When did the music change?!
Question: I have been listening to hip hop for a long time and I am not gonna sit here and act like it did not make a little turn from positive to negative. Public Enemy and Grandmaster Flash did not rap about murders and using the N word. When was the music altered into what we hear now?
Answers: I have been listening to hip hop for a long time and I am not gonna sit here and act like it did not make a little turn from positive to negative. Public Enemy and Grandmaster Flash did not rap about murders and using the N word. When was the music altered into what we hear now?
One of the reasons for the nihilistic themes that dominate today's rap music, I believe can be traced directly to the rise of the crack epidemic in urban communities...
The heavy influence of the crack trade changed many of the values of the youth black culture since the mid-'80s...That's where you get the materialism, the guns, the absolute die-hard mentality for meaningless things. So if you add all those things to the history of black people in general, then you get a very bad mix.
This mentality started reflecting itself in the music in the early '90s with the introduction of the group NWA. Their albums explicitly detailed a hard-core lifestyle of violence, drugs and sex, and when sales exploded - to both black and white teenagers - the themes in rap songs started to turn decidedly darker.
Politically aware groups like Public Enemy and Digable Planets were pushed aside as records labels, hungry to match the enormous sales of NWA and always eager to exploit the next big thing, looked for groups that replicated the winning formula. After the mega-success of Suge Knight's Death Row Records - which released albums by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg - hip-hop's new direction was firmly set.
I think it increased when the violence increased. Also when the women stopped having respect of who they are as women.
When it became commercially viable.
You are absolutely right. I think it all changed when views, opinons and biases were publicly displayed, until everyone thought being racist was just being opinionated.
Rise of the internet combined with diddy suddenly capitalizing on his cash by rapping about cash...ohh thats ironic.
NWA