Learning to Accept Rap’s Generation Gap. Written by J-Zone

[Pool_Shark]

You know what Calvin Butts inspired me to do? Buy Dr. Dre’s The Chronic just to spite him, though I didn’t care much for it at the time. I supported Dre to score a point for my generation. Take that, you ol’ “we shall overcome” sangin’, civil rights haircut havin’-ass nikka. fukk you, fukk your church and fukk your crusade – I will never relate to you.

Maybe today’s music and the world that inspires it is really getting progressively worse. But even if that’s the case, I had to learn that it won’t affect the music I create, listen to or write about for those niche-ass lists I post. It won’t affect how I pay taxes, eat, sleep or shyt, so who gives a single, solitary fukk? What I choose to ignore was not made for me anyway.

He just had to sneak that in there.


Good read.

I think the reason why a lot of people resent older people is cause they constantly shyt on anything new. Like I see someone making a thread about BootCamp Click and and start listening to the albums like but then they gotta start saying shyt like "This is back when hip-hop was about something" It's like even when it's about them and there music they still feel the need too shyt on the stuff I bump so it kinda creates a divide. Realized a while ago though, that I'm not never gonna have a full grasp on hip-hop the way someone did coming up in New York during it's best years. I'm only gonna like what I like and getting into the history is useless cause all history does is put down the current music. I tried to get into those old dusty records where people are rapping about selling drugs and murdering people, nod my head, but other than the beats most of the rappers just sound the same. Honestly, in my opinion I appreciate how much diveristy in flows and other things there now, where as someone from before puts a huge focus on lyrics. Maybe I don't hear it, cause my ears didn't develop in that era but that's what it is.

 

[CrimsonTider]

nothing groundbreaking here....

there's actually a lot i want to say, but it'd be wasted on this site, but i wonder if my take on hip hop (current vs past) is because i fall in the "gap" generation that experienced a lot of eras (ppl born 81/82-86/87), because i have brothers who are 11 & 8 yrs older than me, or because i'm not completely old enough to be on some "this isn't hip hop" shyt

Pretty much in line with the overall theme of relativism as it relates to hip hop, that I've been touting on here and the for years...it's a simple enough concept that I'm still shocked that so many people fail to grasp, instead falling predictably into cliched nostalgia driven glory-dayism and idealism

To my nikkas fighting the good fight against these lames.

Its amazing how everything about their opinion of rap is fueled by how the music was that was the "soundtrack to their youth"

My biggest thing is when these dudes complaining about what gets played on the radio.

They always code their BS with the statement "Radio needs Balance"

When we know they are mad because radio doesn't play the music they like.

 

[Tetris v2.0]

The pendulum does swing back in the other direction. I think some people will go to the same lengths as the nostalgics and the "purists" to blindly defend their PRESENT

Styles and trends come and go with the years. But markets and technologies actually change though. For better or worse, they way we consume media and the way that it is presented to us has changed in the last 2 years and 5 years, let alone the last 10 and the last 15. These changes have a greater effect than just hairstyles, slang and the width of one's pant legs.

The entire perception of Hip-Hop has changed. Its dumb and pointless to bytch, moan and complain over spilled milk, but to deny that reality is even dumber. The MEDIUM of rap is speaking to a wider demog and a much different one than before, and its speaking FROM wider and very different demogs and interest groups, because the advertising and overall business potential for the genre/culture has been revealed over time....

Rap seems to have meant something significant to a certain age group that it doesnt seem to mean to its newer generation....

Maybe people should be a bit more critical of how the medium is being used and appropriated without falling into the typical cliched traps of saying "our old corny shyt > your new faggy shyt"

 

[CrimsonTider]

The pendulum does swing back in the other direction. I think some people will go to the same lengths as the nostalgics and the "purists" to blindly defend their PRESENT

Styles and trends come and go with the years. But markets and technologies actually change though. For better or worse, they way we consume media and the way that it is presented to us has changed in the last 2 years and 5 years, let alone the last 10 and the last 15. These changes have a greater effect than just hairstyles, slang and the width of one's pant legs.

The entire perception of Hip-Hop has changed. Its dumb and pointless to bytch, moan and complain over spilled milk, but to deny that reality is even dumber. The MEDIUM of rap is speaking to a wider demog and a much different one than before, and its speaking FROM wider and very different demogs and interest groups, because the advertising and overall business potential for the genre/culture has been revealed over time....

Rap seems to have meant something significant to a certain age group that it doesnt seem to mean to its newer generation....

Maybe people should be a bit more critical of how the medium is being used and appropriated without falling into the typical cliched traps of saying "our old corny shyt > your new faggy shyt"

This is a great response

 

[daze23]

If you were a teenager in the ’90s and didn’t know which song came after “Zig Zag” on the Car Wash Soundtrack from 1976, that’d be pretty Goddamn sad, too, right? Or does that sound a bit ridiculous?

that's kinda how I feel when these youngsters try to tell me about the scene in the 90's. I don't claim to shyt about the music that was popular around the time I was born. I mean in retrospect I know the popular singles and whatnot, but I'm not gonna claim to have any sort of real perspective

 

[zayk35]

great thread...I too had to realize a few yrs back that ain't no point in shyting on the new sound or arguing about how 89-00 was the best cuz ppl , especially the youngsters just gonna say you hating. And god help me I hate that word "hating/ hater" cuz its the answer to every thing today. So my Ipod is filled with the music that I enjoy and I retired long ago from the Source/XXl mags cuz they no longer really cover the artists I enjoy. Yes I will say I don't enjoy/like todays "rap" and although it doesn't sell like it used to, its worldwide. They don't push "block hardcore" music no more. Hip hop is approaching middle age just like us from the 80's and 90's and none of us do the same things we used to do either, cuz a lot of us grew up and moved out the hood. Hell a lot of us are trying to or doing in life what hip hop is doing and has done.................. CROSSING-OVER and trying to swim in the mainstream.

 

[mozichrome]

man this rap shiit aint that serious where i gotta go back learning about the history of it

either listen to the new music or dont...

 

[daze23]

@ "platinum football fields"

 

[Fmju]

Imma just let y'all have this argument. Old people are too stubborn and younger folks don't care. That's the way it is and it's probably not gonna change for a while. All I know is I like what I like and I could give a damn what anyone else thinks.

 

[frush11]

They always code their BS with the statement "Radio needs Balance"

When we know they are mad because radio doesn't play the music they like.

Completely disagree with this, cause if you grew up during that period then you would know people who did say this.

 

[CrimsonTider]

Completely disagree with this, cause if you grew up during that period then you would know people who did say this.

????

 

[Big Boss]

great read

 

[frush11]

????

I don't know how old you, but radio before the telecom act(1997) was very different to what we get now. And yes there was balance, and yes just like today, you had your popular that got played on a daily. But this playing the same songs over and over was not happening, more music was getting by different artist.

Us older heads don't have a problem with popular being played, but we just have a problem with the fact that, that's all they play. There's much more to modern Black music, than just the same 5-10 artist.

 

[The Bilingual Gringo]

J-Zone the god

He's always got a great point of view when it comes to music. Hands down one of the best artists to have come out in the last 15.

Part of me believes he posts/lurks on hip-hop forum sites.

 

[kermit da hustla]

The real problem is that people are still caught up in calling this Hip Hop this a culture....there is no culture....Its all entertainment. Call it what it is. Culture involves growth.....There is no culture when violence and selling drugs has been ok in rap music for close to 20 years.....thats called entertainment. If there was a culture someone would have checked 2Pac and Jay Z long ago and told them that real men dont put their business out there telling the world they slept with the next mans wife. Thats childish and not the actions of grown mature men. But with entertainment everything is all fair. The entertainment of my young era is gone and we are in the current young era in entertainment. Its not for us...its for them. Its their entertainment let the kids have it. Seems foolish arguing over something using "culture" as a foundation when their really is no "culture."

Selling drugs, and the violence associated with that trade, is part of inner city culture. It's an embedded quality to the hood that is reflected by much of the music coming from that community.