In general, I like Frere-Jones' writing, I am not a fan of this piece for several reasons - mostly because I completely disagree with his thesis, and find most of his argument to stem from an out-dated mode of thinking about hip hop.
If I had to pick a year for hip-hop’s demise, though, I would choose 2009, not 2006. Jay-Z’s new album, “The Blueprint 3,” and some self-released mixtapes by Freddie Gibbs are demonstrating, in almost opposite ways, that hip-hop is no longer the avant-garde, or even the timekeeper, for pop music.
I would argue that hip hop music was adopted as a popular music, but that had little do to with hip hop itself (the culture as a whole, including the music), so much as it did the tastes of the listening audience - and that its status as 'popular' has nothing to do with the vitality of hip hop culture as a whole. Hip hop began as a form of expression for urban youth - it gained acceptance and became a multi-billion dollar a year industry, but it's intent was not as a popular music form. It's also an oxymoron to try and define something as avant-garde and popular at the same time. To be popular, something must be of its time, not ahead of it.
SFJ seems to bemoan the fact that the rappers everyone talks about - the popular rappers - from Hova to Gucci Mane - aren't as good as the rappers everyone used to talk about back in the day. This point, to him, means that hip hop is dead. What he fails to recognize is that he's mistaking hip hop and rap - as defined by KRS-One ("rap is something we do, hip hop is something we live.").
When hip hop became pop music in the early 90s - around the time Dre and Snoop were on MTV every 15 minutes - it's direction within the mainstream began to be dictated by giant corporations - Viacom, Sony, I'm looking at you - whose interest was in profits, and marketing a popular music for financial gain, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the vitality of hip hop as a culture or an art form.
However, there were a few years there, '92-'97 or thereabouts, when there was enough hip hop culture in power to base which artists were popular on the same meritocracy found in the streets that birthed the culture. Hence, the most talented artists were the most recognized, and folks like Nas, Jay-Z, Biggie, Snoop and others established themselves at the top of the game.
Hip-hop has relinquished the controls and splintered into a variety of forms.
SFJ recognizes that it has changed, birthing numerous stylistic offspring, but what he fails to see is that hip hop as it's served through the mainstream media today is no longer decided by merit or skill, but by financial backing from international corporations. The industry has changed. It's not like it used to be, which is obvious if you've ever wondered why Soulja Boy is printing money while artists like Reks, Elzhi, Blu, Finale, Jake One - even Little Brother - and thousands of others named and unnamed - heard and unheard - hold down the underground.
From a true-to-hip-hop's-original-intent standpoint, I would argue there are more good artists coming out now than there have been in recent memory. The quality of the music has been pushed incredibly far by access to technology and the internet - a combination providing quality of production and a listening audience previously only achieved with label backing. The problem isn't that hip hop is dead - the problem is that rap music is no longer judged on merit. Hip hop is alive and well, it just doesn't get heard by anyone who doesn't know where to look for it - which is sort of how it used to be back when it started - only now, there's a lot more white dudes, and a lot less kids from poor urban areas, which is something that needs to be corrected, and which stems largely from the disparity of internet access, aka the Digital Divide.
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