By Soul Bravado
You can also catch SoulBrav @SouLBraV on Twitter.
A Great Day In Hip Hop
*Scrolls through iPod and selects Lupe Fiasco’s Food and Liquor*
Hip Hop has expanded itself from just a genre of music, to a LIFESTYLE. We don’t just listen to Hip Hop, we become it.
Reach deep into your minds and define cool. From high school, throughout life, cool has always been a certain standard for acceptance into a crowd that nobody truly belongs in. “The Cool” crowd is usually the most patterned and predictable group of people we meet in life. (See paradigmatic) Sadly, this crowd controls the economic aspect of youthANDmusic. It has been this way for a long time and will remain so. In the late 80’s early 90’s, Hip-hop culture took the youth by storm, from music to films thus bringing hip hop to life, and into the eyes of the public. Then Biggie died, and took with him the strength of the relationship between “The Cool” and Hip Hop.
I consider myself blessed to be born into the musical time period I was. Being born in the late80’s, I got a small taste of hip hop and over the last 10 years I’ve been digging for more. As I grew so did the distance between “The Cool” and hip Hop. I watched “the cool” slowly drift away from hip hop on to the shores of popular party music. Back in the day the two were co-dependent. Both hip hop and “The Cool” had necessary components that were vital to one another. (Who’s Kid without Play?!?) As a new less conscious movement washed ashore, the imprints of hip-hop were washed away and only “The Cool,” was left.
Hip hop was in the shadows of an otherwise illuminated musically influenced world, but the predictability of “The Cool” came and shined the dimmest of lights on the outskirts of the lifestyle. As all patterns do, “The Cool” cycled back to the past definitions of itself because of the lack of creativity. This took the small flashlight that remained on hip hop, and converted it into source of light that hip hop is today. Once again, it’s cool to be hip hop, cool to listen to old 90’s hits, cool to reach backwards in style and musical taste. While this dilutes the mixture of hip hop heads and pretenders, it gives hip hop the much deserved shine time it needs to survive. So I’ll gladly take the lesser.
Long Live Hip Hop, Long Live “The Cool.”
