this is long.
well most music is a reflection of the culture at large. so just think of what's going on right now. in something like hip hop, its a lot of competition which leads to ego and bravado, all that. we have a generation of young folks who grew up with no real guidance (think kids that were growin up in the 70s early 80s babies) who produced and created music that reflected their times.
jackie wilson, james brown,
jimi hendrix beget michael jackson funkadelic,prince. (think of the time period, war, civil rights, hippies)
nwa, dmc, luke, beget the dogg pound, wu tang, lil jon or the hot boys (crack, mtv, jordans)
jay, eminem, kanye beget drake, kendrick, jeezy(social media, designer, auto tune)
people haven't gotten dumber, its still pretty much the same. its a war between style and substance. the hip hop audience tends to equate that with having the most money, drivin the nicest car, and gettin the most girls (as referred to by one of the posters above). and that's fine. but hip hop is still an art form. yet business has been taking precedence over the actual art itself.
money -> power-> respect.
it seems like when no one cared about hip hop, and thought it was just a phase that,
respect came from your
power to (move the crowd) ask bambaataa, which would eventually lead to making money.
whereas in a business over money situation you make
money, so you can have
power to buy
respect.
money and power is the essence of politics. its a fact that 90% of elections that occur in our country are won by the person who spends more money. if you knew the returns you'd get on investing to get a hit onto the radio, how much would you spend if you knew it was going to get played three times an hour, on the hour every hour, all over the country, for a couple of month period?
it used to be could you actually ball and play ball? now its about how much you spent on your designer shoes/j's.
michael jackson ='s best baller that has the j's to go along with it.
kanye is probably the closest thing hip hop has had in recent years to having someone with a crazy budget that really put it into the music. where it's been a business, but the art still came first. the quality of the art created a lane for itself.
assuming he's making the beats and writing the raps. it seems to be a trend, as you make more money to actually do less art.
its the same
reason why i have more respect for
professional athletes these days. because at least i get to see them actually dunk the basketball, score the touchdowns, hit the homeruns, score the goals.
i wanna see the players make plays, donald sterling may own the team, but i don't watch the games to see him. i want to see blake griffin and deandre jordan catch the assist from chris paul. i think it'd be kinda dumb for donald sterling to take credit for the oop, or claimin he dunked it. i think that would be dumb to support that.
i wanna know who's really doin what and how much? but that's just me. so have fans gotten dumber? not really. they probably just aren't paying much attention because they're too busy lookin down on their smartphones updating their twitters and instagrams to really care.
and should they? they're the audience, they just wanna hear music. however the donald sterlings (owners, labelheads) get to decide who hears what, and what gets played. how would they know the radio isn't good as it could be if they've never known any better?
