Broken Language: The Threatened State Of The New York Sound
If the "Boom Bap" era is over, what are the cultural implications of traditional East Coast Hip Hop being relegated to a sub-genre?
“While y’all playa hate we in the upper millions / What’s the dealings / It’s like New York’s been soft / Ever since Snoop came through and crushed the buildings / I’m trying to restore the feelings…”—Jay-Z, “Money, Cash, Hoes.”
It’s a sound every Hip Hop head can identify: The crackling, boom bap, looped, heavily sampled and sometimes cold melodies that became the anthems across the boroughs of the Big Apple during 1980s and 90s. While it’s been a trend for a few years now, it really hit me the other day. I was walking home to my college-town apartment listening to a shuffled series of songs on my iPod. I made sure to listen to a couple loud A$AP Rocky joints to wake myself up. But as I was walking up to my door, the Capone-N-Noreaga classic “Calm Down” popped into my ears. At first, I was excited because it’d been a minute since I’d heard the record but then I stopped in my tracks. It was almost inconceivable to me that these two came from the same side of the country let alone the same city. Granted, it’s been almost two decades since the congregation of QB kingpins dropped their infamous track, but it really made me realize that, not only have the times changed, but the effort to echo territory has too.
Brand New Guy
“New York New York big city of dreams / And everything in New York ain't always what it seems...” –Snoop Dogg, “New York, New York” by Tha Dogg Pound.
It was last November that A$AP Rocky (who could be considered the poster child for regional, stylistic detachment) mentioned that he wasn’t feeling today’s New York movement saying, “I just don't like modern New York Hip Hop. I liked Dipset, I liked G-Unit–I liked all that shit in [that] era. I'm just saying now, today, I don't really fuck with a lot of New York rappers.”
As dissented as I was with what I believed to be an ignorant notion from the New York newcomer, I started to think about what he was saying. It really made me realize the disconnect between today’s New York enterprise and those of yesteryear.
I like A$AP Rocky, his music provides listeners with something different from others in the region. And in an industry where standing out is one of the only methods of survival, I can understand the music he makes.
While he names Rakim as someone he’s always looked up to and was completely star struck when he met The God on the Angie Martinez Show, A$AP can draw little to no comparison as far as sound is concerned to Ra. Rocky and others like him owe nothing to the pioneers before them in terms of carrying on their musical prowess. They aren’t the first to sound geographically out of place and they certainly won’t be the last. What we have here however, is a disassociation and a generational gap with artists that are so young, they never truly lived though the East Coast renaissance and have no personal connection with a lot of the artists they say inspire them. The fact that A$AP Rocky names Dipset and G-Unit as a pervious era should be a big enough clue. Time moves fast and like that; the Golden Era in New York isn’t one era back, it’s two. Classic albums like Illmatic and Enter The Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers are as old or older than a lot of today’s young crop.
