Here and now...

Many of the most popular songs of 2007 were from Hip Hop artists. For example one of the biggest songs was a song most people known called "Crank that Soulja Boy" from Soulja boy Tellem. In this song, the content is mostly explaining a dance, that pretty much is just appealing to the public. If someone that was a real artist writing their own songs, then wouldn't you think they would write about something more meaningful to them, not just to appeal to an audience. I believe that is what popular hip hop has turned into. Also, A big hip hop artist of this year being featured in an emence amount of the most popular songs of 2007 is T-Pain. The song he did by himself a year or so ago was called "I'm in love with a stripper". Now, this song is nothing more then degrating women and just vulgar words that are not needed to prove his point, I mean if your really in love with a stripper T-Pain, you wouldn't be talking about how you love her body...come on. Let's look at MIMS song "This is why I'm Hot". Well that title pretty much tells you what he is repeatedly saying throughout the entire song. How is that really interesting? I think Hip hop is being degrated to something that is just something to dance and jam to. Not so much an important form of music.

Back in the Day...

The "Pioneers" of the Hip Hop culture are the ones that started it all. To name the most influencial people in hip hop here they are: Afrika Bambaataa the "godfather of Hip hop", The Beastie Boys (the first major all white hip hop crew), Beat Junkies, Davey D, Doug E. Fresh, Dynamic Rockers/Dynamic Breakers, the Electric Boogaloos, Eminem, Fab 5 Freddy, Cypress Hill, Fubu, Sugar Hill Gang, the Fugees, Grandmaster Flash, Grandmixer DXT, MC Hammer, Hype Williams, Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Jay-Z, Karl Kani, Kool Herc, KRS-One, Kurtis Blow, Marley Marl, Master P, LL Cool J, Missy Elliott, NOGA, Native Tongues, New York City Breakers, Notorious B.I.G., NWA, P. Diddy, Public Enemy, Queen Latifah, Rakim, Rock Steady Crew, The Roots, Run-DMC, Russell Simmons, Salt-n-Pepa, Snoop Dogg, TAKI 183, Tupac Shakur, UGA, Will Smith, Wu-Tang Clan, and X-Ecutioners. Now this is a VERY long list of Hip Hops Finest, but I felt if I was going to go through the process of comparing some of them to all new Hip hop stars then I would need the best, and that included all of them. Out of these about 49 Hip Hop legends about 6 are still putting out recent records and kids in highschool and younger would know (as a generalized statement) only about these 6. Is there a specific reason (besides death) that only a select few are still going strong in the hip hop industry? It could be because they changed their old school ways to fit the audience now. I will look at that further.

Which is more relatable to the audience, old school or new school hip hop... or maybe it depends on the artist?

I think that people will take different sides on the topic. Who knows, this question is asking how you relate to the music. People can relate to the music in different ways. How I see it, old school hip hop seemed less vulgar and had some meaning in the words they were saying. Not so much " Shake it for me". A lot of it was about how rough their lives were and you could tell that they had problems and they were letting out their anger and frustration through their music. I listen to a lot of the rappers now like T-pain for instance and its nothing more then trying to entertain us with a beat and repeating the same meaningless words the whole song. Yet, there are some rappers now also that do not follow that statement. We could bring Kanye West into this and look at his past albums. He is new school, but none of his music is about meaningless things, it is empowering music. Also we can look at Sir Mix-A-Lot the One Hit Wonder with "Baby Got Back" (I'm sure you can guess what thats about), he is pretty old school, from the early 90's. His song had nothing more then talking about womens behinds, is that relatable?

BIG NAMES THAT STARTED IT ALL

If you go back to when hip hop started it was not accepted by the public. Some thought of it as horrible and "america's worst slum". It was the Sugar hill Gang that made the biggest impact on the recorded hip hop music revolution which their controversial 1979 song " Rappers Delight".Before that though, there was Kool Herc (Clive Campbell). Before him there was no DJ or MC that made beats for dancers, or b-girls/boys. He made the first hip hop crew called cool Herc and the Herculords (1970's). A lot of people have thought that gangs and rap are interrelated. Generally speaking, gangs were here first and that is were rap/hip hop was derived from.