Independent Hip Hop

For those that don’t know (which would be most of y’all), I been doin’ this hip-hop thing for a long time now. I was one of the original “internet rappers”. Back in ‘95-96, sharing lyrics online in chat rooms and message boards with others at places like The Honeycomb Hideout (shouts out to my old crew KNO haha). I’m talkin dial up 28/8k modems. Audio? Video?? Don’t even think about it. Straight text bay-bee… all day. So yeah, that dates me a bit. And yet, music was and is so important to me, I still haven’t let go.

As the years passed, as deals and opportunities came and went, a fear started to grow inside of my mind.  A fear that up until just recently became my biggest.  The fear of.. becoming an OLD RAPPER (dun dun dunnnnnnn)!

I always saw being old and doing hip hop as foreign, out of touch, and just an all around silly look.  I mean… take your grandpa.  Now put a Dipset chain around his neck.  See?  Now tell him to throw up “The Roc” and say “so wavy.”  See??  Silly isn’t it? Now stop pestering your grandpa and get back to reading this…

I did realize early in why I feared becoming an old rapper.  At that time there were no old rappers.  It was pretty much all youth, from the artists to the tastemakers to the fans.  So I had the notion that hip hop was for the youth.  I guess I figured it would stay that way, and that as I got older my listening tastes would progress to smooth jazz and NPR.  I do get my proper smooth jazz and talk radio in today, but I never lost my primary love for hip hop.  Quite the contrary, it grew even more.

As much as some of these young rap dudes want to try and convince the world that hip hop is only for the youth, that is just not the case at all.  Luckily for us all, the “old school” as a whole has stood it’s ground against the whipper-snappers and the music industry trying to push us into the old folks’ home.  The originators, the golden era artists, and the long-time hip hop fans have never stopped doing what they do and loving what they love.

So now, I see old rappers doing old music, young rappers doing old music, old rappers doing young music.  It’s ill.  There is clearly a lane for us older heads now.  Perhaps an older emcee will never reach the level of fame as some hipster who wears tight nut-hugging jeans and Boy George shades.  But, as he gets older, so does his fan base.

I’m not afraid of being an old rapper now.  There’s plenty of us out there, and we ain’t going nowhere.  Unless those damn kids are on our lawn again…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 1:42 pm and is filed under Make The Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.