Can it Be That It Was All So Simple Then?

On his mindblowing debut album Endtroducing, right before the sublime "Midnight In A Perfect World," DJ Shadow has an odd, forty second song that is seemingly nothing more than a throwaway time filler, yet it always makes me laugh and gets me thinking. It's called "Why Hip Hop Sucks In '96," and it consists solely of a short little loop and a voice intoning "It's the money..."

That has always cracked me up, because it was true. It was true then, when I first heard it. It is even more true now, which is why I find myself going back to that track and thinking. Because I agree with Mr. Davis: Hip hop-- at least major label commerical hip hop-- has sucked for a minute now, and it's largely due to the money.

All you need to do is compare what was coming out ten to twelve years ago (when I first started listening to hip hop in all seriousness) and what is coming out. All you have to do is look at this list of eight classic hip hop albums, all released within a three and a half year period.

Dr. Dre, The Chronic -- Released December 15, 1992
Wu Tang Clan, Enter The Wu Tang (36 Chambers) -- Released November 9, 1993
Snoop Doggy Dogg, Doggystyle -- Released November 23, 1993
Nas, Illmatic -- Released April 19, 1994
Notorious B.I.G., Ready To Die -- Released September 13, 1994
Mobb Deep, The Infamous -- Released April 25, 1995
Raekwon, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... -- Released August 1, 1995
Jay-Z, Reasonable Doubt-- Released June 25, 1996

It is interesting to note that the Jigga man is the last of these eight classics to drop over this three and a half year run of greatness, because Hova indirectly had alot to do with shifting the game and indirectly watering it down (not only because Hova was one of the first practioners of the highly stylized flossing playa/kingpin image in rap, but also after In My Lifetime, Vol. One flopped, he became bound and determined to rule the charts and began crafting anthems like "Hard Knock Life," "Big Pimpin'," "Izzo (Hova)," and others, leaving behind the more nuanced and subtle rhythmic gymnastics that are found on Reasonable Doubt).

Anyway, my point is that, you compare that list with what has come out since, and does anything match up at all? Have there been any hip hop albums released since that can hold a candle to any of these modern hip hop masterpieces? Maybe you can throw Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP in the ring, and you could probably include Outkast's Aquemini, but after that your pickings are pretty slim. And why is that?

Well, not coincidentally, the years between 1992 and 1996 are when rap started to really blow up on a major, national level. All of a sudden, you had Dr. Dre and Snoop riding around in low riders and bringing the laid back Cali vibe to your living room at all hours of the day on MTV, you had ladies calling Biggie "Big Poppa" on mainstream Top Forty radio-- basically, what had once been an underground, semi-localized phenomenon blew the fuck up between '92 and '96. And, for the first time, hip hop was looked at by corporate America as a viable, profitable genre, ripe for exploitation. It's the money...

Now, I realize that I may just be succumbing to a case of nostalgia, saying that things were better before. There's probably some sixteen year old out there who would tell me that his collection of 50 Cent and Mike Jones records are just as vital, and that old school Wu Tang don't have shit on them. As Chuck Klosterman writes in the May 2005 Esquire, people who are caught up in the real world don't spend much time listening to modern music, and thus "That's why everyone insists that most good music was (coincidentally) recorded between their sophomore year in high school and their senior year of college." Except that I haven't stopped listening to modern music at all-- rather, I crave it like a dope fiend searching for his next hit-- and that, for this essay at least, it would be between sixth grade and the start of my freshman year of high school (yeah, I was a hipster even as a wee little tyke!). So I acknowledge that this may be all nostalgia and these insights may come pre-packaged with the sense of wonderment I felt upon discovering hip hop for the first time, moments in my life that come I'm reminded of when I listen to these records, and thus suppose that they are"pure" and give more relevance to them then they should really be accorded. Nevertheless, I shall continue...

(Quick aside: I know I might be late to the game, but I read Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs about a month ago, and just loved it. For anyone that cares about pop culture, or just wants to enjoy a good laugh or two, I recommend this book. It is a rather quick read, and he is able to make some compelling points about seemingly insipid material. Basically, I want to write like Chuck Klosterman when I grow up.)

So, basically right around the time Jay-Z was dropping his masterpiece, Reasonable Doubt, the game had shifted. Once people (read: major labels) realized that you could make a shit load of money with this here hip hop thing, that's what it became about. No longer were you simply rhyming for the pure love of the craft or to get props on your block-- you were trying to get that paper. How you gonna stack that loot? Well, you gotta get played on the radio and MTV. So now, instead of just making a dope jam, it became about "How do I get this on the radio? How is this going to play to Wal-Mart Middle America? How is the video going to look? What image should I use?"

The other night, I was at a friends house and she happened to throw on the burned copy of The Infamous I had made for her. When she threw it on, I immediately got hype, and declared that this was one of my favorite albums of all time. As we played darts and bumped the grooves, I was reminded for the millionth time why I loved this album-- the ominious beats, the lyrical wizardry, the straight forward consistency of every track a banger.

As we listened to the album, I was struck by something that I had never thought of before: As "Temperture's Rising" was playing, I had the eureka! moment of realizing that yes, indeed, there was a femable R&B singer crooning the hook on this song. Now, don't get me wrong, having heard this song approximately 37,000 times, I obviously knew that there was an R&B hook on the song. Yet, it never really jumped out at me, because it worked. It didn't seem forced or out of place, but rather seemed to meld perfectly with the song.

The reason I bring this up is that, once rap blew up mainstream, it seemed like everyone had to get an R&B hook on their songs, so that they could get spun on the radio (Note that "Temperture's Rising" was never a single). Instead of doing it as a benefit to the song, as in the case of Mobb Deep, artists know had to think "How can I get on the radio? Well, if I spit some easy to digest rhymes and then get Mary J. Blige to sing the hook, how can radio not love it?" Voila! That, right there kids, is the watering down of hip hop. So much so that five years later, you've got Ja Rule doing his own weak ass R&B crooning and re-enacting Grease with Ashanti in music videos. It wasn't about making good songs, like "Temperture's Rising"-- it became about getting spun on the radio and bumping your Soundscan numbers. All of a sudden you've got Jadakiss talking L-O-V-E- while Mariah Carey warbles "K-I-S-S me..." over some buttery soft track, which of course dominates radio but does nothing artistically.

Another thing that bugs me about the commercialization of hip hop is that very few seem to care anymore about the craft of the MC. Whereas before you may have had your day job or whatever, but your real love was MC'ing, now it seems as if that has been inverted. In the past, you did what you had to do until you blew up, and thus reached the point where you could be an MC for a living. Now, it seems like people are waking up and realizing "Ya know, I don't really like pumping crack on the block. I don't like the threat of getting shot. So ya know, I'm gonna pick up this mic and try to rhyme, how hard could it be? All I gotta do is get some hot beats and a hot video or two, and I'll be rich! Score!"

For example, I've read or heard alot of interviews with The Game in which he proclaims that, in 2001, when he was in the hospital recuperating from getting shot five times, that is the moment he decided he wanted to be an MC. That his brother bought him every classic hip hop album (including some which I listed above), and he listened and studied how to be an MC. Now, let me get this straight: It was only after getting shot five times that you decided that wasn't exactly the best career move? And that, only then, did you realize, selling crack wasn't the best career move? And only then, you realized Hey, maybe I can make a living doing this MC thing-- I'll just study these dudes for a minute, then I'll be rich! And that seems to be the mindset of alot of MC's nowadays-- instead of it being that they have something relevant to say, but rather the simple fact that they need something else do to with their time. And record companies know that, in today's C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me-- oddly enough, a statement popularized by the Wu Tang Clan) mindset, that if they get Lil Jon or whoever the hottest producer of the moment is to do the beats and package it correctly, kids will eat it up.

Maybe all of this money floating around is the reason why I like mixtapes so much. You see, most songs on mixtapes aren't ever supposed to be released commercially, but are intended more as promotional tools. It's on mixtapes that you hear MC's just going for it, either doing ridiculous things (like Game rhyming for seven minutes straight, over the beat of the Snoop and Dre classic "Deep Cover," on "200 Bars" found on Whoo Kid's G-Unit Radio 8), dissing their competition (admittedly, the most compelling part of the mixtape industry is the never ending collection of diss tracks), or just putting out that grimy shit radio wouldn't fuck with in a million years. How many times have you heard a dope beat and wished you could hear your favorite MC spit over it? On mixtapes, you can (for weeks, I've been saying that someone should rhyme over Ying Yang's "Wait (The Whisper Song)" beat, because the right MC would just destroy that track. What happens? Tuesday night, I'm listening to Green Lantern, and what do I hear? Juelz Santana ripping that track). Mixtapes, because they're designed to be bootlegged and "for the streets," are where all the joints that don't get played on the radio because they're not commercial and safe, but rather grimy and edgy, go.

But even the mixtapes are getting corruped by money. Record labels have figured out that mixtapes are a great way to hype everything up. If I hear Juelz Santana rip the Ying Yang beat, I'm naturally gonna be more inclined to pay attention to Juelz Santana. Well, what do ya know? Surprise, surprise! Juelz Santana has an album coming out soon! Me being more inclined to pay attention to Juelz Santana obviously leads me to being more inclined to check out his album-- and thus the record labels get their cake! Although you can often run into problems when your mixtapes are better than your albums (the most notable example of this would be Jadakiss, but you can throw 50 Cent, Lloyd Banks, and any number of others in this discussion as well).

So, it all comes back to money. Like punk rock or heavy metal or indie rock before it, hip hop got co-opted and hijacked by the money train, somewhere around '96. And thus, the albums that have the kind of impact that say, Ready to Die or The Chronic did are much fewer and far between. Hell, if you look at the list I posted above, most of these artists themselves never reached the same heights again (Nas being the most blatant example, given that he completely shifted his style from his first to his second album. On Illmatic, he wsa the street poet dispensing pearls of wisdom with every breath. On It Was Written, all of a sudden he was a gangster out of Casino, moving pounds of cocaine with his crew and having Lauryn Hill sing hooks on songs obviously crafted for radio consumption-- "If I Ruled The World." Jay-Z too, as mentioned above. I almost shudder to think about what kind of records Biggie would be making today if he was still alive).

DJ Shadow could re-title that song for each successive year post '96, and it would still work. In fact, I think that songs message is even more applicable today than it was in '96. You just don't have the same kind of classic material being released nowadays-- you had eight classic albums in three years time! Now, you're lucky if you get one record a year that you'll surely be bumping a year from now, let alone ten years down the road (as I do with all of the above mentioned albums). All of which, as a music fan, makes me sad and forces me to ponder what Raekwon and Ghost asked, all the way back in '93: Can it be that it was all so simple then?

(Note: This post was inspired by this post by Douglas Reinhardt and the comments I made on it. I have also touched on this topic before, in columns I wrote for the Kenyon Collegian (I couldn't find the link to the specific article in which I wrote about this, but if you're bored, you can hit the archives and scroll through the A&E section to get an assortment of my previous columns, includingg my top 10 records for 2001-2003, which in and of itself might be interesting to some). Just trying to give the props where the propers are due, kids.)