Our brother from another Dart (@DartAdams) chimes in with his top piece of foolishness in Urban/Pop culture. You might be surprised at his pick. But then again if you know Dart you probably aren’t.
Greg asked me to write a piece rehashing some fuckery filled events that happened in 2011 that pissed me off. To be totally honest, that list was far too long and I’d just get my blood pressure up. Hypertension is a silent killer in the Black community. I decided to instead focus on the one defining event of 2011 in my eyes that encapsulated many of the issues I currently have with the Hip Hop industry as a whole.
The haphazard marketing and release of Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Watch The Throne” infuriated me like no previous album release ever has. The elaborate exclusive album listening sessions. The promotional documentary that they repeatedly removed from YouTube and Vimeo. The magazines and blogs that fellated and dickrode Jay-z and Kanye West nonstop throughout the entire process.
The fact that “Watch The Throne” essentially shunned Fat Beats, Underground HipHop.com and any other outlet that actually supports Hip Hop/Rap music. The fact that once the album dropped people that said they didn’t like it or felt that all of the push and buzz was undeserved because the album itself was mediocre came under attack. The fact that it all reeked of a super corporate, pathetic, totally inorganic man made event album from jump all incensed me to no end.
The “Watch The Throne” release and the fallout from it also showcased the ever growing chasm between the two worlds of Hip hop/Rap, the mainstream and the underground. Whereas mainstream Rap fans were so focused on this one album, underground heads were focused on multiple albums that came out around the same time that made “Watch The Throne” sound like an Eli Porter mixtape over Solar instrumentals by comparison. The exorbitant ticket prices of the “Watch The Throne” tour and it’s inexplicable success have only further cemented the fact that we exist in a state of Rap Apartheid on the R&B tip with a Jim Crow feel, appeal to it.
There are two Rap worlds. One mainstream. One underground. They are considered separate and unequal. If you’re in the underground world you can make the greatest possible album, but to the mainstream world you are automatically “irrelevant”. Unless you’ve gotten spins on terrestrial radio or are discussed by mainstream Rap publications or blogs that cater to these audiences you don’t exist and you simply don’t deserve acknowledgement. This divide is extremely evident if you follow the Hip Hop blogs, publications or outlets that cover underground Hip Hop and the music and artists they cover versus the ones that focus on mainstream Rap.
In closing, the one event that perfectly encapsulated everything I find absolutely infuriating and scary about this modern era of Rap was not only the release of “Watch The Throne” but the fact that it’s being praised as a classic when it’s slightly better than mediocre overall. I literally feel like I’ve been living in a 5 month long version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” as I watch a new era of 1%/Swarvoski Crystal Swan/Gruyere Cheese Rap emerge when we actual need the opposite. Never mind me, though. I’m only right…
One.