By Pappy
Jay-Z has recently said that grunge music blocked the rise of hip hop and this is an incredibly interesting statement to me. It's interesting because he's right. When you think about it, there was a big hip hop influence coming up in the late 80's and if everything stayed on the track that seemed obvious, the empire that is rap/hip hop would have come a lot earlier.
But it didn't. Instead, grunge emerged quickly and it was a potent genre that spread far and fast.
So what happened? At first, I was inclined to think that the people just spoke up and grunge resonated more than hip hop. Music is supposed to be very much a democracy and success is supposed determined by the people.
Maybe, as hip hop was poised to take over the world - again, which makes sense - the world just decided that they would rather indulge in this other genre that is very anti-rock, or anti what we knew was rock. Instead of going in a radical new direction as a music-consuming group, people opted for an offshoot for various reasons.
By the way, this is ALSO a very interesting thing. Are we all familiar with "hipsters?*" The people who do uncool things "ironically" to make a statement? The people that love the underground, that love rubbing it in the faces of those who are more tuned into the pop-culture pipeline. Getting into grunge seems like a page right out of the hipster handbook. Why move on to something new and different when you can make a bold statement that you are not only done with the popular rock genre of the day, but are so against it, that they're willing to take time and money to emphasize that they don't like a single thing about it. Nothing.
But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe this was beyond the people. Perhaps the labels had a hand in this and didn't want to risk changing the successful formula that had been working for so long that revolves around a BAND, not one or two people.
Still, it's an interesting part of musical history. You can usually look back and say that the changes were obviously coming. You can even say that with grunge if you ONLY look at rock. Rock was growing in excess and ridiculousness and there was so much musical show-off stuff going on that there HAD to be a backlash. It couldn't last forever. But when you open the scope a bit, you see that hip hop was rising in popularity and was right there, ready to get in the driver's seat, but then this left turn happened and hip hop was delayed.
Of course, one shouldn't complain about this if, at one point, the thing DID become popular. And holy crap did hip hop become popular! It has been constantly changing with the times and once it did become the big force that it promised to be pre-grunge, it's held tight. It's hard to complain about being delayed when the time of popularity has now eclipsed what delayed your success multiple times with no signs of stopping. Ever.
* On a side note, I can't stand the term "hipster." "Hipster" sounds like something cool - something you should aspire to. But the definition that is generally agreed on regarding the term is very much NOT cool and the actions that define the term also define another term: "douche bag." When I was a teenager and adults would ask me what music I liked, I would sneer and say they've probably never heard of the bands I like. I would tell people who eventually did find my favorite bands (I did not like pushing my favorite bands because I incorrectly felt that they were mine and mine alone) that I liked them before they were cool. I would wear clothes that were... well, they were stupid (let's be honest here). I was a teenage douche bag. Definitely not something to aspire to. Yet now it's cool to be a douche - so cool that you don't call them douches anymore, but something else that sounds cooler than it really is.
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1 comment:
I don't think Grunge really held off Hip-Hop at all, because it didn't get any smaller during the Grunge years... Biggie, Tupac, Dre, and Snoop all hit their apex during the Grunge years, and with the music industry being what it is these days, means they sold a lot more records. The hip hop genre was also a lot darker during the grunge era than it was in the 80s or 2000s, where it was more about partying, and talking about how great me and my empire are.
I think the crowds were somewhat more mutually exclusive back then as compared to now though. There were less folks listening to both grunge and hip hop as in this day and age. You were on one side of the fence or the other, generally speaking. When there was overlap, it was more in the vein of A Tribe Called Quest, Rage Against the Machine, the Roots, etc. Things that had a more organic/crossover sound, but before the whole rap-metal movement hit.
But then again, I was just getting into metal as all that stuff came into fashion... mid 90s that meant stuff like Type O Negative, Life of Agony, Sepultura, Machine Head, Fear Factory... basically the Roadrunner catalog. So I was outta the loop with all that, i finally started listening to Grunge and 90s hiphop well after they'd gone out of style.
I worked in a record store in the early 2000s and what would be called hipsters now were almost all the other employees I worked with. They were all into putting everything down and only listening to indie record labels or things that were shittily produced. It made no sense to me to intentionally listen to something thats raw just because its raw. You can still write good music and have it produced cheaply. Well written tunes are well written tunes no matter what instruments you play or how you produce it. It's just flabbergasting to intentionally write or listen to crappy music and call yourself above everyone else. Now there are good indie artists out there, but they dont stay indie for long. Their good music shines through and they hit the big time, and then the indie/hipster crowd refuses to listen to them, because they got popular... how much sense does that make? The artist's palette didnt change at all when they sold more records... and there are indie artists who choose to stay indie for whatever reason (creative freedom, self publishing, DIY ethic) and more power to them... anyways, off my soapbox. I enjoy music no matter the genre as long as its good.
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