What Happened?!

-- Although i try not to alienate anyone in particular... this post is really for my Hip Hop Heads. It is what it is --

Today i was listening to the radio and i started to wonder... what happened to the radio?

I remember way back when I'd sit around with my Maxell 90 minute cassette tape, waiting all day for that song to finally come on the radio. Yea, everyone knows that song. And after waiting all day to record it, I'd get pissed off because I'd get the DJ saying something random over the end of the track...

I don't get that feeling anymore. People have been saying that hip hop's been dead for a while... it's not until recently that i truly started to believe it. (the mainstream, anyway)

For a while, I was happy to go through a day without hearing about someone's swag. I don't know about you, but when i wake up in the morning i Turn My Swag On. And while all these other guys were either Swagger Jackin, or trying to Swag Up, i was busy Swag Surfin. If you don't believe me, Check My Swag... Really.

Whatever happened to the days when rap told a story? Not a generic, run-of-the-mill, i-watched-Scarface, i-sling-rocks story -- but a legit, "this is my life" story. It's funny to me that the only thing that sells nowadays is the hood shit. I didn't know that so much of the world grew up in the hood... I hadn't realized that MILLIONS of people could relate to the drug game and murder. All this time i thought the US was fairly well off.. turns out it's truly just a well disguised 3rd world country. Had it not been for gangster rap, i may have never discovered this fact. Guess i was living in the matrix.

From the swag phase to the auto-tune craze. (or maybe they co-existed?) Don't pretend like you don't care about Auto-tune. Don't act like you could tell the difference between Kanye, Juelz, T-Pain, Lil Wayne, Ron Browz, 50 Cent, Jim Jones, and Young Jeezy. You didn't even know all those rappers had dropped something recently did you? Well they have... all with the same lame lyrics, and queer voice.

I sometimes try and tie in a bigger picture meaning to my tirades. No such luck with this one. I'm literally just pissed off because something that once gave me nothing but joy.. has become a source of agony. I just want to turn on my radio without hearing the same one song on all 3 of the local stations simultaneously. If i keep pressing the presets around 5, it sounds like i'm scratching a record... when really all along i'm only praying for a commercial. Such is life i guess. I'm patiently waiting for the return of real rap. Awaiting the day when we stop putting average rappers on a pedestal (Drake), just because there hasn't been anyone with any true talent in so long. Patiently awaiting the day when we can call albums classics because the album is truly dope, and not because it's just the best album to hit the mainstream in the last 2 years or so. (Blueprint 3)

A Shameless plug for true hip-hop...