Word: hipping
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Basically, my boy argued that now that it has caught the world's limelight as the definitive music and culture of our generation, hip hop is not at a cultural peak but is instead marked for death. Since hip hop started as an urban counterculture of sorts, its current worldwide appeal has rid it of its most essential element, its countercultural defiance. It's now a genre up for grabs, a space for marketing frenzies. Consequently, its prominent products comprise not much more than mediocre commercial formulas devoid of the creative zeal of yesteryear, aimed instead at providing new images...
...interlocutor, the Golden Age advocate, responded that there are still quality rap acts today that wouldn't be able to gain as much exposure as they do if hip hop culture did not garner such global fascination. Good point. If there's anything I would like to see happen in the industry as it stands now, it's that groups like Black Star and The Roots go at least platinum. (By the way, I can't believe Things Fall Apart is only gold! And Black Star has barely hit the 200,000 copies mark....Shame on you, readers and consumers...
...needs a public eye larger than the pockets of "real heads" in the urban centers of the world? When the culture's audience and participants grow, so does the culture's production of nonsense in order to satisfy the new buyers who never knew that Stetsasonic predates The Roots' hip hop band idea, or that the Jungle Brothers were once dope. The culture is only hurt by fans who get schooled about the music by the simplistic sampling techniques of Puffy and the Trackmasters...
...listen and learn. I'm one to side with my boy, and not just for parrochial reasons--I enjoy certain people's company (like Golden Age Man) precisely because they say some outlandish and thus inspiring stuff. But bottom line, I think I've sensed somber days for hip hop much more often than glorious ones: pretty much every time I leaf through rap magazines, or when I think about the fact that the dopest tracks that have dropped in the past couple years will probably never go beyond vinyl singles played on college radio shows like Harvard...
However, I wouldn't go so far as to say that hip hop is sure to die. At least not anytime soon. They might be few, but there are moments when hip hop actually pays...