Open Mike Eagle’s favorite rapper is MC Paul Barman. I listened to his podcast interviews with Dante Ross and he lacked a basic grasp of hip hop history. He sounded like a blackface version of fantano or fakeshore drive. To pretend the “underground” - which became a condescending classist movement of white and suburban black doofuses way way way back - has automatic cred is silly.Why wouldn't a HIP-HOP HEAD want to LEAVE A FORUM that's HOSTILE to Hip-Hop ?
You fukks don't even post about shyt that isn't "Gangsta rap".
You'd have a point if y'all was pumpin' Open Mike Eagle or Blu or Atmosphere or the dozens
if not hundreds of other non-gangsta rappers.
Stop the fukking grand standing.
Many of you are fraudulent Hip-Hop heads trying to front about your undying love for
Hip-Hop but are no where to be fukking found when actual Hip-Hop discussion is happening.
Again, a lot of y'all are not of the culture
If you read a book like Notes and Tones (Arthur Taylor interviewing his peers, the pioneers of Jazz) it’ll fukk your head up, because the parallels with hip hop are crystal clear. Black innovation and art cannot survive being coopted and stunted due to the racism and class wars attendant to American society. The very discourse of hip hop is rotten - the historical facts are altered by commodification. It’s not “dusty old head” bias to be bemused by people revising history to claim Ja Rule had classic albums and “deserves his flowers.” Or that Hammer could actually outrap your favorite rapper. Or that Coolio was a hip hop legend on par with BIG and Pac. All sentiments I’ve seen on this forum in recent times.
I grew up on Keith Sweat, Bell Biv Devoe, Jodeci etc yet I was fully aware my era of r&b was garbage compared to what my aunts and uncles listened to. Circumstances mean some generations get better shyt. It happens. Informed, comprehensive discourse allows us to understand why and how - it provides the context and criticism necessary for sustaining culture. Black people generally lack the influence (the platforms and capital) to control the discourse of our shyt once it gets popular. The relatively small, soulless, white-aspiring class of nikkas who ascend to platforms don’t help matters as they tend to be shaped by and desperate to gain approval from the forces that warp the discourse in the first place. I’m deep in this hip hop shyt - from Harlem, my cousin is a pioneering MC, I lived a lot of the formative history - and what strikes me daily is just how many black people now spout opinions and inhabit perspectives that we used to associate with silly white outsiders.
Also, hip hop used to be black culture in conversation with itself. nikkas sampling and reimagining the music of their youth and making cultural references that united
the initiated in an almost secret society sort of understanding. With popularity came corruption of that core cultural leaning. When you have a white audience willing to throw capital at you, you begin to appeal to whit sensibilities. Hip hop went from counterculture to theme music for conservative frat bros in the mainstream. The recent trend of rapping over mainstream pop samples and shytty noise music about murdering opps is just an extreme example of the minstrelsy produced by the dovetailing of white sensibilities and extreme capitalism. Hip hop was initially a response to warped white sensibilities and extreme capitalism - now it’s the soundtrack for those things.
The black cultural connections have faded and become irrelevant. Now it’s black people rapping a warped white fantasy of blackness.
This isn’t limited to black people, just to be clear. Open instagram reels or tik tok and you see something fascinating: that extreme capitalism, the attention economy, and resource scarcity transform a staggering number of people - regardless of creed, color, or country - into minstrels. Look at all the buffoons dancing poorly with plastic smiles, praying enough people will watch the spectacle, so maybe just maybe Tide or Nutella or some protein powder brand will toss a light bag their way. It’s soul crushing. Art is only as strong as the culture that sustains it, or the counterculture movements that gives it heart and soul. In our current society, even the counterculture is branded and sponsored. We’re down bad out here.
