Next Great Thing

Hip Hop Is Dead. Nas felt strongly enough to title an album as such, Def Jam didn’t seem to disagree, and countless fans and journalists have said the same over the past year as Hip-Hop, or the music that it’s most often associated with, has experienced a 25% sales decrease.

The most often mentioned logic behind the downward record sales trend is identical to the issues that have surrounded rap music since its inception. Misogyny, glorification of violence, racial polarization, and complete disregard for anything positive have all been cited. All of this being said, it’s important to note that Hip-Hop is dynamic. It is often reduced to being widely known simply as a music genre, but it is not synonymous with rap music. It is a lifestyle and perhaps the most significant cross-cultural influence.

America and the rest of the world have borrowed and will continue to borrow from Hip-Hop’s forward-thinking and unique fashion sense, vernacular, and swagger. Hip-Hop remains the cornerstone of cool and if it was dead, the inspiration behind the bulk of consumable mass media would experience a similar fate. Not to mention mass media would need to sniff out a fresh food-feeding hand to bite.

In a week that saw Imus ousted for broadcasting bigotry, it was difficult to escape the point-of-view expressed by the water-cooler loitering majority, “Why can rappers use the same words in their lyrics, but Imus can’t? Why isn’t Al Sharpton protesting these rappers who say the same thing?” Suddenly Hip-Hop is conveniently resurrected for the purposes of finger pointing — ironically on the heels of a very recent, very public Sharpton-lead campaign to “ban 50 Cent” (see the protest video here) that followed an altercation involving one of the artists on the rapper’s label.

Hip-Hop is far from dead. Rappers are selling less records than they did a few years ago, but Hip-Hop as an influencer is a rock. The largest impact of this recent slide is absorbed by the thought-leaders behind the Hip-Hop lifestyle. They must find new revenue-driving channels or ways to remain relevant as founders to directly benefit from the multiple-market-moving-monster they’ve created now that the Hip-Hop commerce “blueprint” they drafted has been globally shared and interpreted and personalized by every imaginable culture, peer and interest group. Hip-Hop itself is not a trend, but it is a trend beacon. A Bathing Ape’s creator Nigo (left) and his diversified body of work is an example of how Hip-Hop’s influence can transcend culture, geography, and industry boundaries. Hip-Hop’s influence within fashion alone reflects its staying power and, keeping true to its legacy, has even created adversarial relationships between streetwear and prep-hop factions (led by Kanya West, below right) — elevating its trend influence to a social and class issue.

For the purposes of book ending, the Nas album title may be the result of his frustration with the divergent interests of rappers, the influence of American Idol, illegal file sharing, southern “snap music” sterility, fatigue of coastal and camp posturing contests and campaigns, fashion emigration, and genre and lifestyle blending with strong influences including skate culture. Bold artist statements and album titles like “Hip-Hop is Dead” enable a strong intro and segue to branch-points for articles like the one you’re reading, but they’re widely misinterpreted. Many artists have made similar absolute comments even at the peak of their genre’s SoundScan success.

But no need to further misinterpret the track’s title. Nas can better dispel its myths and represent Hip-Hop history, its cross-vertical opportunities and record-buying-consumer churn than this writer ever could:

“Went from turntables to MP3s From “Beat Street” to commercials on Mickey D’s”