Jay-Z's still rapping, but hearing him rhyme "My president is black / My Maybach, too / And I'll be goddamned if my diamonds ain't blue" on his cover of a Young Jeezy track celebrating Obama's inauguration in the middle of an economic downturn just depressed me.I actually love that line, but I take the point.
« No One Left To Take Shots At | Main | The Extinction Agenda » The Atlantic Debates Hip-Hop20 May 2009 09:00 am
No, I can't believe I wrote that headline either. Still, this dialogue between Alyssa Rosenberg, Gautham Nagesh and Hua Hsu fits perfectly into our discussion yesterday. I considered jumping in myself, but thought better of it--the only hip-hop I'm listening to these days is Doom and the occasional Ghost. I'm basically done with the music for reasons I haven't yet figured out. And if you're done, you kind of give up all right to make big pronouncements about its future. Still, this line from Alyssa made the old man in me proud:
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I'm 30 and I've been effectively done with Hip-Hop since I was about 19 or 20, and it depresses me to no end. I was a real Head. Spend-your-last-dime-on-an-out-of-print-Freestyle-Fellowship-album Head. I want to keep caring - I just don't.
Just commiserating with you on that tip.
Yeah, I LOVE that line too TNC. In fact, I love the entire song. And I hear you on being done with hip-hop -- I kinda of gave up on it when 50 cent and Lil Wayne took over the radio. But, here lately, I have started to listen to it again; a few songs and artists -- Kayne's "Heartless" and T.I. and team's "Swagga Like Us" -- have caputured my attention and made me recall the joy and excitement I used to find in the music.
The first black blogger at the Atlantic since Frederick Douglass, and you're not throwing yourself in there?
Nah, I don't know. Hasn't hip-hop really become pop largely? I almost think it's too mainstream now to really talk about it as a separate entity, unless you go with more indie/low profile stuff. But so much of that seems rehashed. I can understand your frustration. I guess I'd like to see more instrumentation more actual live music; I was watching the Jay-Z American Gangster Storytellers the other day; it was so cool to a live band play with him. The music industry seems to be shifting more to make money on live music as albums don't make a lot of money anymore; maybe hip-hop should move in that direction too.
Dan W hit the nail on the head. Mainstream Hip Hop has pretty much become pop and it sucks. The only mainstream people I'm feelin right now are Kanye, Common, Jay-z and a few others. I love Lil Wayne's skills and craziness as long as it doesn't get too pop hooky. Minneapolis has a great indie hip hop movement going on right now with the Doom Tree crew. Atmosphere, P.O.S., Brother Ali, Dessa are all kiling it right now. And with P.O.S. you get the mix of the real instruments b/c he's also in a punk band. I went to his show and it was quite a sight to see a dude up there wailing on the guitar then tearing it up on the mic. I'm sure every city has their own indie stuff that is more like the real hip hop we have come to know and love, not the Pop Hop stuff we are hearing on the mainstream radio.
In the vernacular of talk radio: first time caller/love you love the show.
I found the discussion interesting, but something specifically has been rolling around my brain for the past couple of weeks re: Obama and Hip Hop. I keep going back to Nas first appearance on Live at the BBQ: "Kidnapped the President's wife without a plan".....let alone the next line. I can't wrap my head around it, on one hand it's a normal braggadocio line from an early 90's rap track, on the other it captures how far hip hop has moved in relation to "mainstream America" or how that world has moved in relation to it. That's a pretty big shift over 19 years.
I was always surprised Nas didn't use the "Before stepping to me you'd rather step to Jehovah" line in Ether. It would have been perfect!
That is too perfect.
I'm an underground hip hop artist and am now seriously considering being a rock musician. I don't listen to hip hop if it's not some obscure or semi-obscure artist (Doom, Immortal Technique, NYOil, etc.).
It has become a self parody. I've recently moved to a rural part of NC and when the question of my profession comes up when I visit my childrens' school, I reply "writer, artist, musician." In the past I would've directed them to my URL, but now... I don't even know why I feel almost ashamed to call myself hip hop. I kind of know. Maybe I just don't want to admit it.
I not only loved the line, I loved the the whole song. I swear man sometimes people just take analyzing rap too far.
Truth
TNC -- what music do you enjoy these days?
Money quote from Hsu:
I can see where this thread is headed, and it's to a Special on Weaksauce in aisle three. If you're over hip-hop, I guess do you. It's the most popular and revolutionary musical movement in 40 years, and there's still plenty of creative, interesting material to go around. All you have to do is look - not leave it to Clearchannel and Viacom to spoon feed it to you. In an age of such overwhelming access, we seem to hold ourselves back more than ever.
Walk and chew gum folks...
Thats exacly it!
I kind of love his allusion to Marlo Stanfield in the middle of that quote "You want it to be one way, but it's not it's the..."
The Marlo quote has entered my lexicon too. It's just a perfect description of the distance between hope and reality, applicable to so many things and heavy as a brick in its understatement.
Thank you Jonathan. I get so tired of people bashing hip hop. I'm so over it it makes me want hit myself in the head with a hammer. Everyone is all "it ain' what it used to be" blah blah blah. There is plenty of good ish out there. I'm 30 and been listening to rap for almost 20 years. I still love it and will listen to it til the day I die. If you think there is nothing good out there you're not looking hard enough or most likely at all.
I haven't given up on listening to hip hop, I listen to it everyday. I just don't listen to anything post the 90's with few exceptions.
But, its amazing how personal taste in music is. Just above Storm listed JayZ, 50, Wayne and Kanye as things that excite him/her again and those are the exact names that make me cringe hard and run from hip hop today.
@danw- rap is not pop, if you call it that then stop. :P If it's pop, ala kayne etc. its no longer hip hop.
Just to clarify MikeCee, 50 cent and Lil Wayne are a few of the reasons I lost interest in hip-hip..but it has been a few a Kayne and T.I. songs recently that have made me reminiscence on the love I once had for the music. I think back to the excitment of "Rappers Delight" or early Run-DMC or LL Cool joints(ok, I am truly dating myself)when the music was fun and fresh, when I was mesmerized by the pumpming beats, the skill of the mcs, and just the down-right FUN in the music. This stuff made me want to dance, sing along, and pump my fists in the air -- it was that good to me.
And yet, debating the future of angst-ridden-over-educated-white-boy-indie music is so much less satisfying. But it's all I know.
So, whither Okkervil River?
And yet, debating the future of angst-ridden-over-educated-white-boy-indie music is so much less satisfying. But it's all I know.
So, whither Okkervil River?
I resisted listening to Okkervil River for a long time, because I assumed they wouldn't be up my alley. However, I've been on a three week kick, and I can't get enough of them. They are outstanding.
Just read through it. Maybe I'm just disconnected or from another era...
Hua Hsu says:
"But the idea of “political rap songs” seems to overdetermine what the music is about—and it is music."
Yea, rap is a business and its music blase blas, but you can't listen It Takes A Nation of Millions and then repeat that quote above.
Public Enemy is ONE group. Nation of Millions is ONE record. Hip Hop is much, much bigger than that.
Jonathan, totally agree with your larger point regarding the depth and breath of hip-hop.
I thought that particular quote was too general a statement and discounted raps ability to be seriously impactful and "politically minded". It Takes a Nation is just the ultimate expression of political activism in hip-hop and the prime example of why that quote just can't work for me. But, its far from the only example.
I think rap criticism is the cultural equivalent of tree rings. I was impressed at a critical time by It Takes a Nation-- I would add By Any Means Necessary as well. To say that that's just ONE album is to say you weren't 16 when it came out-- period. To remember all the "No Sellout" shout-outs, the Malcolm X samples, etc. and then see how reservations about wealth became "player-hating"-- well, it's interesting, I'll say that. But to intone soberly about "overdetermining" things seems to miss so much more about hip-hop than "political rap songs" that I don't really know what to say other than that I'm old. Put me on the viking ship, just give me some early 90s cd's to take on my bizarre ride II to the phar cyde of the sea.
I'm not trying to dismiss or minimize the record - it's an historic album. There is really nothing else like it, except maybe its successor Fear Of A Black Planet. But hip-hop is a huge, diverse genre of music. It's not *just* political, educated, sonically bombastic stuff like PE. Just as it's not *only* gangster/thug/drug nihilism. It's not only southern, only samples, only anything. People tend to boil Teh Canon Of Rap Music down to like... 10 records from 1988-1992. Always the same ones too, it's like clockwork. B-Boys didn't invent modern graffiti. Larry Troutman was trying to riff on Sabbath's "Iron Man" and came up with "Computer Love". Jazz is bigger than the Blue Note catalog. R&B goes beyond Stax and Motown. And so on.
This is The Atlantic, the writers and commenters tend to be pretty smart folks; yet I'm constantly disappointed in the one-dimensional opinions about the biggest cultural movement of our lifetimes.
Didn't know that about "Computer Love" -- now that's cool. I take your larger point. I'm not saying PE should form Teh Canon, in fact I don't think a canon exists (ironically presaged by KRS-One "No one's from the old school cuz rap on the whole/isn't even twenty years old"). But within the flux there are nodes of intensity, and at some point criticism has to do more than tamp down enthusiasm with "yes, but it's not JUST that." It also has to say "OK, why is 1988-1992 dominating our discussion? Let's sort out and acknowledge the true high points from the nostalgia for polka dots."
"This is The Atlantic, the writers and commenters tend to be pretty smart folks; yet I'm constantly disappointed in the one-dimensional opinions about the biggest cultural movement of our lifetimes."
In all fairness, when's the last time you saw an impressively intelligent and multi-dimensional conversation about hip-hop in mainstream press?
Ah sh*t, my mans and them. O, you know... it IS a pretty good discussion about it. I didn't mean to fire a stray shot at anyone involved (or Coates either). I guess my point was that these discussions seem to follow a really predictable path, one that I think is uninformed and inspired more by nostalgia than research. I'm no journalist (I just blog a lot, haha) but it seems like a really trite story that's been written a million times across the history of American popular music and debunked at every turn.
But you know this, man - we have this argument all the time on soulstrut. heh heh.
Downturn schmownturn. Black people have been in a state of perpetual downturn since pretty much always. That's the whole point of the bling rap thing.
You know I went through the done with the music thing for a while (years) too, but I found, and you may too, that for all the other really good music out there that you start to discover once you step away from rap, nothing else can really replace that feeling you get from hip hop when it's right.
I'm very old.
I stopped at Erik B and Rakim.
Done with hip-hop?
No.
Way.
Now, I may be a simple country backwoods man (in fact I am not, being college town/suburban), and I may not know Original Concept from EPMD from BDP (barely know Jacque, being tripleplusunblack), but that's just crazy-talk. You might want to stop listening to the monolithic pop-kultur blast of music no matter the genre.
Consider the tragedy of Country and Western.
I hope you're trying to be funny with the Country Western reference. That style of music ha sproduced some of the most beautiful songs to come from the Lower 48.
I hope you're trying to be funny with the Country Western reference.
Fail, then?
I was trying to be witty, yes. I was referencing the scene in The Blues Brothers, they've arrived at a roadhouse for their (hijacked) gig.
The tragedy of any kind of music, genre, subgenre; culture, subculture, is, once it's fully assimilated, it is indistinguishable from pop music, the worst kind of pop music. But, just because Garth Brooks was the touchstone for country & western in 1990, that doesn't mean BR5-49 wasn't coming into existence, too.
Others have made the point I was trying for, and they've done it better. I meant no offense, Teknontheou. I would hope that folks want more than monoculture, whatever their background. Some of the best Country and Punk Rock comes from Australia. I'd wager some of the best Hip-Hop the world has ever heard is due out from Peru any day now. In fact, it probably is just a google-click away.
I went through a pretty long period of not listening to much hip hop, from about 1998-2007. It just didn't have much to offer me. Everyone already knows the problems with mainstream hip hop, and I found underground hip hop just painfully earnest and boring. I ended up listening to house music mainly. But I've gotten back into hip hop over the last couple of years, due to the strength of the hip hop internet culture. A lot of acts -- Blu and Exile, Joell Ortiz, Jay Electronica, Tanya Morgan -- are putting out interesting music. I also find that official album releases are worthless, but the mixtapes are probably stronger now than they've ever been.
That is the truth.
I'm not sure why anyone is surprised that mainstream hip hop kinda sucks. Doesn't that happen to every genre? When Rock/Roll first got popular, the mainstream bands were Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, etc. Needless to say, classic shit. As more people come to the genre, the taste of the masses get watered down. But anyone that loves good music goes and finds the good music.
You don't like Lil' Wayne? I don't like Nickelback. That's why I don't listen to them. That doesn't mean that 'rock' music sucks right now.
Win.
It's worth stating too, that as "indie" "white" person music has grown in popularity over the last 3 years or so, a lot of it has sucked too. Part of it is marketing and too much record company control.
It's weird; I used to be obsessed with music, almost of all kinds. I can barely stand to talk about it now; I feel like I either end up talking to someone who knows nothing but what's played on the radio, or indie kids who have never picked up an instrument in their lives telling me what "talent" is--There's no greater example of this IMO than Animal Collective
Well, consider me that indie kid who has never played an instrument, because I love Animal Collective's last album. I didn't like the previous ones nearly as much. Brother Sport is my favorite song of the past year. However, I know a lot of people with really good taste in music who absolutely hate Animal Collective. So who knows?
Its not liking Animal Collective that I have a problem with; it's the belief that they are somehow better than everyone because their music is bizarre--that often comes from people who don't have musical experience. I know too many people who like them and have good taste to diss you for it, but it's the average person sense of superiority about it that bugs me.
Every time I listen to it, I'm pleasantly surprised by just how good some of the hip-hop coming out of my odd little corner of the U.S. is. Common Market and Blue Scholars up in Seattle, my hometown, just blow me away. Here in Portland, Lifesavas and Omega Watts continue to put out seriously good work. Not bad for a region that was more or less written off after the rise and precipitous fall of Sir Mix-a-lot.
I really liked a lot of the local Seattle talent on JakeOne's "White Van Music" record. Had never heard of most of those guys but they hung with the big boys well. Jake of course is one of the most talented guys in the game right now, repping SeaTown all day...
your site got me hooked on that album, JakeOne holds some serious clout in my neck of the woods!
Him and Vitamin D both produce some ill tracks for sure.
That White Van album is very tight.
Anything by DJ TopSpin is also worth checking out.
My posse's on Broadway!
How about an open thread where folks throw out the indie/underground names they consider worth listening to? I've got eight/nine/plus names to check out, just from this thread.
As someone who writes about music, albeit music from Africa, a fascination that came about because I found that the music of my generation had hit a dead end--seriously, after Jimi Hendrix, heavy metal guitarists--ho hum, I have had the opportunity to look at a number of popular music movements all over the world, and the arc of such movements are all pretty much the same.
There's first a period of innovation, a really exciting period, which becomes classic (is there a rock and roller on earth who does not love Chuck Berry?); then mastery, ditto. But then the genre not only becomes a bit washed out from overuse, but the cliches take over as the music business only understands what has made money for them in the past.
This period goes on for decades, while people grow up and find that music no longer is the sound track of their burgeoning consciousness, and meanwhile, new innovations begin; new styles rise up. In the US rock and roll and hip hop have been super dominant popular music genres, so they both have lasted and will continue to do so beyond their heyday.
For myself, I was a teenager when Soul music had its brief day on the stage, and I still think it is the greatest popular music that I have ever listened and danced to: "I'm gonna wait till the midnight hour/to see the twinkle in your eye."
The whole global beats for "Post-Obama world" thing seems a little presumptuous though, considering that much of this has been going on for last the fifteen years or so and has only recently become more visible to us.
I've been digging through of the "world music" section in the pulbic library and at the college radio station here on campus and there's amazing stuff coming out from all over... the aforementioned K'Naan, Mala Rodriguez (Spain), Daara J (Senegal), Sidestepper (Colombia), and the huge "bongo flava" scene out of Tanzania my refugee kids introduced me to that draws from American hip-hop, Indian & Arabic music, and African rhythms and instruments.
What does get frustrating is trying to find copies and support the artists that you do like that don't get the level of distribution that someone like M.I.A. does.
African beats have been world shaping popular music now all over the world for about a half century--Rumba soukous from Congo, and to a lesser degree Kenya and Tanzania; the Mande pop from Guinea, Mali, and Senegal; highlife and funk from Ghana and Nigeria. Of course hip hop has inflected the music more recently, and to those you mentioned above I'd throw out the Sudanese rapper, Emmanuel Jal, who has two cds out, Ceasefire, on which Jal, a Sudanese Christian (and former child rebel soldier) and the great master of the Sudanese oud, Abdel Gabir Salim, a Muslim, collaborated, and War Child, which was produced and released in the US last year. He is not the slickest rapper in English, but his message is powerful.
African music is more widely distributed in Europe, France and Britain, where it is far more popular than here, but there are African vendors in the US at Ivoire Records and PanAfrican All Stars, and several world music vendors, including download sites if you hunt around. The musicians you mention are all available on Amazon. Follow your nose on line, you'll find websites, critics, radio shows, galore.
I love that Ceasefire album as well. I don't have a credit card, so online shopping gets a little difficult, but I'm starting to figure out where to find what I'm looking for. Thanks for the tip!
Ta-Nehisi, I thought it was pretty funny that you opted to bow out of the convo because you don't feel like you're listening to much of it these days - from reading through that roundtable, I'm not sure anyone there besides Hua is listening to much of it either. I went through the exchange with my jaw dropped through much of it - there were some unbelievable things being said, not the least of which is this idea that hip-hop is supposed to be (and I can't even say this with a straight face): "dispatches from the ghetto" or that Young Jeezy - of all artists - has nothing relevant to say about contemporary urban experiences.
There's so much grumpy old folk-isms in the roundtable and these comments above and some of it is willfully revisionist (or else merely ignorant) of hip-hop and its history. It never fails to amaze me how people are so caught up on the Golden Era that they're incapable of trying to understand hip-hop on its merits outside of the politics and aesthetics of 88-94. Don't get wrong - that's my favorite era too - but the desire to fixate on that era, to the exclusion of the 10 years before and 15 years after, feels woefully myopic. When I was younger, me and other "heads" used to clown rock fans and their whiny ways but give us a decade and we've become the same curmudgeons, just with a different genre.
In all seriousness, like Ta-Nehisi, I find myself strangely detached from hip-hop these days and that's after having spent the last two decades listening to it, writing on it, spinning it, researching it, etc. And like him, I'm also not completely certain why that disconnect exists BUT I don't assume it's the music/culture that's changed so much as something about me.
That's not to say hip-hop hasn't changed - of course it has - but it's only become more complex and diverse with time. To me, if you can't find anything interesting about hip-hop today that says something about you, not about hip-hop.
"My President is Black" was the song that I liked the least on Jeezy's last album, and the remix didn't do much for me either. That said, Jay rapping about the color of his Maybach doesn't come close to depressing me because at the end of the day he's still an entertainer. I loved songs like "30 Something" off of Kingdom Come, but songs like that don't get a ton of radio play and don't help sell many albums.
As far as Jeezy goes, I even have a hard time explaining why I like his music, so I doubt that anyone who doesn't regularly listen to rap would understand.
The line that seems to be stuck in my today is "It's a blessing to spend a hundred thousand in a recession/with no second guessing," so I don't think I can legitimately feign concern over rapping about material goods during an economic downturn. In fact, when you're down, sometimes the last thing you want to listen to is someone singing about the troubles and difficulties that are in your daily life.
That's not to say hip-hop hasn't changed...
In the beginning hip-hop was made up of young, poor inner-city minorities that started a social artistic movement, which served as an outlet from poverty, crime, drugs, etc. What did these kids on the block do? They bombed subways through graffiti, Breakdanced on cardboard, Spun some JB records on the record player, and spoke their minds and heart into a mic.
Now the rebellious faction has become the leader/king that holds power, and all the above stated aspects of hip-hop have diminished to some extent.
All movements and persons grow and run their course in time, and it's important to mature as an individual, and I think that's what I hear between the original heads and new heads. As an original, I just want the new generation to start their own movement and give it their own name. It seems like the new producers or industry heads use the word hip-hop to invoke the Golden Era images, when in fact there isn't a strong correlation between the present and past eras.
Just like Rock and Roll sprouted off into Alternative Rock or Emo, or whatever, the current Hip-hop era needs a new name, because it has changed, to the point of hardly recognizing the original from the current.
There's a Catch-22 in these forums too that I've noticed, and it's that the cats on the corners, those I know locked up or dead, or the kids in the ghettos w/ nothing running the blocks don't analyze tracks, discuss the state of hip-hop, or anything like this. But they're at the root. They put in a CD in their home or car and just bob their heads and pass the blunt. I'm definitely down for these discussions and I'm more the Coates hip-hop type than my friends working the corners. But that's hip-hop, I gotta represent for them too, just like Nas's Represent.
Art comes from struggle. Art is always original.
This is crazy, I'm on the right track I'm finally found
You need some soul searchin, the time is now
All I need is one mic.. yeah, yeah yeah yeah
All I need is one mic.. that's all I ever needed in this world, fuck cash
All I need is one mic.. fuck the cars, the jewelry
All I need is one mic.. to spread my voice to the whole world
One Love
I respect the argument that hip-hop is a movement but for many - most, actually - it's a music style and assuming hip-hop still conforms to the same basic aesthetics - a beat, people rapping - I can't see how suddenly, people are going to start calling it something else than hip-hop.
Besides, most of those side-genres of rock music you named are simply marketing terms. It's not like there was an organic movement in the 1980s where people started saying, "you know...I don't like rock. What I really like is that 'alternative rock,' yeah!"
It's not the name that's the issue. If "Crank Dat" was classified as something other than hip-hop, I imagine the same people who liked it would still like it and the same folks who don't, still wouldn't.
Oliver, surely you remember the "college music" category!
I love talking/arguing about music, but I'm a college graduated music nerd record shop owner. Do less educated/gainfully employed cats working some corner of anyhood USA really not argue about who is a better MC ("Jay Z, Biggie or Nas?") or if a new song or trend is cool? That is not my experience. I've lived around plenty of corners and never found a lack of opinion about hip-hop. Might be a little less verbose, but it's not like dudes are too busy working a pack to play the radio.
Ok...firstly. It wasnt a COVER...it was a remix. there is a difference.
If folk can't be bothered to be accurate in the facts, I can't be bothered to comment on their analysis.
Ha, may exact same reaction. But I will chime in...
In these download/iTunes/zshare times, I wonder how anyone can be expected to find good Hip-Hop? It used to be even when radio was bad, there was Rap City or magazines or some other "middle man" that covered the full range of the genre. Now there's either the top of the top (Jay-Z, Kanye, Wayne, T.I. etc.) or nothing. There's a million other artists out there, but no good system to sift through it all for the average fan. I am completely Hip-Hop obsessed, so I dig, and dig, and dig until I find the good ish, but I know the average doesn't put in that effort.
The other thing about people talking about what hip hop is and is not supposed to be is that sometimes we forget who some of the biggest acts were during the early years. Guys like Busy Bee used just come out and rock the crown. Didn't even rhyme really. There also no real lyricism to speak of. There seems to be inability nowadays to just enjoy music Sometimes it's silly and stupid like Soulja Boy but that stuff has always been a part of hip hop. Guys like him have always been making money. They just weren't plastered all over the tv because media coverage wasn't what it is now.
Eddy raises a very important point - if someone wants to argue about hip-hop's roots and traditions, then hip-hop's roots are in *party music*. That doesn't make it apolitical, rather, it pushes us to remember that the politics of pop culture extend far beyond just textual content or polemic intent. What made hip-hop vibrant in its early years was the social context from which it was emerging rather than some well-defined, 10 point manifesto for revolution. As party music, it could be political without having to *perform* politics. Indeed, when, in American history, has the specter of brown and black bodies moving en masse ever NOT been weighted with social meaning or been responded to with fear and loathing? See Martha Reeves' "Dancing In the Streets" or Funkadelic's "One Nation Under a Groove" for examples of what I'm talking about from earlier generations.
When people like you opt out of these discussions, the discussions are framed by either:
1. (mostly white) rock/pop critics who don't know or care much about rap beyond what appeals to (mostly white) rock/pop critics.
or 2.) rap revisionists, KRS-type 4 elements zealots, hip hop "activists," simpletons who think in binaries ("conscious vs gangsta...underground vs. corporate...hip hop vs. rap"), and out of touch hip hop academics, who care so much about hip hop that they have an unhealthy and unrealistic view of its history and importance.
The absence of voices such as yours is why mainstream rap criticism is so terrible these days. Even worse than the music.
Indeed - I was disappointed by that, as well. I disagree with this statement
in principle. This is part of growing older as hip-hop heads. We have to figure out how to make it through our 30s and onward without divorcing ourselves from ourselves or just leaving it to the players Gartrelle mentioned above... or worse yet, the souljah boy crankin, sidekick beat makin, rap twitterin kids! (roffle)
I am 27 years old and when I was younger I loved the misogynistic side of hip-hop. I grew up in Los Angeles and everything from NWA to Too Short I would devour. Then when I turned 14 I listened to Wu-Tang and everything changed. I was one of the few cats in Watts that would throw on my Timbs and a hoodie and bump the new Ghost or Rae. Mainstream hip-hop has turned into nothing more than a nobody with a nice hook and a club beat. The hip-hop I fell in love with is still there. You just have to dig for it a little more. Today I was frustrated at work. I got in my car and there was a little bit of traffic so I started listening to dead prez Let's Get Free and went straight to Mind Sex. It mellowed me out and just made me reminisce about the first time I fell in love with real hip-hop. Don't give up on it because it is just as introspective and beautiful as it was when you fell in love with it also.