by James Spiller

Created on: June 25, 2008

When I need to take a time out to think, when I need to escape this world for an hour, I turn off all the lights, slip on some headphones, close my eyes, turn up the volume, and allow hip-hop's soul and rhythm to float through my ears and infiltrate my mind. I listen to the ghost of Tupac Shakur tell me vivid stories of the street life over infectious west coat bass lines. I nod my head to Outkast's funk, teleporting me to a time and place where psychedelics, space travel, and poetics mingle together as one. I appreciate the merger of kung-fu, grimy beats, and razor sharp lyrics from deep within the urban jungle that The Wu-Tang Clan calls home.

I love hip-hop. I love everything about it. I love the thumping bass, the way a talented artist can flow over an expertly crafted beat, provoking and inspiring emotion with every poetic word spit in the microphone. I love the freedom of expression that hip-hop provides everyone. It has no boundaries. No limitations. It is accessible and it has meaning.

Or should I say had?

Scanning the radio, it becomes blaringly obvious that rap music has undergone a metamorphosis. What was once a pure art form has been transformed into a complete joke. Gone are the talented musicians concerned with style and substance, replaced by cookie cutter hacks concerned with following formulas and booking television air time.

The Tupacs. Outkasts, and Wu-Tang Clans are gone. Thankfully, the works of art that they composed will be with us forever and can never be taken away. But unfortunately, nothing like it will ever be made again.

The world of rap is under siege. Much like the California gold rush in the mid nineteenth century, rap music is being swarmed by people looking to make a quick buck. Today, sacrificing talent for marketability, artists (if you can call them that) focus on creating repetitive and catchy hooks instead of content heavy verses. They flock to the genre in hopes of creating that one catchy song that will be played in every club and on every radio station every five minutes, securing them a paycheck big enough to pull them out of the debt that their twenty-four inch rims put them in.

Simplistic and repetitive beats are the backdrop, inane noises, a catchy hook, and references to the car they are currently driving is the content. People at the top of the rap game, artists such as Little Wayne, Soulja Boy, and Rick Ross have absolutely nothing of intelligence to contribute to the profession that they have chosen to call a career.

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