Features

It’s been a while since I wrote a No Chaser blog, and since the last one I’ve had several epiphanies that I need to address. Somewhere up in my top 10 of things I have come to realize is that my “hood” upbringing was a blessing in disguise. I say that because in most cases, if you have lived through a circumstance, you are more likely able to understand how or why it is the way that it is. Thus, there are a number of things that I hate about the “hood” that I know will never change. If it did, it would no longer be considered the “hood”. Keep that in mind as I continue.

Today I ran across a very interesting report from Neilson. The report breaks the country down into regions and not only gives stats about how people get their music (Streaming, Paid or FREE), but also which devices they primarily use for listening to music (Phone, Computer, Car, TV, etc) and their primary means of discovering new music, beside radio and word of mouth (ie. Youtube, Pandora, Facebook, etc). What's so interesting about the report is in every region, the Car is the #1 device used to listen to music. 

“How the F*** did Macklemore just win an AMA for BEST Hip Hop Album over Jay-Z & Kendrick Lamar? #WTF”

“Hell... I would walk to Brooklyn for some cheesecake if it meant a record deal. I’ve walked longer than that at events selling my CD and there wasn’t a contract waiting in my hotel room.” -Kelby Cannick (The Rapper), 2002

I think we can all remember that infamous scenario when hip hop and reality TV first officially collided. Diddy’s Making The Band 2, showed us just how far some rappers were willing to go for the validation of a record deal. I too was one of those artists, as you can tell from the opening quote, but as that first season played out, I quickly began to see that Reality TV and Hip Hop didn’t mix. It was too up close; too personal; too intrusive into the lives and shortcomings of the cast. It magnified their character flaws to an extent that it overshadowed their talents. The artists quickly became too ordinary, too commonplace, too REAL. This observation would later be proven with the eventual failure and disbanding of the Da Band.

There’s no denying the relationship between hip hop and basketball and no matter how many changes they make to the dress code, the culture is still going to bleed on to the court. In between the fact that every rapper thinks he could’ve went to the NBA and every basketball player thinks he can spit a hot sixteen, I don’t see this relationship coming to an end any time soon. Go to any basketball game and you’re likely to hear MIMS, Jay-Z, or Nelly playing throughout the arena. Turn on MTV or BET and you might just catch a story about Jay-z or Nelly buying a team. So when John Ameachi outed himself, becoming the first openly gay man to have played in the NBA, I had to turn my head toward the hip hop world and wonder... Which one of our favorite rappers is living a life on the Down Low?

Who killed hip-hop? I've heard some say that D4L killed hip hop. I've heard others say it was Dem Franchize Boys, Lil Jon, Three-Six Mafia and even Young Jeezy. Right now we are on the verge of an East Coast/Down South feud that I am sure the media will sensationalize until we loose even more of our talented young men and women in a hail of bullets and bullsh*t. Everybody's talking about who killed hip-hop, but the last time I checked you don't investigate a homicide without a body. With Three-Six Mafia just winning an Academy Award and T.I. nominated for multiple Grammies, hip hop is looking very much alive to me. It seems the more important question on everybody's mind should be, "Who in the hell said hip hop was dead?" Before we turn this into an East Coast vs. The Dirty South beef lets remember that Smoke of Field Mob, just this past summer was quoted having said, "...hip hop is dead and D4L killed it."