Hip Hop On The Radio - Is It Helping Or Killing Hip Hop Music?
Hip hop on the radio - do you enjoy what is playing today? Or do you find yourself looking for other hip hop and rap music to listen to because what you hear on the radio is just not what you're enjoying? Do you wish that the radio had more lyrical hip hop being played? Or is hip hop all about the club style dance music versus the lyrical "think" music that used to be played more so on the radio back then?
Remember when you would hear hits like "Renee" by Lost Boyz, or "You're All That I Need" by Method Man ft. Mary J Blige? To me, hip hop on the radio was bumpin' back then, and you still had a mix of different types of hip hop music. It wasn't all about the club bounce type music that is being played today, at least from my standpoint. You had variety of hip hop music mixed throughout the day, so the music on the radio was never really boring. The mix is what kept it alive, and hearing something to get your groove goin', and something to also stimulate the mind really brought a presence into hip hop. I would be driving in my ride, and have the radio playing on Power 98 here in Charlotte, NC (I didn't start driving until after I left Brooklyn, NY), and I would hear a hot variety of music! What happened??
Hip hop on the radio NOW, to me anyway, is full of the same four or five songs being played, to which three of them are probably by, or featuring Lil Wayne or Drake! I understand that there are trends, and that some artists are more popular than others, but the concept of only playing a certain artist or trend over and over again makes my ears bleed! And it makes me wonder about the future of hip hop! Where are the lyrical tracks? I know some of them are slowly making a comeback, but how long will it be before the radios are playing variety again? Or does everyone have to own a Sirius radio player to get that variety?
As a new upcoming artist of today, do you have to sound like everyone else to get your
hip hop on the radio? Do you stand a chance at all if you're a more lyrical artist like Common or Talib Kweli? Or is it truly the decade or decades of the 'bounce music' rap artist? Is it only about the bootie shake and how many different ways you can say it? Do hip hop artists of the underground stand a chance on the radio? Or do you have to sell yourself to be commercial in order to have a chance?
It's a wonder to me why artists like Nas can say that hip hop is dead. At a certain point, it seems to have died or started to rest on its death bed more and more. It's really hard to say what will happen with the change of the next few years. Regardless, there are still artists in the underground like Prosthetik Intelligentz, New Clear Poet, and others that I've gotten to know that still bring lyrical fire to the table, whether the networks are ready to embrace their music on the airwaves or not.
Don't let the radio dictate your hip hop style and flava! Put your work in, copp some
hip hop beats, and start making your own style of music! If the network isn't ready to embrace it, keep grindin' harder and harder until you more or less make them sweat you to play your
hip hop on the radio!