it seems a cultural truism at that at some point every person, no matter how young at heart, no matter how attentive, finds themselves out of step with current tastes. as a youngster you saw old folks walking down the street, their wardrobes frozen in time, archeological curiosities like insects in amber. flipping through your parent’s record collection you first mined the odd gems, then scoffed because the source was tapped and you knew it would never be updated. if you were astute you could have checked the jackets and saw the exact year that they gave up trying to stay current. in the past few years i have noticed a change in myself, how hard it is for me to find a decent record, how the names attached to the faces in magazines escape me, how the whole landscape of popular culture seems the be blurring together into an unrecognizable mass. at some point in the recent past i was evidently ejected from my cozy target audience chair. i fear my own amber encasement is imminent.

an evolutionary shift in my relationship with music is what first alarmed me to the onslaught of agedness. i’ve always bought a lot of music. it has been omnipresent in my life. from sitting by the radio to record inspector gadget, paid in full, love bazaar, or the occasional keith sweat track off wbls as a lad, to the obsessive mix-tape creation replete with meticulous original cover art and obscure interludes, to the backpack crammed full of cassettes for any possible mood, to the pot and acid fueled radio shack mixer sessions, to shit-faced basement sing-alongs and commando style stereo takeovers at parties. music has always been an integral part of my day to day existence and i was always in search of something new. in the last couple of years, however, the ratio of hit to miss in my musical searching has flip flopped drastically. my buying habit continues unabated, but the results are disheartening. where as once i could swing through a record store, picking up titles i’d never even heard of, and return home with a some real gems, now, finding an album that can even hold my attention through one listen, let alone get played twice is a major accomplishment. no where is this alarming state of affairs more apparent than in our cultural 300 lb gorilla hip-hop.

i’ve often wondered what would become of those of us that grew up during the birth of hip hop. would we all end up as wrinkled old codgers wearing kangols, listening to epmd during group time at the rest home? would television retrospectives celebrating our generation feature grainy video footage of biz markie or doug e fresh beatboxing? will the mall play muzak versions of self destruction or my philosophy or night of the living baseheads in the early morning for our power walking pleasure? i realize now that what we were all so enthralled by will not be remembered as hip hop at all, just as we old coots will not be thought of as the generation connected to it. we are now knee deep in what will truly be remembered. this empty, corny, shiny, skilless, pop amalgam of r&b and rap. that’s what will be beside the encyclopedia entry for hip hop. cavoicier rather than st. ides. diamond encrusted watches rather than 4 finger rings and dookie gold. the kids out there now, the icy hot stuntaz of the world, will be thought of as the true hip hop generation, and looking at the state of things, perhaps that’s a blessing.

to quote pretty toney himself, a.k.a. ghostface “there’s not too many jewels being dropped these day. everyone wants to shake their ass. i call the club the devil’s box. hip-hop is at an all-time low. it’s sad. it’s going nowhere but down. we’re living out the last days, the last two pages of the bible. brothers don’t really know what’s going on. babies with guns. hip-hop is falling the fuck off.” indeed, oh poet of the fur coat and platinum fronts, hip hop is falling the fuck off.

i realize that as a 30 year old white guy who sits at a computer all day adding to the crushing mediocrity of the world i ought to have given up on hip hop by now, the way those pathetic hippies discarded rock and roll, pot, and free love for disco, coke, and the stock market, but as the cliche goes, old habits die hard. i still go out and browse the racks every couple of weeks looking for that release that will recapture even a single measure, a single breakbeat, a single verse of what i used to love so much. more often than not i’m disappointed. it seems that i will not be packing my things and leaving hip hop (“hip hop, you’ve changed, i feel like i don’t know you anymore!”), but rather it is leaving me for a younger fan. goodbye old friend, good bye. (sob)

so what will hip hop’s fate be? will it simply mutate into more and more watered down versions of itself like rock and roll? will it just completely fade off the cultural radar like jazz, relegated to coffee houses and old stalwart clubs? will it end up a ghost of music past haunting music halls, only making itself known to the living in film scores and on internet radio like classical? who knows? but as we all sit and age and wait for a new musical form to grip us, or alzheimerz, whichever comes first, we may as well enjoy what may be the last gasps of hip hops “greatest generation”. lately, and without any hoopla, some old favorites have released records, that if taken together with a precious few younger acts, can almost convince you that hip hop is not a festering maggot crammed corpse. these records are not fantastic from start to finish, but then few hip hop records ever have been. so to anyone who feels like i do, that they are getting old, that popular music is slipping away from them, check these records out while you wait for hip hop’s death rattle.

anyhow, don’t take my word for it, check out itunes or, for non ipod havin’ stuntaz, check out sandbox automatic to listen for yourselves.

p.s. two last recommendations. 1) for endless streaming goodness check out wefunk radio, picks up the torch of the much beloved stretch and bobbito show as well as, i suppose, any one can. 2) a heads up, citizen kane and chairman mao have released a second rare groove record, available at turntable lab or other music. any other recommendations meant to stave off a final pronouncement of death or the awful feeling of being a silly old fuddy duddy are welcomed!

oh yeah, and that thumbnail at the begining of the post… it’s from a poster called the history of rap which is for sale cheap.