what is real hip-hop

[ThaG]

"REAL" HIP HOP IS SOMETHING THE OLD HEADS USE TO DOWNPLAY THE MUSIC THAT'S OUT TODAY... BY SAYING TODAY'S MUSIC ISN'T REAL HIP THEY TRY TO LESSEN THE VALUE OF THE MUSIC BECAUSE IT'S NOT WHAT THEY WERE DOING BACK IN THE DAY... JUST FURTHER SHOWS HOW MUCH AT ODDS WE ARE WITH EACH OTHER WHERE WE HAVE TO DOWNPLAY MUSIC FROM OUR PEOPLE BECAUSE THE OLDER GENERATION DOESN'T THINK IT'S REAL... BUT THATS LIKE ANYTHING ELSE... OLDER FOLKS DON'T LIKE THE WAY YOUNGER FOLKS GO ABOUT DOING ANYTHING...

By a number of criteria, today's music is inferior to the music of the early and mid 90s. To name just the main two, first, the increasing computerization of music has resulted in music that is nowhere as musically rich and complex as music used to be back in the days, because making music using a computer naturally drives things towards simpler compositions; this, BTW, is true not just for hip-hop, but for music in general; second, the complexity and variety of MCing has drastically decreased - in the mid 90s, there used to be a wide variety of rapping styles, including a large number of MCs who were totally unique and sounded like nobody else (the likes of E-40); that's gone, nowadays mostly everybody raps the same way, and it is mostly the same slow, not very exciting mixtape flow; the complex and varied wordplay and rhyme schemes of the days of old iare nowhere to be heard. Now, complexity in music need not be the same as quality, but in general there is a positive correlation between the two and one can definitely make the argument that its complexity is a good measure of the state of the art form.