Hip Hop Then & Now

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Coming up in the golden era of Hip Hop was impactful. A plethora of MCs with diverse flows and styles made it easy to curate the perfect soundtrack to significant events in your life. There was an assortment of songs to choose from with varied focus; from lyrical technique, to conveying a message, storytelling, moving a crowd, or simply just having fun. There was space for each individualistic style to exist and be respected by the fans for which it was created.

Watching the rapidly growing genre reach new heights of popularity among the masses was exciting…up until it wasn’t. With any commodity, comes investors, with investors comes the continual demand for growth. In order to obtain that growth you must reach a broader audience, and the best way to reach a broader audience is to take the art form and water it down to make it more palatable to more people. This caused a homogeneous effect among the beloved genre that doesn’t truly resonate with many of us who remember the golden era, causing us to react in one of three typical ways.

There are those of us who just kind of accept it. We don’t have the time or desire to dig around to find the really good stuff in the midst of the really bad stuff we’re bombarded with daily. In turn, we lower our standards to the point that artists who are mediocre at best, begin to seem remarkable by comparison.

There are those of us who are jaded with most mainstream Rap. We opt to listen to classic Hip Hop in lieu of the new music out now, with very few exceptions that include the occasional guilty pleasures to party or work out to.

Then there are those of us who are so put off by the current state of Hip Hop we’ve regressed to comparing everything to the golden era, including the new work of the artists from that very era. If their new music doesn’t make us feel like we did back then, we don’t want it. It’s quickly dismissed and not regarded as noteworthy, overlooking the artist’s inevitable personal growth and artistic maturation.

Things have changed, but it’s not all bad, it’s a part of life. The evolution of Hip Hop/Rap is not unlike the change that has occurred in other genres over the years. It started underground and now that’s where you have to go to find the best. Thankfully the internet has allowed easier access for artists to release their art and fans to find what speaks to us.

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