- Reasons - 1. Underground hip-hop is bad right now. Stale, overdone, packed with emcees striving for fame instead of pure musical goodness. It’s been a long time since a straight hip-hop album absolutely blew me away. You might call it a hip-hop vacuum. 2. And as soon as a vacuum exists, we the music journalists want nothing but to fill that void with whatever we can deem as the new “thing”. In this case we’re missing good rap music, so champion what ever is just lying around as good. And once we’ve exposed an opinion, we can’t go back on it, so we’re stuck hyping and hyping and hyping the next seventy volumes of The Carter. 3. Finally, bloggers have a need to indulge that which seems the most out of character. I call it hipster irony (tight jeans? The 80s?) and it’s a goddamn plague, and the main reason why every Bun B album gets a 9 on Pitchfork. - Why I’m Mad - 1. We’re just feeding the machine. We as bloggers have a responsibility to promote good music (and there’s plenty of good mainstream rap) but we also have a responsibility to highlight that which might not be heard. Instead we’re filling our pages with the newest Lil’ Wayne cover, and reviews of DJ Drama’s brand new two-thousand song remix album. Sure, if you like it write about it, but just remember you could be filling that space with a recommendation not backed by Universal. Just a thought. 2. We’re spawning the next wave. I’m sick of rap music these days. I’m sick of the repetitive triple snare of Southern boom-bap, I’m sick of mash-ups, I’m sick of bling and all the shit that comes with it. And when we talk it up, we’re giving it legitimacy and giving reason for there to be more of it. 3. Mainstream artists don’t need us. They’ve got multi-million dollar press robots pumping out one-sheets and banners and sparkly videos. Who does need us? The multitude of high quality rappers on the verge right now, the Saigons, the Why?s, the Cadence Weapons who break the mold and challenge our assumptions of what this music can be. Phew, bitching makes me tired. Here’s some songs in the genre of hip-hop you should be listening to – some old, some new, all f’n rad.
:Pharaohe Monch - Free Copy: When I was wee and just discovering the wide world of hip-hop, Pharaohe Monch released Internal Affairs, a gem of lyricism weighed down by trite beats. Though Rawkus floundered soon after, and Monch's burgeoning career with it, it established him as an artist to watch. Ten or so years, and a handful of mixtape and cameo tracks, Monch reappeared last year with Desire, one of the better hip-hop albums to grace the shelves in a long time. That said, it has problems with consistency and tone, but in the end with songs like this as your single, it's pretty much golden. No word on when the Monch Man plans to drop his next album.
:Cadence
Weapon - Black Hand:
CW
doesn't exactly do it for me, but he's certainly indicative
of the current sound of hipster-rap, which honestly is
pretty enjoyable to me. I don't think CW is exactly a
bastion of unforgettable flows, but he invokes a sort of
messy early-Rhymesayers sound that I just can't shake. His
second LP Afterparty Babies dropped on March 4th.
- Noah Sanders -
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