A year from now, I did not have the same view of hip hop as I do today. I, like many of you, thought it was just a genre of ignorant hoodlums openly promoting tragic vices in the least tactful way they could muster. And how couldn't I think that when, I USED TO THINK THAT SHIT WAS COOL......when I was 12.
And then came my 80s era where I denounced the music I once liked so much and didn't look back. I had listened to ignorant bullshit and liked it, and then renounced it. I had no desire to look back it it and shelved any love for the genre as a preteen's lack of maturity. This was one factor in what made me hate it. But, there was another reason- identity politics. In 2016, the rap game had this anti white sentiment in the mainstream, it made me feel like the genre was made for blacks by blacks and therefore even harder for me to swallow.
So what changed?
Kanye West came out in support of Trump, that's what. This prompted my curiosity. Why would this man who once said that George Bush didn't care about black people endorse Trump? I curiously did an inquiry into his past and discography, and Oh Boy, this was a gamechanger.
What I found in Kanye's discography was a long and drawn out epic, a story of man with many of the same personality struggles I faced myself. Better yet, a man who had found a way to improve himself. His albums weaved tales of triumph and tragedy, of adoration and abhorration, of the rise and a fall..... and how to overcome this against all odds.
It dives deep into his mind; the mind of a conflicted man who can't seem to express his true thoughts to the world no matter how hard he pains to do so. These are amazing thoughts of innovation, creativity, and changing the world.... but he just can't seem to get it out right. On top of it, his mother died from a plastic surgery his fame helped make possible. The sadness of his mother's death mixed with his frustration at the inability to express himself and culminated in a dark downward spiral. It wasn't until album seven that he even begins to come back from this, but through his love of God and his wife he overcame and learned to find himself after being so lost in the world.
The complexity of Kanye's work impressed me so much, that my perspective on hip hop as a whole changed. I took a listen at things like Kendrick's "Damn", and Tyler The Creator's "IGOR"; both are complex artists in their own right and like Kanye, speak about things that transcend race and even social class. It helped me realize that hip hop is just spoken words. The medium could talk about literally anything and the beats can be complex as "All Of The Lights" or as barebones as "I Love Kanye". What you get is an incredibly versatile medium with the potential to talk about very real and relavent things.
Now keep in mind, I said POTENTIAL. This isn't to say that the current pool of hip hop artists necessarily live up to it. There are your gems but at this moment it really is stuck in this box of divisive identity politics, sex, drugs, and murder. Will it break out of it? I can't say, but what I can say is that due to these reflections, I no longer have the opinion that the genre is inherently bad. In fact, it can be quite impactful in the right hands.
