{"id":2508,"date":"2013-08-22T22:48:51","date_gmt":"2013-08-23T03:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jamesrichardson.net\/jtalk\/?p=2508"},"modified":"2013-08-24T23:17:06","modified_gmt":"2013-08-25T04:17:06","slug":"thanks-kendrick-lamar-i-miss-real-hip-hop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jamesrichardson.net\/jtalk\/2013\/08\/22\/thanks-kendrick-lamar-i-miss-real-hip-hop\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanks Kendrick Lamar&#8230; I miss real Hip Hop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dmcRZICxU4g\" height=\"270\" width=\"480\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know if it is just a sign of me getting older but when it comes to just the music, I truly don&#8217;t understand what passes for hip hop today. Unlike graffiti and breakdancing, it seems as if the musical side of hip hop has fallen and can&#8217;t get up. The recent controversy surrounding the whole <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=SaMreUKk5Fk\" title=\"Kendrick Lamar - \"Control Freestyle (Kendrick Verse Only)\">Kendrick Lamar Control verse<\/a> has left me shaking my head in disbelief. I honestly did not understand what the fuss was about. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/blogs\/therecord\/2013\/08\/21\/214145432\/the-blast-radius-of-kendrick-lamars-control-verse\" title=\"The Blast Radius Of Kendrick Lamar's 'Control' Verse\">Brothers are stating that Lamar&#8217;s verse on Control is going to shake up the game<\/a>. If that is the case then hip hop is in even more of a sad state than I originally believed.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think Lamar has shook up the game as much as he has taken a page from MCs over 20 years ago. Back when competition was the word of the day. Back when lyrical content was more important <!--more-->than the trash that passes for Hip Hop today. Back when you had to watch what you said or be verbally assaulted for dropping weak tracks. Lamar&#8217;s verse wasn&#8217;t even a dis track. He was just stating that in Hip Hop everyone is in competition to be the best. I give him respect for that, but this wasn&#8217;t anything like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rk2r6EohfT8\" title=\"Hit'em Up\">&#8220;Hit&#8217;em up&#8221;<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Z-alEhlHSzk\" title=\"The Bridge is Over\">&#8220;The Bridge is Over&#8221;<\/a>. If anything it was like he was naming the &#8220;best&#8221; of the current crop of rappers. Hell, I thought <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2012\/08\/10\/harry-belafonte-disappointment-jay-z-beyonce_n_1766315.html\" title=\"Harry vs. Hov\">Harry Belafonte went at Jay Z<\/a> harder than Lamar went at the industry. <\/p>\n<p>Only one thought was going through my head the whole time I have been listening to Lamar, the rappers he mentioned (notice I said rappers an not MCs), and their responses to his track. To paraphrase the illustrious Slick Rick&#8230;. Garbage, garbage, garbage. The whole army of them is straight garbage.<\/p>\n<p>I miss real hip hop. Maybe if this whole professor\/tenure thing doesn&#8217;t work out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reverbnation.com\/jrockthedemonofthemic\" title=\"Demon of the Mic\">I might pick up the mic again<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know if it is just a sign of me getting older but When it comes to just the music, I truly don&#8217;t understand what passes for hip hop today. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,263],"tags":[427,426,428,425,767,424,423,273,272,429],"class_list":["post-2508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","category-hip-hop","tag-battle","tag-beyonce","tag-control","tag-harry-belafonte","tag-hip-hop","tag-jay-z","tag-kendrick-lamar","tag-music","tag-rap","tag-verse"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jamesrichardson.net\/jtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jamesrichardson.net\/jtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jamesrichardson.net\/jtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jamesrichardson.net\/jtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jamesrichardson.net\/jtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2508"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/jamesrichardson.net\/jtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3427,"href":"http:\/\/jamesrichardson.net\/jtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2508\/revisions\/3427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jamesrichardson.net\/jtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jamesrichardson.net\/jtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jamesrichardson.net\/jtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}