Sound and sociology: Is Hip Hop dying?

I remember where I was on April 30 when “Euphoria” by Kendrick Lamar first dropped. I had just gotten home from the morning shift at my job and had opened TikTok only to see video after video about the newly released diss track.

Hip Hop is my life. I start the day off bumping 21 Savage while putting on my makeup, ride to work with Outkast blaring from my car speakers and cry myself to sleep at night with Noname playing in my headphones. Hip Hop is an art and a way of life for so many people, including myself. With roots buried deep in the heart of Brooklyn, New York, and branching out toward the rest of the country, the different aspects and nuances of rap are much more complex than the media gives them credit for. 

These components lie far deeper than just the music — going down into the fashion, the language, the art and the ideology. It’s culture in the most literal sense of what culture can be. 

So when Kendrick released a response to Drake and J. Cole’s “First Person Shooter,” I knew I couldn’t miss a single beat of the chaos that was sure to follow. 

What followed could only be described as a slaughter of Drake’s reputation and credibility as a reliable source of information.

Kendrick released diss track after diss track filled with bold claims of Drake being a culture vulture, absentee father to another child, and a pedophile and pedophile enabler. 

It was intense for anyone watching the situation unfold in real time, and as both a Drake hater and Kendrick fan, I enjoyed every second of it. 

Beneath the biracial jokes and allegations of pedophilia lies a much more nuanced discussion to be held about Drake’s role in the overcommercialization of rap and the death of Hip Hop as a culture.

“Euphoria” features one of the most important lines out of the entire beef when Kendrick says, “Notice I said we. It’s not just me. I’m what the culture feeling.” 

Over the course of four songs, Kendrick structures a cleverly crafted   narrative that paints rap’s golden boy as a villain. From his perspective, Drake’s worst offense is his culture-vulture tendencies and disrespect for Hip Hop as a culture. On numerous occasions he mentions times when Drake — either subtly or not so subtly — utilized his Blackness and proximity to hip-hop to increase his own capital with no regard for the art or the people that it came from. 

In many ways, Drake could be considered the personification of a culture dying. His music — and the way he understands and navigates his way through the culture — is proof of this as well. 

I think it’s safe to say that Drake does not have any traditionally classic albums. Arguably, many refer to his earlier works as some of his best music, with the picks from his official releases being “Take Care,” “Nothing Was the Same” and “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late.” 

However, a noticeable shift in quality could be seen around the time “Scorpion” dropped in 2018, which was the same year TikTok was officially available for download in the United States. 

The streaming era has undoubtedly changed the sound and culture surrounding music. Rap has taken the spotlight as the new genre of pop, with almost a quarter of all streams being hip-hop songs, and RapCaviar being the second most followed playlist on Spotify 

It is safe to say that rap is a victim of over commercialization. Certain songs by Drake like “In Your Feelings,” “Nice for What” and “Tootsie Slide” had a catchy quality to them that made it impossible to resist dancing to. 

That’s exactly what Drake wanted — something that could go viral on apps where the main focus is people dancing and lip syncing to his songs. It didn’t take long for people to realize that anything could go viral so long as it had a hard beat and catchy lyrics. 

Another factor is that the material needs to remain short enough to stay within the attention spans of social media addicted youth. Drake  — and by extension his OVO label — recognized this and capitalized on it immediately. 

A pattern began to emerge of Drake making music that was subpar in quality, in favor of capitalizing on the industry. 

Atlanta is considered a hotspot for Hip Hop, with many iconic artists, trends and unique sounds originating from Georgia’s capital city. 

As Kendrick pointed out in “Not Like Us,” Drake has a tendency to partner with Atlanta rappers on singles and full-fledged projects to create average products. 

Kendrick lists a handful of rappers that Drake has collaborated with, with his main point being how Drake borrows sounds from anywhere in order to stay relevant. 

Whether it's the sounds of Atlanta, Caribbean or New Orleans bounce, Drake loves to take whatever is in the eye of the mainstream audience and brandish it as if he’d been down with it since day one. 

I could bring up example after example of how Drake is the manifestation of rap’s transformation from culture into a commodity.

However, it would be counterintuitive to single out Drake when so many rappers have sold out in the past in favor of gaining more money. The only reason Drake has been catching heat is because he did it so successfully. 

‍Billboard awarded him Artist of the Decade in 2021, and at one point he was the second most-listened-to artist in the world on Spotify. Even in the aftermath of the beef with Kendrick, he still sits at the number 11 spot, which is not an easy feat. 

So, bringing it back to the very reason I decided to have this be my debut article, is Hip Hop really dying? In short, yes, I do think Hip Hop is dying. The Kendrick and Drake beef made it evident that the culture’s death has been a long time in the making. 

Ever since Hip Hop began to cross over into the mainstream all the way back in the 90s, we’ve seen an eagerness from record labels to commodify the culture as much as possible in an effort to make it palatable for a larger audience. 

Once these companies realized that white people could comprise a much larger consumer base, appreciation for the culture no longer became a requirement, and it became more about record sales and which artists could be the most marketable.

Drake is the marketable face that so many record labels have been waiting for. For so long, it had been Eminem, but I think Drake’s biracial identity and proximity to African American culture nullify any argument about him misrepresenting the culture. It can’t be considered cultural appropriation and privilege when he’s Black, right? 

The real-world implications of this are much deeper than rap just losing substance and having worse lyrics than it did 20 years ago. African Americans have been stripped of our cultural identity for as long as we’ve been in this country. 

Whether it was forcing us to abandon our traditional names in favor of European ones, or forbidding us from wearing our natural hair in public, there has always been an ongoing fight to keep Blackness shielded and contained. Hip Hop placed so much emphasis on breaking out of that confinement. It took so many of the aspects of urban-life that were considered undignified and amplified them tenfold, creating a community through the vocalization of this shared experience that millions across the country had lived. 

Even though this issue is so much larger than Drake and Kendrick — and even rap as a whole — I think Drake’s role in Hip Hop’s  transition from culture to a commodity is representative of the way in which white America continuously tries to separate our culture from the people that it came from. 

It's happening with rap, street fashion, our language and even our hairstyles. The line for what’s considered cultural appreciation and appropriation is constantly being muddled, which leads to a form of art and way of life losing its roots, and in turn, slowly dying out. 

While the beef between Kendrick and Drake could have initiated a  movement of enlightenment for Hip Hop, there’s still so much work that needs to be done in order to get the rest of the world to realize that Hip Hop is more than just loud beats and vulgarity. It’s so much more than just drugs, money, women and guns. Hip Hop is the way we speak, the way that we carry ourselves and the way we take our experiences and life circumstances and transform them into art.