Is Hip-hop: 'hip-hop is alive … and vital'

When hip-hop legend Nas uttered the words "Hip-hop is dead," he joined a long list of prophets and fed-up practitioners who've announced the death of a field, only to jump-start a new phase of its growth. Famed author V.S. Naipaul, for example, declared the novel dead, then went on to win the Nobel Prize in literature for his highly regarded fiction.

Of course, if you've got no sense of humor, or if you're stuck on literalism, then you can't really appreciate what Nas and those who support his claim are up to. Hip-hop as a commercial enterprise is surely full of death. Great rhetoric has lost its sway as noble verbal art has been replaced by mindless redundancy of theme--broads, booze and bling. The thug persona has replaced skillful exploration of the thug's predicament: hustling in a culture where crime is the only option of the economically vulnerable. Beyond questions of craft, there's the archetypical record executive who's more interested in releasing records by artists reveling in rims rather than rhymes, and in bouncing bosoms and belligerent behinds more than setting young brains on fire with knowledge of their people's plight. Of course, the culture at large is more enthusiastic about Pimp My Ride than Nightline.

In a sense, the "hip-hop is dead" movement is an update of an ancient problem: the masses seem to be attracted to producers of the lowest-quality product while the makers of superior art suffer by comparison. When Jay-Z released his monumental first album. Reasonable Doubt. universally praised for its lyrical inventiveness, he admitted later on wax that "I gave you prophecy on my first joint but y'all lamed out/didn't really appreciate it 'til the second one came out." Of course, when ]ay-Z became a commercial monster, he was criticized for his extravagant materialism. And Nas' widely celebrated first offering, the classic Illmatic, took longer than it should have to go gold. But when he made more commercially viable music, he too came in for a critical drubbing. Nas seems to have this in mind when he laments on his latest album that "I can't sound smart 'cause y'all will run away." In short, the street runs both ways: beyond the crass machinations of corporate executives who are ruining hip-hop's "street ghetto essence," we seem to get the artists we deserve. If we could more readily appreciate artists' true lyrical greatness, maybe we'd demand a lot more of it and reward it and support it when it came along.

Nas is absolutely right to hold the feet of hip-hop to his rhetorical fire. With the exception of some artists and label stars, the masses of Black folk who should have a much larger financial stake in the commercial core of the culture have been all but banned from its profits. There is mindless aping of sounds and concepts that sell. Politically conscious and progressive hip-hop artists are nearly invisible and inaudible on radio and music video television. And the sheer elegance of hip-hop craft--tailored by artists with the highest regard for verbal dexterity and lyrical innovation--is crushed under the juggernaut of minstrelsy and the numbing glorification of guns, gluteus and grills.

The most powerful sign that hip-hop culture is alive and desperate to breathe is that it has launched such a withering critique from within about the industry that houses it--or makes it homeless as it were. Where is the parallel and public critique in the Black church, where patriarchy and the gospel of bling reigns in even more ugly fashion in the gospel of prosperity than in hip-hop? (After all, Diddy didn't claim to be called, just a shot-caller). Hip-hop is vital precisely because it is able to take stock and grow up and look back and move forward. Hip-hop is alive because two of its greatest MC's of all time--Jay-Z and Nas--on their latest albums wrestle in grown-up fashion with the plagues on their cultural house. "The game's f--d up" are Jay-Z's opening words to his album. And Nas laments that "Everybody sounds the same, commercialize the game/Reminiscin' when it wasn't all business/They forgot where it started/So we all gather here for the dearly departed." But don't forget to listen to Nas' last song on the album: "Hope," where he declares, a capella, that "Hip-hop will never, never die."

Horrible hip-hop must die so that regal hip-hop can live. Hip-hop is dead. Long live hip-hop.

COPYRIGHT 2007 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning