And for every 50 Cent, there is a Mos Def, the rapper-turned-actor who is actually great at both without being pretentious, big-headed, or crude. For every Asher Roth, there is an Atmosphere. These days, for every Ne-Yo, there is a P.O.S. These cycles and their impact have continued for decades now, and to those not paying attention, it would seem as if nothing in hip-hop has really changed.īut the rampant mediocrity and the frustration that mediocrity has caused has, over time, allowed for the greater sifting of the bad from the truly good, those who’ve rejected the notion that hip-hop’s evolution has stalled and is relegated only to what can be heard on Top 40 radio stations and commercials for new ringtones, who’ve taken up the mantle of artists like Public Enemy and De La Soul and decided that enough is enough. These ventures almost never turn out well, and eventually these artists retreat into the comfort of their musical sphere. This leads to rappers who branch into other mediums, like the screen or the printed page.
The better a rapper is at emulating their idols, the more money they make, the higher their profile becomes, the more ingrained their name is on the popular consciousness.
Worse yet, the music is locked in an incessant, almost fearful grip on the coattails of past and more successful rappers, which leads to mediocrity begetting further mediocrity. It is the eternal struggle of hip-hop music, the great lamentation of critics and fans alike, that the genre is so often heavily loaded with almost stereotypical hedonism, greed, homophobia, and sexism that it becomes a parody of itself.
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