Mainstream rap and hip-hop has been largely shit ever since NWA came along. I love Straight Outta Compton, and even parts of their first album are good, but by unleashing gangsta rap, they did a disservice to us all.
Most rap producers have become very tiresome and unimaginative over the past decade or so. The worst is when rap songs steal the entire melody from another song, put a drum machine over it, and repeat the chorus as if it's somehow hip and clever (re: Every Breath You Take or That's Just the Way it Is).
We've fallen a long way from the great sample collages of the late 1980s, though those albums are illegal to create now (via a series of highly publicized lawsuits).
Maybe worst of all, most of the guys we once looked to as leading lights in underground hip-hop are now past their prime and out of touch with the artistic cutting edge. That happens to all artists when they reach a certain age, but it happens faster in hip-hop, because of the insane rate at which styles and tasts change in the music. Common asked "how come the industry builds careers that don't last?" I say, that's the bargain you accepted when you entered this field. That's the way rap has always been, from the Sugar Hill Gang on down to Outkast. Rap is a young man's game. If you hang around too long, you just embarass yourself.
Underground rap/hip-hop didn't make much of a dent in the mainstream, and now I am worried about there not being a future for the music. Artists and labels are getting the news that the general public just doesn't give a shit. As Zappa so eloquently said "artistic freedom is dependent upon adequate funding."
If no one buys your music, no one will help you create it either. Work isn't done in a vacuum. More than anything, I mourn the passing of a voice for the misfits of hip-hop, who don't buy into the whole image of bitches, bling, blunts, gats, and 40s. The creeps and weirdos are my sort of people, and I can't stand to live in a world that has no place for them.
