If you are one to say Hiphop is dead. Who are your personal TOP 3 Suspects? :

[BlackDiBiase]

Drake - literally the fakest mf in rap. If you follow dude's career he started off adopting styles and themes from other rappers and always portrayed an image, always came off with some kind of gimmick. Dude is literally 0 substance all hype. First he was this backpacking Kanye wannabe, then he's the "Young Sweet Jones" despite being from fukking Canada, next he's singing his heart out making odes to the hoes, after that he's this mobster type with the mafioso raps, at the same time a pop icon with songs that hardly resemble rap, mf got like 50 personalities and all of em lame

Jay-Z - same as Drake, just different era. Came up riding other artists waves, taking their styles, ideas and lyrics. Objectively his catalog is mediocre at best. Stans hype him up to be some kind of business genius but in reality the mf is just an opportunist who made the right connections. Not to mention he's been dropping 20 years worth of garbo after coming out of "retirement" trying to come off on some "I'm too cool to flow on a beat" type of shyt

6ixn9ne - a fukking cancer of an artist, rapped about murders, being a gangster and all that hardcore shyt, law got on his ass, started singing like the opera, even tried to justify his snitching. I'm not even going to touch on the tattoos, colored hair and use of the n-word.

I'm pointing out these three because I think they had a large influence on where the game was headed, not saying there's not a thousand other wack motherfukkers that made shyt music but these are the leaders

I like how you can call Jay on it. Bad enough he made every MC throw away the pen and paper to say they "came off the dome" but integrity/money over art and then bragging about it. He didn't even show to Hiphop50th Celebration, and turned it foul.

 

[3333broadway]

The South Killed Hip Hop and we all know it.

As soon as NYC lost the culture it died.

 

[L. Deezy]

1. Kanye 808's phase- birthed all these trash ass Emo artists and Drake.

2. Future - with all this drug abuser rap

3. Migos and that same cadence everyone in the south still using. Although its wayyyyy more tolerable than the first two mentioned

 

[Mastamimd]

The South Killed Hip Hop and we all know it.

As soon as NYC lost the culture it died.

Blame your trash ass DJs for wave riding instead of us dog all they had to do was promote your people in YOUR city. South been making moves since the 90s and during that time depending on the platform we were getting blackballed damn near. Saying the South is why nyc lost the culture is lazy, y'all gotta look in the mirror for that man

 

[Mastamimd]

Not to mention during the wackest time period y'all was putting out shyt like Arab Music y'all can't act like it was just us man, and we had multiple classic albums as well as dope movements during the time we "ruined" hip hop. If anything we saved it from being second fiddle

 

[Mike Wins]

Blame your trash ass DJs for wave riding instead of us dog all they had to do was promote your people in YOUR city. South been making moves since the 90s and during that time depending on the platform we were getting blackballed damn near. Saying the South is why nyc lost the culture is lazy, y'all gotta look in the mirror for that man

Truth. T.I., Wayne and Rick Ross was way more talented and better lyricists than the local rappers New York was jocking and promoting while the south was supposedly ruining hip hop.

New York letting its standards drop and refusing to support the local artists that actually had talent is a New York problem.

 

[BlackDiBiase]

Truth. T.I., Wayne and Rick Ross was way more talented and better lyricists than the local rappers New York was jocking and promoting while the south was supposedly ruining hip hop.

New York letting its standards drop and refusing to support the local artists that actually had talent is a New York problem.

Facts! NYC started getting lazy and even though Papoose was not my type of rapper I recognize his skills and he deserves more than to be doing this Clarissa Shields cuckold thing he is on. That's how NY do their legends with no support, It's the mecca if the top is like that. These other 'opps to the culture' are going to smell food.

The picture is online. A brunch dinner with all the new 360 hipop label A&Rs and execs they were all yacubian. Toasting to the destruction and ugly representation they are banking off. That picture is disgusting, not one black presence there.

Blame Steve Stoute too, a useless middleman who broke the cultures back when he started giving hiphop appeal to Gwenyth Paltrow and them with the 'Tanning of America' and other failed hiphop ventures.

 

[Buckeye Fever]

Soulja Boy Tell Him

Crank Dat blew up, but the song was AWFUL. It makes Turn My Swag On sound like It Ain't Hard To Tell.

I actually love Turn My Swag On

 

[BlackDiBiase]

I DON'T USE A PEN AND PAPER I AM OFF THE TOP

Both Biggie and Jay-Z were lying. It's the Producers who are in the same bed as Jay and profit from him that say that dumb sh1t that I never seen him use a pen and paper just nodding and then made a whole record

- He used a pen and paper in JD's car for the verse in 'Money ain't a thing'. Dehaven talks about Jay always having scraps pieces of paper with rhymes on him and finally there is footage of him in the studio getting interviewed and there is a pen and paper pad right on the equipment. Jay wants to inflate himself and seem like a deity I mean he did have a silent birth after all.

- Biggie never ever ever recorded his collabos with anyone present. With the Lox Biggie went home. With BTNH Biggie went home. With Jay-Z Biggie went home to do his verses, and etc.

Why wouldn't Big lay his verse down when others are doing so? Lil Cease already slipped up Biggie used to write his rhymes on pen and pad and he used it for Lil Kim too unless his telepathic. Biggie was conning dudes and so does Jay and now every Rapper who thinks he has skills throws away a pen and pad ie. Lil Wayne and rambles garbage for us.

 

[BK The Great]

Ringtone era was trash too. And all that sales talk watered down the music and made it all about commercial bullshyt music.

 

[Buckeye Fever]

Ringtone era was trash too. And all that sales talk watered down the music and made it all about commercial bullshyt music.

I forgot to mention about how Soulja Boy should get some credit for YouTube blowing up with that trash ass song. It's the "Laffy Taffy" of solo songs

 

[Rekkapryde]

The South Killed Hip Hop and we all know it.

As soon as NYC lost the culture it died.

The minute NYC made selling out for radio play cool and everyone following the Puff Blueprint, it was over.

NYC who frowned upon crossing over forever changing it up, that was it.

All you needed was a catchy beat/hook and limited skills after that and it's gotten worse ever since.

 

[Amo Husserl]

1. Telecommunications Act of 1996 removing regional sounds and local gatekeepers from the culture and letting in the big corporations full of mountain climbers who play electric guitar and their wives and mistresses on payroll to uniform hip-hop for mass appeal while slowly taking the integrity out of the music. Can't put Diddy in the top 3 'cause the record labels that benefitted from the '96 Act were already doing that anyway even if it wasn't as blatant as Diddy's shiny suit era. Pete Rock and InI gettin' shelved was the first real casualty and sign for what was to come back in '95. I think 1994 was the last year hip-hop was allowed to be hip-hop for the sake of celebrating Black expression.

2 & 3. MC Serch linkin' Nas to Columbia Records and the business of hip-hop, hip-hop was different before and after Illmatic 'cause four producers on the album came from some of the best groups at the time.

I don't think Serch was nefarious gettin' Nas his deal on Columbia, but the effect didn't do hip-hop favors after '95. Illmatic was a paradigm shift not only for the culture of hip-hop but the business model for hip-hop. Although Illmatic is a great album, I think it was mentioned in record company meetings before and after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a model for labels to divide and conquer hip-hop by aggressively separating emcees from producers and limiting the cohesion of the album format that came from the emcee-producer combination.

Now there was money for producers and emcees to go outside their groups and compete against their group's interests for financial success. I think Pete Rock & CL Smooth were a casualty of this 'cause Illmatic dropped before The Main Ingredient, then Center of Attention gets shelved the following year and It Was Written drops in 1996. Those four albums across '94 and '96 represent a development and rejection of certain content in hip-hop.

I don't think it was a coincidence IWW was a mainstream hit for Nas when it dropped a couple months after the Telecommunications Act of 1996. As far as hip-hop concerned, I think IWW and Nas's early career was a product of the '96 Act and showed the music industry was starting to get serious about profiting from hip-hop by elevating it to the mainstream. One emcee could now be boosted by the hottest producers at the time and have some of the hottest features and that was likely more cost effective for labels going forward. Columbia Records also had the Harvard Report as a playbook to get into and market Black music.

What I'm tryna say is, Nas was the record label prototype for the hip-hop star. I think 2Pac was supposed to be that but became too much of a risk for labels even if he was still an influential factor on hip-hop aesthetics.

1994 was the last year of hip-hop for the sake of hip-hop. Afterward there was sustained label pressure for artists to have a hit single for radio, not a hit album for the culture. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 moved the conversation away from what was good for the culture to what was good for business and I think MC Serch alley oop'd that to Columbia with Nas.

FWIW, I think Jay-Z and Nas beefin' saved Nas from becomin' a casualty of industry.


I wasn't there.

 

[Mastamimd]

1. Telecommunications Act of 1996 removing regional sounds and local gatekeepers from the culture and letting in the big corporations full of mountain climbers who play electric guitar and their wives and mistresses on payroll to uniform hip-hop for mass appeal while slowly taking the integrity out of the music. Can't put Diddy in the top 3 'cause the record labels that benefitted from the '96 Act were already doing that anyway even if it wasn't as blatant as Diddy's shiny suit era. Pete Rock and InI gettin' shelved was the first real casualty and sign for what was to come back in '95. I think 1994 was the last year hip-hop was allowed to be hip-hop for the sake of celebrating Black expression.

2 & 3. MC Serch linkin' Nas to Columbia Records and the business of hip-hop, hip-hop was different before and after Illmatic 'cause four producers on the album came from some of the best groups at the time.

I don't think Serch was nefarious gettin' Nas his deal on Columbia, but the effect didn't do hip-hop favors after '95. Illmatic was a paradigm shift not only for the culture of hip-hop but the business model for hip-hop. Although Illmatic is a great album, I think it was mentioned in record company meetings before and after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a model for labels to divide and conquer hip-hop by aggressively separating emcees from producers and limiting the cohesion of the album format that came from the emcee-producer combination.

Now there was money for producers and emcees to go outside their groups and compete against their group's interests for financial success. I think Pete Rock & CL Smooth were a casualty of this 'cause Illmatic dropped before The Main Ingredient, then Center of Attention gets shelved the following year and It Was Written drops in 1996. Those four albums across '94 and '96 represent a development and rejection of certain content in hip-hop.

I don't think it was a coincidence IWW was a mainstream hit for Nas when it dropped a couple months after the Telecommunications Act of 1996. As far as hip-hop concerned, I think IWW and Nas's early career was a product of the '96 Act and showed the music industry was starting to get serious about profiting from hip-hop by elevating it to the mainstream. One emcee could now be boosted by the hottest producers at the time and have some of the hottest features and that was likely more cost effective for labels going forward. Columbia Records also had the Harvard Report as a playbook to get into and market Black music.

What I'm tryna say is, Nas was the record label prototype for the hip-hop star. I think 2Pac was supposed to be that but became too much of a risk for labels even if he was still an influential factor on hip-hop aesthetics.

1994 was the last year of hip-hop for the sake of hip-hop. Afterward there was sustained label pressure for artists to have a hit single for radio, not a hit album for the culture. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 moved the conversation away from what was good for the culture to what was good for business and I think MC Serch alley oop'd that to Columbia with Nas.

FWIW, I think Jay-Z and Nas beefin' saved Nas from becomin' a casualty of industry.


I wasn't there.

I like this because these two factored in to the beginning of the end of the DJ

 

[BlackDiBiase]

1. Telecommunications Act of 1996 removing regional sounds and local gatekeepers from the culture and letting in the big corporations full of mountain climbers who play electric guitar and their wives and mistresses on payroll to uniform hip-hop for mass appeal while slowly taking the integrity out of the music. Can't put Diddy in the top 3 'cause the record labels that benefitted from the '96 Act were already doing that anyway even if it wasn't as blatant as Diddy's shiny suit era. Pete Rock and InI gettin' shelved was the first real casualty and sign for what was to come back in '95. I think 1994 was the last year hip-hop was allowed to be hip-hop for the sake of celebrating Black expression.

2 & 3. MC Serch linkin' Nas to Columbia Records and the business of hip-hop, hip-hop was different before and after Illmatic 'cause four producers on the album came from some of the best groups at the time.

I don't think Serch was nefarious gettin' Nas his deal on Columbia, but the effect didn't do hip-hop favors after '95. Illmatic was a paradigm shift not only for the culture of hip-hop but the business model for hip-hop. Although Illmatic is a great album, I think it was mentioned in record company meetings before and after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a model for labels to divide and conquer hip-hop by aggressively separating emcees from producers and limiting the cohesion of the album format that came from the emcee-producer combination.

Now there was money for producers and emcees to go outside their groups and compete against their group's interests for financial success. I think Pete Rock & CL Smooth were a casualty of this 'cause Illmatic dropped before The Main Ingredient, then Center of Attention gets shelved the following year and It Was Written drops in 1996. Those four albums across '94 and '96 represent a development and rejection of certain content in hip-hop.

I don't think it was a coincidence IWW was a mainstream hit for Nas when it dropped a couple months after the Telecommunications Act of 1996. As far as hip-hop concerned, I think IWW and Nas's early career was a product of the '96 Act and showed the music industry was starting to get serious about profiting from hip-hop by elevating it to the mainstream. One emcee could now be boosted by the hottest producers at the time and have some of the hottest features and that was likely more cost effective for labels going forward. Columbia Records also had the Harvard Report as a playbook to get into and market Black music.

What I'm tryna say is, Nas was the record label prototype for the hip-hop star. I think 2Pac was supposed to be that but became too much of a risk for labels even if he was still an influential factor on hip-hop aesthetics.

1994 was the last year of hip-hop for the sake of hip-hop. Afterward there was sustained label pressure for artists to have a hit single for radio, not a hit album for the culture. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 moved the conversation away from what was good for the culture to what was good for business and I think MC Serch alley oop'd that to Columbia with Nas.

FWIW, I think Jay-Z and Nas beefin' saved Nas from becomin' a casualty of industry.


I wasn't there.

What!?

Props on the in-depth take, sh1t was dope.