How Many Streets Must a Thug Roll Down?

Let me clear the air about one thing before I begin:  I don’t hate rap music.  I actually quite like rap.  Atmosphere are one of my favorite artists of all time, genre be damned.  What I do believe, however, is that what most people perceive as rap music is not, in fact, rap music.  This is not said with the intent of slighting artists like Black-Eyed Peas.  But the type of “rap” that Black-Eyed Peas make and the rap that artists like Talib Kwali make can’t be compared in good conscience.  What we are seeing in the rap genre–nay, in the entirety of hip hop culture–is a sudden divergence of one culture into two increasingly different ones.
Normally, I’m the last one to delve into the subject of subgenres(what exactly is the real difference between Techno and House music, anyways?).  But there are times when these subgenres make themselves necessary.  The very fact that rap has entered into the mainstream in such a major way is the catalyst that incites the need for a split in genres of rap.  This commercialization is the pivotal moment–in any culture–when a schism occurs.  One can always watch the two sects of a culture react to the popularization to that culture.  And in most instances, it plays out the same way:  One sect embraces said commercialism, and the other sect vanishes into obscurity, only to come back in twenty years as the definition of the culture that shunned it to begin with.  It happened with punk music.  It happened with metal.  And it happened–and in many ways it is still happening–with rap.  One could of course make the argument that this sort of dichotomy is still occurring with metal, but certainly not to the violent degree that the hip hop culture is breaking in two.  If we look at two famous rappers–one from each subgenre of rap–we can obviously see this break.  In any normal conversation, it’s practically impossible to mention El-P and Lil’ Wayne in the same sentence.  But both of them have achieved their own forms of transcendence.
For all intents and purposes, rap became a viable commodity around the time people started going to clubs to hear it.  This fact is blatantly obvious; I doubt anyone has ever been in a night club has heard any less than three of Weezy’s hits on any given occasion in said night club.  His music, and that music which emulates it, is almost condescendingly straightforward.  Any given club rap album is made up of songs that are essentially about being in a club.  And only in a night club atmosphere could anybody sell a song that is about exactly what people are doing that very instant with such a degree of success.  But if all the self references are to be believed, even Lil’ Wayne doesn’t recognize this fork in the road of hip hop.  Weezy has made more than a few comments about being “the greatest rapper alive.”  Of course, this could be easily pawned off as a manifestation of that self confidence which comes along with the hip hop mentality.  Even underground rap artists have similar lines.  In the Atmosphere song “52 pickup,” Slug refers to himself as a “dope fucking rapper.”  But the fact that Lil’ Wayne refers to himself as a rapper at all brings to light the fact that he has made at least a subconscious decision to reject the separation of club rap and underground hip hop.  If you look at the money that he has pulled in merely from being a hip hop producer, it’s obvious that Lil’ Wayne has transcended the title of rapper.  He’s become a mogul in the truest sense of the word.  Lil’ Wayne is club hip hop.
If you were to go ask any one of the tweens who worship Lil’ Wayne who El-P is, more often than not you’ll wind up getting a blank stare.  Most aficionados of the underground rap circuit will, when asked the same question, launch into a tirade about how El-P was ripped off by the mainstream rap scene.  This is a fact that neither El nor the man who borrowed heavily from his doctrine(a kid from Detroit named Marshall Mathers), deny.  If you went back and asked those same middle schoolers fawning over Lil’ Wayne about Eminem, they’d be able to recite you his entire discography backwards while hanging upside-down and doing Sudoku.   In his defense, Eminem has taken El-P’s style and grown into something that is very much his own.  But the fact remains that Marshal himself has admitted to essentially hijacking El-P’s flow and propensity to rap about absolute off-the-wall subjects.  In his own way, El-P has transcended the title of rapper, as well.  He has become the unwilling mentor to the voice of a very lost and very pissed off generation.
These two reflections are, in essence, bizzaro images of one another.  And there is of course a degree of crossover.  At their core, though, these two styles of rap are on a path that is ever diverging.  A possible explanation for this is that they have managed to do something that other styles of music that have dichotomized in a similar fashion failed to do.  Both styles of rap music are still commercially viable.  Punk rock was certainly never able to do this.  Bands like Blink 182 went commercial and thrived, while hardcore punkers like Dead Kennedys managed to make a significant statement before they self destructed.  Metal–and for that matter, rock in general–has fragmented to such a degree that it’s almost all melded back together to everyone except the artists themselves.  Yet somehow, these two very distinct styles of rap have managed to be independently successful.  I would posit that this is due to the hip hop culture’s relative openness to commercialism.  Maybe one day we could all learn from hip hop’s ability to coexist.  We can only hope that a certain five foot five emcee had it right when he said, “pop punk is dead, and hip hop is the way of the future.”