First and foremost, I would like to thank Lupe Fiasco, FNF, and MUAH for giving me the opportunity to contribute to Lupethefiasco.blogspot.com. Be sure to stay tuned, as you should, because this is the place where you will hear about everything Lupe Fiasco and FNF! I would also like to take this opportunity to moderately plug myself by simply saying that my name is KAE Hock, I represent The First State, Delaware, and that I can be googled. Now lets get down to business!
Creativity is King!
What happened to the music industry? At what point did we forget that music is a form of expression? Better yet, at what point did we begin to disregard that hip hop started, in part, as a rebellion to the societal norm and that biting, or in the words of our present generation "swagger jacking" was against all applicable hip hop laws? People sometimes lash out on the south for what they are currently doing in hip hop, but what is happening in the south is not unfamiliar territory! In my humble opinion, there is a fine line between drawing inspiration from something, and stealing it. The sound of the south is an excellent example of reinventing a well built wheel. Many of our early hip hop songs contained heavy 808 style sounds, and effortlessly blended fun and reality, and there are a slew of hip hop artist from the south that carried on this tradition. For example, Ludacris, TI, Young Jeezy, and More. Scarface, 8ball & MJG, and OutKast are examples of southern emcees that brought original flavor to hip hop early on. However, what we are witnessing is the mass carbon copy of the socially popular. This is the part where the corporations get involved and take the music in the wrong direction by using money to persuade musicians to create a certain musical product when they are not musicians themselves. These, my friends, are not uncharted waters. We saw the same thing happen when Jay-Z and the sound of the east coast was popular. We saw the same thing with gangster rap. Real artist making real music, preceding artist who imitated the popular because they feared originality because of corporate interest. The result is plain and see: WATERED DOWN MUSIC! As you probably noticed, unless you live in a cave or something, there are still talented artist performing these same styles of music today, but those genres of hip hop are pretty much look upon as "Old School". Because of this copycatting, hip hop artist usually fail to include social responsibility in their creative process and hardly ever reach the hearts of one of the most important groups of people in music. FANS. Social responsibility made so many artist great (Ex. Tupac, Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye), yet and still, the artist of today rarely embrace todays realities and instead, focus on a bunch of shit that doesn't matter. This is why we need artist like Lupe! Artist who are not afraid to lose their precious sponsorships, or a couple of those dollars that they worship, and will reach out to touch the hearts of the People, and do not fear originality. Although the result is carbon copy Lupe's, at least it opens up another lane than the unoriginal, watered, and DUMBED DOWN Shullbit that we are force fed through our media outlets. Well Im down blackin out...LOL I gotta take my niece to work. On a final note, Artist: Be Original. When something is watered down too much...It just doesnt taste as good.
- Hockaday
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