I haven’t been writing for a while, I could say I’ve been busy but I think becoming laxed is the key reason. Now post ‘Umbrella’ RnB & Hip Hop has hit a post sludge of the same it has to be said, once producers and artists got the formula of using distorted guitars, wavy synths and eclectic samples, the sludge train docked its load of the door of mainstream radio outlets i.e. Radio 1 (but what else can you expect).
The last couple of years have been notorious for ‘BIG’ mainstream hip hop, we had the mainstream birth of Lil Wayne, T.I taking Grand Hustle to the UK in the form of Paper Trail and protégés galore with Cash Money using the aptly titled adjectives in its name to grind out Drake, but you cant help feel this momentum of mainstream success has blurred the vision of how ground breaking a genre could and ultimately should be.
As I lay on my bed freezing my ass off, I’ve been listening to some mainstream artists who could turn the tide for said genre’s in the new year with a sense of a ‘new’ formula, taking the style in a fundamentally new direction, being ground breaking without having to rely so heavily on the sludge train, some examples of this can be seen in artists such as Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, Shyne and even (yes its coming!) Dr Dre.
Now the latter I feel will bring about a positive shift in early 2011, with Dre releasing the highly anticipated Detox sometime in February and Shyne taking his release from prison as a step not only to realise a form of religion but to also unleash 10 years of angst of being locked away to snowball the airwaves with intelligent and hardcore raps that many labels including Cash Money and Def Jam are willing to pay BIG marketing dollars for.
Now the much hype that ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ has ensued is in my opinion deserved, Kanye, who spent two years making the record has broke the formula chains to great effect, the album which is his dark take on all things celebrity and his own demons is astonishing, highlighted tracks for me are Blame Game with John Legend which ultimately see Kanye using studio wizardry to seemingly show his many inner monologues, done to great effect and the fantastic Power with Kanye rapping, "My childlike creativity, purity, and honesty is honestly being crowded by these grown thoughts/ Reality is catching up with me, taking my inner child, a line which to me symbolises his genius of producing but also his ego nature to steal MTV awards and attack rednecks.
Nicki Minaj, fresh off much ado about nothing continued beef with Lil Kim finally released Pink Friday, and although it does sound fresh, it ties inbetween where I feel she wants to be and what’s commercially viable for mainstream radio play which we all know creates the big $$$, mixtapes before the big release were so promising edgy, off beat wordplay, shifting personalities but I feel the sludge has forced itself on her, with failing to chart Massive Attack (although great) being replaced with the use of Annie Lennox samples on Your Love, I feel if she had been allowed she could have changed the face of females in hip hop, hard hitting and ready to take on the norms and this is something she has ultimately failed to do.
So the end of year has been strong for hip hop, although it could be stronger, newly released single ‘Kush’ by Dr.Dre sees the doctor rapping about one pass time that hip hop generations young and old can understand ‘green’ but what can a 45 year old man rap about, when he spends most of his time in the studio looking after his artists, lets hope we some surprises on Detox. The one great hope I look forward to in 2011, will be Shyne, cooking up his come back LP, I really hope that the sludge will be partly shifted….
NOTE:
The reason I fail to mention the likes of Eminem, Rick Ross, Jay-Z, is because although at times great records it goes no where near the fundamentals, the commercial viability of such records makes it so it cant really be ground breaking.
An example of $ludge vs diversity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSFyrrhKj1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZCUtnuAXg8
Guess which is which.........
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