A few years ago, I wrote a blog of hip-hop truisms and I got the urge to re-up the concept.
Here it goes:
1. Everyone knows that hip-hop officially died with the release of Puffy’s No Way Out, but the final nail in the coffin will be known forever as the moment Lil Wayne was anointed the greatest rapper alive, without incident.
2. Definition of a hip-hop purist: anyone who owns every KRS-One album, yet refuses to concede that his flow has remained (frustratingly) unchanged for 2 decades.
3. Speakerboxxx is better than The Love Below, but no one will ever say it because Big Boi’s equally unapologetic persona can’t be sold on Madison Avenue.
3a. Also, it will be forever true that OutKast, as a proper duo, have only made two great albums, ATLiens and Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik.
4. The only difference between T.I.’s career and LL Cool J’s is that T.I’s will end sooner….oh, and T.I. can’t rhyme.
5. New albums by Rakim and the Fugees, should we ever get them, will be brilliant, but everyone will hate them because hell hath no fury like keeping the streets waiting.
5a. The streets’ reception of The Wu’s 8 Diagrams is the example that proves this point.
6. You never quite understood Digable Planets, but you miss them just the same.
7. Knowing the so-called Five Pillars of Hip-Hop means absolutely nothing.
8. It will always be true that anyone labeled the next “Tupac” will have heard nothing he created before all eyez on me.
9. Nas is a better rapper than Jay-Z, but a Jay-Z album is more likely to be enjoyable.
10. You know they didn’t really write their rhymes, but you still love you some Salt-N-Pepa.
WOW…and I here I was thinking that you were just anouther smart ninja with nothing better to do than write arousingly relevant dissertations on VSB joints…I am impressed…
WORD on KRS1…(I will never admit it again in life…)but WORD!
8 Diagrams indeed…
I understood the Digable Planets, don’t hate…lol…and I still listen to LadyBug…she’s my “friend” on MySpace…
Nas is a better writer (if you don’t have to look up his lryrics in google and wikidpeda to understand them) but Jay’s delivery is more palatable…
and for the record…LilWayne looks like a fetus and is probably a d!ck smuggler…but I will admit er’once and a while…I hear something clever from him…even if it is only like an 8 bar spit from an entire album!
Lil Wayne is wack. Period. I am of the mind that people like him, even infrequently, because so much of corporate hip-hop is uninspiring and he seems electrifying by comparison.
So on that score, I am willing to concede that there’s value to this. The problem is that the folks who say this are the same people who continue to make Puff the poster boy for hip-hop despite the fact that most heads can’t stand him. So the fear that this notion of Wayne as the greatest might become a dominant narrative in hip-hop discourse makes my blood run cold.
Would that we black folks understood the value of our art and guarded it as fiercely as we dared.