30 Under 30: Aging With Hip Hop

I turn 30 in a couple months and with age has come a few things: my knees hurt sometimes for no reason, I cant eat spicy food or sugar the way I used to, and my relationship with hip hop is changing.  I grew up at the peak of the blog era where I spent countless hours as a high school/college student on hotnewhiphop.com, 2dopeboys.com and djbooth.net (yes, that’s a .net address). I remember buying the XXL Freshman list issue, when Complex was just a magazine,  and when genius was rap genius. All memories of a bygone era before streaming, when we walked around with iPods or Zunes filled with music pirated from limewire (I was more a frostwire guy myself). In those days I was the first on everything. I remember being early on the beast coast movement, Wale, and wearing chuck taylors because Wiz Khalifa said it was cool. But now I am almost 30 and I feel myself becoming an old head. My musical taste is skewing older with Alchemist beats, Nas dropping every year and to be honest a massive influx in jazz.

I wrote about this a few years ago when I was concerned that corporate America was taking my identity away as a hip hop head. Don’t get me wrong, I still think capitalism and the current structure of big law have changed me in various ways. But I also think the current structure of hip hop itself has changed too. The 2016 XXL Freshman Cypher with Kodak, 21, Uzi, Yachty and Denzel Curry is the marker I use for the new generation of hip hop. When it dropped it divided the community- the older generation thought it was weak as the bars and the punchlines seemed to be lacking from everyone participating (other than Curry), however the younger generation saw the fun that the artists were having playing off of each other and the vibe that they created together and applauded it as the best cypher to date and some further of all time. I found myself agreeing with the former and for the first time saw myself enter the old head category.  I think it is no coincidence that 7 years later these are some of the biggest names in the genre. It has always been said that hip hop is a young mans game. However, the old heads still seem to be running the game whether it be the trinity of Kenrick, Cole and Drake still outpacing their younger colleagues in sales or the world stopping every time Jay-Z or Andre decide to throw a few bars to the world. There seems to be a generational gap between the blog era and the SoundCloud and streaming eras (that is partially why Her Loss is such an amazing concept for an album).

I think there are 2 ways to discuss why these artists in their mid-thirties (some of which creating entire albums about their therapy journey) are still running the game. I think it is reductive just to say artists from my generation are better and that is why they are having better lasting power even with the mixtapes that they blew up from having their 10 year anniversaries. I think you also have to look at the unprecedented shift to streaming. We are still trying to figure out the value of a stream and a market that no longer buys music. The artist selling CD’s out their trunk has gone the way of the dodo and the internet has replaced the line outside of best buy hoping to get a copy of their favorite artists CD. This is going to take some time to adjust to and figure out. Especially as major labels simultaneously lose their grip on the industry with artists redefining their relationship to the labels that have stolen so much from Black people in the past. The entire recording industry is at a pivotal moment of finding itself after the internet democratized information and access.

Concurrent, with this shift in the market  you have the multiple deaths of rising stars of the new generation. I watched an interview with Trippie Redd (Canton stand up!) where he pointed out that of his generation/class of rappers he is one of the last to still be alive. XXXtentacion and Lil’ Peep were the breakout stars of his sub-genre and are no longer here. You can’t talk about this generation and death without talking about the death of Pop Smoke who was on his ascent, completely changing the music scene of hip hop with drill music (I also wrote a piece on this years ago) when his life was tragically cut short. With all this destabilization it is easy to see why these young artists are struggling to make it to be as big as the generations before them. It also makes sense as to why I find it so hard to connect to them.

It seems to me that young hip hop and I are in two very different places in our lives. Young hip hop is in a world that they are actively still building, creating new systems and approaches to making it as an artist. Whereas I have already built much of my world and am trying to ensure that it continues and grows under my own supervision. So to answer my question from years before- no I did not fall out of love with hip hop. I merely grew into an old head. You can call me KRS-2 (That’s ab Ab-Soul bar btw).

With all of this said I would like to introduce a new non-hip hop portion of the blog: I Shoulda Been Read This. Where I look at Black classic novels that I shoulda been read. Be on the look out for my forthcoming pieces on The Bluest Eye, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and Things Fall Apart.