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What Happened To Hip Hop

A short while ago Nas, later receiving support from other Hip Hop figures, said “Hip Hop is dead”.   This comment has sparked a lot of controversy. It provoked many figures, who all considered themselves apart of Hip Hop movement, to make public comments and/or write blogs or editorials about it. I personally have my own opinion about it, which I’ll discuss later, but the question that’s bothering me is: if Hip Hop is dead then how did it die? I have researched many people expressing their opinions on this topic, for and against it. Some agree that Hip Hop is dead and some say otherwise.   Most of them have interesting opinions that I agree and/or disagree with, all worth mentioning. This paper will take you through what I think is good and bad explanations/reasoning for controversial argument. So… what happened to Hip Hop?
One reason for Hip Hop’s current state, expressed by a Hip Hop pioneer, Public Enemy co-creator Bill Stephney, is that all of this is connected to the rise of the crack epidemic in urban communities. He feels that Hip Hop is now a parody of itself. In an article written by Walter Dawkins of Dave D’s Hip Hop corner, Stephney is quoted saying:
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.
Dawkins points out the validity in his argument by pointing out this type of mentality of the early nineties group, NWA. He commented that, “Their albums explicitly detailed a hard-core lifestyle of violence, drugs and sex, and… sales exploded [from] both black and white teenagers”. I would agree with him that that’s when rap themes began to take a dark turn. I don’t agree that this was solely because of cause of crack epidemics in the 80’s. Though drugs were probably a major factor in the...