This is a mash-up I made featuring a few of the different
styles of hip-hop. I cover underground, old school, and modern rap to show the
wide spectrum of styles available to us today, and I’ll leave it to the viewer
to decide which sounds the best with my own opinions inserted for criticism.
I am a very strong critique of Lil’ Wayne, mainly because he
is undoubtedly the most popular rapper today, but more interestingly because he
reached such a status without having any recognizable talent that sets himself
apart from the rest of his competition. He doesn't write his own music, he can’t
keep up with the flow of most of his songs, and the rhymes and punch-lines in
most of his music are mediocre at best when compared to other artists who
really care passionately about the music, and not only the fame and recognition
it brings; proof lies in the video.
I’ll leave the criticism of modern rap there for now, and I
wanted to also comment on the actual progression and change that hip-hop has exhibited.
We still have amazing talent to listen to in the industry, and this is made
evident with the insane lyrical power of artists such as Blackalicious and
Celph Titled. While these are only two artists who challenge mainstream rap and
continue to focus heavily on the writing and lyrics that go behind a song,
underground rap in my experience has a better reception in regards to producing
a higher quality of rhetoric by the artists. No one can tell me that the
artists who are pouring their souls into creating their music can be matched by
someone who does it strictly for money.
Undoubtedly, artists such as Tupac who started the hip-hop
trend, as well as dedicated underground hip-hop artists, leave more of an
impact on the listener because they are on a completely different level of
production than what we hear today in the radio.
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