Hip-Hop Status Quo

To me, the spirit of Hip-Hop Culture, if one can define such, is an attitude of opposition to the status quo. This is in fact why the VISIBLE aspects of hip-hop are trendy: clothing and merchandise. For anybody who is uncomfortable with the status quo but too lazy or too little interested in making real change, it's easy to adopt the appearance to fake the spirit. That is emblematic of the problem with a cultural infusion of outsiders into Hip-Hop Culture.

These same outsiders who for years have NOT yearned for the kinds of change that Chuck D, KRS, Aceyalone or Cee-Lo embody are suddenly expected to understand this discontent and resonate with it? It's far more likely they would try to change hip-hop to fit THEIR world, and not vice versa. That's basic human nature and the pattern is well documented.

To this end, I would also like to add that the dichotomy of the status quo versus the spirit of rebellion also defines the love/hate relationship we have with pop rap. Rebellion and commercial success do not have a history of going hand in hand. For a time an outsider to the pop music world may become trendy, and once in a while they build a loyal enough fanbase to survive the decades. Generally though pop artists are expected to sing and care about nothing except love, sex, and the occasional drug (preferably alcoholic). Fast life, fast cars. Nothing that challenges materialism, racism, or capitalism. Our distrust of pop rap music comes from the fact that these kind of messages are anathema to the spirit from which hip-hop was born.

I'm not trying to be revisionist and deny that the music was a party in the late 70's and 80's, but the spirit OF the party itself was a cultural response to oppression racism and disenfranchisement and the fact this spirit lay at the heart of hip-hop was what allowed it to evolve from liberation on the dancefloor to liberation of the mind.

These days there may be too wide of a dichotomy between the two but that's another topic altogether. My point is that hip-hop culturally has a hard time assimilating vapid music and mental music together; which causes friction and tension. Meaningless music is not in itself harmful and can be good for the spirit in small sugar fix doses but when allowed to dominate the hip-hop scene it has a harmful effect much like eating too many sweets causes cavities: it bores holes into the spirit of hip-hop and eats away at the core.

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