Yo what up hip hop headz out there? I go by da name of Fatz D'Assassin 1/2 of the up and coming underground duo " Da Circle". We hail from NYC, and are eternal fans, and students of this culture. In present day hip hop we see slumping sales of physical product and a rapid decline in creativity and originality. Rappers of today are simply drones like worker ants and bees who roam the industry aimlessly and have no other purpose other than to bring in vital resources to their queen (label) to nourish and bring forth the next generation of mindless drones ( rappers ). Growing up in New York City amidst the " golden era " of hip hop, I witnessed M.C.'s take the game into the outer reaches of any ones wildest imaginations, with many different styles of rhyme, dress, dance, beats, message, etc. Many artists hailed from my home town but the artists who hailed from other cities were just as creative and driven with their own movements and sounds that the record store was like a buffet table of dishes that you could pick and choose your favorite meal.
Not only did these acts compete vigorously on wax, but in video, and stage performance as well. This is no longer a practice in the hip hop culture. Just like anything else...money and corporate influence came in and robbed hip hop of its soul, and replaced classic M.C.'s with rappers, and put a dollar amount on every aspect of the game. Now that the new breed are relevant they do not pay homage to the greats of the past, in fact hip hop/rap music is the only genre of music that disrespects its pioneers as being to old and outdated to step up and rip it down. I breaks my heart to hear the younger kids give credit to artists for remakes that were inspired by artists of yester year, and confuse this with being original...I thought one of the founding principles of hip hop was NO BITING! I know that the coin has two sides, older artists feel disrespected watching young kids reaping the harvest for the seeds they sowed...while younger artists feel the older heads are reluctant to pass the torch and acknowledge the new breed as a peer group. However you see it it means Nada if the culture is dead and gone, because the question I often ponder is this.....if there wasn't another dime to be made as a hip hop artist, dj, dancer, video vixen, manager, etc...how many people would still be apart of it. So personally I view the economic climate as a major cleanse, a purging of the bullshit. what do you think?
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What up Fatz ?
ReplyDeleteWile I do wish that this "Economic Climate"
would act as a "Cleanse", Unfortanetly I find that
the current state of our Economy only adds more
to the pipe dream of being a "rich" and "famous rapper".
They were always there but even more so since the down turn of our economy I meet more and more Johnny come lately "Rap artists"
that just popped out of the wood work last year, with
hopes of raping the culture and trying to get there shot at fame. I do a lot of
shows around long Island so over time I have had the chance
to build relationships with some of these cats,not all of them are bad people
but they all share common traits like the complete and total disregard
for the history of this(Hip Hop) culture that is coupled with the "I just don't give a fuck" attitude. Wile I can connect with the attitude of not giving a fuck
for what people think of me (a prominent trait in all great Emcee's), when that
attidude is combined with the complete and utter ignorance to aknowledge history in hip hop it just gives a dude a face I'd love to punch. Just last week
I had an argument with this kid who wanted to know why I don't respect him
as a rapper.... And he was like and I quote word for word "your telling me that you can't respect my music just because I don't listen to kool daddy Kane and Big daddy rap"? .... To wich I replied "precisely" ... It's not the fact that his flow is terrible or that he talks about his truck sitting on 22's every other line in his rhymes when I only ever seen him walking. It's that when I asked him who his favorite rappers were or what inspired him most in Hip Hop he told me "money" inspired him to rap and he's gonna "blow up" and that he didn't even like hip hop untill he saw all the money he can potentially get his hands on and since he just got out of jail from serving what he described as a "short bid in the county" he can't get "caught up" in "his old bullshit" and then I shit you not, at this point his sister interjects in the conversation and says "you went to jail for 8 hours until mommy bailed you out cause your stupid ass is not supposed to be driving daddy's car untill you get a job and pay to fix your license".... At this point I nearly shit my pants laughing at this kid and walked away, but this is a great example of the new breed of the skinny Jean wearing uncultured lie writing leaches that are ruining this culture we all love and hold so dear. But I laugh it off kid, you can still find the real if you look for it, and it's on us to keep this thing alive and let theese kids know where it came from... So with all that being said the idea of the economy helping cleanse the game is a rather optimistic one and we can only hope it plays true. But I brace my self for another stretch of bad luck.
Peace,
East Coast
13k
East Coast (Stereo Type,Bad Karma)