by Brandon at No Trivia
Rappers aren’t rapping anymore. That’s not the grumble of an old-school fan or knee-jerk disappointment upon hearing say the Kanye/Lil Wayne/Jay-Z/T.I track “Swagger Like Us” or the rap-less “Love Lockdown”, it’s just a fact. Most of radio’s rappers are doing as much singing or club-ready chanting as rapping, and the few guys still rapping are l
ayover from the late 90s/early 2000s or are named Lil Wayne and Kanye West-and the “talents” of those two are for some reason, still up to debate.
Sure, there’s plenty of rapping in the “underground”–which at this point, just means, not one of the like 12 artists that can still get rap radio support–and the so-called “hipster rap” trend/sub-genre offers some genuine rapping, but really, rappers just aren’t rapping anymore and it’s a bummer, but it also just makes sense.
The height of rap “lyricism” (a term that means nothing but everyone reading this knows its meaning) was during the early-to-mid-90s when hyper-poetic rappers like Wu-Tang and Nas and Biggie ruled the radio. Since then, every rapper’s tried to occupy that same space and failed, not for a lack of talent, but because it’s a pretty much perfect era that was able to function at a pretty high-level of visibility with a relative lack of corporate interruption…and then it ended. The death of Biggie and Tupac, Wu-Tang’s dissolution, enter the era of Puffy–all the stuff you’ll one day read about in a music textbook on the history of rap– but most importantly (and word to Dart Adams) The Telecommunications Act of 1996.
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