In the beginning, hip hop was nothing more then a positive movement for those in a negative struggle. The beats were infectious yet simple, the rhymes were elementary yet profound. The pioneers of the hip hop culture gave the urban centers a gift. A gift that was intended to be used as a platform for the poor and hopeless! Hip hop was something pure and innocent that wasn't meant to be commercialized nor was it meant to be abused with profanity and vulgarities. I often wonder what the pioneers of this industry think when they see their gift not only being abused but also neglected and sold to the highest bidder. Hip hop is at a stage where it is as successful as it has ever been yet the people who have followed it since the beginning are not joyful.
Let's face it! Money is the bottom line in every business. Whether that business has pure intentions or not, at the end of the day it comes down to how much revenue that particular business has generated. The trickiest aspect of all of this is trying to nurture an art and keeping it pure while still having it create revenue. This is more evident in the world of music as a whole but more so in hip hop then any other artistic field. Quite frankly, a painter paints! No one can dictate to a painter what it is exactly that they should be painting that day. If you are familiar with business you may have heard of a term called supply and demand. It states that in order to have a product to supply to society there must be a demand for it. Hip hop has skated on a slippery slope with this issue for a very long time and it has gotten to the point where the artists themselves may feel they are in control but in actuality they are just puppets being controlled by strings.
What has hip hop become? If you were to turn on your radio or television you'd find that not only do most hip hop videos resemble each other but the lyrical content is quite similar as well. If they are not talking about women in a derogatory fashion they are talking about how much money and cars they have. You're probably asking what the problem here is since they should be allowed to express themselves. The fact of the matter is hip hop was created as a pure art form. People would be shocked to know that the cars and jewelry the hip hop artist sport in their videos is actually rented! Yes, you read that correctly. They do not own it, nor do they live the lifestyle they talk about. They have turned what was once pure into a facade. You might ask how it is possible that an entire industry has nothing different to say. That's where most of society is wrong. There are many hip hop artists out there that would love to talk about something positive but the platform no longer exists. The music industry has made it so that if you're not supplying what they feel the audience is demanding (sex, vanity and violence) you will not sell. Therefore no one really with anything of substance is getting signed which results in them not having a level playing feel to be heard.
When the pioneers of hip hop look at what it has become, they shake their heads in disbelief, as it is merely impossible to grasp how far hip hop has swung in the opposite direction of what it was intended to do. It wasn't intended to brag about your money nor was it meant to be a marketing tool for big wig companies, it was intended for you to be able speak from your heart. It's a forgone conclusion that hip hop can never become what it once was. My only question is to the hip hop artist who are about to come out. Can you please just say something?
Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Guitars
