Not another 'state of hip-hop today' thread
 

Read this article, chances are you'll agree with something in it.

Simon Reynolds's Notes on the noughties: When will hip-hop hurry up and die? | Music | guardian.co.uk

I'm surprised to find myself almost agreeing with the dismissal of underground hip-hop, outside of the 10-15 'essentials' I have accrued I find some of the big hitters in that scene to be portentous and backwards. The purveyors of underground hip-hop 'hybrid music' I have got time for though.

Thoughts?

Sounded like your typical "Things were so much better back in the day" rants that make me want to puke out my blackened guts. OK I agree with him about the current state of mainstream hip hop but I've always thought like that and so have a lot of people, "Mainstream hip hop is more about self image than lyrics!" ZOMG really!??!?! Even his little pathetic rant on underground hip hop was dumbfounded and had no real substance to it. He couldn't even be kind enough to name a few hip hop groups from this decade. 2009 the death of hip hop? Don't make me laugh, here's a list of hip hop albums from 2009 I have found myself enjoying:

Gift of Gab - Escape 2 Mars
Random - Mega Ran 9
CunninLynguists - Strange Journey Vol. 1 & 2
P.O.S. - Never Better
Bike For Three -More Heart Than Brains
Busdriver - Jhelli Beam
Brother Ali - The Truth Is Here
Sleep (Of Oldominion) - Hesitation Wounds
Classified - Self-Explanatory
DOOM - Born Like This
CYNE - Water For Mars
Cradle Orchestra - Velvet Ballads
Audible Mainframe - Transients
Mos Def -The Ecstatic
mc chris - Part Six Part One
K'Naan - Troubadour
Phrase - Clockwork
True Live - Found Lost
Why? - Eskimo Snow


People really need to be more positive.

I agree the genre is presently stagnant,but it's by no stretch of the imagination finished with.For a start it's commercially as big as ever.

i think you totally missed the point of the article Pete, it was in response to a 'hip-hop is dead' rant, published in the New Yorker; and i wouldn't call the few lines referring to underground hip-hop a 'pathetic rant', just an observation, it's an insular scene.

And the whole thrust of it was about solutions but you obviously missed that too - 'when will hip-hop hurry up and die'? I.e. when will the black youth who make this stuff that gets hoovered up by boring mugs of all denominations start to get fed up of it, when they move on THEN things will get interesting in the mainstream again and I won't have to listen to ****ing Aesop Rock up on his pedestal spitting scathing rants and call for consciousness that I can't even bloody understand anyway.

You are the obscure mixtape-wielding naysayer in this dialogue man, I'm fed up of backpacker hip-hop for now, I've got my good ones to cherish. oh and btw the new DOOM was shite

Hip hop is doing fine.

I actually haven't heard any 09 hip-hop yet, so I'll have to check some of these out. Props for da list.

I concur.

To add some to this, (even though I disagree with one or two from your list)

Brother Ali - Us
Felt - Felt 3: A Tribute To Rosie Perez
KiD CuDi - Man On The Moon: The End of Day
Blue Scholars - Oof! EP
Tech N9ne - K.O.D.
Danny! - Where Is Danny?
Zion I - The Takeover
The Grouch & Eligh - Say G&E
BK-One (with Benzilla) - Radio Do Canibal (one of my favorites this year, I REALLY recommend this)
KRS-One & Buckshot - Survival Skills
XV - Everybody's Nobody (Mixtape) (favorite mixtape of the year)
Krizz Kaliko - Genius
Lupe Fiasco - Enemy Of The State: A Love Story (Mixtape)
mc chris - Part Six Part Two
mc chris - Part Six Part Three
Wale - Attention Deficit
Raekwon - OB4CL pt. II
Method Man & Redman - Blackout! 2

And I know I'm forgetting some.

Add to that:
D-Sisive - Let the Children Die
Fashawn - Boy Meets World
Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt II

Hip hop started in the parties, nobody was saying it was dead when they were doing the "pee wee herman"

Snap/party rap ain't nothing new. When people get sick enough of it you'll have a bunch of new artists that are the opposite of it, thats how it goes.

The new doom album goes hard too.

Can't believe I forgot the Fashawn album.

I disagree about DOOM, but we'll get nowhere with that conversation.