The Decline Of Rap Music

It was 1986 and hip hop stars Run DMC just released what would become their most successful album, Raising Hell. On this landmark recording, the rap trio also resurrected the dormant career of rock legends Aerosmith and broke down walls separating the two musical genres. Looking at hip hop music today, one can see many more similarities between rock and rap.

As a child of the 80s, I grew up with the rise and explosion of rap music as well as the dominance of 80's metal. Those who are my age can clearly see the very similar paths that these genres have taken.

In the late 1980s, rap music was a "hip" underground form of entertainment. MTV finally added a rap video program in 1988, and most teens my age became fans of BET (when, as white teens, we couldn't even locate that network previously) since they showed more R&B and rap videos. When the first wave of "gangster rap" music came out with N.W.A., Too Short, 2 Live Crew and others, the uncensored albums were very hard to find. I remember going back and forth across Portland from record store to record store in search of certain albums.

When you were able to buy an N.W.A. album or a Too Short album, it would soon be passed around amongst your peers so everyone could make a dub. I remember wishing that the music was more accessible and more widespread. My first rap concert was in 1990, I went to a Public Enemy show. I had bought a ticket in the second row, and was so excited about seeing Chuck D, Flavor Flav and Terminator X. The show was fantastic, and I even enjoyed the opening act, a NY trio named The Afros. The feeling that I was in on some special musical wave was awesome and indescribable. I would scoff at those in school who were listening to the "top 40" pop stuff.

The perfect timing of my youth enabled me to also be able to enjoy the tidal wave of metal popularity. Def Leppard, Metallica, Skid Row and others dominated my cassette rotation as well. Even though I couldn't see it clearly at the time, I did get a feel that metal was cannibalizing itself. Soon, every new group sounded and looked the same. The same songs would seemingly be released again and again. At the same time, rap began to bubble up to the mainstream. MC Hammer, Ice T, and (ugh) Vanilla Ice brought rap onto the charts.

In the early 90s, a wild whirlwind hit the music industry. Grunge rock hit from Seattle and bumped the deteriorating metal scene into the background. Simultaneously, rap music was becoming more and more popular. N.W.A., Ice Cube, and others became almost mainstream artists, Snoop Dogg came onto the scene, and by the mid 90s rap was incorporated into popular music.

You could easily paint the comparisons right then, one decade earlier, 80s metal bubbled up and became mainstream and then became less and less creative and more corporate. Now, by the late 90s rap music was doing the same thing. You can hear it still today, every rap song that comes out seems to sound just like another and all of the lyrics are basically the same. Just like metal did, rap is cannibalizing itself, and the creativity is being lost.

Looking back at Public Enemy, my favorite rap group of all time, they have been pushed into the underground. Unless you are doing a facsimile of the "gangster rap" genre, the record labels want nothing to do with you. The similarity to when metal became only about big hair, shiny outfits and party songs is very noticeable. Now, metal was both killed and saved when grunge became the big thing in 1991. Many metal bands have regrouped and returned to filled arenas nationwide. I have been, and am still, waiting for the big creative giant to come and overhaul rap music. There needs to be a new voice, a creative new spirit, to redirect rap into a new realm. It is sad to see a once innovative, brilliant, creative musical genre become so stale and lifeless.