Word: hops
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Shatema, why can't we use this hip hop that you swear is yet to come attack the existing canon of hip hop's objectification and hatred of women, the males' insistence that we look half-black and Filipino or we won't see them? It should and will (I have thousands of things to say on that subject). We have to keep the problems straight in our mind and not attack sexism like it's a new thing, created by hip hop. True, women are most likely to be killed by someone they know, but why? Femme-hop...
This one kid I know recently claimed in one of those infamous dining hall hip hop conversations that we are currently in the "Golden Age of hip hop." "There's so much variety," he said ever-so-dreamily, "so much experimentation, so many opportunities to get involved in the rapidly growing industry...." I just sat and smiled, waiting for the heated response I knew would come from one of my boys. You should have been there for the screams and shouts--and my peripheral laughter. But on the real, all jokes aside, my man dropped science...
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...
...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...