If Hip-Hop Had Legs…..

It’s a senior getting hazed like a freshman. Since its inception, it was born with an original sin. Cursed for culture. Deemed as “not real art.” Bluntly put, “Nigger Music.” Hip-hop is the pure essence of Black living: turning water into lemonade. Poverty, classism, racism, and every other form of oppression Black and brown people were facing, so to escape the burden of their reality, Block parties and gatherings were held to give some form of freedom. Have fun and feel human. Hip-Hop is the greatest happy accident.

Butterfly Effect of art that combated the domino effect of systemic problems, hip hop has gone on to guide, inform, represent, and create smiles on top of saving lives, whether it be the artist or the fan.

Yet over the past few months, going on years, it’s been needing refills of migraine prescriptions. Cuz its discourse circuit has been breeding so much stress and fuss from voyeurs and residents that hip hop might end up on the beach with Rose Byrne. No matter where it turns or what escape route it tries to bail through, the voices of the critical, the overbearing, and the toxic are reaching schizophrenic levels. If it were a sentient being, it would be an adult ready to emotionally crash out like It’s 1999.

-Hip Hop is Dead…… again

Jesus died and came back once. That’s cool. But has he done it three times? Cuz hip hop apparently dies every 10 years; whoever is declaring their deaths is worse than Dr. Hartman. Common told us it was time to worry in 1994; Nas said it was a wrap in 2006; old heads and purists said it was G.G.’s in the mid-2010s because of the new wave of the “Mumble Rap/SoundCloud” era. Now once again the record is skipping-

-is skipping

-is skipping

skip-

Cuz ever since Billboard reported that hip hop has been struggling to dominate the charts compared to previous years, it’s been in a frenzy. Where are the rap superstars? Who’s next up? It’s dying? Who’s going to carry the torch? As far as everyone is concerned, we’re witnessing the Black Tuesday of hip hop.

-Rap Fatigue

Outside in the waiting room, we see a party playing rock, paper, scissors on who gets to pull the plug. Boys and girls, Black, White, and everyone in between, united to judge not by the covered skin but by its character, and also the color of its skin. denouncing the genre as a whole, expressing how there is little to no substance anymore. “Money, Cash, Hoes,” “Lord forgive me for killing all these niggas,” and “bring us back to the Golden Age” is what it all boils down to. The boys are lost souls who make murder music, and the girls only rap about popping pussy. Music that prepares you for keeping your spot warm on the corner or auditioning at a strip club. At this rate, they’ll attend Hip Hop’s funeral just to make sure it’s dead.

-Drake vs Kendrick Aftermath

Rapageddon has left us with a dystopian society between purists and normies. Don’t get it twisted; this has always been a thing. However, more than ever, stubbornness, pretentiousness, and being the most unreasonable/obtuse are at an all-time high. Division at its most hyperactive: democaps vs. Republicoons, Jedi versus Siths, South Park versus Family Guy.

-Underground Scene is Living Hell

Tabloid headlines fill the air larger than Schoolhouse Rock font. Controversies that have been happening over the course of months. Allegations of grooming, predators, abuse, the slow burn of a mutation to an unsafe space for certain marginalized groups: transphobia. queerphobia and misogynism, it’s been getting a bad rap more than McDonald’s ice cream machine.

Expected to be the Messiah, solely preaching the good word and the message, especially since it was louder about it in its youth. As time goes on, however, it’s become a multidimensional Rubik’s cube of an art form that has so many sides and colors that every and anyone can see themselves on a part of it (for better and for worse, depending on the context). An outlet to vent what you feel and flex how you feel, especially being a Black art form, we can’t drop the pot of “Black isn’t a monolith”. Now, with the beauty of the internet, you are in the best time to truly grasp that, to find every kind of hip-hop to emphasize why we need these stories of realities told. Find what you like and learn from others, from Samara Cyn to Niontay, Redveil to El Cousteau; conscious to trap to anything in between, it’s well-rounded, not rigid. The mass appeal of hip hop is caused by white fandom. So what are you really trying to do? Protect little Black kids from Rated M content or inadvertently appeal to white sensibility? Remember the red dot should be on the forehead of systemic issues, so go to the source of people’s conditioning, not the victims rapping about it.

No matter how hard it tries, it’s still not good enough for people.

Pan, to its right ear, hears its patrons bickering back and forth. One side is blowing this manospheric bubble; the others are juiced up on a moral superiority complex. “Anti-intellectualism versus true art.” Both sides are lost in the sauce of parasocialism and are not even focusing on the music anymore. No middle ground; both parties have flaws (granted, one side is definitely more problematic than the other) and want to double down. Anything indirectly correlated between the two parties, they will manage to work it into a conversation so that bystanders will just catch a stray. Feels less communal, instead of more of a 24/7 debate. Climbing down to the underground, whose behavior ranges from gross to despicable. For the past couple of years or so, artists have been checking off the irredeemable list:

• Grooming
  Abuse
  Transphobia
  Queerphobia
  Misogyny

They’re artists that have been a safe space for some; others are indirectly causing unsafe space for marginalized groups to the point where our outsiders are more aware of the muck than the actual music.

Hip-Hop, it will never die. Whether there’s a jolt in its pulse for a mainstream comeback or it kicks back while other genres take over, it’s cool. Sooner or later, it’ll get back on its feet in the mainstream, but now, maybe it’ll be okay for it to take a step back to reconstruct and rejuvenate. Slow down its world. Stress levels are at an unhealthy level, hair is grey, trying to figure out how to make everything right. All this responsibility, but no assistance. If hip-hop had legs, it would run.