Not to mention Vanilla Ice

Hicks with lifted trucks, bass pro shop hats, and got bottles of dip spit rackin up absolutely love kevin gates and i have no idea why

the switch up you talking about happened around the early 2010’s i think, rap was undeniable at that point you had to accept it

it’s been getting gentrified since like the late 1980’s though lol

The gentrification of the mixtape is whats really sad tbh. I remember plain as day in the early-mid 2000s,mixtapes of rappers being sold in cornerstores/barbershops for $5. Alot of people didn't have a computer,and if they did,they didn't know where to get the music or how to download it. The way the music was unmastered and raw just felt so underground/street.

My barber stayed playing all of the latest mixtapes. I'll never forget hearing One Night Only in the barbershop for the first time and then going home trying to find it on the internet

Can’t really speak on the 1980s. Have any examples?

Rapture was a rap song by a white girl and was the first rap music video to play on mtv

this is the definitive answer it happened in 3 waves
80s commercialism like mtv
ye vs 50
intersextion of internet suburbia (jerkin colored skinny jeans)
offspring of ye and internet is blog era j cole, asher roth, wale, kid cudi
w wale putting out a tape about nothing, more broad in subject matter, kid cudi selling his emotions, and j cole appealing to college kids,
war on chiraq
early tde such as ab soul, schoolboyq pro era, odd future
lil b x kreyshawn gotenks of meme rap
watch the throne birthed leather skirts along w
asap and oF, the first purely internet movements
this was the last wave of organic rap
then soundcloud era
music ends afterward
we're now in the tiktok matrix

Switch out Joyner Lucas for YB tbh

i don’t wanna go all black conspiracists on ya, but like white hands were all over rap even when it first started. they was the ones running the labels.

from op though it sounds like you mean a overall acceptance thing, and like other people said you can link that to early kanye and his era. I’d say Ye, Em, and Wayne along with some others kicked in the door and the generation after that carried it

Blondie literally preceded the rap industry

Vanilla Ice
MC Hammer

Def Jam went out of their way to appeal to white male teens in the suburbs

Limp Bizkit

Yeah she played a big role in getting the industries attention on it I think

She also put the first rap act on national television

Saying she gentrified rap in any way is crazy

This gotta be it

People need to realize this too,Ye brought in a whole audience of people that were never suppose to fit in Hip Hop,into Hip Hop. The hood did not like Ye but,the suburbs,im talking the real suburbs,fucked with him cause all he really rapped about was pop culture/about clothes/first world problems. Ye after CD did not have black people rocking with him like that,he's really the ultimate crossover artist tbh.

But,he's one of the reasons rap is gentrified now.

I mean when something small gets mainstream attention people see they can get money on it

So

We can debate this all we want but there is a very clear divide between mainstream rap before the edm era and after it

She still respected rap culture
When people say the g word, they’re talking about Vanilla Ice types who don’t respect the culture

2010 when MBDTF and Rebirth came out.

As incredible as the 1st album was, both projects lead to Pitchfork obsessed hipsters taking hip hop seriously as a genre and rappers being on that "I'm not a rapper, I'm a rockstar" stuff that appeals to people outside the genre.

Same year as LMFAO and Lil Jon doing their hit singles

When rappers started appealing to white college/high school students in their subject matter and the paradigme switched from playing rock, pop and edm at parties to hip-hop. Somewhere around 2008 with the rise of Drake, Cudi and J Cole even though there was a shift before that with Ye, Eminem and 50 obviously, but the full shift was Cudi, Drake and Cole.

Man on the moon came out before and it was up there with the hipsters.

MBDTF and MOTM2 made people want to disrupt the status quo of rap being street/urban. Ye rocking the suits/getting the MBDTF movie played simultaneously on BET/MTV and Cudi rocking those super skinny jeans/making songs like MANIAC in 2010 was insane looking back