What Happened to Hip Hop?

This is a question many people ask, generally at dinner parties, or winging on facebook about the "golden age". People talk about Run DMC, Biggie Smalls, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, then compare them with Chris Brown, Wiz Khalifa, Nicki Minaj et all and a little tear goes from their eye. The question is, what happened?

Let's start at around 2000, when Hip Hop was run by 3 people: Timbaland and The Neptunes. These two super producer line-ups made every single hit at the time. They were good at what they did, but what was interesting was the style of music they made on their popularity. Basically, what they made was quite similar to pop music before them, (though still broadly hip hop). Also, absolutely everything with their name on it became ridiculously popular. This can be considered the time when hip hop became pop and vice versa.

This is important because of what record labels think. When a genre becomes popular, BOOM, hundreds of wannabes with record label money behind them. And, surprise surprise, they became successful. So we can basically say, that hip hop "sold out" and became broadly rubbish at about 2003. However, there is still good artists out there: you just need to know where to look. (In all honesty, I am far from the best person to know about good new hip-hop, so not a lot I can do for you there.)


And that, my friends, is that. What happened to hip hop is some very good producers became too successful. I am terrified of this happening to Dance music, but its not looking good. So, remember kids, its not cool to be cool.

Its all your fault.