The Good, The Bad, The Hip-Hop

By Tanay HudsonChronicle Staff Writer If Lupe Fiasco rhymed back in the 90’s with what he is saying today, he’d be considered a legend.Back then, artists like Common and Black Moon told a story with their words. Most of Black Moon’s videos are in black and white and were placed in Brooklyn. They didn’t have on flashy clothes or jewelry in their videos because it wasn’t needed. Their purpose was to make the listener think, not awe them with their appearance and their riches. When I watched their videos I also noticed that there were no video vixens, just people from the neighborhood. In their music, Black Moon spoke about real life struggles and what they saw going around them but creatively. One line that Mos Def said that really stuck out was “Blastin’ holes in the night to see the sunshine,” signifying and summing up the struggle and hard times that people in the ghettos go through everyday. But he said it without profanity and with cleverness. This is exactly what hip hop is missing today.                                                                   I’m not saying rappers should remove the profanity and drug references from their music. Hip hop is a reflection of society, and these rappers are only talking about their environment and what they have been through.  They are giving their testimony. These rappers have the right to do and say what they want and shouldn’t have to worry about influencing children because it is the parent’s responsibility, not the rappers, to tell them right from wrong.But then again, if hip hop artists would talk about their experiences in a more artistic way, there wouldn’t be a problem.  If Jay-Z hadn’t grown up and sold drugs in the violent Marcy projects of Brooklyn, his lyrics and his image would be totally different from what it is now. But what makes Jay-Z superior is that he has a way with words, like Lupe Fiasco. Their lyrics are intellectual. And interestingly, because they went through different things the content of their lyrics are different. For example, in “Cashmere Thoughts,” Jay-Z rapped:  ”When I’m rhymin’ with remarkable timin’ caviar and silk dreams, my voice is linen spittin’ venom up in the, minds of young women mink thoughts to think thoughts type similar might you remember, my [… ] is col-l-l-ld like December.”While Lupe Fiasco says in “American Terrorist”: “We came through the storm nooses on our neck and a smallpox blanket to keep us warm on a 747 on the pentagon lawn wake up the alarm clock is connected to a bomb anthrax lab on a West Virginia farm shorty ain’t learned to walk already heavily armed civilians and little children is especially harmed camouflaged torahs, bibles and glorious Qurans the books that take you to heaven and let you meet the Lord there have become misinterpreted, reasons for warfare we read ‘em with blind eyes I guarantee you there’s more there…” Personally I do feel uncomfortable when I hear some of these lyrics. For instance, I love listening to Lil Wayne’s mix tapes but some of his lyrics are quite disturbing. For example, in  ”Back on My Grizzy,” he says: “Snipers at ya porch, rifles by the forts and we shoot up courts.”  While these lyrics do disturb me I still listen to his music because Lil Wayne does have songs that are charismatic and comical that I enjoy listening to.Rap at its best tells a story.Yet Lupe Fiasco’s creativity with words hasn’t helped him achieve mainstream success. To date neither of his albums has reached gold status. Like Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West is also a creative force in hip hop and barely uses profane and violent lyrics. So why hasn’t Lupe Fiasco had mainstream success like Kanye West? I guess young America isn’t ready for someone of Lupe’s lyrical stature yet.Lupe’s contemporaries don’t seem to be stepping up as artists. For example it seems as if 50 cent is saying the same thing on every album. He isn’t more creative or less; he is just same as he was on the previous album — yes, he had a rough life but he isn’t living that life anymore. He needs to talk about new things and challenge himself as an artist because he isn’t challenging me as a listener.An older generation may feel that hip hop is dead and not as uplifting and refreshing as it used to be when it first originated, while the youth of today loves it because most of them don’t have any knowledge of what it used to be. But Hip hop is constantly growing and morphing into different aspect of the urban culture. It started as a small underground way of expressing the situations one was living in, yet still today the same principles are in effect. The way of living has changed and so has the music. Life will always change into something new, and Hip Hop will be beside it changing along with it.