Is Hip-Hop still relevent?

Good hip hop is.

Like many musical movements, Punk especially comes to mind, it’s all gotten too big and perverted from it’s roots, I’ll agree, but, there’s still hidden gems to be found if you dig enough.

Almost every major cultural movement gets co-opted into the “mainstream” eventually. Hip-hop is no exception.

People need to disassociate ‘Hip Hop’ from ‘Rap’. Pretty much nothing in the mainstream today represents the fundamentals of the movement, so therefore it’s not Hip-hop.

Yes Hip Hop is very relevant to the many people who enjoy it. It is a cultural art form.

@benseven Very true. Now it just seems like they’re trying to get the latest ringtone or hot club hit. Longevity doesn’t seem to be a thought.

Wait, are we talking music or culture in general?

If there is one person listening to an old Run-DMC album or a tape of The Sugar Hill Gang. It is relevant.

Just like a 90 year old woman in an old folks home listening to Fred Astaire. It is relevant to her.

@shadling21 I was thinking of the music when I posed the Q, But that is a good point. Can you live one without the other?

What do you mean by “relevant”?

One thing I miss about some of the “old school” hip-hop I heard back in the 80’s and early 90’s was that it had a healthy sense of humor, didn’t take itself too seriously, and could touch on sexual topics without getting absolutely vulgar. That’s not to say that those qualities were lost wholesale per se, but at some point whatever was getting exposure on MTV and on the radio lost it, I think. But then it wasn’t long before MTV and radio lost relevance for me enitrely. I holed up in my own little musical world for about a decade before poking my head out again.

@dansedescygnes I guess I mean does it still hold the value and quality it once had. There doesn’t seem to be any integrity anymore. There’s no “meat” anymore. A lot of the earlier stuff had a message. Stuff that you could apply to the real world. Now it just seems to be about how many bitches you got. Or how much money you got.

@Shecky_Johnson

Well, that’s true largely. As someone who doesn’t like rap (I only really like hip hop songs with singing in them, but having a verse that’s rap is fine) I tend to like any hip hop that sounds good to me, bad lyrics or not. My brother feels the same way. He prefers old hip hop to new, but sometimes he comes across some new hip hop that just sounds good, even if the lyrics are kind of stupid and nothing compared to the older hip hop.

There’s more and better rap music than what’s on commerical radio, but you have to look for it!

@aprilsimnel That is very true. I don’t even listen to it on the radio ‘cause it does not speak to me.

I found this one english dude through a friend of mine. Scroobius Pip is a lyrical Genius. The album (which I have listened to like 40 times since December) is “Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip”. He’s taking it back to the begining. If you get a chance, check it out.

I like all kinds of music and I’ve noticed through the years that Rock and Rap/Hip-Hop seem to take turns with new “good” music. There will be a lot of good Rock songs out and I find nothing keeping me on the Hip-Hop stations and vice-versa.

The Rap/Hip-Hop genre pretty much sucks right now but there’s some new artists breaking out and some older ones trying to come back so it won’t be long before the switch takes place.

I personally like to stay in the middle with the whole Rap-Rock thing (or at least something close). My current favorites are Skindred and Hollywood Undead.

i love hip hop and am an enthusiast for good poetry behind a funky beat. its so sad that the shit u hear on the radio is labeled hip hop cuz its more like boy bands im so discouraged sometimes that i stop writing my own rhymes which ive felt is my calling for awhile. we need a change where people don’t associate hip hop with antisocial behavior and dumb bitches. i just pray that this change will come soon so i can feel confident to release my poetry in the world, without being labeled an uneducated, crime commiting, womanizer