Have u ever seen this show on Vh1 called “Then and now”? Nice little show, but I’m not here to talk about the show, I’m here to talk about the thing they play at the start of the show, it’s an interesting little animated opening video of, in their eyes, the evolution of music through the ages. It starts of with a Jimi Hendrix like character playing a little riff then he morphs into a disco character and the tune morphs a bit too, then comes a long haired heavy metal/ hard rock kinda guy who like plays a distorted version of the same tune and then he morphs into a fat blinged out hip hop guy, and that’s the end of the video.

The evolution they’ve portrayed is relevant too – Hendrix and other rock legends ruled in the 60’s then disco took over in the 70’s, then with the death of disco came the rock and heavy metal age with groups like guns n rose, nirvana, metallica etc in the 80’s and 90’s and now, this is the interesting part, has come the “Hip Hope Age”. Well according to them in any case. And I agree with them, I think this is the hip hop revolution, I’m not saying that the other genres are dead or anything. I mean lets face it all through the 60’s 70s and 80’s and 90’s other genres did exist, except that they were less prominent than the controlling genre of that time. And (unfortunately) now is the time of Hip Hop (If you disagree your probably in denial or both deaf and blind).

The question I’m hoping to answer in this post is why? Why is it that people are more in tune these days to hip hop more than anything else? Why is it that more mainstream genre’s are trying to infuse bits of hip hop in them (pop and rnb being HUGE examples)? Somebody said (I think) “the world is going too fast to have time to stop and smell the roses” and I think that’s exactly whats happened to music too.

Think about it, all you have to do in hip hop is remember one tiny little tune, which generally is a small beat, and a main single phrase, generally the name of the song itself. Its true, the music part is plain to hear and as far as lyrics go all that matters is that one phrase (face it no self respecting woman would dance to over half of the hip hop tunes if they cared what they said, its only for hard core fans who are keen to pursue rap or hip hop). Pick any song, 90% chances you’ll see its true.

It’s sad but people don’t have time these days to follow a long elaborate solo or the little picks and bends of a guitar, or the small variances and flows of jazz or the shear dominance of a voice of soul. All I’m hoping now is that genres don’t fade out, like the disco, to being barely followed by a small group of cult fans who people look upon and think “those people are weird”. And just like I hope food wont become a pill someday I hope music wont become any more shorter in the time to come or its just wont seem like music any more…

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Remember the good old days when somebody heard Stephen hawking talk and people went “hey that’s weird.”? But as time went by some hip-hop producer somewhere pressed the wrong button and got a similar robotic voice and somewhere in his tiny brain Paris Hilton went “That’s Hot”. And boom in comes the invasion of weird voices in music (kanye west’s stronger being the best example of the robotic voice).

I think this whole thing started with the Akon featuring Alvin and the chipmunks in “I’m so lonely” ( I know I know it’s an insult to Alvin and the chipmunks but hey it did sound like them). Now akon himself has a weird voice over that with the chipmunk thing I didn’t know if I was listening to a normal song or a song in an animated film. But somehow everybody loved it, then the dude was everywhere, almost everyone featured him sometimes even in stupid things like gwen stefani’s escape where all he did was go “woo hoo hee hoo”. Then comes the real reason why I think Stephen hawking should sing – Tpain (I think Akon’s prodigy). For those of you who are wondering who he is, he’s the guy in kanye wests “Welcome to the good life” song. Now that dude barely sings; he sings something and its digitally mastered to have a huge robotic ting to it, and again people gobbled it up. Now he’s everywhere, his own song bartender, ft akon btw, is a big hit and people are having collaborations with him all over the place.

All this makes me wonder, what the hell do need to have to be in hip hop? DEFENITELY not voice, it was never a big issue in hip hop anyway, face it most of them are there cause the cant sing, even more so now with people digitally adding to the voice. So that’s not it voice doesn’t matter, music is not the issue cause that comes from producers. Lyrics may be? Ha right?! Have u ever actually read those things!! So what is it? Only thing that comes to mind – contacts, period. Well is it just me or is that just plain sad for anything that calls itself a genre of music….

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