Dear Thursday: Hip-Hop, Do You Know Where You’re Going To?

Photo by Andrew Siguenza

So as many of you know, I used to be a huge fan of hip-hop, and now I’m really … well not so much. I liked the last Kanye West album. I like a couple of the cuts off of the last Nas album. I thought the last Jay-Z album was a great piece of nostalgia. I don’t even listen to Nelly anymore. And the other day I asked my husband, “Do you think it would actually be physically possible for me to be anymore sick of ‘Blame It’ without being moved to create a felonous act just so I would never have to hear it again?”

I still listen to other types of music, so I know it’s not a case of my ears no longer being open like a lot of people my age. Also, I work in Top 40, so I have the charts to back me up on this. The number of hip-hop songs in the Top 40 have been in steady decline for a few years now. It’s kind of like the anti-climatic end of a bad marriage — the conversation just gets sparser and sparser until the day that one of you just up and asks for a divorce.

I haven’t asked hip-hop for a divorce yet, but let me tell you, I’ve been thinking about it. I wonder where are relationship is going. It’s gotten stale. Hip-hop no longer seems to want to try anything new, and it’s not even attempting to blow my mind. It just trots out the same tropes and stereotypes, no surpises to the point that I have to ask hip-hop, “Hey, when did you get so vanilla? Seriously, you might as well be Pat Boone, you’ve gotten that bland.”

Lately I’ve found myself wondering if this is all there is to a fire hip-hop-wise. Will another artist or movement come along that really sets me on fire, or will hip-hop just continue to recycle themes (badly) until it Nickelbacks out like rock and roll? We’ll see.

Til then, I found this Atlantic roundtable on the state of rap fascinating.