In the beginning, hip hop was nothing more then a positive movement for those in a negative struggle. The beats were infectious yet simple, the rhymes were elementary yet profound. The pioneers of the hip hop culture gave the urban centers a gift. A gift that was intended to be used as a platform for the poor and hopeless! Hip hop was something pure and innocent that wasn’t meant to be commercialized nor was it meant to be abused with profanity and vulgarities. I often wonder what the pioneers of this industry think when they see their gift not only being abused but also neglected and sold to the highest bidder. Hip hop is at a stage where it is as successful as it has ever been yet the people who have followed it since the beginning are not joyful.
Let’s face it! Money is the bottom line in every business. Whether that business has pure intentions or not, at the end of the day it comes down to how much revenue that particular business has generated. The trickiest aspect of all of this is trying to nurture an art and keeping it pure while still having it create revenue. This is more evident in the world of music as a whole but more so in hip hop then any other artistic field. Quite frankly, a painter paints! No one can dictate to a painter what it is exactly that they should be painting that day. If you are familiar with business you may have heard of a term called supply and demand. It states that in order to have a product to supply to society there must be a demand for it. Hip hop has skated on a slippery slope with this issue for a very long time and it has gotten to the point where the artists themselves may feel they are in control but in actuality they are just puppets being controlled by strings. Continue reading →
