Coming of Age

The thing you have to understand about music is that it runs in cycles. Big Band and Swing died. Soul is gone...So are The Blues. What makes people think that Hip-Hop is immune from the Reaper? I mean, Hip-Hop today is still Hip-Hop, but its branched off. The problem is that people are confusing Hip-Hop with Street Hop. THAT'S the culture everybody misses. The Illmatic kinda sound...that sound isn't gonna come back. That was Street Hop. Just like i said that Big Band and Swing was gone...Big Band was a subgenre of Jazz, but that doesn't mean Jazz is dead. Soul is a subgenre of R&B and that doesn't mean R&B is dead. I get so mad when people say that Southern rap isn't Hip-Hop. THAT SOUNDS STUPID! IT'S ALL HIP-HOP! That statement is equivalent to saying something like 'That's not a Honda....it's an Accord.' Under the Hip-Hop umbrella lies Street Hop (Ghostface Killah), Rap (Lil Wayne), Hip-Pop (Kid Cudi), etc. When Hip-Hop evolved from Curtis Blow to Biggie Smalls, the Curtis Blow era was pissed.

You can't really be mad that Hip-Hop has evolved the way it has. Because for the kids growin up hearing the stuff that's out now, you have to realize that these are their golden years of listening to music. Our golden years were the '90's. Just like our parents say 'Back in my day, our music was MUCH better than the crap you guys listen to..'. It'll always be like that. The older generations will never understand the upcoming era. Thats the way its always been. We have to realize that we're aging...The music industry is no longer trying to appeal to us. They're trying to appeal to the 14, 15, 16, 17 year olds. This is our first coming of age and it feels a bit odd to us. First is anger about our culture being gone. Then comes sadness (when we hear an old song that we once loved and think 'Man....'. Then we reach the point of acceptance...where music won't mean as much to us because we realize that we have lives to lead outside of the Hip-Hop culture. We'll begin to raise families, pay taxes, and this culture will be just a mere memory from the good 'ol days. This is our first Coming of Age.