yeah it must be tough seeing people find optimism in a genre that you guys helped kill lol

In not rly interested in a discussion about rap that isn't a broader discussion about the state of black culture at large

A lot of the issues in rap are reflections of larger issues in the black community that need to be addressed

I agree we need a spiritual and creative revival of sorts but I wonder what the effect of essentially abandoning street rap would be

Genres come and go

Guess rap next

the real coming back. the feeling will be restored

what

Hip hop ain’t been the same since they cancelled 106&park.

Need to bring that back with some new relevant hosts. Like that one city girl and maybe a b level rapper like blueface or something.

if Tupac and biggie was alive drake and little gayne would be working at McDonald’s

you guys stanned literally some of the worst artists this genre had to offer, helped kill it off, and now you’re sitting here complaining about niggas making threads trying to find optimism in the genre going on the decline

like the cognitive dissonance is insane

i only stan xxxtentacion and cardi b

bro this isn’t optimism

literally shameless lol

same dudes on here who gassed Yeat and the millionth rehashed Future album, are now on here upset people are complaining about the state of the genre, when they were responsible for any of this s*** in the first place

Sometimes i imagine your posts in a batman voice

so then what is it

If Laffy Taffy dropped today, it would be the deepest most lyrical song of the decade besides Kendrick

It’s not just the so-called guests that feel like this tho. At this point it’s pretty much everyone openly saying “shit is NOT good rn in mainstream rap” except for internet rap nerds like us who hold resistance against that being a valid sentiment or cause for concern

Who were their predecessors that indicated them having as big a presence as they do

I don’t think it works like that lol

yeah it is

if anything it’s weird to say being glad that bullshit music is being purged from the genre by way of post 2016 casuals getting bored with it is “celebrating hip hop dying”. OPs whole point is being glad that we’re probably finna go into a renaissance where people start trying more different s*** now that something that sounds like XO tour life or Yeat or Carti just probably isn’t finna be that type of success again lol

this is the true problem

it’s jumped the shark to a place where it seems like the answer is abandoning certain sounds and content

but no one legitimately knows where to go after that when you have the conscious rappers like larussell or cole/dreamville still sneaking in gun bars and songs lol

Alright fr man I'll answer this soberly because the "hip hop is dead" discourse here is just grating at this point and tiresome, but you bring up good points in the OP. Sorry for the attitude, but it's just very annoying seeing people crapping on a genre I love all the time.

You need to stop caring about whether or not hip hop is driving the zeitgeist culturally. We don't need a resurgence of memes that try to resurrect the bygone era of hip hop being a commercially dominant form of music that has nearly flawless integrity at the highest commercial levels. These memes in fact never really cared about "the culture" but in its waning commercial integrity and increased commodification.

Short of an economic revolution, the best thing that could happen to hip hop aside from a creative renaissance in the mainstream is to see it lose steam as a mainstream commodity. Once it becomes less profitable to make, the incentive to exploit the genre for profit will evaporate with it because the potential to do so will be greatly diminished. We will, as what happened with rock, enter a brief creative slump for the genre even worse than we have now, and then see it a few years later rise again as an independent art form with less money in it but more creative integrity and perhaps even diversity. This is again something we've witnessed with rock music.

These things happen in cycles and there's no real panic necessary. If jazz has managed to pull through after all these years even in a diminished capacity, hip hop will be fine. Hopefully a creative renaissance happens for the genre before it inevitably wanes as a popular commodity, but right now we're seeing with hip hop what we witnessed with rock in the 2000s: its commodified apex marked by a massive slowdown in innovation and dip in quality, which by the late 2000s was eventually met with the genre's fall from dominance as a commercial art form. Hyperpop or something similar is likely to take rap's place at the top, or honestly country at the rate we're going especially if a Republican president wins.

Y'all gonna laugh at me for typing too much anyway, I can't win and don't care to, but yeah, relax.

I'm saying they are the present and the future will be artists who were influenced by them.

Y'all gotta realize that once you commodify a culture it's no longer a culture, but a product that abides by the laws of supply and demand. That's what hip hop is now and has been since at least the mid-80s: a product.

that’s not how it works anymore because they have no direct predecessors

Outside of maybe Kanye for drake and maybe 3 stacks/Em for Kendrick, Cole Kendrick and drake didn’t really have any direct predecessors either lol

facts drake is the best example imo. dude is unironically a gangster now and probably is responsible for deaths among other bad things

but the thing is like street rap is a gift an a curse. it pulls people outta the hood but also pushes the culture in a worse and worse direction. tbh idk whether its good or bad cus i also do think music is only a part of the issue not rly the source

also like u said, it feels like we're swinging towards a right wing upswing, which has a ton of people who think black people should conform to certain aspects of white america including complete abandonment of street culture. it feels like you have people pushing the culture in a worse direction in an act of rebellion but the effect is people just disconnect and now things are worse cus none of the systemic problems are being addressed and people are less tolerant/more racist towards black ppl

This topic needs a megathread at this point