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Soundtracks: Dope or Deadweight?

© Steve Juon

It's hard to keep up these days. Every week it seems like there is at least one if not two new soundtracks with anywhere from five to twelve new hip-hop cuts on it. Did we, the fickle consumer, create this marketing phenomenon?

In some sense, we must have. We bought soundtracks from movies we loved (such as Friday) that were unto their own mostly generic in content and had little to nothing to do with the film. Based on the platinum success of these soundtracks, greedy record executives figured that hip-hop soundtracks were the newest way to cash in on an unsuspecting public.

This is not to say all hip-hop soundtracks are bullshit, nor that all hip-hop soundtracks have songs which are totally unrelated to the actual film. In some cases, movies like New Jack City, Menace II Society, and Juice featured class A soundtracks with quality new songs by highly regarded hip-hop artists in films where the songs were actually used in a manner and way that made sense. It seems today though that soundtracks are little more than marketing tools to get no-name artists recognized and for established artists to throwaway their lesser material. Even when you have quality songs on a soundtrack like "How to Be a Player" by EPMD or Eightball and MJG, you have generic garbage by MC's like Suga Free and the Usual Suspects. For the most part, the wack songs tend to outweigh the good ones.

What's my point? Even were I to say that the public shouldn't invest in soundtracks it wouldn't make any difference: people run to buy _Money Talks_ just to hear the latest songs by Lil' Kim and Mase without realizing that they've just gotten burned. In my case, I'd rather wait to see if such songs come out on their next album, a 12", or a mix tape. If for no other reason, I simply CAN'T afford to buy every new soundtrack that drops on the scene, so I'd rather not buy any of them unless I get a rare comeup where I have more funds than I know what to do with.

Peace, Flash

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