Hip Hop is Dead?

Rap started out being controversial as a medium of artistic, political and national expression for black people. Its success was based on stories and protest of the black African community through the art form most pervasive and accessible to them, music. But now rap has taken on a new meaning where its controversy is a prerequisite for any successful rap album, such as 50 cent, Eminem and other “hard” rappers that seem to be bound to the notion of hip hop containing controversial and subversive elements to attract media attention, and consequentially, big dollars! People ask, “What happened to hip hop??”

Essentially it is now geared towards money and superficial displays of gangster rap personas and images of success, boasting about their money, diamonds & “bling bling”. I believe recent hip hop or “Hip-Pop” has exploited the historical importance that rap played in the 70’s and 80’s of rebellion against the status quo, racism and the ‘black revolution’, to make a lot of money. Essentially it has boiled down to “selling out” and being globally successful, or “keeping it real” and sticking to hip hops original purpose (in turn, losing out on the money & global appeal of the typecast glamorous, misogynistic & materialistic “Hip hop” and “rap”).

The rappers who debate political issues are now only appealing to smaller subcultures but never to the masses. There seem to be very little grey areas, where politically powerful hip-hop messages are promoted globally. It seems the hip hop music industry is, for lack of a better phrase - Black and White: A lot of money globally VS Integrity/respect towards the black community. Appealing either to the black audiences that had spawned the art form, or reinforcing the negative stereotypes they had once fought so strongly against (promoting these stereotypes to a now more globally diverse and young audience). Hip hop is now counterproductive, not “dead”; as stated by ‘Nas’ the rapper who claims that “hip hop is dead”.