What happened to socially/politically concious rappers

it's easier to get through these threads if you imagine RT's speaking voice to be Cookie Monster

XP to RT - This wasn't my discussion to begin with. Nothing else anybody said seemed to work, so I thought, "What about open hostility?" And I jumped in.

the question of the relative lack of political rappers isn't even up for debate

false

Where? This is just bullshit. No one outside this board would say this.

LITERALLY NO ONE

as demonstrated by the lengthy list of political statements from current rappers that have been cited, none of which you will acknowledge as containing political content or as being from "current" rappers. your premise is faulty, and your arguments are dishonest.

see I can play nice too

Krayzie Bone in a song from recently

[Verse 2]
Everybody asks me
What happened to conscious rap?
And I say we tell em'
The money and the power
MC's have been silenced by the dollar
So with the struggle they don't want to be bothered
Emergency, the game's unresponsive
Turn on the radio, you're listening to garbage
9 out of 10 of their hit songs is nonsense
I need somebody to tell me how they got in here"

i found one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8wLa3-Q2CU

xp question answered then

/thread

yo remember the old days

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ArZnKvbOxk

I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars /
They criticize me for it yet they all yell holla /
If skills sold truth be told I’d probably be lyrically Talib Kweli /
Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense /
But I sold five mill, and I haven't rhymed like Common since.” -

Jay-Z, “Moment of Clarity”

tresor, what happened?

trax, what happened?

hip house, what happened?

ball in the street, what happened?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNyDjkPO8l0

I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars /
They criticize me for it yet they all yell holla /
If skills sold truth be told I’d probably be lyrically Talib Kweli /
Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense /
But I sold five mill, and I haven't rhymed like Common since.” -

Jay-Z, “Moment of Clarity”

― ..but is he a virtuoso? (Raccoon Tanuki), Wednesday, January 7, 2015 1:34 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yo, for real, he said that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKwdHqdrw1Y

conscious as fuck

Engaging with this shit is so 2014, FPs all round

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJG0ir9nDtc

another sock rapper

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C99iG4HoO1c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwuJzo9eX9k

If you want to talk about the popular demise of explicitly "conscious" rap, I think there's an argument to be made there, but one which requires actual forethought (hint, hint). Also I've listened to like 5 new rap records total in the past year so I could be full of shit (HINT, HINT).

serious answer: American pop-rap audiences have yet to recover from City High

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LahcSFleKm8

http://hyakumonogatari.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/utagawa-tanuki-balls.jpg

Strong black voice are being oppressed, popular Hip Hop is now used as a means to moral degradation and oppression.
Positive messages are being silenced
There's no interest in moral guidance in rap now
Jay Z is where he is because he never challenged the system

"When the '90s were coming in, a whole bunch of different things were happening in society that rap music was answering to, which showed itself as being a diverse art form," he recalled. "Therefore, the threat of black people having something to say, with their large vocabularies through rap music, was something that kind of threw the media on its side for a minute. So I saw this coming."

http://www.austinweeklynews.com/News/Articles/7-9-2008/What-happened-to-Hip-Hop%27s-social-consciousness%3F/

Leave it to the rest of the internet to have a intelligent debate on this topic than this sorry place I guess.

"People started giving drug dealers props. I've seen neighborhoods wiped out by drug dealers for like a 15- to 20-year period. It's very easy to take advantage of black people because it's been done for 300 years, and we've learned to love the abuse."

RT's speaking voice to be Cookie Monster

OG Sesame Street, or death metal? Either way, huge lol, A+

istr 2001-2010 being full of critical handwringing over misogyny/"the n word"/Hip Hop Is Dead, so maybe 'the political' was in the process of draining away from the music into a broader discussion about the way we interact with cultural artifacts

xp oh yeah add "drug rap" to the list of things critics were handwringing about

OK here goes. Here's my hasty, simplified, work-in-progress take on why politics was unusually prominent in mainstream hip hop in 88-92:

1. Age. A lot of MCs were raised by people from the civil rights generation.
2. Religion. The most outspoken MCs were often NOI, if not Five Percenters. The movement was prominent at the time.
3. Political context including the last phase of the Reagan/Bush years and the appalling behaviour of the LAPD under Daryl Gates.
4. Fashion. The more people did it, the more people wanted to do it, and it sold. This has always been the case with protest song booms.

What changed? Existing MCs got tired of being battered by the media, after Sister Souljah and Cop Killer, or just didn't want to be political for their whole careers. Trends changed and soapboxing felt old. The power and appeal of the NOI waned. The industry became more lucrative and therefore more cautious. I don't think 1995 or 2000 stand out as particularly fertile periods for political rap so it's not that there's been a drop-off in the last decade, it's more that 1988-92 was a perfect storm of factors that won't be replicated again.

BUT there are still MCs whose work is just as political as Nas, Wu-Tang and Outkast, ie it's in the mix, it's in the background of the narratives, it's not the banner headline. And one-off issue songs from MCs who aren't generally associated with them. And people like Kanye who are political in idiosyncratic ways that don't have anything to do with PE or KRS. And older MCs finding new paths. And when something like Katrina or Ferguson happens you get a surge of polemic from people you might not expect.

There you go. Answering your question. Also, read Jeff Chang's book.

Again, neither Kanye or Jay Z were out in the last decade. They're both from previous generation. They're both pushing or in their 40s.

College Dropout was released in 2004. He fits the parameters of your question exactly, despite your disingenuous attempts to disqualify him.

xp don't forget old-school, Woodstock-packing, baby-booming rockism :)

College Dropout was released in 2004. He fits the parameters of your question exactly, despite your disingenuous attempts to disqualify him.

― buffoon watu51 (Drugs A. Money

If you count 11 years ago as in last decade, and ignore fact Kanye was out in the 90s, then yeah I guess he counts as a rapper who came out in the last decade.

Kanye was not rapping in the 90s

6 days ago, 2014 was in the last decade

so you are specifically looking for young political rappers who debuted after January 7, 2005?

Any rappers from the last decade. It's not really a serious question because obviously my list in the original post will win.

OK here goes. Here's my hasty, simplified, work-in-progress take on why politics was unusually prominent in mainstream hip hop in 88-92:

1. Age. A lot of MCs were raised by people from the civil rights generation.
2. Religion. The most outspoken MCs were often NOI, if not Five Percenters. The movement was prominent at the time.
3. Political context including the last phase of the Reagan/Bush years and the appalling behaviour of the LAPD under Daryl Gates.
4. Fashion. The more people did it, the more people wanted to do it, and it sold. This has always been the case with protest song booms.

What changed? Existing MCs got tired of being battered by the media, after Sister Souljah and Cop Killer, or just didn't want to be political for their whole careers. Trends changed and soapboxing felt old. The power and appeal of the NOI waned. The industry became more lucrative and therefore more cautious. I don't think 1995 or 2000 stand out as particularly fertile periods for political rap so it's not that there's been a drop-off in the last decade, it's more that 1988-92 was a perfect storm of factors that won't be replicated again.

BUT there are still MCs whose work is just as political as Nas, Wu-Tang and Outkast, ie it's in the mix, it's in the background of the narratives, it's not the banner headline. And one-off issue songs from MCs who aren't generally associated with them. And people like Kanye who are political in idiosyncratic ways that don't have anything to do with PE or KRS. And older MCs finding new paths. And when something like Katrina or Ferguson happens you get a surge of polemic from people you might not expect.

There you go. Answering your question. Also, read Jeff Chang's book.

― Re-Make/Re-Model,

So you don't think , it's just been dumbed down?

If we're talking about the critical conversation and how it started to shift away from "conscious" rap in the last decade-plus, I think Pitchfork overcompensating for ignoring rap by going all goon long about 2006 is a big part of the picture. The industry had long since moved on, but politics didn't just vanish from hip hop - c.f. that booming post from RM/RM.

are those goalposts heavy RT

Too many people are trying to derail, ignore the point, trivialize, troll.

This is pointless.

I'm out.

lol well done

Too many people are trying to derail, ignore the point, trivialize, troll.

― ..but is he a virtuoso? (Raccoon Tanuki), Wednesday, January 7, 2015 7:10 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

LMAO

lol someone responds with polite, well-reasoned response, RT takes ball and goes home

That crazy-ass seven-day year

RMRM otm. How can you call it dumbed down when there are so many 90s vets still in the game? Socially conscious rap has become a strand in a lot of albums instead of the overarching theme, like how Strange Ways can coexist with Operation Lifesaver. But there are still young rappers like Ab-Soul who still make protest a major part of their creative identity...

xp dammit

"You won't have Raccoon Tanuki to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference"

Too many people are trying to derail, ignore the point, trivialize, troll.

This is pointless.

I'm out.

http://media3.giphy.com/media/G4hyijVbE9FUQ/200_s.gif

would be curious to see the list of 'ignorant rap' c.1987-1997 that RT has actually listened to (not to say enjoyed)

http://blog.honeyee.com/paul/archives/images/cookie-thumb.jpg

socially/political artists were fabric of hip hop identity, you used to have to have some "knowledge" song on your album even if you weren't that type now

Socially conscious rap has become a strand in a lot of albums instead of the overarching theme

this happened back in the golden era too, and applies to the majority of the people cited in RT's original list. You'd have crass sex rhymes next to political posturing, happened all the time.

http://i.imgur.com/NsTL6PR.gif

Good point. I thought about Slick Rick as I wrote that