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The New Old School (The African Hiphop Movement In Effect) |
| themac (09/07/08 02:53:22) Tag: hiphop |
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I spoke to modenine the other day over the phone and in just a few minutes,he got me in on the African hiphop movement-we, really? he got curmudgeonly about Hip-Hop. Like a lot of folks who are reaching, or are already in, their 30’s, we lamented the lack of knowledge younger Hip-Hop fans have of the old school. Mode0, however, also brought up the interesting point that teenagers today have their own version of old school and it may surprise a lot of people to see which artists fall under their “old school” classification. I started listening to rap music when I was nine or ten years old. To make this equation easier let’s just say ten. They were all ten in 1998, so providing they didn't have older siblings who could introduce them to Hip-Hop earlier in life their version of “old school” starts in the mid to late 90’s. The idea of Wu-Tang, A Tribe Called Quest, The Fugees, Redman, DMX, Onyx, Naughty By Nature, and even NORE being “old school” is painful to a lot of Hip-Hop fans. It gets us riled up when younger fans don’t know about Rakim and our favorites from our youth, but the fact of the matter is that’s two generations of artists ago, so unless they feel like being historians they’re not going to know who any of those artists are. Heck, most 18 year olds don’t even know about The Fugees. Why would they? The group had broken up before these young adults even cracked double digits in age! And unless NORE’s “Superthug” was rocking their fifth grade dances they probably have never even heard his great workout tip to “run laps around the English Channel.” After taking all this into consideration I’ve decided to lighten up a bit on the Hip-Hop loving youth. Yeah, they say silly things like Lil’ Wayne is the greatest emcee alive (like mode9 mentioned) and that Jay-Z and Nas are two of the all-time greats, but in all honesty it’s because they don’t know any better, and we need to stop expecting them to. One issue a lot of us older fans who’ve either been involved in the culture from day one, or at least been alive since day one, is that sometimes we get on our high horses too much and preach about “the good old days,” or “the golden era.” It’s no wonder there’s such a disconnect with younger fans, all a lot of us do is preach about how great things used to be, giving no reverence to what’s going on now that’s good. As older fans we never had anyone preaching to us about how good Hip-Hop used to be because there was no “used to be.” It took twenty years before there was a “used to be” to reference. What we are essentially doing now is telling the next generation they should be listening to their parents’ music. Now, is that very Hip-Hop? I don’t think so. While I may not like the plethora of young artists and 'colleagues' that are out there today I can say there are still a handful that represent the culture well and create some really good music. I know Od, (hope y'all sending in your votes for him on the advanced warning show),Da Grin (still don't know why i'm loving his music) can’t be considered young in age, but they qualify as young in the sense that they haven’t been in the public eye (ike that big public eye_ for very long, and they’re fantastic. There are still plenty of reasons to get excited in Hip-Hop, but the first step has to be the realization that as older fans the concept of “old school” has shifted and the party goers of 2008 and beyond have grown up on the Hip-Hop of the new millennium. Love it or hate it, it’s a fact that a lot of our favorite artists, and a lot of the artists we revere as the greatest of all-time (and with good reason), are complete unknowns to the legions of voter-aged listeners now entering school. How we can encourage these young listeners to dive into Hip-Hop’s deep library of fantastic artists and albums is something we need to work on. Clearly the way we’re going about it is all wrong, but if young fuji wanna hear KWAM 1 and rock fans can still want to listen to The Doors, there has to be a way to get a Hip-Hop loving teenager to want to check out a Fugees CD. going about this in the supposed right way is Modeinstein (i'm declaring a change of name of mode9),If you ain't heard? African Hiphop Movement is the latest hedline from the Local Hiphop scene that is going global.It's a movement for hiphop head/artiste to get together and shoot this dearest baby-hiphop to a whole new level.As voluntary like the red cross service,This is what the industry needs.A mixtape is in the talk-An African Hiphop Movement Mixtape,it should cut across the continent. I would say it's long over due.what about you? culled from www.downtowninc.net |
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