next man but not in the same way i might have liked what was coming out say, a decade ago. or even as much as i liked saltshaker, get low etc.

This thread could be my new Macarena-zation fantasy.

this reads like one of those fake columns they do at the onion

otm

lol stanley crouch

No way. Crouch undoubtedly considers the R&B songwriters of the 40s to be hopeless sellouts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgMgLjMghuk

Most of what he criticizes "Crank That" for could equally apply to "Rapper's Delight."

Do you notice any similarities between ILMers getting worked up about people criticizing rap and right wingers getting hot and bothered over gay marriage? They're both equally predictable.

You must create some interesting slashfic.

it's funny how humans are!!!!

s1ocki i love your voice-of-reason zings but you're kinda going overkill with them lately :(

s1ocki no longer cool sez white dude on ILXOR.com

Don't worry guys, Sage Francis and Scroobius Pip are gonna make hip-hop relevant again.

The article is very boring and stupid and tl:dr. It's a shame it's a "talking point on the internet", because that probably makes it successful for the people who commission pieces on salon.com, and they'll likely want to put up more work in a similar vein. Sometimes I think the best thing to do w/such pieces would be to totally ignore them.

We are witnessing nothing less than the Macarena-zation of a genre

hip-hop died when the first Iowan said
When will the awful / dance crazes end