SDot asks What Happened to Writing?
by Phil Chard
Words mean things, which is one of the reasons why hip hop is such a phenomenal culture. The things we say, how we say them can be, the AD hieroglyphics inscribed in the head of a hip hop heads and their heart.
What's written, from a rapper or journalist or blogger, impact the plateau of the game. The words catapult a being to stardom or a clearer vision and perspective of the written words transformed to vocals on a beat that ushers the words into people's memory.
Hip hop is life as much as it is life changing. The words we recite can change a perspective, they can turn a smile of adoration into a grimace of disgust. So my question is, on reporting such a monumental culture, why is the hip hop journalism so shoddy & grotesquely mediocre?
Right now, I'm utterly disgusted.
“All these new hip hop blogs are good for is free downloads and being the luggage carriers of datafilehost links.”
Sans the bias exhibited in some editions, I grew up on The Source & XXL. I was privileged enough to be in a multiracial school that one of my classmates had a jet setter of a father that would bring him "I (heart) NY" tees and tapes and magazines from the States.
We'd spend days perusing the magazine during lunch breaks, free periods & trips home on the train while our eyes bulged at the Karl Kani and Pelle Pelle advertisements that were just as appealing as the articles themselves. .
We read the articles and felt we knew more about hip hop. We read in depth interviews and riveting editorials. We would then go back and bump the music and have a deeper understanding of it and the artist who made it.
We admired the substance and were enthralled at how one can take a deeper look at the cover, the music, the lyricism, the story, the content and how it impacts the culture we were slowly falling in love with.
Locally, Hype Magazine was our go to. I avidly collected the mix tapes that came with the magazine. The excitement to rip open the package, put the CD in, press play & read the magazine was unfathomable. Within that magazine were well thought out and researched articles. Articles that critically analysed the culture, the music and the artists. Meaning someone didn't just rock a FUBU jersey and say "Yo" a hundred times - they listened and applied their minds to the articles.
Within the status quo of current Hip Hop “journalism” a few writers and bloggers do that. Blogs clog our timelines and Google searches with reblogs. You "read" one and you've read them all.
The whole screenshots as news? Tired. Your predictable interviews? Yawn. All these new hip hop blogs are good for is free downloads and being the luggage carriers of datafilehost links.
I'm a thinker, I'm a dreamer. I think and dream on how hip hop can change the next person's life. I write what I feel with the music and how it moves me. I dream of ways WE, the stakeholders in hip hop, can grow it so everyone eats.
I can almost hear, "Why haven't YOU been writing?", I'll say it now, I was in a dire situation in my life and I couldn't contribute to hip hop in the way I wanted to at the time.
I'm good with being the exception but it's sickening that hip hop journalism has turned into a clickbait pig sty. Y'all writing, if I can call your screenshots of tweets that, is shoddy and has as much flavour as plain yoghurt on rice cakes.
Y'all ain't got the sauce.