De La Soul were never "conscious hip-hop". They were just hip hop.
And "conscious hip-hop" is a redundant term , penned by clueless industry execs who did not know how to market it.
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Why did Pro Black/Conscious hip hop take a decline in the mid '90s ?
- Thread starter Raheem95
- Start date
And "conscious hip-hop" is a redundant term , penned by clueless industry execs who did not know how to market it.
There was definitely a backlash to conscious shyt by the time NWA had their run and Death Row, Geto Boys, Scarface etc started to get popular. The problem was a lot of those conscious acts were fighting amongst themselves too (X-Clan going at KRS/ KRS going at Poor Righteous Teachers) and it began to weaken the message.
Why should I bother hearing pro-black cats trying to sound hard when I can just throw on some Mobb Deep? A lot of traditional cats like LL Cool J and Big Daddy Kane were having identity crisis too putting out try hard releases like Looks Like A Job For and 14 Shots To The Dome. although LL shyt still tough tho
Scarface was way more conscious than x-clan will ever be. Most of the so-called "conscious rappers" messages were corny, repetitive, preachy, and not keeping up with the rapidly changing conditions of post-industrial, post-crack reality of visible minorities in America (black-americans, puerto-ricans, caribbeans, even some native americans). You ever see the "My block" video?
Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta ? These masterpieces resonated with me more deeply than anything any of the conscious cornballs ever came out with. And this is somebody from Buffalo saying this.
That was PM Dawn that Kris threw off the stage, breh.
But I see your point. Those dudes(PM Dawn) deserved to get thrown off the stage for talking reckless about him and PE in that Details interview.
Video of KRS-One throwing them off the stage or a diss track ?
And how were De La Soul fakkits, they just seem like some artsy bohemian conscious motherfukkas.
Video of KRS-One throwing them off the stage or a diss track ?
And how were De La Soul fakkits, they just seem like some artsy bohemian conscious motherfukkas.
My bad posting before thinking confused groups.
iFightSeagullsForBread
The Working Class Hero
Same reason Hair Metal, Grunge got eventually replaced by alternative rock and nu metal.
People wanna hear something new after awhile.
And just because a rapper is considered "conscious" doesn't automatically give them a pass for being good, look at Hopsin and Jidenna for modern examples.
People wanna hear something new after awhile.
And just because a rapper is considered "conscious" doesn't automatically give them a pass for being good, look at Hopsin and Jidenna for modern examples.
Basically this. It was called reality rap.
But yeah commercial rap is what killed it.
All of this.
People can't complain about putting rappers in a box they had a hand in creating themselves
Like who? Please name examples. Wack is wack. I listen to 98% "gangsta rap" too. But the only problem with conscious rap is there is NOT ENOUGH OF IT. We sift through 100,000 dope selling rappers to find the 5 guys that we actually like. But a handful of conscious rappers sound corny and we have to kill the whole genre...thats the okie doke.
Who exactly are the corny conscious rappers that everybody hates? Can we name them? X Clan only really had one album. It can't be just them getting on EVERYBODY's nerves...
To me its not about specific artists, its about the CONTENT. Like people said before, Ice Cube was a conscious artist. So was Scarface, so was Willie D. So was 2Pac and Nas who everybody claims to love. Nobody would say they were corny or preachy so why can't today's artists have similar content?
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ogc163
Superstar
What I envision the typical conscious Hip-Hop fan to look/sound like
Who the fukk is Quelle Chris? Who the fukk is Denmark Vessy ? Who the fukk is Quelle Chris? Who the fukk is Ceschi?
A good example of why cats don't rock with modern conscious rap
Who the fukk is Quelle Chris? Who the fukk is Denmark Vessy ? Who the fukk is Quelle Chris? Who the fukk is Ceschi?
A good example of why cats don't rock with modern conscious rap
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Taadow
The StarchBishop™️
Common, Tribe, De La Soul, Jeru The Damaja, and the like.
Why can't a "dope-selling rapper" have a conscience?
Is conscious rap a genre?
I agree that it's about "content".
So if it's about "content" and not so much being a type of artist, why struggle to fit into that conscious box?
(sidebar: Case in point - today I was listening to some Nore, Melvin Flynt Da Hustler. For all the ignorance on there,
you had "Sometimes", "Goin' Legit", and "Flagrant Cops" on there. Those songs come from a conscious place.
In my listening to hip-hop history, i've found most artists are like that.)
Ice Cube, Scarface, Willie D, 2Pac, and Nas were conscious in my opinion...and I do think they were "preachy" at times.
But they were also balanced - they had dichotomy. I don't think they would call themselves "conscious" rappers, and you know why?
Because they weren't wearing that self-imposed "conscious" label like some of the aforemtioned.
newworldafro
DeeperThanRapBiggerThanHH
Conscious sounding rap didn't die in the mid 90s,.if anything, when you add in ths neo-soul era of the mid 90s to early 2000s.it was amazing great time, all the way up about 2005-06.
What did happen in the mid 90s was the fukkboi radio stations, became consolidated and stop playing conscious rap. There use to be a period where.you could, get your street, conscious, and even dance rap on the radio station all at once. But on the radio station, where you reached the most people, the conscious sound was basically erased, until maybe now with a few songs here and there.
What did happen in the mid 90s was the fukkboi radio stations, became consolidated and stop playing conscious rap. There use to be a period where.you could, get your street, conscious, and even dance rap on the radio station all at once. But on the radio station, where you reached the most people, the conscious sound was basically erased, until maybe now with a few songs here and there.
Internet blowing up simultaneously amplified this
feelosofer
#ninergang
I think people are getting eras confused a bit. There was definitely a lull in Pro-Black, pro empowerment music in the industry, this happened in the early 90's. NWA started this shift, but really executives knew that there was an insatiable thirst for fukkery on records and over beats, selling it to suburban white kids who never stepped foot into Compton or Newark or Bed-Stuy or any place like that. Pro-Black message could only appeal to audiences that could relate to that but sex and violence is universal. On top of that, race relations in the US with the riots and whatnot had eroded that idea of that sort of back to Africa movement, and peaceful movement, and put people in a different mindstate. On top of that there are people that think that conscious rappers are talking at them or are a bit preachy (which I don't always disagree).
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The problem with concious rap now is that dudes forgot to entertain as well as observe and inform. The result is middling music that gets away with murder simply because people think "they're saying something"
I'll give you a perfect example of who I'm talking about
After Quality, the man put out dud after dud but he doesn't (or didn't at one point) get much heat for it because hes a "conscious emcee with a message".
He's a dude gassed off his own hype with a bad voice and worse flow. And to be brutally honest, these problems were apparent during his prime, he was just a fresh face and Hi-Tek's beats carried him. Mos Def before that (who also fell off).
Dude even recognized he put himself in that box by calling one of his albums "Prisoner of Conciousness". Too bad it was weak just like the one before it with some rather cringeworthy attempts at breaking out of that box.