Fenxy

Wait, rappers aren't all gangsters?

Getting your album bought is all about getting that one (or two) chart hit or club hit recognised these days. In the pop (the abbreviation, not the genre) music scene, at least.

Instead of going out and buying the album, the kids are just going home and downloading that track off the Internet. Maybe that's part of the reason?

As for this rap nonsense: Even as someone who, as a rule, doesn't listen to rap or hip hop (save for a dash of RJD2 and the Grey album here and there), I can see how superficial the scene has become now.

I blame Canyay Vest. No good reason though. I just do.

Incientally, I heard an excellent remix of that Soulja Boy track a few days ago. I'll see if I can dig it up.

Edit: Here ya go.

Fooling the white kids must have been a concept that a Time editor stuck in, because it's irresponsible to think that "white kids" not buying more rap records has directly led to the decline of all hip hop sales in general. On top of that, the entire article concentrates on the "gangsta rap" genre which you said died out more than 5 years ago, so either the person who wrote this is an idiot, or he/she knows exactly what she's doing by writing a mistyped, irrational article, in an effort to get readers.

Of course the author doesn't dive into any other theories as to why rap album sales are declining, but how about tackling the actual issue which is album quality declining as a whole. There are no gems anymore like "Illmatic" from Nas, no lasting sets of music that can be played start to finish without finding some junk filler tracks in the middle. Artists are focused on making the hot club joint, or the commercial-sounding record that gets played on the radio, but are less committed to making a full album full of winning music.

Unfortunately in our "hit" society you're not a commercial success unless you have the 1 club joint, the 1 radio success, so nobody actually cares about making good albums. When's the last time an artist got more than 2 singles off their rap album? If we take a look across to R&B, Justin Timberlake's latest album had 5 singles come off the 12-track album, all of them hits. Jay-Z had 2 singles off Kingdom Come that has 15 tracks on it, which just shows that he didn't think anything else could do well.

Mike: Justin's a hit with the kids though. He could release just about anything. The music itself is mediocre at best. That he had 5 "hit" singles isn't really indicative of good music, just the mainstream at work.

KRS-ONE said, "Rap is something you do. Hip-hop is something you live."

I think it's less fooling the white kids than it is the changing definition of hip-hop.

To me it's characterized by intelligent, thought-provoking often activist lyrics, clever rhymes, unique beats and samples... think Common, Wu-Tang and their various affiliates/solo projects, ATCQ, De La, Roots, all artists who find their origins at Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, Kool Herc, RUN-DMC...basically back when it was about a MESSAGE. I mean, just try to listen to "Fight the Power" and tell me it doesn't get you all riled up no matter what color you are.

What folks call hip hop now definitely isn't, as far as I'm concerned. There are a few tracks I hear on the so-called hip-hop stations that I can actually get down to (T.I.'s last two albums have been banging) but the rest is just crap.

I may be a little white girl but spending most of my life in NOLA and Memphis I'm not isolated from urban or black culture, and to me the music of the early hip hop movement is like a history lesson. If today's rap music is supposed to be a continuation of that story that's pretty tragic.

Artists are focused on making the hot club joint, or the commercial-sounding record that gets played on the radio, but are less committed to making a full album full of winning music.

To me, that is what has been wrong with hip-hip for a very long time. It's annoying. What's even worse, like Scrivs said, is that this materialistic b.s. has snowballed for a long time and calling it old would be an understatement. Every song that 50 cent makes is the exact same.

The demise of [commercial] hip-hop has nothing to do with white kids. It has to do with shitty music. I can't remember the last time that I 1.) bought an album, or 2.) listened to a new album all the way through and loved it. That is rare these days.

Don't get me wrong, I party to the club joints when I'm out, and they have their place, however, I don't intend on listening to club joints for the 8-10 hours that I work everyday.

So basically, everything on the radio, for the past few years, has sucked, and that is why hip-hip, on a commercial scale, is dying.

This exact same conversation happens every single time $genre gets to a certain age and moves out of vogue.

I don't think it's the demise of a genre that's happening though, I think it's the maturation. It's moving out of the "new"--I quote that because here I mean a hyperpopular phase, regardless of how long the genre's actually existed.

The ONLY people this affects are the copycat/crappy artists. They survive only if something is hyperpopular. The true artists will continue to thrive because they're worth listening to regardless of the genre they fall into, or the popularity of it. The serious artists will cross genre barriers as they progress through their career, some even defining their own.

I have noticed less white kids listening to crappy rap and hip-hop over the past few years. While that demographic certainly drives sales up, it doesn't define anything.

Not to offend as you sound like a hip-hop fan, but it is all regurgitation, which you've also stated, so I'm not 100% sure if you're just saying that there needs to be more original hip-hop or what.

50 Cent is Gangsta Rap, anyone who acts like (or perhaps in his case actually is) a criminal through their talking-over-beats music can be classified as gangsta rap. I'm sure there are plenty of sub-genres for rap and offshoots of gangsta rap but really, you can't get too serious about terminology when you can't even spell your own words. :)

Anyway, hip-hop is somewhere around 87% regurgitation.

Given that rock'n'roll these days is somewhere around 94% regurgitation, that almost sounds like a good thing, but really, I could come up with a popular rap song simply by using the following formula:

Take one obscure rock riff and mix it over a steady beat.
Add the following lyrics:

"I remember when I had nothing, now I have lots of cars and stuff.
But I'll never forget when I had nothing, uh huh, huh uh, that's enough."

clicknathan,

you should start your own label. That's easily a platinum record you've got going there!

just some figures:

Top selling albums (so far) this year world wide:

1 Minutes To Midnight Linkin Park 3,827,000
2 The Best Damn Thing Avril Lavigne 3,578,000
3 Not Too Late Norah Jones 3,220,000
4 Life In Cartoon Motion Mika 2,851,000
5 Call Me Irresponsible Michael Bublé 2,386,000
6 It Won't Be Soon Before Long Maroon 5 2,225,000
7 Lost Highway Bon Jovi 1,835,000
8 Infinity On High Fall Out Boy 1,716,000
9 Good Girl Gone Bad Rihanna 1,502,000
10 A Best 2 Ayumi Hamasaki 1,400,000

This is an absurd idea. And just typical old media scapegoating. The truth is that most chart mkusic today isn't relevent. Hiphop hasn't been relevent for a good 10 years. The truely great stuff is going on on MySpace, in underground clubs and in the cities.

Indie all the way! It can never die. And the albums are always good. The Format, Sufjan Stevens, The Fratellis, Feist: you can listen all the way through and be ready to start it again at the beginning, you just can't get tired of it.

Man, wish I had good typing and stuff like you guys.

But yes, for the past few years all the "hip-hop" isn't hip-hop at all. I would call it regurgitated rap. They sing about mindlessthings such as their girls, money, cars, and how you can't fuck with them.

But still that's all you'll here on the radio and in clubs. And guess what, they're the ones making a bunch of money unlike most average americans that work their asses' off!

But what pisses me off the most is the kids, a.k.a. the future generation; which I myself am. They're messing with our minds and think that is what's cool and hip, making guys call girls bitches and whores. Then women screw some poser and they live poor and have shit. It's plain sad....

But I think we also need tolook at today's "rock". All of it is emoish sounding indie rock. And they're top charts too.

But I liek a tiny bit of today's rap and rock to be honest. But deffinetly not top charts stuff. I like Modest Mouse, Talib Kweli, Common, and a couple more that I forgot.

Watch me crank dat soulj-- oh, you guys mean me, don't you?

Wait, Fall Out Boy has one of the top albums in the world right now, but we're talking about the decline in rap? How about the decline in music in general?

One of the things that has made rap so insanely (disproportionally?) popular over the last few years was the cross over from a mostly black audience to a mixed audience. So as rap is declining (along with every other genre of music, except possibly Christian rock) it's losing it's white popularity base. This is just an example of a journalist clamping down on a statistic and running all racist and wild with it.

Can we say "decline in mainstream music" and not music in general?

Does anyone else not really care what mainstream music is all about, and still enjoy listening to all the other stuff they listen to?

Yes, a lot of rap is crap. Yes, a lot of rock is crap. Yes, a lot of indie is crap. Yes, the top hits charts are generally crap.

There are plenty of new albums that I listen to in their entirety (read: mostly not rap), for days, even weeks, on end.

It's kind of nice to see rap declining, because I think the "music industry" needs a change in top-dog genre. As someone said above, good artists will always be good artists, despite the times.

I find more pleasure seeking out those good artists than turning to the radio or the charts for my music tastes.

All this said, I'm not one of the people who gets upset when a band "sells out", or who won't listen to music that's on the radio solely because it's on the radio. I just happen to think most of the music that's on the radio is not as good as the stuff that's not.

90% of everything is crap... including statistics.

Only 70% of the time.

Good point Devin. I stand corrected.

Coming from someone who listens to rap;

Mos Def, Common, and Talib Kweli are indeed talented, but some times it seems they lack that passion that could put them over the top.

Also there is a difference between making educated raps, and crossing the like.

It's like they are doing good 1 minute, and then they go on a 20 second rant with big words

"improbable, philosophical, indominable, abominable"

Rap to me is really about simplicity and power in fewest words as possible. I love those guys sometimes, don't get wrong, but I don't feel that power, and sometimes you can tell that they just went and got a dictionary and a thesaurus and just looked for big words that rhymed to put them in their raps, because if you really look at the string of words I just made up there, it really doesn't make sense if you look at the whole thing.

And none of them have the type of flow that artists like 50 Cent and Jay-Z have.

Well I look at it like this first all these rappers who say they are thugs, are now living in mansions in rich neighboorhoods, driving expensive cars. The real hood life leaves them as soon as soon as they get that big check from the record company. People aren't stupid and they realize what frauds they are.

Next what new "flows" have really come out lately. A lot of hip-hop and R&B over the past 10 years are rehashed poorly done remixes of songs of the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Hip-hop artists need to be original and unique in their raps and style.

Finally hip-hop is going down the tubes with just plain bad music. When I see songs like Peanut Butter Jelly winning awards, you have to wonder "What the hell has hip-hop become".

To me all these new "hit" songs are variations of the hokey-pokey and simon says. They all have some dance that they have to explain to you how it's done (e.g. snap your fingers). lol

I Don't see what the problem is. there is plenty of good hiphop out there maybe you guys just dont know how to find it? Check out this new track from Brother Ali.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO18F4aKGzQ

magic6435,

I equate Brother Ali as the new and improved version of KRS-1. The problem is Brother Ali isn't mainstream and with the way hip-hop is today, won't be mainstream anytime soon. It's sad to say but hokey-pokey rap sells records....speaking the truth doesn't. And if you don't sell records, you can write rhymes all you want but you'll be working in another line of business.