Blog Era Back? How J. Cole, Wiz Khalifa & Others Are Restoring The Feeling

Street Knowledge · Thursday at 11:58 AM

Baggy clothes, sped-up soul samples and super-skinny celebrities aren’t the only trends making a comeback.

In recent months, a number of Hip Hop stars — from J. Cole and Wiz Khalifa to Big Sean and Chance The Rapper — have quietly been helping to recapture the essence of one of the game’s best-loved periods: the Blog Era.

Beginning in the mid 2000s, this digital revolution redefined Hip Hop and breathed new life into the genre as Internet piracy was crippling the music industry at large. Pioneering websites like NahRight, 2DopeBoyz and OnSMASH wrestled power away from traditional gatekeepers such as radio stations, record labels and magazines, spearheading a new wave of online tastemakers that shook up the game.

Updated daily with a seemingly endless stream of new songs and mixtapes (much of which were available to download for free), these blogs helped birth future superstars like Drake, Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, nurtured exciting left-of-center movements like Odd Future, TDE and The Cool Kids, and allowed established names such as Lil Wayne, Joe Budden and 2 Chainz to circumvent label politics, flex their creative muscles and reinvent themselves.

Without the Blog Era, we wouldn’t have cult projects like Drake’s So Far Gone, Kendrick’s Section.80, Wiz Khalifa’s Kush & Orange Juice, A$AP Rocky’s Live.Love.A$AP and Wayne’s Da Droughtand Dedication series, to name just a few. And without these projects, Hip Hop wouldn’t be what it is today.

Some time around the mid to late 2010s, however, things began to change. Streaming platforms had monopolized the music industry, changing the way music was released and consumed, and the rise of social media was taking clicks away from websites, making it hard for them to survive. Eventually, pivotal platforms like NahRightand 2DopeBoyz ceased to exist, signaling the end of the Blog Era.

They say all good things must come to an end, right?

Street Knowledge · Thursday at 11:59 AM

Almost a decade later, however, the spirit of this special time has been making a small but not insignificant return.

Those who are old enough to have experienced the Blog Era firsthand may have started to recognize this mini renaissance last year in the aftermath of Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s epic beef. Following his bold yet controversial decision to bow out of the “Big Three” battle to protect his inner-peace, J. Cole dropped a loosie out of the blue called “Port Antonio”— not on Spotify or Apple Music, but on YouTube.

The song was not an attempt to dethrone “Not Like Us” or decapitate either Kendrick or Drake. Instead, it was a typically introspective effort that found Cole reflecting on his come up, lamenting the current state of the culture and defending his decision to wave the white flag. Its sample of Lonnie Liston Smith’s “A Garden of Peace,” famously flipped by JAY-Z’s “Dead Presidents,” called to mind Cole’s early mixtapes which saw him tackle classic beats from Hov, Nas, Kanye West and his other Hip Hop heroes.

Months later, perhaps inspired by his nostalgic, career retrospective audio series Inevitable, the Dreamville founder made eskay proud by starting his own blog called The Algorithm. “This is just a place for me to share,” he wrote in his debut post. “I been wanting a lil blog for years. Somewhere to post random shyt I fukk with where the audience is way smaller than it is on the social media platforms. Finally pulled the trigger, bare with us as we still developing this page and the layout.”

Cole has since done what any rap blogger looking to make a name for themselves used to do: premiere new music from a big name. In this case, himself. In February, he shared another new track called “cLOUDs”exclusively via The Algorithm, just days after recording it — no label approval or promotional rollout needed. In fact, he didn’t even have a title until 20 minutes before hitting publish.

This drop-what-you-want, when-you-want approach has also been (re)adopted by Wiz Khalifa. Since leaving his longtime home of Atlantic Records, the Taylor Gang chief has pumped out a series of independent mixtapes at a pace that would make a young Wiz proud, while also dropping freestyles over everything from 2Pac’s “So Many Tears” and The LOX’s “fukk You” to Solange’s “Cranes in the Sky.”

He has even teased a remix of “cLOUDs”after being asked by J. Cole to jump on the smoking-friendly song and is gearing up to release a long-awaited sequel to Kush & Orange Juice in April to coincide with 4/20. It’d be rude not to bump it on DatPiff when it drops.

Fellow Blog Era darling Big Sean has been turning back the clock as well, recently releasing “Head to the Sky Freestyle” — a flip of Sounds of Blackness’ 1991 hit “Optimistic” — exclusively on Instagram to celebrate both Black History Month and the 10-year anniversary of his Dark Sky Paradise album.

“I just went in for fun,” he explained of the song and its accompanying music video. “This original always felt so special to me, so inspiring, soulful n black. I actually been on a slightly darker vibe in the studio lately (might be cause of Dark Sky Paradiseanniversary inspiring me, but we’ll get to that later) but loved how this beat felt like a ray of Sun. Shot this clip in NY a couple days ago in the few hours of spare time we had.”

It’s perhaps no coincidence that Cole, Wiz and Sean were all part of the 2010 XXLFreshman class alongside the likes of Freddie Gibbs, Jay Rock and the late Nipsey Hussle — a defining moment of the Blog Era.