Hip-hop in the past decade, your opinion?

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What do you call this new flow where people rap like two syllables, pause, two syllables, pause for the whole fuckin song? I've been trying to google it to try and understand why and how people listen to it, and if there's any self-awareness about how awful it is.
 
I like some of the new artists, but if I'm honest I don't relate to most of it. I started listening to hip hop in the early 80s so I'm an old head. I tend to like more melodic stuff that is less focused on bars and lyrics and more based on delivery and song structure. My son is 14 so he feeds me a fairly current diet of what's popular with young people, and I turn him on to old school stuff. Works out well.
 
Nexus Zero said:
What do you call this new flow where people rap like two syllables, pause, two syllables, pause for the whole fuckin song? I've been trying to google it to try and understand why and how people listen to it, and if there's any self-awareness about how awful it is.
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We are in the minority brother, the radios play it cause alot of people love it.
 
Mainstream rap / hip-hop is just fucking awful.

Maybe I'm just getting old and I was blessed being at a young age with Pac, Biggie, Snoop, Eminem, Beastie Boys, Jay-Z, Jurassic 5, Wu Tang, Outkast, Rakim, NAS, TCQ, NWA, Cypres Hill, Public Enemy, Run DMC, Mobb Deep, Lauren Hill, De La Soul, Grandmaster Flash, Jungle brothers, Sugar Hill Gang, Fat Joe, Fugees, Bone thugs and Harmony. Christ, even Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.

Who we got now? Drake? With tracks like Hotline Bling? And She bad? Jesus tap dancing fucking Christ. And Kanye is well past it.

Mainstream hip-hop is dog shit.
 
MarkMclovin said:
Mainstream rap / hip-hop is just fucking awful.

Maybe I'm just getting old and I was blessed being at a young age with Pac, Biggie, Snoop, Eminem, Beastie Boys, Jay-Z, Jurassic 5, Wu Tang, Outkast, Rakim, NAS, TCQ, NWA, Cypres Hill, Public Enemy, Run DMC, Mobb Deep, Lauren Hill, De La Soul, Grandmaster Flash, Jungle brothers, Sugar Hill Gang, Fat Joe, Fugees, Bone thugs and Harmony. Christ, even Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.
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The young ones will tell you hip hop has "evolved" and to move on. But most of these had better flow (does flow even matter these days? Apparently not) than most of the shit released today.
 
Atlanta rap really just took off big time thanks to Gucci Mane and his acolytes in the production booth. I like most of the popular sound that has come out of there in the last few years

Flockaveli is where we saw this big change starting to come in.

also indie rappers really kicked in the door thanks to the internet changing the mixtape game.
 
joelseph said:
We got Black Milk's No Poison No Paradise and I'd bet most of gaf has never even heard the album.
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Yeahp, great album that a lot of people would pine over but won't even give a Spotify listen because they've convinced themselves that rap is dead and won't even attempt to see what it has to offer
 
DeSo said:
The young ones will tell you hip hop has "evolved" and to move on. But most of these had better flow (does flow even matter these days? Apparently not) than most of the shit released today.
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I honestly don;t get what it has evolved to. I mean, maybe from the 70's and 80's rap created a sub genre of gansta rap and dis tracks, but a lot of artists in the 90's you could be fooled into thinking they were from those years.

Why has it changed to complete shit in the last 10?
 
Run the Jewels, Death Grips and Aesop Rock have all been worth listening to to me. And if you count DJ Shadow, he just dropped his first legitimately good album in like a decade last year
 
Great stuff still, but I feel like rapping for the charts(Specifically common club music), turns a lot of the shit into crap.
 
I am not a fan tbh. I love rap, but man I CAN'T FUCKING STAND R&B. Seems like a lot of the songs have some weird r&b hook. There have been some great songs the past 10 years, but it's no nas,snoop,tupac,jay,mobb d, list goes on era (to me)
 
Should start listening to music outside of the US, UK got some great scenes going on.
 
Seems to have gotten a little more dance music influenced. Definitely slower, more digital, less analogue sounds I would say.

Less explosive. Less lean. I think a lot of the new stuff, builds up, takes its time. Even albums. Felt like before, it was much purer, and going off like a bombshell.
 
I don't think it ever stopped being good, the sub genres and niches I listen to have kept producing with both established people and new artists.

And even a lot of popular stuff sounds good even if it's not for me.

I think the actual issue is its a young art form and the 90's period so many are in love with it was still young enough with only so much volume of work that radio played everything from chart toppers to underground.

Somewhere in the 00's it had been around enough that the music industry finally got a handle on how to do to rap what they do to all music and make a manufactured poppy general consumption version to flood the radio with, forcing fans to look elsewhere, just like every other type of music.

In other words hip-hop didn't die it grew up and is healthier than ever but with the same nuisances as all the other established styles.
 
I remember roughly a decade ago (longer than that)..actually being hyped for an album to come out..nowadays I find myself not knowing an artists past 2 came out with no care in the world. Expectations have dropped. My best example is back to back from drake was considered one of the best "diss" songs out....10-15 years ago, I don't think it would be the same. Rhymes and in some cases delivery have taken a step back and beat production and hooks have taken a step forward.
 
I definitely love some new stuff that's being made. Massive depth of content is now accessible nowadays.

Majority is booty though.

Not feeling a lot of the popular stuff.

Watch someone say that dress wearing looper Young Thug is GOAT or some shit. Bad lyrics, boring unsubstantial production, blows my mind he's so popular.
 
hip hop is one of the biggest offenders of "old man yells at cloud" in terms of the fan mentality. Lots of elitism, not enough open minded ness
 
I don't know if I'm in the minority or not but I love the current state of rap. yeah there's a bunch of mainstream garbage but when has that not been the case? the flipside is that there is more music out there for people to find thanks to the internet and rappers can be more specialized about the type of stuff that they want to make because they can stay independent and still get discovered. because there's so much out there you do have to do some digging but I like the trade off personally. there are a bunch of rappers that I would have never have found back in the day that are a few clicks away for me now because of platforms like bandcamp and soundcloud.
 
Past decade?
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I have enjoyed alot of hip hop over the last decade, I don't really pay attention to most of the mainstream garbage so my view on the genre is pretty positive.
 
Deepwater said:
hip hop is one of the biggest offenders of "old man yells at cloud" in terms of the fan mentality. Lots of elitism, not enough open minded ness
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CrayToes said:
Honestly. It's pathetic.
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Ric Flair said:
Hip hop has never been better.
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I understand how it could feel like that, but I would contend that if you're approaching music like a lot of older cats do you aren't really going to hear a lot of quality hip hop through popular channels. It's a legitimate criticism imo. There is still great quality music, but it is nowhere near as accessible as it was when I was young. I don't think anybody really listens to the guys that dismiss all new music out of hand.
 
JZA said:
I've been listening to Big KRIT, Kendrick Lamar, Chance, Joey Bada$$, they're pretty much the new guard for me. They've convinced me hip hop is not dead.
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Add Curren$y, Drake, Freddie Gibbs, Smoke DZA, Oddisee, Future, and a few others as well. In fact I think a good argument can be made that 2007 is when this new guard of rappers started coming out and in the last decade more quality artist came hit the scene than say the preceding 7 years of the 2000's.

Like Nas's album Hip Hop is Dead came out in 2006 for a reason. However, since 2007 it's been reinvigorated
 
highrider said:
I understand how it could feel like that, but I would contend that if you're approaching music like a lot of older cats do you aren't really going to hear a lot of quality hip hop through popular channels. It's a legitimate criticism imo. There is still great quality music, but it is nowhere near as accessible as it was when I was young. I don't think anybody really listens to the guys that dismiss all new music out of hand.
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There's plenty of quality, mainstream hip hop. Kendrick, Chance, Schoolboy Q, Isaiah Rashad, Migos, Kanye, Young Thug, J. Cole etc. have all dropped genuinely high quality albums in the past year or so. The problem is the people who dismiss modern hip hop purely down to the fact that it doesn't sound like what they're used to. The past 10 years have been far more creative and enjoyable than the prior 10 years when everyone and their mother was trying to sound like Pac.
 
We've had some REALLY stellar artists to pop up these last dew years.

Kendrick Lamar
Chance the Rapper
J.Cole
Tyler, the Creator
Childish Gambino
Big K.R.I.T
Joey Bada$$
Blu
KiD CuDi
Earl Sweatshirt

We also saw a lot of rappers who were big in the Early 2000's to lose relevance like Ludacris, Common, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Outkast.

But I do feel like creativity is much, much better than it was in the early 2000's, late 90's. Artists like Childish Gambino, Chance the Rapper and Tyler, the creator, I feel are way more accepted and appreciated for how different they are compared to what we heard during that era.

Of course there were lots of duds in there as well but just lime any music genre and period of music in general, there's a ton of underrated stuff that the popular eye never sees or fails to notice. I think hip-hop/rap has had a good past 10 years.
 
Zeus Molecules said:
Like Nas's album Hip Hop is Dead came out in 2006 for a reason.
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To be fair this was just a reactionary title to a sentiment common at the time due to the south rising in popularity and New York continuing to champion shit like Red Cafe and Uncle Murda. HHID is as bad as anything that came out around that time.
 
Deepwater said:
hip hop is one of the biggest offenders of "old man yells at cloud" in terms of the fan mentality. Lots of elitism, not enough open minded ness
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"Back in my day, young niggas didn't talk about fuckin bitches and snatchin chains, they talked about losin bitches and gettin they chains snatched!"
 
Zeus Molecules said:
Add Curren$y, Drake, Freddie Gibbs, Smoke DZA, Oddisee, Future, and a few others as well. In fact I think a good argument can be made that 2007 is when this new guard of rappers started coming out and in the last decade more quality artist came hit the scene than say the preceding 7 years of the 2000's.

Like Nas's album Hip Hop is Dead came out in 2006 for a reason. However, since 2007 it's been reinvigorated
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I only like Oddisee out of any of those names. Nas's comment did have some clout to it, but rappers were even showing disdain for the genre since the 90s like Common's I Used to Love H.E.R. and Big L's I Don't Understand.
 
MindofKB said:
People love to trash modern rap and call for a return to the 90s, but the 90s had garbage rap too. You're just remembering the best of it.

Modern rap is incredible, you just have to look harder for the good stuff because there are just too many rappers. The fact that anyone can buy a beat on Soundclick, mumble over it, and post it to Soundcloud, means that the genre is incredibly bloated. There are tons of artists not pumping out mumbly trap songs, they're just not as advertised and promoted as Lil Boat, Thugger, Future, etc.
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This. The game is way better than it was in the 90s. There are so many artists waiting to be listened to that it could be overwhelming.

The good thing is we have the Internet which makes it infinitely easier to discover talent vs some dude handing out mixtapes at a bus stop.


Banglish said:
I'm really disappointed in gaf right now. Where the fuck is the love for curren$y??
Dude is THE most consistent rapper of our gen.
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Hell yeah, Curren$y is that dude.
 
MindofKB said:
People love to trash modern rap and call for a return to the 90s, but the 90s had garbage rap too. You're just remembering the best of it.
.
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Nah, I remember the bad stuff like Master P and his crew, but there was definitely a bigger percentage of good vs bad in the mainstream market. Female rappers have always been looked under in the scene, but you can't say it's better for them now than it was in the 90s. Nobody's really studying anyone besides Nicki. Iggy had a little fame last year or was it 2015 and now nothing.
 
In the last 10 years some of my favourite rappers and rap groups have emerged:

Kendrick Lamar
Vince Staples
RTJ
Logic
Odd Future

On top of that we've had brilliant albums from established artists such as:

Kanye West
A Tribe Called Quest
MF DOOM
Lupe Fiasco
Common

Overall I'd say it's been decent and is maybe my most listened to genre.
 
Andrew Korenchkin said:
Childish Gambino....man I can't get into him. Because The Internet is mediocre and boring and Camp is fucking garbage.
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Still glad you ended up hating Camp like me.
Andrew Korenchkin said:
This comment is ironic because Childish Gambino seems to shirk away from any form of masculinity and testosterone, common in Hip-Hop.

Also, Big Sean is trash.
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Don't insult The Don.
Blasian Persuasion said:
I only like Oddisee out of any of those names. Nas's comment did have some clout to it, but rappers were even showing disdain for the genre since the 90s like Common's I Used to Love H.E.R. and Big L's I Don't Understand.
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I Used To Love Her is Amazing, I Don't Understand is a terrible song.
 
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