How Did Hip Hop Get So Old?

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Now the "young n1ggas" like Drake, Kendrick and J. Cole are closer to 30 than they are to 20....

Drake-27
J. Cole-28
Kendrick-26

Danny Brown is 32 and he is a part of the "new school" wave....

Even someone that is the ultimate symbol of "young and hip" A$AP Rocky is 25....

Biggie and Tupac were living legends that had come and gone by 25...

Nas, Cube, Rakim, Outkast, Tribe, EPMD and L.L. all had classics before their 21st birthdays...

Same with female rappers... Nicki Minaj is 31...Roxeanne Shante and Foxy Brown were ringing out when they were teenagers and Latifah and Lyte had already hung their jerseys in the hall of fame and moved on to other ventures by that age...

Where are all the voices of the cats 18-23 at and why aren't they being heard? Is it label politics holding the young dudes back, or is a career of a rapper just not something thats appealing to young guys?
 
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kingdizzy01 said:
these days we still got 30 year olds living with parents and its considered normal behavior.

times have changed with the environment.
Click to expand...
Good point...

I was just thinking about how Biggie and Pac were both married by 25 and just seems more mature than an A.S.A.P.


Maybe the answer is just that kids grew up much faster years ago...
 
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Multiple Factors,

Fans are willing to buy records from older artists (I remember in 1990 thinking i cant believe these old dudes still trying to rap.. i was thinking about 25 year olds)
Labels market more broadly not just to the youth demographic (Broadening of hip hop consumers)
Labels rather rely on a proven record (Busta Bust keeps getting signed even though he hasnt sold a lot of records for a long time)
Artists actually make money (In the 80s and 90s rappers stopped at 25 or less because they needed a real job to feed their families)
Independent Hustle (Kendrick & Many have dropped records before their current age they just havent dropped Major Label records)
 
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i think it takes longer to get put on now days. back then you could send your demo and if you had skills you were signed and put out an album a year later now labels wait for you to drop mixtape after mixtape to build your fanbase cause they're not doing that work anymore then sign you, then drop more mixtapes then you put out an album. that's like 4 years right there
 
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The starting point for a lot of rappers was different as well. A lot of the pioneers were raised on Hip Hop and began working on their crafts early on. Even though they had gotten record deals at relatively young ages, they had been doing it years prior to getting in the industry.

There have been quite a few instances of cats (these days) who hadn't been rapping no more than a few months to a year before pursuing it... " I wasn't no rapper. I just played around, but people were telling me my sh*t was hot. I been rapping seriously for like 8 months. "
 
TheBeeShine

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gator_king said:
Biggie and Tupac were living legends that had come and gone by 25...

Nas, Cube, Rakim, Outkast, Tribe, EPMD and L.L. all had classics before their 21st birthdays...
Click to expand...

in that time period, there were only a few hundred rappers. now that there are a few hundred thousand rappers, the odds are in favor of a wider age range.
 
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