Now this to me hardly seems to be the case. Ever since Grandmaster Flash and Grand Wizard Theodore pioneered the turntable as a musical instrument, hip-hop and vinyl have gone hand in hand. There's no reason to believe they won't in the future either -- vinyl has never been more popular and more and more people are going from "bedroom DJ's" as Josh 'DJ Shadow' Davis once was to hip-hop producers and musicians of their own.
So what's the real beef? The purists among hip-hop believe that all hip-hop should BE on vinyl, not just be DJ'd with vinyl. Furthermore they believe CD's are a technology which was meant to replace and destroy vinyl altogether because of their durability and usability. The most insulting thing of all to said purists is that some people have tried to invent "CD Scratchers" that allow you to manipulate a CD in the same way a DJ does vinyl for cutting and scratching of music.
Now personally, I think CD Scratchers are a joke -- they don't sound 1/10th as good as true vinyl DJing does. However for me that's not the issue. Hip-Hop has always been about innovating -- taking things that had never been done before with instruments or musical styles and blending or reinventing them into something better. Who's to say that CD's and vinyl can't compliment each other; when a DJ can play a beat from one and scratch with the other? What if a new way to use CD's comes about that nobody has even thought of yet? It doesn't have to replace vinyl. Rather, CD's become another part of the arsenal a DJ uses. Quite frankly, not everybody in the world owns a turntable anyway -- just like not everybody in the world owns a compact disc player. It takes a lot of ego to tell somebody not to buy a $12 CD or an $8 tape when they just spent $25 for the double weight four album version of the same release.
People should be allowed to innovate or create hip-hop in any way they see fit. If not, the music and the culture will become as stagnant as rock and roll has -- cliched riffs and cliched lyrics. We need people like DJ Shadow and DJ Premier who combine both the old technology and the cutting edge of NEW technology to keep hip-hop alive for the Ninety-Now and beyond.
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