What the hell happened to rap?
 

Back when I was much younger, I was quite a fan of rap, but as the years passed, I just quit listening (I'm pretty sure it was around the time Tupac was killed).

I recently found my old rap CDs and gave them a listen and still found them just as good as they were back in the day. I sampled some of the rap from the past 5-7 years and it was nauseating shit; you couldn't pay me to listen to it.

Is there any rap that remains true to the stuff from the 80s-early/mid 90s era, or is it all just the same generic sound and uninspired lyrics.

For any old rap fans who feel the same way as I do, when did the genre take a nosedive for you?

What happened to rap music is that old rich white guys got their hands on it.

It took a nosedive in the late 90's. There have been a few good CDs since ('The Marshall Mathers LP', '2001', a couple of Jay-Z CDs, 'The Documentary', Kanye West, and a few others)...but it's been pretty bad for the past 8-10 years.

no rap will ever beat the rap from the late 80's/early 90's era. jay z and busta rhymes still put out some good sh!t (but mostly their earlier stuff), but thats about it.

basically, there is a complete lack of cohesion in rap. almost no one sits down as a group/team, decides on a concept and sound they want to achieve and then create a fully cohesive and consistent album all by the same producer/dj/rapper anymore.

there are no more djs for rappers/groups, just lame trendy producers.

there's no more scratching sounds!!

all these lame producers create (and stockpile) lifeless throw-away tracks and then farm them out to whoever pays the most for it.

there's endless amounts of stupid "featuring" guests on song after song when all i want to hear is the actual rapper whose name is on the album.

usually the guests are not even in the same studio as everyone else. all this "featuring" crap is done by mail now, not together in the studio in real-time.

lots of weak synthetic and electronic sounds and no more thumping bass, repetitive breakbeats and scratching.

retail albums all focus on choruses and hooks now. mixtapes are often vastly superior to an artists "real" album because they just focus on freeform raps that lack a dumb chorus/hook.

r&b singers on rap songs! wtf!!

sampling laws. that is the most crippling thing ever to rap in my opinion. now you have to be rich and well-funded and even then you still might not get permission to use something. before these laws the sky was the limit.

oh, an example a modern cohesive rap album? dj muggs vs gza.

A friend of mine summed it up nicely when he said, "The South killed hip-hop." The sound seems the most prevalent today and, despite my being from the region, I HATE it.

There's still good stuff out there if you dig around. Just don't turn on the radio.

I agree with everything you said. Another cohesive album is Murs 3:16 The 9th Edition by Murs and 9th Wonder (I haven't heard their follow-up Murray's Revenge yet.

http://www.mimifroufrou.com/scenteds...0P%20Diddy.jpg

...happened to rap.

You should try listening to hip hop instead..

...or try visiting a local record shop and picking up some independent music.

Last year's "discovered" Top Shelf 8/8/88 compilation is a great throwback to the earlier style of of hip-hop, despite the somewhat questionable history of the recordings.

I don't know of many rappers who still consistently work in that particularly old school-style production some of you are looking for, but if the lyrical content of mainstream hip-hop is what you dislike, there are a host of extremely intelligent artists (usually, though not exclusively, in the backpack/indie hip-hop scene) who are worlds away from the usual guns/bitches/bling triumvirate.

Which, really, is as it should be. As much as I really love the early stuff by the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC, who used LOTS and LOTS of samples, artists should have complete & total control over their songs being sampled, without exception. I've been a musician for over 30 years, and if someone wanted to use one of my songs (or a bit of one) in a rap song [or hip hop, or whatever you want to call it...it's all the same], I'd probably price it WAAAAYYY out of their ability to do so, unless I was a fan of theirs, or if I really liked their material.

Dorky white chicks from Long Island started rapping and everyone realized the genre is completely played out.

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/I-u8QxRpADg&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/I-u8QxRpADg&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/K6D5xpCgETk&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/K6D5xpCgETk&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

What happened to rap music is that old rich white guys got their hands on it.

I'm not a fan of rap, but I agree with this statement. Everything that comes along these day's that is new and popular get's destroyed by record producers and rich white guys who try and make a buck off everything. This holds true from everything in the music to the sports world. Nobody can leave anything alone these days because they want their piece of the pie, even if they have to destroy everything in the process.

Which is definitley a trait that only rich white men have. -rolleyes-

While not entirely classifiable as hip-hop, some of Steinski & Double Dee's long-unavailable material from the past 20 years has recently been reissued in a 2-disc set called Steinski: What Does It All Mean? This would definitely hit the "sweet spot" for those of you looking for some truly classic work.

The last decade of rap = hair metal bands of the 80's. All flash with no substance.

There is only one rapper that is still the dam good and that is GANG STARR!

1993 and beyond happened.

I've been saying this for years.

...and who's fault would that be? It could never have anything to do with selling out could it? It's all the white man's fault. :lol:

I was never a huge fan of rap but did enjoy an album here and there up until the early 90s.

Of course there is still good hip hop music out there. You just have to look a little harder now.

= J

I was talking to an indie record store owner last week and he cited the biggest problem with rap music is that they put out good singles, but shitty albums. So, people will download the one good song but not buy the album.

Do yourself a favor and pick this one up, you will not be disappointed.

http://www.fatbeats.com/catalog/cata...cd-FB5117.jpeg

Ugly Duckling- Bang for the Buck

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...oL._SS500_.jpg

Best album out right now.

9th Wonder is one of my favorite producers. I never much cared for Buckshot though. They also have an album together called Chemistry that's pretty solid.

If you like 9th Wonder, check out any of Little Brother's albums. Out of North Carolina, they're probably one of my favorite outfits now. 9th Wonder is no longer producing for them though. Check out The Minstrel Show - a classic album.

Also, Nicoley is an amazing producer. From the Netherlands. Check out The Foreign Exchange - Connected.

Black Milk - Popular Demand. Producer/MC, awesome beats and great flow.

For something different, check out the Cunninlynguists. Southern rappers get a bad rep, but their album, A Piece of Strange is a classic, classic album.

Sure, there's not a lot of the edgier, boom-bap Wu-Tang or Illmatic style stuff coming out these days, but if you look in the right places, there's a ton of awesome producers and MCs out there.

Any rap/hip hop I listen to anymore is from 87-93. I occasionally pick up something new, but very rarely. I think the last disc I bough was Aesop Rock's None Shall Pass which is an incredibly solid album. It almost gives me hope for the genre.

That's a group, not a rapper.

<img src="http://www.tubafrenzy.org/weblog/archives/TheForeignExchangeConnected-thumb.jpg">

This was the last album that turned my head. I still listen to "Raw Life" regularly.

Actually, 2004 was a pretty decent year for hip-hop. You had Connected, The College Dropout and Madvillainy (off the top of my head).

The problem is not rap. The problem is popular/commercial rap. And it comes and goes in waves of quality. I'm sure it will have a nice resurgence eventually. One thing I am dismayed about is that it almost lacks any type of lengevity as it often has a shelf life of a few months if not less. There are of course a lot of exceptions to this (Enta Da Stage, for one) but you can something similar about other genres which are sometimes geared "for the club": how much techno from the mid-90's have you listened to recently, as opposed to other genres, for example?

Yeah I'll agree with that, too, along with many other good theories posted. You know, having been around longer than the genre of Rap has, I'm surprised it's overall popularity has even lasted as long as it has.

I remember DJ-ing at a dance club back in the early 80's, and back then, in the dawn of the genre with artists like Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash and The Sugarhill Gang emerging, it wasn't even called "Rap" music yet. It was still being labeled as "Disco", because it was music being primarily played only in the clubs, and you could dance to it. It was still too new to even have a name yet. We just thought it was another angle on a passing fad, which would itself burn out rather quickly. Nobody I knew in the biz then ever saw it becoming the eventual monster it did become the latter 80s and 90's. I'm not a huge fan, but I'll certainly give it credit for enduring as long as it has.

But still, all along I've been wondering how long it was going to take before it started to burn itself out, or people just started to grow tired of it. I stopped asking that question about 4 years ago. When anything becomes too super trendy, you know it's shelf life is about to become much more limited in the not too distant future. Things can only get so big before they either explode, or implode, and it's usually the latter. I was working in a music store for some years, and you would just start to see the amount of Rap titles in the bins become less and less each year - and the number of hit artist become fewer and fewer. And while I certainly wouldn't pronounce it dead, I would however say that, for the most part, it's approaching it's nadir of popularity.

I find that when people say that there isn't any good rap anymore, that what they're typically talking about is the crap they play on the radio. What people forget (intentionally or otherwise) is that it has always been a rare occurrence for good rap to be played on the radio. Did you ever hear NWA, Eazy-E, etc on radio? With a few (very rare) exceptions, you did not. What about Tupac? You might have heard "Dear Mama" or a few other more "radio friendly" tracks on the radio, but the overwhelming majority of Tupac's tracks were never played on the radio.

Bottom line is that you cannot look to the crap on the radio as your "evidence" that there is no good rap anymore.

Somebody else in this thread wrote that there are no more DJs and scratching. That couldn't be further from the truth.

If you want to hear some good hip hop/rap, here's just a handful of people to check out:

Dilated Peoples
Jurassic 5
The Roots
Styles of Beyond
Akrobatik
Mr. Lif
The Perceptionists
Blackalicious
Atmosphere
Murs
People Under The Stairs
Little Brother
Tech N9ne

... and, to name a few that are almost mainstream enough to hit the radio (and occasionally do get played on the radio):

Common
Talib Kweli

There's plenty of good hip hop/rap music out there. Like any genre of music, you just have to want to put in the effort to find the good stuff.

Early and Mid 90s was the best for Hip-Hop. And because it was so good then, you even had some hot shit on the radio. Now, you have to dig really deep into the underground to find current gems so it's very rare to find a good track on the radio. Some Bay Area Hyphy was poppin for a bit. But yep, most of what is put out everywhere is garbage. I still enjoy the odd album coming out, but mostly I go back to the good old ones. Yesterday I was enjoying the Alkaholiks and Camp Lo.

This is about the time it was the end for me. De La, Cypress, Onyx, Tupac was it. Over and done with it ... and as stated already it became the hair band generation.

What happened is the rise of Southern based Hip Hop. It's really a much different form of rap than what had been popular for the prior two decades, which was a New York centric based sound. Much of underground hip hop is still much closer in spirit to the NY sound whereas the mainstream rap of today(outside of older established artists like Jay-Z & Nas) that makes the radio/MTV is more influenced by the South/Midwest.

This is a hilarious post. Are you one of those guys who thinks that hip hop and rap are two different things?

Yeah, I've always found that highly amusing, myself.

Yep, I am.

Glad I could entertain you. My purpose in this thread has been fulfilled.

'rap music' and 'hiphop music' is the same thing.
Rap and hiphop is not the same thing. Rap is what the MC does.
Hiphop is the 4 elements and beyond. Its the culture. Some will argue but you could say video games, skateboarding, smoking blunts are all hiphop they are part of the culture as much as and moreso than graffiti and b-boy-ing is nowadays

They are. :hscratch:

KRS-ONE...Is that you? :)

Check out the new Flobots album.

= J

I think the problem is is that the crap on the radio *IS* the stuff that is getting the most attention. I'm not talking about in this thread, I mean in general. There were people who worked hard to give rap some credibility and some justify its existence, and all this "Ho's, bitches, money, and cars" that is prevalent in the "radio crap" does nothing but eat away at that.

The thing is, this isn't a problem that is exclusive to rap.

Exactly!

In fact, about a week ago my brother-in-law made a comment to me that he doesn't really listen to much rap anymore because "rap songs now are, at best, just the flavor of the month." In other words, the songs that are "hits" now won't be remembered in 5 years, 1 year ... or even 6 months.

He was using this as his reasoning for not listening to rap anymore.

However, what he said is true not only of rap, but of pretty much every genre. The crap that gets played on the radio, in general, is typically a bunch of stuff without any staying power. Amped up, beat thumping club tracks that will be forgotten next month.

As with most genres, there is PLENTY of great rap music out there, you're just not going to find it on the radio. If you enjoy rap, and are willing to put in a little time, you'll find it.