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Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous
Here is the point. Rap music died in the 90s.. a few artists from that period kept it alive in the 2000s.. new rap is a reflection of new society, but that is entirely my point. Rap wasn't a reflection of society, it was a critique..
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There was certainly a clear and dramatic change in hiphop around about the year 2000. New York was no longer the focal point, regional scenes got more attention, groups became much less prevalent, sampling and DJs were being replaced by synths and software.
New York hiphop had become bloated with people putting out 20 track albums with 10 mins of skits, the New York underground was just a load of people rapping about how rap sucks, which sucks too. Rawkus lost it. Tribe split, Gang Starr faded away and Premier got boring, Wu Tang had spread itself so thinly with 1 zillion solo projects that they lost the trust of their fans, Mos Def became an actor, lots of other groups who had been dependable in the 90s kind of faded away or split (e.g. De La Soul, Brand Nubian, CoFlow, Kool G Rap, EPMD, Mobb Deep, BootCampClick). The biggest rap stars of the last 10 years had ended up murdered, plus a few others died. Nas never made another record as good as Illmatic (and nobody learned the lesson than less tracks on a rap record is more). Snoop hooked up with the Neptunes and became a pop star. All that was left were business rappers like Dr Dre and Jay-Z, and record labels were more interested in if a rapper had a six pack than rhymes.
It really did feel like the bottom fell out of the genre, and pretty much every hiphop fan I spoke to at the time and for years afterwards was at a loss as where to find good new stuff (aside from whatever involved MF Doom, Madlib or Ghostface or also OutKast).