We ran across the latest XXL Magazine cover, its got Mr Kanye West on the cover and his four page article is worth every minute spent on it, anyway we were trying to find the articles so we could put it up. We couldn’t find it on the site, but we did find an article by Thomas Golianopoulos asking us When Did You Realize Kanye West Was Great?It got me thinking.
We think we thought he was great when he dropped his first album, but we lost faith in him a bit during the auto tune phase. But he came back lately to prove to us that he is beyond just great. This we saw during his VH1 storyteller set. The set was amazing, made even songs we never liked our favorite songs.
But we also think that we realized his greatness when he dropped the power joint. Video was amazing, so was the song and the album too is coming together well.
My favorite scene in the movie ‘I think I love my wife’ is when Chris rocks childhood friend realizes she is “the old bitch in the club”. I think that scene rings true to the current state of hip hop even though it(hip hop)has tried to deny this for a while.
In what better way can this be made evident than to have new comers using you as not only a reputable reference point the construction but influence to them doing what they do.
With the introduction of new age kids that create music that does not subscribe to the initial sound of hip hop but has an undeniable boom bap sound alike sound that has for the past 40 years been assimilated to this genre. Kanye West and T-pain introduced auto tune which many followed and it was ultimately adopted as an extention of hip hop.
But just off heir heals Kid Cudi and the South African duo Locnville have introduced a sound which has an undeniable hint of hip hop but this sound is further extended by its mixture of electro.
This new representation of the current experimental nature of the modern day youth is slowly integrating people’s tastes.
The question that I want to pose to this new generation sound is what shall we name you? We are tired of explaining who you are to people instead of calling you by name and them knowing who we are talking about.
I for one think screaming out:”hey you black dude that looks like a white dude when the sun is at its highest point, with a bit of Chinese English accent and overly cocky attitude” whenever I want to get your attention.
But with all that said I really think you should get a name so that they could stop calling you hip hop because as much as you cool it is in your best interest to stand on your own and not under the already crowded hip hop banner.
