What happened to socially/politically concious rappers

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.

yo RT how come the only west coast artist on your list is NWA and why are Last Poets and Gil Scott on there they are not from the 80s/90s

Tell me about the time before money flooded into hip-hop Grandpa Tanuki

crack epidemic impact is totally overblown imo, coke had been part of hip since the beginning - Kurtis Blow, T-Ski Valley etc. which is not to say that crack didn't decimate black communities, just that its preponderance as lyrical content was driven by commercial factors (white kids in the suburbs eating up gangsta braggadocio), not "realism" or "reportage"

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.

The likes of Common, Mos Def, Talib, Roots and Dad Prez were actually second wave conscious rap as a rebound to the crack nihilist rap that was beginning to dominate.

Now we're past that 2nd wave, but it essentially just lost out to the even more strongly materialistic cheap kills lyrics that even underground is dominated by.

Is there a 3rd wave coming? I can't see it, maybe ferguson etc will spawn something. But the rappers I see with that the most have been likes of Big Boi and Q Tip.

to say that there's no diversity in hip hop is just I can't even

I mean, a gay transexual rapper has a fucking cable TV show

but keep repeating it, maybe it will come true for you

ok, i feel like i have to squint hard to buy into the premise of the OP.

maybe less conscious rap in heavy rotation R&B and rap radio than in the past (a circumscribed past), but elsewhere?

seems to me that rap at the local, grassroots level in North America is as politically conscious as ever, and with a greater proportion of females (and with them feminist content) than ever.

seems to me that the continuing vitality of hiphop world-wide, and in multiple vernacular languages, is not only explicitly but inherently political, i.e., as a megaphone used by marginalized youth to tell their own stories in their own (maligned) vernacular.

i would almost flip the question: what is it that permits explicitly political content to succeed commercially in popular music, when it does so? to me it's not surprising that there would be a natural waning of the political in a popular style of music. as in other arts, it's HARD to consistently convey social critique in a manner both authentic and viscerally compelling, without listener fatigue settling in. Shit, the evening news -a form of entertainment after all - knows this well. Rare is the story where inner-city issues or constructive initiatives are featured. Nah, it's the yellow ribbon that attracts the cameras (and eyeballs, apparently). Sex, violence, fantasies of wealth are always an easy sell. They are also probably easier to work with, as lyrical material.

We've seen this phenomenon in rock, jazz, folk, soul, and many other musical styles, and it's no wonder that hip-hop is not immune. What I still think is worth noticing and appreciating is the extent to which hip-hop maintains an edge over most other musics as a vessel for the social and the political. That it has ebbed somewhat on my radio dial seems like a more ephemeral concern.