In recent years, hip-hop has seen an increased polarization between its two predominant camps—the defacto underground and the popularized mainstream. In that dichotomy, there exists a growing animosity from the underground that seeks to invalidate popular radio rap as “inauthentic” and “lacking substance.” Backpackers in particular are guilty of fostering a very stigamitzed elitism on the matter, in which “keeping it real” entails listening strictly to hip-hop that carries obvious and distinctly defined notions of social commentary. It’s gotten to the point, however, in which underground hip-hop has gotten too readily dismissive of anything the pop world has to offer, and I would counter that while it takes a world of intelligence and hard work to craft underground hip-hop that’s both creative and observant, it may take even more to craft a club banger that’s universally fun and appealing.
Recently, Ice-T (perhaps best known for his role as a reformed hoodrat on NBC’s Law and order: SVU) had this to say about 17-year-old pop phenom Soulja Boy:
“Fuck Soulja Boy. Eat a dick. Nigga single-handedly killed hip-hop. We came all the way from Rakim. We came all the way from Das EFX. We came all the way from motherfuckers flowing like Big Daddy Kane and Ice Cube, and you come with that ‘Superman’ shit? That shit is garbage.” (sourch)
I’m not going to deconstruct all that, but essentially Ice-T is name dropping in order to establish a credible ethos to help paint Soulja Boy as inauthentic, and he does it in a bitter way that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. “Hip-hop is dead” is probably the most hegenomically overused phrase in all of hip-hop. Old school rappers like Ice-T and Nas utilize the phrase ad nauseum in order to maintain their validity in the hip-hop universe. Effectively, these guys are the architects of the genre, and in that they deserve a high level of distinction. However, to depreciate the value of hip-hop’s “next generation” exposes a fundamental flaw in their train of thought—hip-hop, as with all art, is always evolving and changing to reflect the times around it. Ice-T talking shit on Soulja Boy, in addition to sounding petty and bitter, essentially relegates his own ideal of hip-hop to a static form.
Now, I love Soulja Boy, and would have to agree wholeheartedly with Kanye West’s take on the Ice-T/Soulja Boy beef:
“Soulja boy is fresh ass hell and is actually the true meaning of what hip hop is sposed to be. He came from the hood, made his own beats, made up a new saying, new sound and a new dance with one song. He had all of America rapping this summer. If that ain’t Hip Hop then what is? A bunch of wannabe keep it real rappers that ain’t even relevant, recycling samples trying to act like it’s 96 again and all they do is hate on new shit? N***as always talk about the golden age but for a 13 year old kid, this is the golden age!!! That song was so dope cause everything he said had a hidden meaning… that’s Nas level shit… he just put it over some steel drums which is also some Nas shit if you had the 2nd album cassette with the bonus track “Silent Murder” on it. In closing… new n***as get ya money$$$$$$$$$$ Keep this shit fresh and original…. ain’t no fuckin’ rules to this shit and that’s what real hip hop is to me.” (source)
Effectively, Kanye is unique because he is one of very few artists who is able to bridge that mainstream/underground dichotomy and is mutually respected in both camps, and I think he’s able to do this because as a producer and rapper, he understands what’s important to both– he’s able to synthesize pop music production with rhymes that operate within the framework of a conscious narrative.
Going off that, I think where the underground began to hurt its cause is it began to overemphasize the idea that “good” hip-hop needs an explicitly conscious narrative in order to be validated, and I think this culminated in a knee-jerk reactionary sort of way after the passing of J Dilla in 2006. In a post-humous collaboration mixtape aptly named “Dillagence”, the commercially viable Busta Rhymes admitted that Dilla’s production brought out the best in him, and is just one illustration of why Dilla was so important to the structural integrity of the hip-hop world. With his music, he was able to hold together the fringes of both camps and placate the festering animosity that the underground harbored towards the mainstream. On the flip side, the mainstream doesn’t give a fuck (or gives very little). I think his passing in a way opened the floodgates, and prominent fixtures in the underground universe (like Talib Kweli and Mos Def) “jumped ship” and went mainstream. While these guys held on to some of their artistic integrity, the underground world was never really the same.
This shift in the balance placed a new pressure on the underground to re-evaluate its identity, and it rebranded itself in a way by placing heavier emphasis on lyrical content. This allowed smaller labels, like San Francisco based AntiCon (who house artists like Sole and Doseone) to really blossom in the underground hip-hop sphere. By adopting a culture that was more lyrical and verbose, underground hip-hop also became more serious; more “wax poetic.” And for awhile, that was cool.
However, I think underground hip-hop reached a tipping point in that it realized its fundamental flaw– it began to take itself too seriously. This seriousness furthered the undergrounds contempt for the mainstream, which holds that the new school of rappers (like Soulja Boy) are bad because their music isn’t intelligent and doesn’t provide social commentary. However, I’d like to argue that ALL hip-hop, regardless of subgenre, provides a form of social commentary, and I think backpackers sometimes forget this. Guns, cash and women are all tropes that help offer insight into the struggle to get out of “the hood”, which in itself is the purest, most fundamental narrative within the entire hip-hop dynamic. I think mainstream deserves validation from the underground in that it’s able to do all this without a) taking itself too seriously, and b) making social commentary palatable for a much, much wider audience. While it isn’t as obvious and realized, it is nonetheless there, and plants the seeds which allow the underground to exist in the first place.
While popular rap may sometimes caricaturize the ghetto, it also gives the hood a voice it otherwise wouldn’t have. It crafts an identity, which in turn provides a social framework from which to work from. Admittedly, at times this is detrimental to the hood community as a whole, but for the most part, it allows them to be heard through a medium that everyone can like—a medium that everyone can dance to.
I’d like to leave you guys with this video of Andre 3k. In it, he states that hip-hop is powerful because it’s able to encapsulate ALL these different facets of the mainstream and underground alike. Hip-hop stemmed from a party scene and is first and foremost about the party, and that’s what makes it such a powerful form of communication– it’s an art form whose most important instrinsic value is also its most obvious– it’s alive.
// Chris Guy in collaboration with Caspian de la Sanchez
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