Today marks my tenth month as HipHopDX’s Senior Features Writer. And, it’s been one helluva year so far. For the over 100 editorials, interviews and reviews written within the amount of time, I’ve been vehemently praised and hated equally. Some call it being inconsistent, I call it success. One should never enter this business hoping to please everyone. Trust me, it’s literally impossible. Just yesterday, DX freelancer Nadine Graham provided a nuanced answer to the age-old question of whether or not Southern Rap ruined Hip Hop. The reception was literally split down the middle. Just as many readers applauded Graham for tackling such a touchy subject head as they loathed the discussion itself. Watching the hundreds of opinions on this one issue was fascinating to watch. That’s honestly become the best part of the job for me. Meanwhile, Complex managed to break the Internet through Justin Charity’s interesting Why Did Everyone Claim to Enjoy Kendrick Lamar’s ‘To Pimp a Butterfly?’ Many were angry that anyone would dare disrespect what many consider the album of the year. Despite wholesomely disagreeing with Charity’s argument, it’s quite refreshing seeing someone have balls enough to go against the grain. This is what makes modern rap journalism so fascinating: No opinion or voice is left behind. Ironically, everyone from Top Dawg Entertainment President Punch to Talib Kweli himself found themselves turned off by the article. Complex actually gave To Pimp A Butterfly almost a perfect score of 4.5 /5 by the way. So are online publications supposed to give an outlet to all thoughts and feelings toward a particular album or serve as glorified publicists?
This isn’t any different than a piece I wrote some months ago entitled Dr. Dre, Eminem & A Few Extremely Uncomfortable Moments On “Compton.” Having open dialogue about misogyny and violence against women in context to a few moments on Compton: A Soundtrack By Dr. Dre angered stans. Also, I gave the album a 4.5. The reason? I loved the album that much. But, make a few honest observations and one automatically becomes a hater. Matter of fact, one commenter had the audacity to promote violence against women. In his world, women need to get beat. Now I don’t agree with that but, it’s his (or her possibly?) opinion for the world to see for better or worse. General conscious in the Internet age is always related to the most vocal. Makes sense that an album like To Pimp A Butterfly has a 4.0 user score on DX as it stands as the best rated rap album in Metacritic history. While many online publications have a clear winner in K.Dot’s sophomore album, readers of this site feel Lupe Fiasco’s Tetsuo & Youth is a better album as it enjoys a 4.7. The same could be said for Yelawolf’s Love Story or Tech N9ne’s Special Effects which both enjoy a 4.5 user score. Calling albums classics become difficult and it’s not because of what the general conscious are with writers or actual quality the project presents. Hell, my review of Fetty Wap’s debut was met with criticism despite having a user score of 1.3. This means that a selected group of people were vocal about their love of that album and that’s fine. Simply put, there isn’t a monopoly over what’s considered good or bad anymore.
Take your top five best albums of all time and someone within the electronic walls of the Internet hates it. Regardless of how iconic Illmatic has become since being released over 20 years ago, not everyone was on board with the album. Los Angeles Times writer Heidi Siegmund said the album The Source gave five mics to was hampered by “tired attitudes and posturing” before calling it “an obvious attempt to wrestle Hip Hop away from the West.” Of course, this is coming at a time where turn-arounds for music reviews were a lot longer; sometimes stretched to almost a month. Therefore, the argument of sites not digesting music properly becomes almost questionable. Most importantly, there were a lot less published writers than there are now.
The wonderful thing about the Internet’s consumption of music is that mainstream major labels nor major outlets aren’t in complete control of music taste as people might suggest. It’s the reason why Run The Jewels 2 could be considered critically the best album of 2014 along with Cocaine Pinata and PRhyme yet found themselves outsold by everything from Iggy Azalea’s debut to Rick Ross’ Mastermind. Who cares right? Their individual fan bases carry them past that anyway. Then again, there are rare moments where the stars align as critics and consumers agree. Case in point: J. Cole’s 2014 Forest Hill Drive. But wait, acclaimed journalist and New York Times author of The Rap Year Book Shea Serrano has been quite vocal about his dislike for Jermaine. Though Drake may find himself rap’s current commercial king, he’s actually never been a surefire critical darling. Drizzy’s only album on Metacritic to make it over the 80 percent barrier was his breakout So Far Gone project. So who’s in control, journalists or fans? Who knows? What’s understood is that regardless of whether or not an album is a classic, someone is always going to find something to love or hate about it. Ladies and gentlemen, this is called perspective.
the article is fine and its not completely wrong but there is nothing modern about of any of this. Classics are determined in time. Kendrick’s albums may never even be remembered. Midnight Mauraders by Tribe Called Quest was given 2 stars by Rolling Stone Magazine and no one even flynched. Plenty albums have been heralded in the past, only to be dismissed later and then, vice versa. My gut is history will be very kind to Drake as the hatred is mostly driven by superficial reasons and I feel history will also be less kind to Kendrick unless he improves on what he is already done (its not that he isnt great, its just i dont know anyone who actually really listens to him now. Will they listen to him 20 years from now?). Im not sure that will happen. BTW, Rich Forever is most in contention for classic with Rick Ross. Mastermind wont be remembered
Wow… You’re that big of a stake Stan? Good Kid gets play to this day EVERYWHERE I go, and I can’t stop listening to “To Pimp a butterfly”… Drake will be the one with the tarnished history due to his being inauthentic…
well Kendrick hasn’t really dropped anything lately.. but Vice City on Jay Rock’s project was jumpin. Pretty sure next time Kendrick drops something, everyone will be listening
The only thing Rick “Tits” Ross will be remembered for is being the biggest FRAUD in Hip Hop!
This article is very on point because at the end of the day it’s all entertainment. People take all of this way too serious. Great read my dude.
How does Hate equal success, Urinal? For God’s Sake, you made an article writing 5 points on why Iggy is Hip Hop, and then mentioned that the HUSTLE was always part of Hip HOp. That was the biggest FAIL ever, you don’t even know the 5 elements of Hip Hop. Keep writing, bc the only people you are fooling is children who are just now starting to listen to Hip Hop. Fake Journalism like this is what’s killing Hip Hop. FACT
LMAO!! If you didn’t get the sarcasm in the Iggy piece, you’re slower than I thought. And Urinal? How elementary?
Someone came up with FIVE reasons why Iggy is hip-hop? I can imagine; “Sorry everyone, we won’t be spending Christmas with our families this year, we got some serious brainstorming to do!”
Well said by the way.
Im starting to hate this whole Hip Hop culture, and it’s bc of you Journalists supporting this FAKERY non-talent MFS. The Labels are paying you and you are nothing but Presstitudes(prostitutes). I hope you mfs have fun listening to retarded and autistic “artists”. FOH
No matter how many millions of people are against this, money talks at the end and you publish the most ridiciolus things
You know whats funny? I guarantee you Ural and the rest of DX staff doesnt even listen to retarded music like Yung Thug and Future, they listen to Rock N Roll and other real Genres with talent. They just get paid by Big labels to write this BS and Give these wack MF’s great scores and then they turn around and listen to a whole completley different Genre. No sAne person can listen to Yung Thug and Future and actually say “Wow this is great”, first of all you can’t even UNDERSTAN THEM MFS! They dont speak English. Ya’ll are nothing but trolls.
Oh get over it, people like Young Thug and Future. I go to enough concerts and parties to understand that. If you don’t like them, that’s totally fine.
Ural I do tend to disagree with you a lot of times (but I also agree quite a bit), and here is why. You come off as a bit of a hypocrite. How can you love an album like Compton, but then write an article that seeks to desecrate it? That makes no sense to me. You seem to nitpick quite a bit. You should’ve wrote an article about the song Animals on that album.. one of the most important tracks of the year given its message to a mainstream audience, yet you choose to focus on misogyny, something that has been present in hip hop forever. And you even acted surprised about Eminem’s lyrics, when those type of lyrics are what have built Eminem’s career. I get that you write articles to get views, but you could balance it out with more articles that promote the good things in hip hop, not just the bad.
You tend to disagree with me a lot and agree, that’s fine. You’re not going to agree with everything I say. And yes, loving an album on its own musical merit is different than tackling the themes presented itself. That’s taking a humanistic approach which sometimes can be hypocritical but that’s the human condition sometimes.
Constructive criticism….I also felt that Animals was the most poignant of the soundtracks.
We dont always have to agree, but when checked & sound corrections are given it’s honourable to note and hopefully adjust one’s thinking.
We can grow Hip Hop & keep it pure at the same time! Thanks to Ural for creating the platform for such dialogues. I am also trying to find my feet interms of publishing/writing on Hip Hop locally here in South Africa. It’s great to read different POSITIVE views that motivate me to keep pushing the envelope.
Hiphop is just like anything else in America. It started out pure, it grew and spread. For awhile it got better and better, but at some point the integrity and values of what hip-hop stood for started to deteriorate. With every new generation less and less of those principals were being passed down. It was just like La Cosa Nostra. Less honor, more greed. Hip-hop sold out to American capitalism. It stopped being a culture and became a huge business enterprise. Business doesn’t have integrity. “On he doesn’t write his bars but claims to be the greatest MC, that’s cool”. ” Oh he was a correctional officer and not a cartel boss, that’s OK white college kids shakin they ass in the club don’t give a fuck, why should we?”. And then we now adays we got radio shows and platforms like vladtv that turned hip-hop into the wackest reality TV show of all time. They start beef to get views and today’s artists are too dumb to realize it. Anything to be more famous. Kendrick is the exception, which is why his shit feels special. Hes an artist, not a business. There’s lots of artists like him but hiphopdx spends their platform on Weezys crib getting raided. Wtf that got to do with hip-hop?
“Kendrick’s albums may never even be remembered.” Dude, people are still talking about GKMC and Section 80 years later, Kendrick’s albums will never be forgotten. “Midnight Mauraders by Tribe Called Quest was given 2 stars by Rolling Stone Magazine and no one even flynched.” One irrelevant review from an irrelevant publication doesn’t mean a thing when other publications praised Midnight Marauders. “Plenty albums have been heralded in the past, only to be dismissed later and then, vice versa.” Such as? “My gut is history will be very kind to Drake as the hatred is mostly driven by superficial reasons and I feel history will also be less kind to Kendrick unless he improves on what he is already done” And your gut is wrong as history won’t be kind to Aubrey as he’s already hit a point of oversaturation and overexposure to the point where people will get tired of him and that will hurt him in the future while history will be kind to Kendrick as he’s making great music and is focused on music instead of that Hollywood bullshit. “(its not that he isnt great, its just i dont know anyone who actually really listens to him now. Will they listen to him 20 years from now?)” You obviously don’t get out much if you don’t know anyone who listens to Kendrick. And yes, people will listen to him 20 years from now.
Dope article Ural. Everybody has their own opinion and having the “electronic walls of the internet” have made people that more “vocal” about their opinions. In the end, sometimes things turn into a popularity contest. For example, I’m from LA and will back up anything TDE even if it’s something like Jay Rock’s latest album which I honestly didn’t enjoy too much. In the end, there really is too much hate on the internet no matter what you do. Those who learn to play the game best, gain the most success. Anyways, dope article again; very down to Earth.
See, it’s all well n good, people can get down with whatever they wanna get down with. That’s the moral of the story yeah? I’m all cool with that, but i’m from the Golden Era! And back then rap/hip-hop was nowhere near as commercialised as it is now, so i didn’t really have anyone pushin’ wack fuckin fakery shit on me hard out sayin that it’s the dopeness, I just knew what the dopeness was coz most of it was the dopeness!! Know what I mean? I’m kickin back bangin some Dogg Food the other day and some fuckwit goes “What’s this shit? Should chuck some young thugga mafucka on! Yeeeaahh booyeee!” What Tha Fuck! Bro take these ten albums here n get back to me in the morning, you should be cured by then. Maybe even one of them songs has got Slim Thug on it, the real thugga mafucka! So anyway I change the shit up…But the fact is nowadays people are conned into thinkin shit’s sick by the media. You really think 44 billion bitches naturally just love One Direction? Ppfff. Money talks, just wish they’d keep that sewer-dredge mouth-spill the fuck away from my hip-hop!!
I think the point of kendricks album was to make something so startling and musically sound you cant do anything but hope you’re intelligent enough to keep up.. It’s a dose of some one who gave no fucks about Whats expected (make commercially viable music) and made music with integrity…that may not always be liked but it can’t be denied when you have the limelight…he used ppls stupidity and sheepish mentality against themselves…score one for a true Revolutionary
The “who’s in control” question is a very relevant one. By control, you really mean impact. Who has the most impact/influence . Media does. And media comes from eveywhere with truth and lies abound. Your article, my posted comment and digital sharing/word of mouth is media.
Test.