Sure, you can find 'decent music' if you look. The difference between now and then is you didn't have to look. You could turn on the radio and hear some unbelievable song. Now, you turn on the radio and you hear the same 5 rappers/rnb sounding like a frog over slight variations of a 'crunk'/'trap' beat.
A big part of the problem was the overreliance on 'sampling'... When people started sampling other's music for the majority of their production and stopped producing on their own, you have a whole generation where learning to create your own music from scratch was gone. Sooner or later, you run out of samples to use, so what then? That's why we are where we are today. Most of the nice samples have been used up, and you have guys trying to produce their own music, but they were never reared in that rich, musical lineage, so you have fairly basic production now. Add corporatization in the mix, and you have actual talent being thrown to the side, and mediocre artists who do what their told and who can fit in to the current 'musical formula' getting the limelight.
A big part of the problem was the overreliance on 'sampling'... When people started sampling other's music for the majority of their production and stopped producing on their own, you have a whole generation where learning to create your own music from scratch was gone. Sooner or later, you run out of samples to use, so what then? That's why we are where we are today. Most of the nice samples have been used up, and you have guys trying to produce their own music, but they were never reared in that rich, musical lineage, so you have fairly basic production now. Add corporatization in the mix, and you have actual talent being thrown to the side, and mediocre artists who do what their told and who can fit in to the current 'musical formula' getting the limelight.
The 90s had some of the GOAT music. Still black, still elements of the church.
