2009-03-06

is hiphop dead?




i think hiphop may be dead again.  

kanye is in love with synthesizers and robot music.  lil wayne is putting out a rock album.  j dilla is dead.  p diddy was on csi: miami. dr dre's new album will never come out, so he's busy selling headphones.  madlib is mostly making sound collage albums, that's at least what i call his beat konducta series.  eminem is out of retirement to kill what dignity the genre has left with two new albums this year.  chris brown might go to jail.  t.i. is going there already or might be locked up now (and thank you mtv for making this the subject of two seperate reality shows.)  every white hipster kid thinks the hood internet and girl talk is hiphop. and even MIA is on hiatus.  anticon has become its own formula, every release sounding the same.  atmosphere can only breathe life into frat parties.  crunk ate itself.  t-pain spoofed himself on SNL.  hiphop in general became so mainstream that the president gets down to will.i.am.  

it's the same route punk followed.  angsty underground genres make their biggest impact and best music before everyone turns their ears toward it.  then the game is over.

we even have a notorious biopic to kill dead air on vh1 with.  (which by the way i'm about to watch, out of curiousity.)

maybe someone can tell me what new exciting groundbreaking hiphop is out their to listen to.

but my love affair with the genre is dying (or gone already.)  i doubt even the new clipse album will be worth my time--a bad sequel to hell hath no fury.  

kid cudi and the cool kids might finally put out a full length to change my mind, but until then i've lost faith.

please someone give me a suggestion(s).  i need a new hiphop album.  i can't think of anything i really even want to bother downloading.  

it's friday night and i want some jams.  but my mind is blank and disappointed.


5 comments:

Aa said...

i like, and have always liked subtitle (lab waste, giovanni marks). these albums are great:

lost love stays lost

zwarte achtegrond (under lab waste moniker)

i'm always recovering from tomorrow

terrain to roam

Ben Miller said...

Calling Chris Brown "Hip Hop" is like calling the Jonas Brothers Garage Rock. He's R&B - at best.

MIA is not hip hop. Period.

Lil' Wayne, Kanye and T.I. are all Hip-Pop. It's just pop music with rapping instead of singing. Britney Spears instrumentals could serve as their beats for new albums. And Kanye hasn't produced a banger since Big Pimpin'.

Lately I've been listening to:

Black Milk - Tronic http://sharebee.com/69d820d8 - This guy isn't the greatest rapper, but he is the immediate successor to dilla.

Jake One - http://www.mediafire.com/?tng5zjzydku - One of the dopest producers out there with a good mix of mainstream and underground mcs.

Big L - The Big Picture http://www.mediafire.com/?lxgudojz0hm - an oldie, but classic.

And anything by Sandpeople - they're poor, so I'm not posting a DL link http://www.myspace.com/sandpeople & http://www.myspace.com/debase - By far the dopest crew in the Northwest, and maybe the country.

tinygrooves said...

i was poking for at the concept of hiphop, making it reach further than i know it should.

but needless to say i was fishing for suggestions.

thanks aaron and ben.

i forget to mention how lupe fiasco is the last new rapper i got down with. i need the fresh air in my iTunes. so yes thanks.

Ben Miller said...

Gotcha.

So still on iTunes, not Songbird? I would switch, but I'm possessive of my play counts in iTunes since I've used it for like 5 years. I would feel like a poser if I didn't have like 30+ listens for my Coltrane and Mingus albums.

tinygrooves said...

yeah i do try to use songbird. its a more interactive way of listening to then iTunes, but they haven't added a few features i need that come standard on iTunes. so i'm waiting til either iTunes gets too intergrated with its web store to be tolerable or when the next big update puts steve jobs to shame.