At the risk of totally offending and causing further emotional harm to an already Emo generation, I would like to discuss what I call Hip Hop’s lost decade – 2000-2010.
Let’s be honest – even the hipster/twenty-somethings fully admit that hip hops golden era was the mid 90′s.
Since 1998, there has been a steady retread of attempts to personify this mid 90′s aesthetic. The only attempt to move hip hop away from the classic 90′s form, was the synthesis of Hop Hop into ‘Pop’ music, and even this held to the fashion and attitude of the 90′s aesthetic.
From my perspective, in 1998, I was able to recite – without hesitation – the producer, writer, album, and year of almost any hip hop song after listening to just the first bar. I was albe to retain most of the history of hip hop in my meagre brain.
From 2000-2010 hip hop grew exponentially, but not in quality. What we got was a rapid growth of attempts to reproduce or further stylize artist images from the mid 90s’.
For example – Hieroglyphics and Del could be seen as the founders of ‘nerd rap’, Rza and Wu the forefathers of ‘death’ rap, etc etc. This is further demonstrated by the number of ‘guest appearances’ of these mid 90′s artists on the new stylized artists projects. (too many average mid 90′s artists are living off of nostalgia – but that’s another post)
As far as I am concerned, almost every artist that has released a hip hop record between 2000 and 2010 (myself included) has made no significant contribution to advancing the art form. We will not have the legacy of artists like Nas, Wu, TuPac, Dr. Dre, etc.
We have simply maintained the artform, we have ‘carried the torch’ – albeit admirably. However, this is also why I can never remember the names of all of the new ‘flavour of the month’ rappers and producers; the volume is overwhelming. Because the music is so rooted in nostalgia, those of us old enough to remember the mid 90′s as it happened, find ourselves saying the same thing about new music, ”this sound like (insert 90′s rapper here)”.
This is not to say that the music is not good – there are great songs and great albums – but nothing that pushes the limits of the art form.
What is fascinating to me, is for those people who are hearing the mid 90′s hip hop, and today’s hip hop all for the first time – how do they synthesize this? It is one giant wall of music?
I guess this is how you end up with people putting Nas, Tupac, Rakim, Necro and Aesop Rock on the same top 10 lists.
Posted in Hip Hop, music
