South, Exploitation, and Sport

Ahh, the South! There isn’t ANYTHING like it! I was born and raised in the South. I'm very proud of it too. Why not be? We have great tasting food, real African culture based here, humble hospitality, and oh yeah...the rap music.

Now, I have a love and hate relationship with the South's rap music industry. Why I love it? I love it because we can produce bangers. Every artist from the South can get played in every club and every radio station. We also get more deals than artist from the North.

But I must say I really hate the South's rap music industry as well.

First, majority but not all of the artists' aren't producing any message behind their lyrics therefore since artists' from the south are more nationally known then of course when rap music gets criticized then it’s based on the music that’s nationally heard. Get my drift? I hate that rap music gets a bad review because it's not that bad and there are more positive, more dope artists' out there.

Secondly, artist from the south are so thirsty for a "deal" that they don’t realize that they are being exploited when they get signed. They are being exploited by music executives who just want to make money off of our musical culture and make them look stupid. You really think they understand or care about what Future is attempting to sing about?? Therefore, they throw idiots in music videos and call it Hip Hop. A lot but not all of these idiots just happen to be from the south.

Thirdly, the younger generation catch onto this and sadly this type of Hip Hop is all they know. They know nothing of the fathers of Hip Hop. They barely know who Jay Z is. I feel like he has to fight yearly to keep his name alive and keep up with the ignorance and he has been in the industry for 20 plus years. I mean even though I was born in 91 (YES HATERS I'M A 90's baby so what?!) I'm interested enough in music to seek out where this dope shit started at and who was the first ones to do it.

But if you don’t know your history then you don’t know what the present future is supposed to be. For example, "rappers" nowadays talk nonsense. If you listened to a lot of these songs without a beat would you still think it’s "fire"?

In my opinion, true Hip Hop contains 2 types of messages behind the lyrics. One message may be the metaphors and punch lines that make you think twice and you’re like “wait did he just say that? How he’d come up with that? That’s clever!” The other message may be all those metaphors and punch lines together to come up with a message to the people, the politicians and towards other artists'. Some people view Hip Hop as a battle of who is the best lyricist meaning who can come up with the most clever lines that no one else would think of and some may view Hip Hop as way an empowering tool for the people from listening to the story within the track that relates or make you think.

Hip Hop is a sport just like basketball; Hip Hop requires strategy and mental intelligence. A few bars may appear to the public as a few words at first but the meaning and metaphors are way much more. It takes skill and hard work. It really does. "No days off" like Wale would say. It's intelligence at its best when played by great rappers. Some rappers do it for the sport and nothing more. Then some may do it for the sport and the money. Whatever they do it for is their business, what they put out is ours.

Ahh, the South. It produced me and I'm thankful for that because if it wasn’t for the South I don’t think I would've been as curious as I am about Hip Hop today.