Is Rap Dead?

Nasir thinks so. Should you? In my head, the jury's still out, which I guess means that I don't think so. But if it isn't, then it certainly is visiting Rock at the farm where all good music goes after it dies. And if it is dead, then tell the 5-0 that it was a suicide.

There's no doubt that rap is certainly in a wee bit of a slump. I haven't checked the numbers for Ludacris, but all of the other major albums this year have vastly undersold what was projected. Take Lupe Fiasco for instance. He had one of the most hyped major label debuts (which included guest spots from Jill Scott and Jay-Z) in recent years. Unfortunately, his name only foreshadowed his first week's sales numbers of 58,000. Are you shitting me? We're fucking less than 10 years removed from when everything coming out of P's basement was going gold or platinum, and this motherfucker can't even crack a hundred grand?!!

Now, I'm not trying to say that numbers are everything, and what's popular is what's best. But for rap/hip-hop I think the sales slump is indicative of a fucking problem. People my age might remember when every time you turned on MTV there was puffy, busta or somebody spitting a rhyme in a video. Now you turn it on and it's some dude wearing eyeliner bitching about how tough life is for white twenty-something year olds.

So, I ask, how did rap all of a sudden lose the incredible momentum it once had? And here's my answer. Rap is struggling right now because of two letters all of the artists are familiar with: O.G. No, not that one, but kind of. When I say it, I mean Overexposed-Gangsterism.

Straight Outta Compton came out in 1988. And there's no doubt it not only is a classic rap album, but also just top-notch music. Period. But while E, Dre, Cube, and who-gives-a-shit-what-the-others-names-were might have single-handedly revolutionized the industry, they were also the catalyst for the despair that all hip-hop fans feel now on some level.

What NWA did was they brought gang-life into everyone's fucking home, including pimply-face white kids from the midwest who thought that bustin' a cap in someone's ass sounded a helluva lot more exciting than detassling corn. The thing is, though, those kids grew up, got jobs, and started spending their money on music. And they knew what they liked: hearing guys talk about a life they would never have, particularly one that included lots of women, booze, drugs and guns. So, not only did they buy, but they bought as much of it as they could. Record execs, whose job it is to monitor what people are obsessed with, and exploit accordingly, did just that.

All of a sudden rap went from speaking truthfully about what it was like growing up in the world to telling everyone that success was how many groupies you had, how many gats you packed, and how many benjamins you pocketed. Everyone not only wanted to be Tony Montana, but they also told you they were. Or in Ja Rule's case, that he was the next Tupac.

And it was/is all such bullshit in so many different ways. First, imagine if one of your friends told you the same story 13 times and the nine others after him pulled the same shit. You would tell them to shut the fuck up. So, why can rappers get away with it? Am I the only one tired of hearing about how many bitches they fucked and how much bling they got? Of course not.

Second, beef. This really reached a new pinnacle of absurdity when a record label manufactured a supposed dust-up between it's biggest star and one of it's up-and-coming. And now these motherfuckers actually hate each other. Battling has always been a part of the art. Murder, though, is a different story, unless you're an exec trying to sell a couple thousand more albums. The industry claims to revere Biggie and Pac, but yet it perpetuates a cycle of goddamn violence.

Third, these guys are full of shit. ATTENTION READERS: JEEZY IS NOT THE SNOWMAN. As a friend of mine and I were talking about the other day, if you are a full-fledged dealer, you don't rap. You don't have the time to be sitting down and writing a 100 bars. Conversely, if you rap, you ain't got time to be grindin' out a living. So even while some of these guys might have sold a few bags in their past, they are not the true-life Frank White now. You wouldn't let some white boy from Baton Rouge tell you that he was a Latin King, so why do you let Curtis Jackson tell you he's the real 50 Cent? Or to put it another way, in his autobiography, Snoop claims to have lost his virginity at 13 in a sex sandwich. Uh-huh, and I bang supermodels in my spare time.

These guys have beaten the shit out of the dead horse of being a gangster, and it stinks to high heaven. So, is it any wonder people are getting tired of listening?

However, if rap is on life support, is there any medicine to save it? I think so. Do yourself a favor, and break out ODB's Nigga Please. No, I'm serious. Go listen, and then come back and read the end of this.

Finished? What did you think? First, probably, that I'm crazy if I think this guy's the answer. (And yes, I realize he's dead.) But as Meth tell us on 36 chambers, Dirty got his name because his style has no father. And in that statement lies the truth about what needs to happen for rap to find salvation. Somebody's got to come along like nobody's ever heard before. It can not rely on the players already in the game. Simply, it needs another Big or Pac. Which probably means that while it's not dead, it might as well be. Those two are gone, and there won't be any one like them for a while. And why are they no longer with us? Because somebody wanted to be a gangster and help rap kill itself.