REVISED Cultural Critique

Cultural Critique of Rap

            The current climate of rap is nothing like it used to be. Rap has changed drastically from its humble beginnings fighting against social injustice. Rap is now frowned upon as a genre, people see it as provocative and causing problems rather than working to solve them as the genre originally intended. New lyrics no longer speak of social justice but rather naked girls, guns, and drugs. This is what is popular in the culture but there is also a lot of good and positivity that comes from the rap culture. 

            Older rappers (80’s and 90’s rappers) were similar to rappers today but also at the same time very different. Some of the rap songs you heard back in the 90’s would sound similar to songs today because technology was starting to catch up. The big difference between the time periods is the meaning or lack of meaning behind the music. Older rap songs spoke out against police violence and social injustice. “Fuck that shit, ‘cause I ain't the one

For a punk motherfucker with a badge and a gun To be beating on, and thrown in jail

We can go toe-to-toe in the middle of a cell”(NWA, 1988). Even though the lyrics are very aggressive the song is meant to be taken seriously, NWA is speaking to other blacks that have been oppressed and feel like they are being targeted by police. Rap began to gaining popularity as the tension between blacks and whites was beginning to boil over. Four years after ‘Fuck Tha Police’ came out was 1992 when the Rodney King Riot occurred, this is one of the deadliest altercations between blacks and whites during the civil rights movement. This is no coincidence either, Rap acted as a platform for black men to get behind to express their thoughts and say what they mean freely.

            Rap has changed since the days of NWA but there are still some artists that hold the same values. Rap catches a bad rap (haha get it) from old white men who still see it as a platform to cause social unrest.  A big example of everything conservative minded people hate about the culture is one of Future’s newest albums, ‘Future’. This album focuses on drug dealers, guns, and everything associated with living a fun life. People cannot understand that these songs are not meant to be taken seriously. These songs do make killing and smokin’ dope sound pretty fun, doing it once may be kind of fun. Old stubborn people think that these songs encourage that kind of behavior and cause young impressionable kids to want to follow in the rapper’s footsteps. The current culture of rap looking in from the outside is a rough bunch of people who do not care about who they hurt or how they make their money. If you understand the culture and can get passed some of the rough parts, there are a lot of positive things that do come from all of this. Although Future’s newest album focuses on Draco automatic submachine guns and taking Percocets people do not realize that behind the scenes Future does care about giving back and where he comes from. “Draco season with the bookbag, Rat tat, got a little kick back” (Future, 2017), this is a direct line from Future’s song ‘Draco’ rapping about gun violence. This doesn’t paint rap in a good light even though these lyrics are very common lyrics across most rappers in today’s rap songs. Although rap does have very dark lyrics in the songs good things do come from these dark rappers. Some of the good that can come from rap is coat drives that Future frequently does for kids trapped in poverty. Honestly who gives a shit about coats but this does show that these big bad dread head animals do have a soft and caring side to them.

            Rappers couldn’t give a rat’s ass about looking good for the media, the reason they do these charitable things is because they care about where they came from. Rappers used to come from all over and there was no “hub” for rap until recently when drill style rap took over. Atlanta has produced almost all of the top recent talent. Atlanta rappers have a very unapologetic style to their lives. Future being from the slums of Atlanta, the dirty ATL, knows the dangerous lives kids go through growing up and now that he’s on top he cares about his hood so he wants to give back. Recently Chance the Rapper, maybe not one of the wildest rappers, donated One million dollars to the Chicago School district. Chance has also been heavily involved in the school district trying to fight for reform to help children get out of poverty. Chance even raps about is upbringing and what it means to him, “My village raised ‘em a child, come through the crib and it’s bustin’, You meet anyone from my city, they gon' say that we cousins” (Chance The Rapper, 2016). The rise of hip hop hubs has caused competition in between rappers but in a good way. Every rapper wants their city to be the best it can be to show that the city they represent is better than their competitions. This drives rappers to be good and give back, even vulgar rappers like Lil Wayne are involved on the charity. After New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina he donated 250,000 to recovery help. Even the villains can be good some times.

            The current climate of rap is far different from what it used to be, but is that so bad? Many people will reminisce on the golden days of rap where songs matter and lyrics meant something. If you’re stuck looking at the past you’re going to miss out on all of the gold that’s dropping lately. The culture of rap has been through a lot, it has: caused social changed, gotten people killed, encouraged kids to sell drugs, clothed homeless kids. You can hate on the culture for having dark spots but what culture doesn’t. No one’s perfect and no group of people are perfect. The culture of rap is always evolving and changing and if you can’t take a little bad with your good then go listen to Ed Sheeran or some other bullshit.

REVISED History of Rap

History of Rap

            Ever since your great granddaddy could spit kids have wanted to be rebellious. It all started when Jesus turned water to wine at his high school graduation party and ever since then kids have been pissing their parents off in any way they could. The 1950s and 60s kids modernized rebellion by using rock and roll to ‘stick it to the man’. Similar to the children of that era kids of the 1990s and 2000s use rap to channel their wild side. Do you actually expect 16-year-old white girls to do the horrific things described in these songs? No, but the carefree aggressiveness you get from these songs is what draws in the listeners. Rap hasn’t always been rebellious though, it started from very different roots and has transformed over time.

            Nobody knows exactly where rap came from but a lot of nerds who research this kind of stuff mostly agree that it came from Africa and the Caribbean Islands. It started with storytelling with a beat behind it. This style of storytelling was brought to America when the slave trade brought thousands of Africans across the ocean. Until the 1960s who knows what happened to rap. The genre laid low and didn’t get too much love because it was an African American dominated genre and blacks were not the most loved people in the 1960s. Once Blacks began fighting back against oppression the genre gained traction and popularity as a genre all Blacks could get behind and support as music their people created and liked. Rap popped up again with a legend, DJ Kool Herc (you know he’s really cool because he spelled cool with a K).

Herc started making beats by using two record players and bouncing back and forth between the two to make the first beats ever for rapping. This is pretty dope because people now make some pretty garbage beats and they have thousands of dollars of equipment and all my man had was 2 record players. This really opened up the flood gates for anyone who can rap because now they had beats to rap on. The Fatback Band released the first rap song ever ‘King Tim III’, not a super well known song but it’s important to mention because releasing the first rap song ever is pretty cool. No one really cares about the Fat Back Band but everyone knows about Rapper’s Delight. This song brought the masses into the rap scene and got them interested. After the crowds got drawn into the rap scene it was time for Run- DMC and N.W.A. to make their dash into the lime light and cement their place as rap legends. Rap with these kinds of rappers was meaningful and had messages about social problems and other big issues. N.W.A.’s hit song ‘Fuck the Police’ was a rally song for blacks who felt oppressed by the police. If you find a song as influence as that song now, please come find me because you probably never will. Until the 1980s rap had been dominated by African Americans, it was time for the white people to show what they could do, the Beastie Boys were the first and wow was that weird… but still great music. This was a big time for rap because it showed that rap was for both black and white people because before that rap was seen as music only for African Americans. Better white rappers did come along, in the early 2000s Eminem came onto the scene and it hasn’t been the same since then. Before you can talk about Eminem you can’t skip over some of the rapping greats. 

The 1990s were dominated by the biggest rap names of any time period: The One and Only Dogg, Tupac, DMX, and Ice Cube. Most people would probably consider this the Golden Era of rap. The media was dominated by Rap and the feuds that came with it. The beef between Suge Knight, Biggie, and Tupac was the biggest headlines to come from rap. Suge Knight was blamed for the murder of both of them, even if you didn’t care for rap you still knew what was going on because it was like a reality show. Conspiracies still surround what happened between these prominent artists. Rap had meaning and was not the violent hate filled rap we see today until this point in the genre. Once rappers started shooting each other and becoming angry is when the genre took a new direction. Some may say this is bad but it gave birth to some of the greatest rap music ever created. ‘No Sunshine’ by DMX is a good example of this, it is a rap song with no great meaning but it is loud and violent and it described the rap climate at the time.

Not all artist stuck to this loud and in your face rap, that style of rap isn’t for everyone and was at times too much to listen to. Rappers like Snoop Dogg, and later Wiz Khalifa, stayed away from killing and stuck to a calmer recreational activity, smoking the gandja. It’s what the Dogg has always done and will always do. On a side note Snoop Dogg created the scene for rapping about weed and that’s still popping today with rappers like Wiz Khalifa. This style of rap is carefree and more accessible to people who can’t handle hardcore rap. So after all that drama and nonsense with Suge Knight we get into some more great rap from people like Eminem. The movie 8 Mile showed off rap and brought more people into the genre. Rap battles and freestyles became popular and pinned two rappers against each other to see who the better rapper was. Rap was at its prime for lyrics at this point in the genre. The genre was focused on the word used but that was all about to change because next came rappers with insane beats.

The 2000s were started with lyrics but the genre has definitely transitioned away from that and gone towards flashy beats and catchy hooks. Andre 3000 and his flamboyant clothing was one of the first to get into this with songs like ‘Hey Ya!’ and ‘Ms. Jackson’.  Although these songs may not be meaningful and the anthems for social justice these songs did a lot for the genre of rap. It showed that rappers can have topics besides shooting each other and smoking pounds of weed and still stay on the radio. Andre 3000 started this kind of rap but it became perfected with artists like Jay Z and Kanye. Jay Z is undoubtedly the most successful rapper to ever be in the game, he took rap and made it into his empire. Jay Z started a label and signed on artists, this is a big move for the rap game because artists started to collaborate and work together rather than shoot and hate each other. Jay Z has also made an ass ton (thats a metric measurement) of money from rap, he is the third richest rapper ever with a net worth of $550 million dollars. Jay Z saw the potential in rap and the culture surrounding it and made it his goals to get a portion of that. Dr. Dre had a similar mindset and capitalized on rappers and rap fans by creating Beats by Dre a headphone company. Artists turned businessmen like Jay Z and Dr. Dre are popping up more and more. The most recent has been with Kanye West and his takeover of the fashion through Yeezys and his clothing lines.

Kanye was born in the rap game, he embraces the fast and wild lifestyle that you expect a rapper/fashion artist to live. As a side note Kanye is married to Kim Kardashian, take that how you will but to me its evidence Kanye may be clinically insane. Although the rap game did some weird things to Kanye he still is a rap mastermind, he took the emphasis away from the lyrics in his album Yeezus and made it a mashup of rap and electronic music. Kanye is breaking ground in the rap world by using electronic beats and fully altering his voice through auto tune and other electronic software. Kanye uses these tools on Yeezus, not because he needs help with his sound but because he wants to create sounds and songs unique to anything you've heard before.  Although this album is surrounded by hate it was still a huge album because he combined rap and electronic music, arguably the two largest genres for party music, and opened the floodgates for wild party rap. Yeezus also introduced rapper styles like the goon himself, Lil Boat (Lil Yachty or Miles McCollum), the savage from Atlanta.

Lil Yatchy is an anti-thug, fun loving, rainbow grill wearing rapper that is living the dream life of every teenager in the USA right now. Although Yachty will probably be gone soon he still has made his mark on the rap game with electronic silly beats that ride the top 100 songs on the radio for waaaaay too long. Yachty will also be noted for being a successful rapper that never acted like a thug. Many rappers had to play hard and flew how street they are to make it to the top but Yatchy never did this. He stayed true to himself and rapped about his life, as normal as that sounds it’s not the normal for the rap industry. The most recent kings of the rap game have been the group Migos. Migos has combined lyrics and catchy beats unlike any other artists to bring together the two elements of rap and create radio dominating rap music. Migos and especially crew member Quavo have been featured on most new rap songs released and have dominated radio and all rap top 20 charts. As we have seen rap has gone from social justice music for African American rallies to music everyone and their mother has heard, rap has been all over the spectrum of music. Many people say the Golden Era of Rap has already happened but I believe we are living in it right now. If this is the Golden Era of Rap then who knows what will come next??

REVISED - Holistic Album Reviews

I Decided

Big Sean wrote this for college students like me and probably you if you're reading this because who else cares about rap music. This album is made up of easily forgettable songs that probably will never see any radio air time except for a few flame songs but luckily for Sean that’s not why this album matters. This album is a ‘I made it to the top, let me see how far I’ve come’ kind of thing. Similar to Chance the Rapper’s “Coloring Book”, Big Sean is reflecting on his path to success. These kind of albums are great because you get a glimpse into the real life of rappers, the fake front of “murdering gangsters” and “slaying hoes” comes down and their soft fuzzy underside shows. 
Even though Big Sean knows he’s on top this is definitely not a happy look on his path to getting there. In order to get where he is Sean has had to neglect a lot of important things in his life to get there, mostly his mom and loved ones. This is the biggest message Sean stresses in the album and also in interviews, he tells how his mom always had his back along the way to the top but he’s been selfish and hasn’t given enough back to her. The songs don’t speak much to you but at the end of the songs there are short sound bites from phone calls that really tug on your heart strings. This is a really unique way to include an underlying message into an album without affecting the music of the album. Sean left himself room to be as creative as he wanted to be the music but still hold the message he wanted to give to his audience. Hearing Big Sean talk to his mom and tell her he wishes he could’ve spent more time with her makes you want to call your mom right away. Just as you’re ready to call your mom and move back home because you miss her so much the next song comes on and it’s a banger. 
The album has a good mix of storytelling songs and songs that you want to scream along to while you’re driving to the gym. Sean knew he couldn’t be all ooey gooey so he brought on rappers like Eminem and Migos to breathe life into this album. The balance between the two types of songs on this album is flawless, even though the two are so different. The songs with Eminem and Migos appeal to people who maybe arent as big of Big Sean and just want to hear good music, the other songs appeal to the people who appreciate hip hop and the meanings Big Sean puts into his songs. The first time you listen to this album try not to fall asleep because it kind of sucks and drags on. Once you understand that this is a slow meaningful album you can get into it and enjoy it. 
The first time you listen to it you don’t pick up on the messages and the story behind the album but after you’ve heard it once or twice the meaning reveals itself and you feel connected to it. Big Sean’s other big purpose for this album is to talk about failure and how you can learn from it and do better the next time, I guess that why he named a song “Bounce Back.” In the album and interviews Sean talks about his hardships getting to the top and it is very relatable to anybody because nobody gets what they want out of life without failing a couple times first. This album honestly is great when you’re lying in bed hungover at 9:50 and have a class at 10:05, it gives you enough motivation to get up and seize the day even though you hate life. For college kids this album is great, it helps put everything into perspective sometimes you get too caught up in your life and think that all that matters is what’s going on here and now, but Big Sean is here to tell you otherwise. Take a breath buttercup you’re not that important, life can get overwhelming but meaningful albums like this help you get through it. Plenty of albums teach lessons or tell stories but for me and our generation I think this can be a perfect example of how music can do that. Sadly, this album will be greatly overlooked because looking at it song by song it sucks pretty hard but all together it is meaningful and impactful. Big Sean took an album and created a story in a way that I have never experienced before. 
Although i've critiqued the hell out of Sean's work and said all the bad things about his album overall it was a very good album that deserves a lot of praise. Songs like Bounce Back will endure the test of time and stand as a testimonial to the work he put in. Not only will the song Bounce Back hold up, the rest of the album will be noted as an album that influenced rap and the culture surrounding it. Keep it up Big Sean you're the man.