Hip Hop originality, and why I don't crowd surf
I love hip-hop. It's my go-to genre, the soundtrack to my life, and sometimes the reason I enjoy waking up in the middle of the night. Bars show up while I'm being attacked by the dudes who made South Park after I tell them Baseketball looked like it would be a fun sport for real, and they should fund my efforts to make it happen.
I've gleefully wiped the sleep from my eyes, just to type out some punchlines that only serve to amuse me and help fill out my personal freestyle collection overtime.
The art of it is beautiful. But man, sometimes I have to fight the urge to mimic what other cats are doing, and just duplicate their music full shop.
No one can prevent me from using the same old stories, the same tired tropes. The lane is wide open.
I'm not gonna rag on the mainstream, or indie darlings. I'm off my "real hip hop" steeze, and just allow the world to do what it does in peace. I'm just a cat who's looking to at both sides of the creative table, and noticing that wobbly leg has become an accepted part of the whole deal
Everybody wants to be Hogan(80s, maybe even early NWO era). They want the popularity and everything that comes along with that. When the market is flooded with cats promoting themselves as "the guy", it means that no one really is.
That's what makes potential fans tune out more often than not. It's the reason cats write off the genre as a whole, and assume it's all the same across the board, because the most visible artists vie for the same imaginary spot, all the freaking time.
I don't understand why anyone would want to pigeonhole themselves like that. It feels like a creative dead end for a sector of the culture that's supposed to showcase juggernauts, titans, and verbal wizards.
As a lyrics guy, I'll say that you don't have to compete with what Slaughterhouse tried to do(they focused on the who can rap better trope, but also made a few songs that displayed creative growth from Ortiz as a storyteller, and had Royce jump back in his Death is Certain bag from time to time), just make it a point to establish yourself AS YOURSELF.
I'm not against the cats who get on the mic just to talk their shit. I dig that, AND know just how fun it is.
Shooting off at the mouth should at least be an inventive venture, a display of lyrical prowess and wit. But too often, it's just empty bravado, recycled rhymes, and predictable punches. Hip Hop is over 50 years old. It's safe to say we're just abot bragged out at this point. You'll never run out of subject matter, so go ahead and explore the bounds of just who this awesome mofo you say you are really is.
The fucked up thing is, there are fans who seem perfectly content with "whatever." They'll consume anything, as long as it fits the current trend.
Speaking of Slaughterhouse, Joe Budden pointed out the bizarro nature of the average rap fan, during his battle against Hollow Da Don, stating:
...Yall booin' the hard shit...
The biggest reactions from that battle were after some pretty standard issue gun bars. Hollow started his first verse talking about how the industry only cared about Battle Rap when they realized they could squeeze a few dollars out of it, and how they tried to low ball him for the Total Slaughter event. Mostly, the crowd only made noise when he name checked Rosenberg, and Shady.
The pleaser is always ripe for getting squeezed. They're used until they no longer have a use, then are quickly thrown out like moldy bread.
I could have said soggy lemon, but that's a predictable follow up for the squeeze annalogy. Pretty sure I can bring up missmatched phrasings in a later journal entry, and square this circle by linking to this later.
Yeah, that's seems like a mad scientist type thing I'd likely do.🧪
Heres my reasoning for making "Vacant Care" the way I did: The crowd pleaser is only liked for a short time, then promptly tossed to the side when someone else starts to get attention from the audience. I never wanna leave the validity of my creations in the hands of people who view everything as being disposable water-cooler fodder.
I wanted to break free from tired conventions, to create something that felt genuine to me. I wanted to explore the atmosphere of the world without relying on the hip-hop laden crutches of my all time favorites.
Establishing a narrative was something I made sure to do during the planning process. Before the first bar, or title for a song was work-shopped, I wrote the story for what I wanted to say. It was just a mind dump, and I took everything I felt was important for making my point, and built the project around that.
I wanted to avoid making something vapid and samey. If Vacant Care was designed as a modern commercial rap album, I'd be locked into the cage of whatever that definition is as of you reading this. The album would be subject to a broad brush stroke used for judgement of all common rap music today.
Being uncommon was the key. I'm not the guy who reps a set. I'm a loner who likes staying to himself, and doesn't share the values of cats who pride themselves on rotting away on a certain block, in a city that doesn't care about their life or death unless they rock jackets or hats that hype the local sports team in a video
. I can't stand the people in the town I grew up in. I'll never have anything nice to say about any of them.
Fuck those zombies.🧟
I know the "real hip hop" argument has been beaten into the ground, but there's a good reason for that. Rap being a lucrative venture for those running record labels means you'll wind up with a lot of basic and uninspiring material. Artists have to play it safe, right? Nothing is safer than replicating the efforts of your contemporaries, in hopes to match their success.
Truth be told: if musicians were getting the majority of the money made from these contracts being signed, I'd be more willing to accept the grift. I don't want artists of any medium to struggle. The all time greats that we learned about in art class shouldn't have died broke, but did. I wanna see artists valued more than they have been, no matter the medium.
If you make it to the point where these companies wanna work with you, the creator should in fact be the one who benefits the most from that alliance. But because it isn't that way, the most I can hope for is genuine artistry from the people being pushed as elite in the world of Hip Hop.
Whether I agree with who's got the culture eating out of their hands, I'm still in a place where I need to walk my own path. I can record songs that tell what I'm thinking, how I feel things can be changed, or create a world of fiction that encompasses a chunky stew of events related to my experiences. It all depends on how I'm feeling at the time. The less creative option only serves to slow production in the early stages.
And I can't get down like that because...well...I'm tryna eat out here, ya know?
