2007 - The Year Ghetto Rap Hopefully Dies

[Pic0o]

Time has a good article up about the decline of $$$ being thrown @ Gangster Rap, and the current, redundant image the industry has given, a once unique and life-like music form.

 

Today that same market is telling rappers to please shut up. While music-industry sales have plummeted, no genre has fallen harder than rap. According to the music trade publication Billboard, rap sales have dropped 44% since 2000 and declined from 13% of all music sales to 10%. Artists who were once the tent poles at rap labels are posting disappointing numbers. Jay-Z's return album, Kingdom Come, for instance, sold a gaudy 680,000 units in its first week, according to Billboard. But by the second week, its sales had declined some 80%. This year rap sales are down 33% so far.

 

Longtime rap fans are doing the math and coming to the same conclusions as the music's voluminous critics. In February, the filmmaker Byron Hurt released Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a documentary notable not just for its hard critique but for the fact that most of the people doing the criticizing were not dowdy church ladies but members of the hip-hop generation who deplore rap's recent fixation on the sensational.

 

Both rappers and music execs are clamoring for solutions. Russell Simmons recently made a tepid call for rappers to self-censor the words nigger and bitch from their albums. But most insiders believe that a debate about profanity and misogyny obscures a much deeper problem: an artistic vacuum at major labels. "The music community has to get more creative," says Steve Rifkin, CEO of SRC Records. "We have to start betting on the new and the up-and-coming for us to grow as an industry. Right now, I don't think anyone is taking chances. It's a big-business culture."

 

Artists who never jumped on the gangsta bandwagon point the finger at the boardroom. They accuse major labels of strip-mining the music, playing up its sensationalist aspects for easy sales. "In rock you have metal, alternative, emo, soft rock, pop-rock, you have all these different strains," says Q-Tip, front man for the defunct A Tribe Called Quest. "And there are different strains of hip-hop, but record companies aren't set up to sell these different strains. They aren't set up to do anything more of a mature sort of hip-hop."

 

Of course, gangsta rap isn't a record-company invention. Indeed, hip-hop's two most celebrated icons, Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., embraced the sort of lyrical content that today has opened hip-hop to criticism. And the music companies, under assault from file-sharing and other alternative distribution channels, are hardly in a position to do R&D. "When I first signed to Tommy Boy, [the A&R person] would take us to different shows and to art museums," says Q-Tip. "There was real mentorship. Today that's largely absent, and we see the results in the music and in the aesthetic." That result is a stale product, defined by cable channels like BET, now owned by Viacom, which seems to consist primarily of gun worship and underdressed women.

 

Tribe was and is some great music. It's a shame the entire scene got consumed by Hatred and Bitches. Hopefully Rap, is one of the many things, that is forced to reinvent itself, in the name of the people who once stood by it.

 

One can only dream that Rap, Sports Athletes and Politicians are the next main 3 things to change in our society. I remember when each one was associated with having some class.

[h0m3r]

Today's hip-hop is goddamn disgraceful. Everytime I listen to Ghostface, GZA, WuTang, Nas, etc. I compare it to the last rap song I heard on the radio and wonder how things went from Liquid Swords to 50 Cent's latest snoozer. Proof that people will buy shit regardless of whether or not it's worth a fuck.

 

Mainstream rap, make something good and original or GTFO:boxing:

[CatOnShrooms]

think i heard like 3 good rap/hiphop songs this year... but last year [2006] there were like 6 good albums.

 

so yeah hopefully it dies or starts to make good songs :)

[J0k3r]

Since I dig a lot of rap I will say this... Serial Killa Rap is the only way to go :) Detroit underground style.

 

I haven't listened to one good NEW rap track in years. Here is my version of the industry..

 

Today's Rap Track (For a whole cd, multiple by 14)

 

"Its all yo yo yo my money money money! I'm so paid I bang whores and I am so rich look at my chains cause I am soo rich check my whores kause my wh0rez are rich kause i am rich look at my smooth fur coat Im soo rich.... NOW BUY MY SHIT!!"

 

Thank you that will $21.00 USD plz

[Pic0o]

"I got this chunky drip on my Shiz, and you be sippin them drips." Could be a cause of that Life Path.

 

So could being a Carnie. :junk: