I Used to Love Hip Hop in its Essence & Real

With the rise of global, mass produced, media based "hip hop", all I can stand to listen to these days from this genre are artists like Common, who still exude the same real feel that hip hop grew up upon. Released in 1994, I Used to Love H.E.R is my favourite Common song, although he was still Common Sense at that time. Classic hip hop artists are a rare thing nowadays, but I think Marco Polo defines the cut with Nostalgia and makes me "Backtrack turn back the page".





Even album covers don't strive for that creative element anymore. Music is art, so it goes to stand that the music sleevage should represent the item it contains. Not such a big fan of the Biggie posthumous release, and with the exception of maybe one song, the artists doing the duets probably should have sticked to their own niche and not cramp Biggie’s reputation. OUtkast’s ATliens and Aquemini are trying to reach a bit out of the hip hop box (though pre Stankonia), but still stay there with their bling and booty reminiscent images. I just think hip hop needs to get out the box/label that it’s been put in along with r&b and rap, as there really are great artists of this genre out there eg. Common, Talib Kweli, Maxwell, Mos Def.




Not so bad Album covers include: The Roots-Rising Down, Beastie Boys, Erykah Badu has some cool illustrative ones like World Wide Underground. Miss Badu is the quintessential Afrocentric queen; her lyrics, sense and image corroborate this. A lot of old school artists seemed to elaborate on comic styles, such as GZA - Liquid Swords.

Lots of covers have/had the potential to be exciting, but lacked this element due to artist ego or record label wants, or the need to conform to all that glitters must be good…

Hip hop was defeated by ego and sold out to commercialism.
I used to love h.i.m so there's still hope.