What happened to socially/politically concious rappers

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

Ice Cube, Ice-T, Brand Nubian, Digital Underground, etc.

I think Pitchfork overcompensating for ignoring rap by going all goon long about 2006 is a big part of the picture.

― Futuristic Bow Wow (thewufs), Wednesday, January 7, 2015 11:08 AM (4 minutes ago)

this is a big part of it, right? as rap became a dominant pop force, the late 80s/early 90s conscious and activist strains got shuttered off into backpack rap ("the underground", "real hip-hop", etc). indie culture wholeheartedly embraced backpack rap in the 90s into the early 00s, but then became self-conscious about the nerdiness, went hard for pop & goon stuff mid-decade.

I don't think the mainstream vs. conscious distinction really existed prior to the Bad Boy Records era... to my mind, the epithet "conscious" has always been linked to a rejection of that strain of crass materialism

(but keep in mind that I was in born in '87, & this shit appears to move in cycles)

Which is why not all political rap falls under the "conscious" banner, and why RT's failure to make or even comprehend the distinction doomed the discussion right from the start. Critical listening, what a concept.

Finally the conversation gets good.

I don't think the mainstream vs. conscious distinction really existed prior to the Bad Boy Records era... to my mind, the epithet "conscious" has always been linked to a rejection of that strain of crass materialism

― I can just, like, YOLO with Uber (bernard snowy), Wednesday, January 7, 2015 11:29 AM (4 minutes ago)

well, conscious rap existed long before the bad boy era, but yeah, the idea of fundamental opposition between conscious & mainstream was a 90s thing

iirc

I don't think the mainstream vs. conscious distinction really existed prior to the Bad Boy Records era

this is def true (altho I think the real turning point was earlier - ie, the Chronic - then when Biggie hit it was all over). You did have plenty of "strictly hardcore/no crossover!" talk on rap albums, but the thing is pretty much everybody who was not some one hit wonder pop lightweight did that.

diamond district

like you would have this posturing about r&b standing for "rap and bullshit" and not crossing over or having female singers on your records on a record that had female singers and obvious crossover hit attempts on it

xp

It's crazy to see people be
What society wants them to be, but not me
Ruthless is the way to go, they know
Others say rhymes that fail to be original
Or they kill where the hiphop starts
Forget about the ghetto and rap for the pop charts
Some musicians curse at home
But scared to use profanity when up on the microphone
Yeah, they want reality but you won't hear none
They rather exaggerate a little fiction

when did white ppl start to blame hip-hop for all the black community's problems, tho

because that appears to be the point when u flip from NWA style "FUCK THE POLICE, btw wack sellouts are wack" to anti-mainstream as a political position

no one has addressed the diversity in hip hop that existed in the late 80s to 90s. That choice doesn't exist anymore. You could choose back then who you wanted to aspire to from KRS one to Too Short, Slick Rick or Chuck D.

And no one mentioned crack epidemic. The nihilism themes that came with that. The crack culture fueled a lot of the dark cheap materialism we see today dominating rap lyrics.

http://conversationsofchange.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/head_in_the_sand-461x307.jpg

Why frame it as "no one mentioned x or y"? Just make your point.

Btw rap is pretty damn diverse now but you'd have to listen to it to know that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2VG53RIJ50

To be fair to RT, moaning about how hip hop was better bitd has been a fundamental part of hip hop culture since at least the mid-90s.