Its 2012 and hip hop has been around for a solid 30+ years...we've seen the upstart of the genre with Marley Marl, Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious 5 and Kurtis Blow to the golden era of the 80's...the 90's ushered in the 'gangsta rap' era along with the conscience rap emergence...the 90's also had the emergence of the flash, braggadocio rap of Bad Boy and also had the birth of hip hop legends Nas, Jay-Z, 2Pac and Notorious B.I.G...the late 90's and 2000's showed the world that hip hop was incredibly marketable and young black entrepreneurs could become millionaires (shout out to Roc-A-Fella Records, Bad Boy Records, No Limit and Cash Money records)...
Now that I've given you a brief history on hip hop let me get into my maturation of hip hop focusing on Jay-Z...before Jay-Z showed the world that hip hop is not only a young man's game, it was thought that once you hit the age of about 35 that rappers should not create anymore new music...that thought almost seemed to make sense because some of your favorite rappers of yesteryear just didn't produce quality music when they hit their mid 30's...that way of thinking about hip hop is dead!
Eminem was 37 and released a very solid album in 2010 "Recovery" , Jay-Z, 40+ yrs old released a banger album "Watch the Throne" with KanYe in 2011 that had 2 smash hits (Niggas in Paris and Otis) and Nas is still producing great music whether is solo or collab projects...When you see Jay-Z performing at venues like the President's inauguraral ball, Carnegie Hall and becoming the first hip hop act at the Glasonbury Festival, you recognize that hip hop is a well respected genre that will have our favorite artists touring and selling out large venues like The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith til they are in their 60s (damn that's a helleva run-on sentence)...
I'm just glad to see real hip hop and talent will live forever with respect like the other genres...thanx Hov for showing the world that 'you will respect me simple as that' (line from 'The Ruler's Back' from Blueprint album. I probably shouldn't have said that because I just ruined the aura of my creative writing.). Hip Hop forever!
holla,
(4o)ur
No comments:
Post a Comment