"If you try to locate the moment of a major paradigm shift, in the moment, perhaps by calling your album 'Hip Hop Is Dead,' as Nas did in 2006, you're slipping into weatherman territory. Will it rain tomorrow? Will another great rap album pop up? The life spans of genres and art forms are best perceived from the distance of ten or twenty years, if not more. With that in mind, I still suspect that Nas-along with a thousand bloggers-was not fretting needlessly. If I had to pick a year for hip-hop's demise, though, I would choose 2009, not 2006." Everything I've written about rap this year? This is what I meant to say. And here's a video of Freddie Gibbs, the Gary, Indiana rapper profiled in the last section of this excellent piece.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
6
This cat is pretty mediocre. If he's the salvation we're in trouble.
Somebody call Benny Goodman's kid - it's time for big band to take back the stage.
I don't know. I think it died quite awhile ago. If I had to peg it, it'd be sometime in the late 90s between 36 Chambers by the Wu and the whole Puff Daddy's existing fiasco. It had nothing to do with Tupac and B.I.G. being shot other than that they were the last two "gangster" rappers that still cared about word-play and emotion as much as sounding hard. Although Tupac lost that at the end anyway.
People still listen to hip hop?
Gary, Indiana! What a wonderful name, named for Elbert Gary of judiciary fame. Gary, Indiana, as a Shakespeare would say, trips along softly on the tongue this way ...
Not Louisiana; Paris, France; New York or Rome!