First, I gotta say big ups to easy_baby and C.O.G. for recocnizing that hip hop is a culture, not a genre of music...True hip hop fans, indeed !! Now, where are the rest of the true hip hop fans?? lol
Hip hop is not dead now, and never will die, as long as their are people out there who actually know what real rap is and the true meaning of hip hop. When I was growing up (I'm 28 now) and I started listening to rap, my family always thought it was just a "phase" and that I would grow out of it. But here I am, almost 20 years later and I'm still a devout hip hop head. So as long as there are people out there like that, then hip hop can never die.
I answered in an earlier question that hip hop is not dead, but, more like...hip hop has cancer. You can beat cancer and go on living a normal life, but it's not easy to conquer it. The "cancerous" elements in rap/hip hop right now, are these endless songs with meaningless content (for a few examples....King Kong, Chicken Noodle Soup, Buy You A Drank, It's Goin' Down, This Is Why I'm Hot, Party Like A Rock Star, oh my god, I could go on and on and on, but I'll stop)....
The artists who write these songs are a poison, or cancer to real hip hop. Rap blew up, and now it's a "lean, mean, money makin' machine". You can't put all the blame on the artists however, because they are just feeding the superficial rap fans what they want to hear, what's gonna make them get payed. And you have to blame the greedy record labels who find all these nonsense artists and sign them because they already know who makes up the majority of rap album sales, and they know what the majority wants to hear.....
So, I'm not being sh*tty about this, but for those of you who ARE listeners of rap and you buy into all this nonsense and you go out and buy the 50 Cent albums, instead of the Mos Def albums, then you can only blame yourself for the theory that hip hop is dead. If you don't want to hear all the garbage that the radio stations play, then STOP listening to the stations. You might think that you alone cannot change the direction of hip hop, and you're right....But if every single one of us "true" hip hop fans completely stop listening to FM radio stations, and we completely stop buying the 50 Cent albums, then we, together, can make a statement...not just to the radio stations, but also to the artists and their record labels......
Think about it...If all the true hip hop heads stop buying the garbage cd's, and only buy cd's of the real rappers (mostly underground), and we influence our friends, and then maybe our friends begin to do the same thing...and so on....then, in time, rap album sales for the 50 Cents' and Young Jocs' will begin to decrease, and album sales for the Mos Def's and Talib Kwelis' will begin increasing....And what do record labels do?.....the jump on the band waggon....Right, right??
Yeah, it's a long shot....but isn't it worth giving it a try? Who knows, maybe we can change the direction of hip hop ourselves, and bring the real sh*t back
I have already started doing my part...In the past 2 or 3 years, the only albums I have bought have been by artists such as Immortal Technique, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Lupe Fiasco, etc......I haven't bought one single "commercial rapper" album in this entire time period....I swear to God...because I got tired of being dumber by the end of songs lol....
And I very rarely listen to the radio anymore, and I have not turned my TV to BET or MTV or MTV2 in probably (and honestly)....a year or so
So, if you are a fan of real rap, and you're sick of the sh*t they play on the radio all day long....then do something about it....do your part.....let's start our own movement and bring back music that has meaning
Finally, my last "shout out" has to go to.....vincent g......Why are you answering a question in the "hip hop" category if you hate it so much?? Are you lonely, or are you just trying to be annoying?? Oh, poor baby, you must need some attention....So there....I gave you some attention.....Now go annoy who ever "your" friends are, or whoever you share interests with and leave us grown ups alone !!