by Terumoto

Created on: January 08, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

The state of hip hop in today's society is odd. A mere shadow of its former self, on the surface it lacks the truth, meaning and expression we grew to love it for. Hip hop has turned into a way to appeal to a wide audience, a way to make money by exploiting the stupidity of fools and children. You think the branches of corruption only reach so far as the music industry? Think again. Meaningless music is a disaster. In the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s basically all mainstream music had a message, a meaning or a purpose other than profit. In this age, music made for the sole reason of raking in cash is what proliferates the mainstream.

This is not good, on many levels. The easily corrupted and molded minds of youths have been tricked into thinking bad music is good music, and as if that wasn't enough, their ideals and goals have been skewed. Particularly disappointing is the part that mainstream hip hop has played in instilling poor morals into the minds of young females, and also males to a lesser degree. Promoting materialism and lifestyles focused on it is what does the damage. You might say older artists lived in a similar materialistic way after they became successful, but there is a difference. Those artists made songs to express what they had learned from their experiences, and how adversities affected them as well as songs about their success. And more importantly, their tracks actually had meaning. Today, whichever artist is the flavor of the month releases a terrible song designed for clubs and perhaps incorporating an attempt at starting a new dance craze.

One of the main arguments I hear in defense of these bad artists, is that they don't need to make meaningful music because their music is intended for play in clubs. That is understandable... As long as the music is good. In the 70s, 80s and 90s club music was great, musically. It seemed that it was designed to make you want to dance and let loose, you actually felt the passion of the artist in the songs. What do we get these days? A poorly made synth beat, with repetitive and unoriginal drum patterns, and bass lines that have no flair. There are some really great, original producers around, but you will never hear their beats on MTV. And if by some miracle a good song actually emerges, you will hear it at a ratio of one decent song to one hundred bad songs.

Music is subjective, thus anybodies opinion is as valid as mine. However, people are actually forced to like mainstream music. I guess this doesn't matter,

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