Old Age Hip-Hop vs. New Age Hip-Hop
I had the book “The Big Payback” on my wish-list on Amazon for about 2 years. I would always look past it and just buy things I quickly saw, liked and purchased…or I just always bought the other things that were on my wish-list. I finally decided to stop being so cheap, and purchase “The Big Payback”. It was well worth the money. I had no idea that Hip-Hop could take up a 645 page book, even with author Dan Charnas, leaving stories out. When I closed the final page of the book, I thought to myself, “I finally see why my dad DJ-ed in his teenage years and had tons of Coca-Cola crates full of records and briefcases full of cassettes.” My dad used to play his records/cassettes through his stereo system while we cleaned up the house on Saturday morning, so all of these Hip-Hop acts that were talked about in the book…I already had knowledge of. I didn’t really get into Hip-Hop until I was 15 (2006). The thing that lured me into Hip-Hop was LimeWire. I don’t know how I found the artist by the name of Lupe Fiasco, but once I did, I made sure I downloaded every mixtape/underground song he had. From that moment on, I listened to FNF radio with Lupe and Bishop G every Monday night. I had already had a few Hip-Hop singles on my iPod, thanks to LimeWire, but I never thought to venture into getting Hip-Hop artists full albums’, because the only rapper I liked, Lupe, wasn’t signed, so there was no album. My dad wouldn’t let me by parental advisory albums, so I devised a plan. My dad always let my siblings and I stay late after school, because it gave him extra time to work, since he was self-employed Real Estate loan officer. I took that to my advantage. Every Tuesday, I decided to start taking my siblings to the good eateries we’ve never been to around Pasadena, CA. My younger siblings’ school was only a block away from a Tower records, and about three blocks away from a Target. Target always had better release day sales, so I would just go get all my Hip-Hop albums from there, hide the purchase in my school bag, rip the CD to my iPod, and store the album in a small album case that no one even knew I had, compared to the huge one that I let everyone in the house pick through. Eventually music started to die down, and I became a fan of the unsigned Hip-Hop artists versus the signed crap Hip-Hop artists. Funny how everyone made Mixtapes on cassettes, and here Mixtapes were, and still are at an all-time high for signed and especially unsigned artists. Everyone wanted to be a DJ back then, and now that has transferred over to Hip-Hop producers with their personas and power. Dan Charnas book did confirm one thing for me, a hypothesis I had way before I even got into Hip-Hop, “The more money the Hip-Hop industry makes, the bigger in becomes globally, the more watered down the music is, and the less it makes sense and holds its value.” When no one had money and was just trying to get a Hip-Hop record out there in the 1980’s just because they loved the art, the music made sense, the music stood for something, even some people in the industry thought morally about certain singles that were going to be released to the public, because they knew that kids were listening. Now that Hip-Hop has the whole world at its ear, the less it makes sense and stands for nothing. Wouldn’t you want to capitalize on the power in a positive way? No, I guess most Hip-Hop artist just want to be coons, jigga-boos and put on a minstrel show. I laugh at the people that say, “Well, the whites are controlling the industry, so they get to choose what gets played.” I used to believe that, but then at the same time I kind of didn’t. “The Big Payback” helped me make up my mind and my conclusion about the whole situation. Yes, a lot of “white” people invested in the artist in the early times, but the radio in the 1990’s didn’t sound like it does now. So automatically, let’s rule that out. Not saying that the radio, especially when it comes to Hip-Hop, has ever been pure (i.e. Ice T, NWA, B.I.G., etc.), but turn on the radio now, and it’s completely different; so different to the point that I don’t even care to name some of those certain artists and their buffoonery. Also, to my understanding, and this is parallel to a lot of industries these days, whites don’t own as much as people think they do. Yes, whites are the faces of certain companies, but they aren’t own by them. So many investors and entrepreneurs with money come from regions like Asia, the Middle East and a group of people called Jews. I feel indifferent about the word “Jews” seeing that it leaves me in utter confusion; is a Jew just someone who believes in Judaism, or is it a race of people who are descendants of the Hebrews? I don’t see how the dictionary can say it’s a race and also a religion. I basically feel that it should only be one definition, but hey, whatever. But I digress, at the same time, is someone from the “inner-city” so desperate to the point that they will “sell their soul” to get a six-figure paycheck (because at the end of the day, most Hip-Hoppers make their money in other industries that include film, endorsements, etc…not exactly from the label itself). But it even kills me when the “suburban” or “middle-class” kids go off to become puppets in an industry that transitioned itself to cater to building the soundtracks for strip clubs. So, all-in-all, some of the fault is to blame the artist itself, for the foolery that has become of Hip-Hop. I haven’t heard a track like ♫Summertime♫ by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince in ages, which was a feel good, non-foolery track that actually made sense. Throughout Charnas book, you get tidbits of how certain artist’s images came into play, thanks to the record label’s creative department. Image is everything, which is something a Marketing degree holder like I would definitely know about. My problem with image…is when image becomes a Hollywood movie/script. I could understand yesterday’s artists’ image. They wanted to be smooth, just clean, be fly, etc. Today’s artists were once cops and college kids who now rap and talk like thugs and drug lords, were once innocent girls who jumped-rope and hop-scotched who turned singing into soft rap and now dress and talk like strippers. Not saying that you didn’t have your share of yesterday’s artists that did that, but now…75% of Hip-Hop artists do that. As an artist reaches higher peaks, and gains more “money”, shouldn’t their thought process change, wouldn’t they want to be entitled to more power and be taken seriously? That led me to the misconception about labels not being owned by “black” people. I’ve observed a lot of black people throughout my years and it has come down to a few things when it comes to business and them being an entrepreneur: 1) they don’t know how to run a business, 2) they’re too lazy to run a business, 3) they are doing too many other things to run a steady business, 4) they get involved with the wrong people, usually involving some illegal activity, 5) they don’t have the money, so they just decide be an employee under the company that sprung off of their idea, 6) they start a business, make it successful, then sell it, 7) or like Charnas brought to my attention in his book, they just form joint ventures. I promise you, for the longest I thought Puffy owned Bad Boy and Dame and Jay-Z owned Roc-A-Fella to its entirety…Sike! In this day and age where indie labels are springing up out of nowhere and everywhere and distribution can easily be done on the web via iTunes, Amazon, etc., there is no excuse why artists can’t sign themselves to their own deal. If you’re a drug dealer already making money with dreams of being a rapper, why don’t you just not by those rims you want, and fund your studio time and engineer for the mix and mastering of your product, or better yet…make a home studio since equipment is sold to the masses for a reasonable price. If you work a nine to five and you want to be a rapper, why don’t you just save a little to the side from each check and make an album. Social media is so prevalent now-a-days, you can network with anyone who can make your project come to life and either pay a flat fee, or cut them some royalties once you sale the album, unless you’re just going to sit there and make Mixtapes all your life hoping to become a slave to one of the “Big Three”. I’ve seen some of those contracts (some of the contracts mentioned in Charnas book were straight thievery and anyone with common sense and dignity would have known so), I’ve interned with a label to see how they waste money of these old school promotions/marketing of artists to the point where once the label recoups their advance, they hardly get a dime. I’ve seen the labels drop, pick-up and drop again, the same artist. Or how quickly an artist’s project can get pushed to the back burner because they star of the label is now ready to drop an album. These things that I’ve just mentioned aren’t anything new, even Charnas tells of these stories within the book. The saddest part is when a Hip-Hop artist does get the power to control his/her destiny, and he/she still chooses to release coon music. Yes, Hip-Hop has integrated the world filled with youth of all nationalities and races, but also damaged the new generation in negative ways. When Hip-Hop influenced movies, at first it was funny, a joke, now it’s horrible, to the point that BET doesn’t even get a second to be seen on my TV, or VH1 where I used to go to listen to music that didn’t hurt my ears now have Hip-Hop influenced reality shows that make the cast look like animals. Hip-Hop used to have to fight to get a show on the air (MTV), to having good shows almost everywhere (MTV2, BET, etc.), to having nothing but unknowns trying to break-in/make a buck fighting every time you turn on the TV. It’s funny how radio and music videos were so important to Hip-Hop, now most of the Hip-Hop songs on the radio and music videos on the TV suck because they were just thrown together. And if there is a horrible Hip-Hop artist who says that they, along with their staff did put their time, thought, and energy into a single/video, you my friend need to get your money back and definitely need to rethink your life plan. But all-in-all, “The Big Payback” broadened my knowledge on an industry that I didn’t get interested in until the mid-2000’s, and I see why I still don’t care for it that much now. Sometimes, the old days are better and will outweigh the new days.