Article Revamped 12/25/25
Music has always been bigger than entertainment to me. It is education. It is identity. It is culture. It is the soundtrack that shapes how we see ourselves before we even know we are being shaped.
Lauryn Hill is a perfect example of that power. She did not just make songs I loved. She made me curious. She made me want to read The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson. She made vocabulary feel like a flex, not a threat. She existed in a moment where it was cool to be conscious, informed, and intentional. Intelligence was admired. Paying attention to oneself was respected. You could be deep and still be fly.
That is why it hurts to watch what has happened to hip hop in the mainstream.
No one signs up to be a role model. Most artists will tell you they are not here to raise anyone’s kids, and I understand that. But whether you like it or not, influence comes with the job. Hip hop is not a small corner of culture anymore. It is global. It moves language, fashion, politics, advertising, and identity. People copy what they see, what they hear, and what gets rewarded.
When Rick Ross dropped “BMF,” I watched the ripple effect in real time. Kids and grown folks ran to Google to learn the names in the record. Who is Larry Hoover? Who is Big Meech? That curiosity alone proves the point. Even if someone does not “approve” of what is being referenced, they are still being pulled into it because the music made it sound like status. That is influence. That is power.
So I have to ask a question that still feels relevant years later: why choose to represent the dumb stuff when we clearly do not have to?
How did we get to a point where so much of popular hip hop is reduced to a predictable set of references: drugs, violence, sex, and ego, packaged like a product and sold like a lifestyle? And before anyone tries to act like I am being unrealistic, let me say it plainly. I am not asking every rapper to be overly conscious. I am not asking for sermons on every track. I am asking for musicality. I am asking for real lyricism. I am asking for intention. I am asking for art.
Because what we have now in a lot of mainstream spaces is not even rebellion. It is repetition. A loop. A formula. A performance of ignorance that gets rewarded with streams, brand deals, and cultural dominance.
And it is not just the content. It is the craft. We are living in an era where technology can correct almost anything. Autotune and Melodyne already changed the landscape back then, but now we have whole systems that can smooth voices, build hooks, clone cadences, and turn mediocrity into something that sounds acceptable enough to sell. Meanwhile, the truly gifted artists, the ones with pen, breath control, stage presence, and originality, are still fighting for visibility because the industry often prioritizes a look, a vibe, or a trend over talent.
That is the part that bothers me the most. A person can have a real gift, and still get blocked because they do not fit the image a corporation can package easily.
Hip hop sits close to my heart, so I cannot pretend I do not see the deterioration. Watching the art form decline feels personal, like watching something you love get misunderstood and misused. Like being a mother, watching your child make choices you know will hurt them. You want to shake them, but you also know the world is cheering them on while they do it.
And today the decline has a new layer. Social media has sped everything up. Songs are made for clips. Lyrics are built for captions. Artists chase moments instead of bodies of work. Streaming rewards quantity, not necessarily quality. A throwaway line can go viral, and suddenly that becomes the standard. Nobody has to be great anymore. They just have to be attention-grabbing.
That is why the question becomes bigger than music. Because if the culture rewards nonsense consistently, the nonsense becomes normal. The nonsense becomes aspirational. The nonsense becomes what the “cool” people imitate.
I have loved hip hop since I was a little girl. I knew my love was real when I first saw Shock G from Digital Underground perform “Humpty Hump.” He was wild, funny, and original. He looked like he was having honest fun. That mattered. There was creativity there. There was character there. There was actual entertainment without needing to degrade anybody to do it.
Then I got older and fell in love with hip hop through women. Salt N Pepa and Queen Latifah showed me what it looked like when women owned the mic without begging for permission. They made me feel like I could rap too, like a woman could compete in a male-dominated space and still be impactful. Salt N Pepa were grown, and yes, they were racy at times, but they carried themselves with a certain boundary. They did not have to lose themselves to be seen.
Artists like MC Lyte and Queen Latifah carried a different kind of authority. When Queen Latifah wore her crown, I respected her automatically. I was a little girl, still innocent to life, and even then, I could feel the power in that image. It told me womanhood could be strong without being reduced to body parts. It told me dignity could still be hip hop.
At some point, the “sexual revolution” in rap shifted from being playful and self-owned into something that often feels like marketing. Teasing the imagination used to exist. Now, a lot of it feels like the goal is shock, exposure, and constant escalation. I am not saying female artists should be submissive. That was never the standard I admired. I am saying the industry profits when women feel like their main value is how much they are willing to reveal, and that is not liberation. That is a business model.
And when corporations sink their hands into culture, you can feel it. Hip hop used to give birth to classics that carried community messages and real storytelling. Records like “U N I T Y,” “Ladies First,” and “Poor Georgie” were not just songs. They were statements. They were memories. They were lessons. The mainstream today has moments of brilliance, but the machine is louder than the artists who are actually trying.
The wild part is that hip hop has become so powerful that it is the soundtrack for commercials, kids’ movies, fast food campaigns, everything. People who do not even respect the culture use it to sell products because they know it moves people. That should tell us something.
So yes, I am still asking for accountability.
Not the fake kind that turns into censorship. The real kind that asks artists and audiences to think. To consider what is being amplified. To consider what is being normalized. To consider what becomes fashionable when profit is the only god in the room.
Because music is not neutral. It is emotional programming. It is identity-shaping. It is cultural architecture. And when the most visible side of hip hop becomes a consistent celebration of self-destruction, we cannot act surprised when self-destruction starts to look like a lifestyle.
Hip hop does not have to be perfect. It does not have to be one thing. It does not have to be clean. It does not have to be preachy. It just has to be real. It has to be creative again. It has to value skill again. It has to respect the listener again. It has to remember it is an art form, not just a product.
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