Kanye West defeated 50 cent in their chart battle of epic proportions and single handedly saved Hip Hop. Or at least that’s how I remember it, my memory is foggy.
Of course, Curtis Jackson already has another album on the way. ‘Before I Self Destruct’ due March 2008, which coincidently has a collaboration with Kanye West originally intended to go on Curtis, according to a interview on American TV. You would be forgiven to think that this whole thing just might have been manufactured to increase record sales and that despite their fierce media battle, Kanye and Curtis get on perfectly fine.
Of course that’s just a scandalous accusation and completely untrue, its merely coincidental that both albums became the first two albums to sell over 600,000 units in the US each in the same week since 1991’s Guns’n’Roses Use your Illusion I and II.
In my previous post I stressed the importance for Hip Hop to ‘innovate itself once again’ to reclaim its fair share of the mainstream. As modest as I am, I realise the influence my prophetic words must have on the music industry but I was shocked over the speed in which artists would heed them. Lately I’ve been monitoring Lethal Bizzle, who seems to have followed my master plan word for word.
A member of the ‘Grime’ wave here in the UK which has been, apart from himself, Kano and Dizzie Rascal, largely unsuccessful due in large to its resemblance in subject matter to US Gangsta rap which, as tends to be the case in most aspects of life, is something that the Americans just do better and bigger. The lacklustre and frankly embarrassing MOBO awards this year only reinforces the current lameness of the UK Hip’ Hop scene, regardless of whatever you call it.
However Bizzle is networking, reaching out to the incumbent indie scene, going on NME ’Rock and Roll’ tours and getting press inches as a result for the Grime scene some accuse him of abandoning. Probably the same traditionalists deriding Kanye West for using Daft Punk samples in his songs and collaborating with Chris Martin.
The same music elitists who would rather their favourite sub genre stay overlooked. It’s necessary to mix a few pop sensibilities into your music if you want to breakthrough to the mainstream, which is something that is true whether you are a new Grime artist or a Death Metal band, before you reel away from your screens and imagine your favourite band attempting a Britney Spears cover, im thinking more Nirvana’s Nevermind than Ms Spears Baby one more time. Radio 1 doesn’t want to hear it if it aint catchy.
It’s a fact which he’s more than aware of himself, as he talked to the Guardian’s Lindesay Irvine.
"It's true that the grime scene can come across as too intimidating. I'm trying to move away from that: it's OK for five minutes but it doesn't take you very far." That variety of bruising two-step battling, he adds, "is like the early days, the nicking-cars stage of the game. Then you realise that there's more than that. Me, and Dizzee Rascal too, realised we want to get beyond that."
Maybe using the analogy of ‘nicking-cars’ for describing Grime is an iffy one, but he is more than aware that he acts as a ambassador for the Grime scene, maybe UK Hip’ Hop as a whole. And as Kanye West has dethroned 50 cent as the ‘king’ of International Hip Hop by attracting a whole new audience to the genre by sampling Daft Punk. It’s just as necessary that Dizzie Rascal collaborates with the Arctic Monkeys and Lethal Bizzle tours with The Gallows.
All eyes, for the moment at least, are on Hip’ Hop. Next week will see the release of the Third albums of arguably the genre’s two biggest stars, Kanye West’s Graduation and 50 Cent’s Curtis
Two of the biggest-selling artists of the last four years go head-to-head Tuesday in the record stores with new albums: Kanye West’s “Graduation” (Good/Roc-A-Fella) and 50 Cent’s “Curtis” (Aftermath/Interscope). It’s a big day not just for West and 50, but for the ailing music industry. With sales down 30 percent this year, the major labels who have dominated music for the last half-century are in need of a blockbuster album (seven or eight of them, actually) as the holiday buying season looms into view. Hip-hop in particular is tanking. In the ‘90s the genre led the surge in CD sales. Now it’s in the doldrums, with only three of the top-20 best-selling titles of 2007.
Hip’ Hop may not quite be ‘dead’ as the album title of Nas’s latest effort suggests, but its definitely in decline.
Why is this the case?
Well, my generation at least and seemingly the market as a whole has been turning enmass away from Hip Hop towards the skyrocketing genre’s of rock, whether that be emo, indie or even the classic variety.
Quite a range of tastes and preferences, which mainstream Hip Hop, just doesn’t have. Its dominated still by gangster rap and chauvinistic men boasting about their strength, magnetism and how many times they’ve been shot. Its not exactly appealing to the music fan who wants a bit more substance from their music.
Cue a great exodus of teenagers, including me, who were of the age were you truly become critical of the music you listen to, rather than merely accepting it. As a result a whole generation of 14 and 15 year olds switched allegiances away from the Hip’ Hop and embraced Rock which had arguably suffered its own crisis in the late 90’s where in the temporary gulf in the absence of Britpop, it was perhaps justifiably seen as the genre for miserable Goths, if you told someone you listened to rock. Jokes about Korn and Slipknot would invariably follow.
Rock has since smashed into the mainstream and managed to diversify itself, the NME lead revolution of fresh garage rock bands such as the Strokes and The White Stripes replaced the since Dormant Blur and Oasis and Pop Punk bands such as Blink 182 and Sum 41 offered a more cheerful alternative to Korn and Slipknot, unfortunately these two strands of Rock would later create two of the most despicable social scenes ever created in history, ‘Indie’ and ‘Emo’ but that is the price you have to pay for mainstream success.
Hip Hop will need to innovate itself once again and provide, like Rock has , greater variety, more originality and greater creativity to pull itself out of its rut, mainstream hip hop is and has been for quite some time, dominated by this ultra masculine and often homophobic figures which as gun crime spirals in the UK appears less and less attractive.
Hip Hop’s great hope lies In artists like the outspoken Kanye West, the self proclaimed nerd, who is more than happy to throw in political and social commentaries into his lyrics rather than talking about shooting cops and has denounced homophobia and chauvinism in Hip Hop in the past.
Or the outstanding Outkast, Imparticular the unpredictable Andre 3000, who is more than happy like, Kanye West to borrow from other genre’s, throwing in a guitar lick here and there and lending drums that sound more like drum and bass than a traditional hip hop loop. Rock music has always been ’borrowing’ from traditionally black genre’s, Rock juggernauts Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones have made their fame and fortune on blues rock originated from the deep south of America.
It’s time for Hip’ Hop to lend back some ideas to level the playing field and claw back some fans. Next weeks chart battle is not as simple as a fight between two stars of the genre, as Blur vs. Oasis was in the 90’s, its far more important than that. It is a battle between the new wave of Hip’ Hop and the old, the future and the past. Kanye may not win the popular vote, but it is his brand of Hip Hop that offers the genre’s greatest potential growth for the genre.
This is the blog of an aspiring music journalist...maybe.
Currently extremely busy with College studies, so this place may be a bit quiet at the moment.
The future of UK Hip'Hop? (Sounds familiar)
