When Irv Gotti was on RapFix Live with Sway not too long ago, he was granted the floor with an opportunity to air out all of his gripes with the music industry he’s had a significant part in. After discussing his issues with Def Jam’s lack of a president and troubles with his former label Murder Inc., Irv shifted his attention to the way our music is changing. During his rant, he makes a hilarious remark about how artists like Jay-Z are liable to make a record sampling Martin Solveig’s “Hello.” Despite the studio laughter, however, Irv kept a completely straight face to prove that it’s actually not funny at all. Hip Hop, in his opinion, is diminishing in favor of a more pop, electro sounding type of music. Is he wrong? Latest albums from Hip Hops most prolific figures like Jay-Z and Kanye as well as newcomers like J. Cole have featured dubstep heavy beats that would make anyone in the club whip out a fresh pair of glowsticks. In fact, even our dance culture has taken to incorporating 80’s b-boy style pop n’ locks over dubstep and electronic beats.
It’s also pretty interesting to note that when Nas claimed that Hip Hop was dead back in 2006, Hip Hop had already been brewing a new style of rapper, known as the backpack/hipster rapper, who brought lyrics back into an ad-lib ladened genre but also incorporated style from rock and 80’s retro culture. Through its development we’ve seen rappers such as Lupe Fiasco, Charles Hamilton, Mickey Factz, and others who threw away the boom bap and 808 heavy beats for guitar synths and techno beats in a much more artistic form of their self expression and mission to display their uniqueness to the Hip Hop genre.
So was hipster rap actually the rebirth of Hip Hop after the original died out according to Nas? Or was this new style just the start of a transformation into a brand new genre that is what Irv Gotti is warning us about? Only time will tell for sure, but we can all speculate. What do you think?