Well, I’m screwed. I find myself writing a piece for a website where everyone knows a lot about music. To top it off, my post is in the company of some very good writers. So how does this music writing work? I’ll just name-drop a couple obscure musicians, reference a popular venue and then we can post this bad boy up? Oh boy. Let’s see what I got.
“Hip-hop is dead,” Nas said, and looking at Rick Ross’s latest work I am not going to lie; it kind of looks that way. What has hip-hop come to when one of its well-known artists raps about selling dope off an iPhone and compares himself to ’70s Giants QB Fran Tarkenton? The man has tracks with the complexity and artistic value of a finger-painting I did in Pre-K. Yeah, my mom smiled and said she loved it, but I saw that thing in the trash week later. Like my finger-painting, I think Rick Ross albums generally deserve to be in the trash too.
Understand that I pick on Ross not because he is releasing the crappiest music in hip-hop (he isn’t, I’m looking at you Drake), nor because he is the easiest to mock (have you seen Nicki Minaj’s butt implants?) but because he is the best representation of what is swagless with mainstream hip-hop. Hip-hop as it has become known today is a genre warped by gangsta clichÌ©s and hollow lyrics about drugs, money and, the most constant of constant themes in popular hip-hop, females that need exploiting. Ladies and gentleman, I come from the wastelands of New Jersey to tell you THIS IS NOT HIP–HOP MUSIC. So much is just aggravating noisiness, full of weightless couplets and over- emphasized hooks. “My top back like JFK…. They wanna push my top back like JFK…. So, so I JFK.”
It is no surprise mainstream rap is losing disenfranchised fans to a semi-underground, conscious hip-hop community. Next time you have the chance, listen to any track off “The Welcome Mat” by OCD Moosh and the Twist. You will not be disappointed. Consider it assigned listening. On my next article I will be exploring this conscious hip-hop scene, delving into artists and music in hopes of introducing you, constant reader, to some new swag to listen to.
By Sam Bermas-Dawes