The trivial, fallen state of hip-hop

AS A YOUNG kid growing up poor in Fresno, the one musical genre I found myself most attracted to was hip-hop. In its earlier days, rap music was raw and honest, and the stories it told were about the losses and struggles of everyday life.

Rap was a musical style, which epitomized realism, and as the great poet John Keats once wrote: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”

I understood the beauty and sincerity that rap had to offer and, as a result, I became engrossed in the world hip-hop.

To me, it was a legitimate form of art and I can still remember being in elementary school and writing my own rap songs, which detailed my struggles. Okay, so maybe my struggles were juvenile, but hey, they were real and they mattered to me.

Contemporary rap music no longer matters to me.

The honesty of the music is gone, and every time I happen to come across a music video in which the rapper is surrounded by cars and jewelry that have just been borrowed for the video shoot, I can’t help but summarize rap in three words: one big lie.

The death of the Notorious B.I.G. in 1997 signaled the death of hip-hop as I knew it. Its murderer? A Mr. Puff Daddy.

Desperate to keep his Bad Boy record label afloat, Puffy emerged from behind his Wizard of Oz curtain and stepped into the mainstream hand in hand with his new protégé, Mase.

Together, this duo laid the blueprint for what the future of rap was destined to become — a world of shiny suits, unnecessary jewelry, terrible dancing and pointless lyrics.

Amazingly, everybody else fell right in line.

Sensing that there was money to be made with this super-flash approach to hip-hop, burgeoning rap artists anxious to make it onto MTV immediately began mimicking the styles of Puff Daddy and, just like that, rap had entered into a downward spiral that it has still yet to pull out of.

Most mainstream rap music today can be classified as nothing more than neo-disco; it is designed purely for your non-sober enjoyment while at a dance club.

The lyrics lack any sort of substance, and the beats are so stupidly simple that they sound as though they were produced on a children’s keyboard that was purchased at the 99-cent store.

“Snap ya fingaz, do ya step, you can do it all by yourself!” Hmm…that’s powerful.

But hey, everybody loves a good dance song, and Lil’ Jon and his army have made a killing off of manufacturing these joke-worthy songs to the masses.

If you’re at a nightclub (perhaps a couple of drinks in) and a Lil’ Jon track comes on over the sound system, go ahead and dance your heart out.

Don’t feel guilty about it — hell, I might even join you out there. Listening to mindless music when I’m in a mindless environment doesn’t really bother me.

What does bother me is that these songs are compiled onto one disc, packaged and then shelved under the hip-hop section at Tower Records.

I have news for you: if your personal CD collection is dominated by the likes Lil’ Jon, the Ying Yang Twins and the Young Bloodz, then you’re not a hip-hop fan — you’re an idiot.

I foresaw the inevitability of rap’s demise back in 1997 and, as a result, I’ve spent the last nine years in a sort of musical time warp.

Aside from a handful of contemporary “underground” rappers, most of the hip-hop I listen to these days was produced during the glory years of rap, from 1988 to 1996.

This is back when Public Enemy was encouraging political activism, Rakim was inserting intellectualism into rap, and a young Nas was weaving complex, poetic tales of growing up in the Queens Bridge projects of New York.

Today’s rap music carries no message. It says nothing of importance and it lacks honesty. I guess it befits many members of our society.

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