the decline of Hip-Hop

Ta-Nehisi Coates laments the lack of depth and humanity in mainstream rap today.

It's tough to ever call out a particular genre, because within any genre there is always of course enormous variety, in technique and message and sheer talent.

But I think it's fair to judge the mainstream, public face of a genre, and mainstream rap has become awful, awful, awful. Rap is hardly alone in this regard; most mainstream music is pretty bad, and I couldn't tell you that mainstream rock, to the degree that such a thing exists anymore, is any good either. However, mainstream rap is terrible yet remains in the face of public consciousness and the musical moment. And that's precisely the problem. I've felt for years that the problem with rap is that, after a brief artistic flourishing and quick ascendancy to mainstream dominance, the (white) entertainment media was so enthralled with the cache and cool of hip hop that they ceased holding it to any musical standard at all. Because the mainstream entertainment media so identified black culture with the cool, and hip hop with black culture, they abandoned any pretense of rendering critical judgment on the music and simply when into constant mythologizing and comic overpraising. This is the phenomenon that has brought you, for example, VH1's Hip-Hop Honors. Because, you know, nothing screams hip-hop authenticity like Mark McGrath MCing an awards show on VH1.

For awhile there it was the thing for previously rap-averse music critics to suddenly declare that hip-hop was the true artistic vanguard. Never mind that most popular hip-hop has always been rather derivative and shallow. Like many genres, the best in hip-hop has often been off the beaten path. No, to embrace hip-hop was to move away from the stodgy rock-centric musical criticism of the past and embrace the new new hotness. White music critics could demonstrate not necessarily hipness but (in their own minds) their unflagging pursuit of the best music being produced. It so happens that there was a time when hip-hop was indeed making the best music out there, but the mainstream media, as always, was a few years behind the curve. Outkast really started getting mainstream accolades with Stankonia; but there masterpiece, unquestionably in my mind, is Aquemini. As usual, the public perception of musical virtuosity was a few years late. Stankonia is Outkast's Sergeant Pepper; Aquemini, their Revolver. (Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is sadly their Wings/Double Fantasy. But I digress.)

The trouble with this kind of laudatory press is that it equally praised brilliance and failure. I know I'm in the minority regarding Eminem and Kanye West. But surely anyone would concede that, say, Juvenile is not high art. When the mainstream face of musical media failed to distinguish between Talib Kweli and the Ying Yang Twins, it hurt everyone. Rappers could make comically derivative, tossed-off records and still be on the cover of every magazine, in every commercial, all over MTV. This isn't to say that music critics didn't laud some and deride others, but music critics hold littler power over the general thrust of the mainstream music media, and those subtle distinctions got lost in the wash. What remained was a sense than any rap was good rap, and that as long as music had a hip-hop construction, it was to be praised as "What's Now".

The effects were terrible for rap. When you're held to no real critical standards, there's no particular reason to write good material. Rappers have always been greatly prolific, often to their credit. In an atmosphere where anything went, though, this kind of mass production just exacerbated the problem. There was so much terrible rap out there masquerading as good music, and kept alive only by the vague notion that it was counterculture and cool. I am baffled by people who continue to insist that rap is a counter-culture. Rap is a Pepsi commercial and a show on the E! network. It's lost any claim to being out of the mainstream. That's not really such a problem; indeed it should be a goal for a mature genre. But rap has badly lost its way, artistically, though of course there are always exceptions.

I hope the knee-jerk association of hip-hop with the cool or the now is a thing of the past, precisely because I am a fan of good hip-hop. I think rap needs to be lost in the woods for a little while, for its own sake, so it can come out a more healthy, more self-critical genre. Whether the positive messages Coates laments come back, I really couldn't say.