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Showing posts from August, 2018

Hip Hop: How Much Should You Sacrifice To Be Relevant?

So as an artist I've started to think about the question of relevancy. Like how much of your craft should you sacrifice in order to stay relevant? In some ways the answer is obvious. Just enough to keep your business alive so that you can have a craft to do in the first place. In other ways, it's less obvious. Take this for example; finding your style as a rapper can be a difficult task. The landscape of rap has changed so much in the last twenty years that it's hard for people to find their fit. In the past what was valued was pretty obvious. Lyrics. You always had your rappers that weren't quite as lyrical but relied on their cult of personality (which I hear was Tupac's claim to fame). You also had your complete booty rappers that were entirely commercial (Vanilla Ice for instance). But long story short, it was a market that was album driven and primarily featured lyricists. Now Hip-Hop has expanded so much that a lot of the things that make it "Hip-