Bye Bye G-Unit
Welp, so much for Fiddy, Young Buck, Lloyd Banks, etc. Looks like my prediction in March of '05 wasn't too far off, that G-Unit were at the peak of their popularity and it was all downhill from there. Eh well, good riddance, Fiddy had nothing important to contribute since his mix-tape days, and the only other member of the posse who was even remotely talented was Young Buck, but then he decided to stab some guy. And to think, there was a time when I happily ran out and bought a Boost Mobile cell phone for the sole reason that these guys said I should.
That seems to be the sad truth about hip-hop: it's extremely hard to maintain one's popularity in the long term. How many 80s rappers still have any kind of impact on the hip-hop charts? Sure, the Beastie Boys still do all right for themselves, but the days when they had hit singles and helped shape the entire music biz are far behind them. Hell, just the other night they appeared on Conan O'Brien and when I first spotted them on stage I seriously thought it was Chicago doing an a capella gig. Anyway, even 90's rappers: Hammer, Coolio, Ice-T, Dr. Dre? The first two are a joke, the third plays a cop on Law & Order SVU as atonement for singing "Cop Killer", and Dre only continued his popularity by producing singles for the last wave of hip hop artists, including Fiddy (hemmorhaging popularity as we speak) and Eminem (retired). Then there was the whole Dirrty South deal, which was basically a huge joke that only most of the rappers themselves weren't in on. Honestly, not too many people could take someone like Lil' Jon seriously, and those that can aren't people you'd want to associate with or anything.
I can't claim to have ever been a huge fan of the rap genre in general; I remember in 1996 or 97 or so swearing off MTV because they were starting to play nothing but rap videos. Little did I know that the "reality" shows they also aired would be an even worse scourge upon humanity in the years to come. But anyhow, it's not me for whom rappers rap. It's the people who claim to relate to them best- suburban white kids with nothing at all in common with most rappers. True, African-Americans may have a higher percentage of hip-hop fans among their ranks, but because of sheer demographics it's those McMansion-living, Slurpee-slurping, baggy-pants-sporting white boys who buy up most of those gangsta rap CDs. Then again that's pretty much how it's been for ages, one can trace it back from rap to disco to Motown to Elvis to jazz to ragtime. African-American music gets huge with white people and when the irony becomes too much to bear, it's time to move on to a new trend, albeit one to which the same rules apply.
So I suppose 50 and company are on the way out, though not completely KO'd just yet: there's still plenty of youngsters who'll tell you how much they feel his flow and whatnot. Good thing their affluent, white yuppie parents are busy at the country club and can't hear the filth their children are listening to, or they'd use it as yet another excuse to utter something like, "I'm no racist, BUT .. all these black folk are polluting our children's minds!" Or something equally retarded.Again, same way as with ragtime and jazz et al. White youngsters co-op black culture, white parents are appalled and racist. Nevermind how they were doing the same thing just a generation ago- unless they were listening to one of those white musical stylists, like ... er ... uhm ... aha, Barry Manilow! Or Kenny G! Or Yanni!
That seems to be the sad truth about hip-hop: it's extremely hard to maintain one's popularity in the long term. How many 80s rappers still have any kind of impact on the hip-hop charts? Sure, the Beastie Boys still do all right for themselves, but the days when they had hit singles and helped shape the entire music biz are far behind them. Hell, just the other night they appeared on Conan O'Brien and when I first spotted them on stage I seriously thought it was Chicago doing an a capella gig. Anyway, even 90's rappers: Hammer, Coolio, Ice-T, Dr. Dre? The first two are a joke, the third plays a cop on Law & Order SVU as atonement for singing "Cop Killer", and Dre only continued his popularity by producing singles for the last wave of hip hop artists, including Fiddy (hemmorhaging popularity as we speak) and Eminem (retired). Then there was the whole Dirrty South deal, which was basically a huge joke that only most of the rappers themselves weren't in on. Honestly, not too many people could take someone like Lil' Jon seriously, and those that can aren't people you'd want to associate with or anything.
I can't claim to have ever been a huge fan of the rap genre in general; I remember in 1996 or 97 or so swearing off MTV because they were starting to play nothing but rap videos. Little did I know that the "reality" shows they also aired would be an even worse scourge upon humanity in the years to come. But anyhow, it's not me for whom rappers rap. It's the people who claim to relate to them best- suburban white kids with nothing at all in common with most rappers. True, African-Americans may have a higher percentage of hip-hop fans among their ranks, but because of sheer demographics it's those McMansion-living, Slurpee-slurping, baggy-pants-sporting white boys who buy up most of those gangsta rap CDs. Then again that's pretty much how it's been for ages, one can trace it back from rap to disco to Motown to Elvis to jazz to ragtime. African-American music gets huge with white people and when the irony becomes too much to bear, it's time to move on to a new trend, albeit one to which the same rules apply.
So I suppose 50 and company are on the way out, though not completely KO'd just yet: there's still plenty of youngsters who'll tell you how much they feel his flow and whatnot. Good thing their affluent, white yuppie parents are busy at the country club and can't hear the filth their children are listening to, or they'd use it as yet another excuse to utter something like, "I'm no racist, BUT .. all these black folk are polluting our children's minds!" Or something equally retarded.Again, same way as with ragtime and jazz et al. White youngsters co-op black culture, white parents are appalled and racist. Nevermind how they were doing the same thing just a generation ago- unless they were listening to one of those white musical stylists, like ... er ... uhm ... aha, Barry Manilow! Or Kenny G! Or Yanni!