now i am definitely an adamant adherent to real hip hop, but i have already shared my views with you guys about that. i don't consider it real in any sort of elitist way whatsoever. on the contrary i consider those that do to be arrogant and those with the "i don't want my underground hip hop to ever become mainstream and fuck that term real hip hop" to be equally so. you will also find that people at this site who are followers of real hip hop agree with my definition of it for the most part. my opinion of Lil Wayne is no superior to anyone else's. same with my opinion of Soulja Boy. that doesn't make them hip hop. Lil Wayne is a bit closer to hip hop than SB and can cross the boundary from time to time, but for the most part he is a pop artist. the problem is that many people misconstrue our message when we say "real hip hop". i just wanted to clear that up.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

how?

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

BIYATCH!!

it could be. it might not. you would have to listen to find out. Kool G Rap got Haylie Duff (Hilary Duff's sister) on the hook for one of his songs on a Premo beat and it was definitely hip hop. it isn't the artist, but rather the individual songs that are "hip hop music" or "pop music" and when an artist makes more of one or the other or gravitates toward making one or the other, he becomes either a pop artist or a hip hop artist. on top of that, it isn't an absolute thing. a song isn't either hip hop or pop or rock or blues or funk. think about it like this: you have a big fucking 2-dimensional diagram with sections that sort of fade into each other, sort of like a spectrum. a song can fall between two sections anywhere they please, but we can determine what type of music to consider the song by where it falls more directly. if it is sort of in between hip hop and pop, but more on the pop side, it's pop music. if it is more hip hop, then it's hip hop music. toward the middle it is a bit more subjective, however, because of how close it is to the middle. sure, you can say this is arbitrary, but aren't most human constructs? we then can say the same for all music. is division in music itself not arbitrary? so i guess the lines between blues, jazz, rock, soul, funk, R&B, classical, etc. are all arbitrary. i guess it's all just music. and let's take it a step further. music, cats, tables, earplugs, remote controls, donuts, etc. are all just things. i mean are those distinctions not just as naturally arbitrary as the distinctions between music? and what about words? "think", "the", "Cambodia", "aliens", "resolution", etc. are all completely arbitrary. so basically, language itself is, without our signification, completely arbitrary. but for us to communicate effectively at the level that we do, language is absolutely necessary. so using distinctions, like distinguishing sub genres of music from each other are useful. that's why when someone asks me what kind of music i listen to i say "hip hop" and when they say "oh, so like Lil Wayne" i say "nah, real hip hop" and people who know what that is know right away what i'm talking about. they may have their false assumptions that i'm calling Lil Wayne wack (i think he is, minus a handful of songs, but that's besides the point), but if it gets serious i just set them straight and either they rumble on because they're fucking stupid or they leave it at that. it is a term that is as necessary as, like i said, distinguishing between "Mexican food" like Taco Bell and authentic Mexican food (which i have had to do with people from the deep south when they come to California and i take them to a Mexican restaurant).

lol smh

btw, here's that KGR/Haylie Duff track. dope shit:

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

In the same way that Nas or KRS-One is hip hop. There's no difference.

yes, there is a huge difference, which i have outlined above. there is little to this new age music calling itself hip hop that retains any likeness to traditional hip hop. the 4 elements have been forgotten. not a single element has been retained except, one could argue, emceeing. i would argue otherwise but that is beside the point. further than that, rap today is much more rooted in pop culture than hip hop. the only reason that we even see hip hop culture on TV today at all (ie the BET Hip Hop Awards) is because of the people like us who give a shit and brought it back or kept it alive. hip hop is, was, and always has been a counter-culture; a revolution against accepted views, street struggles (including gang violence), and so much more. this new strand of hip hop has become a part of the exact same culture that hip hop was originally designed to oppose, not necessarily in a combative way, but rather to provide alternatives. all you need to do to realize this is listen. most people wouldn't consider emo true rock music (rightfully so) because it doesn't retain the key elements of rock music. most people don't consider acid jazz to be jazz music or current R&B to be true R&B in the sense of what it was when it first came about in the early 1900's. why should hip hop be an exception? if we want to say "well it's all subjective" (which, on a philosophical level, i agree that it is, but i've already shown why it is impractical to look at it as such) then shit, i can call Eric B. & Rakim polka music and fuck it, i don't even need music related titles. i'll call Lil Wayne libertarianism and Soulja Boy an ice cream cone seriously though man, just listen. if you have ears you will hear that the majority of mainstream rap is further into the pop category than it is into the hip hop category and people like Soulja Boy are so far that we can barely consider the majority of their music to be even remotely hip hop related. am i saying they suck? no. that's up to you to decide, just like it is up to you to decide whether or not you like McDonald's. i truly don't understand how i can make this any more clear. any additional responses like