You ever listen to the radio and wonder what the fuck happened to rap music? The rap game has succumb to corporate cancer and it’s deteriorating by the seconds, that’s what happened. What I mean by that is the major corporations/ labels have slowly filtered out the authentic rap music and have replaced it with lollipop bullshit rap. They have shut down the windows of opportunity that independent labels once had because they did not want to share in the stake of the independent’s artists. Think about it, back in the 60’s we had Motown Records, an independent label that produced superstar artists like Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, the Jackson 5, etc. These artists were crushin’ the game back then because Motown was in the creative hands of people of that culture. The same thing with Bad Boy, No Limit, Cash Money, and Rocafella. Whenever you leave the creative control in the hands of the actual people who create and live the culture of the music they’re creating, you will ALWAYS have a better product. The independent labels weren’t producing any bullshit because they would test their product on the streets first and get the feedback before taking it any further. If the music and/ or the artist was wack they knew it and they either went back to the drawing board or didn’t fuck with that particular artist anymore. The end result would be that we wouldn’t have to be subjected to listenin’ to wack shit on the radio. So by the time these major labels were introduced to these independents they were presented with a roster of artists who were already molded.

The problem the majors have with working with independent labels is that they have to break bread with them in order to do business with their hit-making artists or else the independents will continue grindin’ it out on their own for more money. This is what happened with Cash Money, and No Limit for example. The majors were put in a position where they had to put sweet offers on the table because these labels were selling hundreds of thousands of records on their own already. Major corporations do not like to share the wealth, especially with some young Black entrepreneurs. This is when the corporate cancer begins to spread. Majors decided to play hardball and take over the radio stations across the country. They limited the the amount of airplay that local independent labels were able to get and this changed the game a lot. If we can’t hear the music on the radio, we’re not going to know it exists, therefore we won’t buy it and it leaves the independents with zero bargaining power.

Now that the majors have the biggest media outlet under their control, they have now decided to say “fuck the independent labels we are gonna find artists ourselves.” Bad decision. You now have White executives approving which rap artists are good for the game when they don’t understand the difference between a lollipop rapper, a commercial rapper who can also get the streets and a straight underground street rapper. So what do they do? They start signing artists like Souljah Boy and think that this is what the streets want. They’re gonna sign artists like Drake too. In terms of talent Drake is not bad at all but it’s just that he isn’t doing anything outside of what we’ve already heard. He is a replica of Kanye West and Lil Wayne. Now the last time I checked Kanye had 4 records under his belt and Lil Wayne had a few albums and a thousand more mixtapes to release, so by the time Drake comes out I think it’s safe to say that we don’t wanna hear another Kanye and Lil Wayne sound-alike, we already got the originals. But now it’s to the point where Drake is being marketed to us as the nigga whose supposed to breathe new life into hip hop. I guess somebody at Universal really likes El Debarge lookin’ niggas ‘cuz in terms of talent he ain’t bringin’ nothin’ new so how is he supposed to resurrect the game?

We didn’t have this problem when WE were in control because it was about who could be the most ORIGINAL and the most CREATIVE. Say whatcha want but Outkast didn’t sell 10 million records on 1 album by accident. And when Public Enemy, Eric B. & Rakim, Run DMC, Scarface, Biggie and Tupac was out it was about creativity and originality. So I guess all I tryna say is that hip hop has succumb to corporate cancer and without the rescue of indepedent labels there’s not a big chance we can resuscitate it any time soon.

Iposted some videos of what hip hop used to be and what it is today. You can clearly hear the fuckin’ difference but I’mma let y’all be the judge…check ‘em out.

Source:www.xplicitspit.com