In two and a half decades, hip-hop has been written off as a fad and written up as a movement. It’s been vilified and championed, been a scourge and a salvation.
But it’s always, always been young.
Whoever heard of a middle-aged hip-hopper? Nevertheless, hip-hop is beginning to get long in the gold tooth, forcing its veteran artists to contemplate their evolving role in the musical culture.
“When somebody’s at their hottest, it’s generally when they first come out. … That’s part of hip-hop, you know: So-and-so’s fresh off the block. He’s got skills, and he’s hungry,” says Todd Boyd, author of “Young Black Rich & Famous.”
Hip-hop is so youth-oriented that kingpin rapper Jay-Z retired from recordmaking last year at age 33. One track on his swan song CD, “The Black Album,” featured the telling line, “What more can I say to you/you heard it all.”
Retirement appears temporary, however. Jay-Z and R. Kelly–touring together now–plan to release their second collaborative album, “The Best of Both Worlds: Unfinished Business,” billboard.com reports.
“There’s not a bunch of hip-hop artists that you can relate to once you hit 30,” Jay-Z told Time magazine. “I think, unfortunately, rap music is made to destroy itself. You have to be fresh and sell to an audience that’s 16 to 25. They demand that you ‘keep it hood, keep it real.’ “
Jay-Z has learned that hip-hop culture’s auxiliary businesses–like clothing and liquor–can be more profitable than recording. Which is fine for him, rapper/producer/actor Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and other rappers with outside business aspirations.
How old is hip-hop?
“I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hop, and you don’t stop.”
So started “Rapper’s Delight,” the first hip-hop record to make the Top 40, released in September 1979. Some old-school rappers cringe at the notion that “Delight” marks the beginning of the hip-hop era, because the elements of hip-hop–a DJ spinning or sampling records while an MC improvises rhymes or shout-outs–had been gaining momentum in street parties in the Bronx for several years.
Even though they had little credibility in the rap community at the time, and never had another hit, the Sugarhill Gang took an obscure party phenomenon limited to a few New York neighborhoods and sent it out, almost instantaneously, to millions of people worldwide.
You don’t have to respect it, but it was the true beginning of hip-hop as a cultural force.
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— Cox News Service