Ok, I’m sure there are plenty of sites, blogs, and people in general slating hip hop. I like hip hop, I have done since I was quite young (admittedly I considered good hip hop being MC Hammer at that time, so I can’t lay claim to being a connoisseur).
However, over the last 10 years it has become a bit formulaic. Life is hard, yes, and there are guns, yes. Hip hop is storming the charts with more and more generic beats and lazy samples (I recently heard a new Kanye West song which lifts Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. Fine, that’s ok, but it’s hardly crate digging, is it cashing in on the recent hit? It used to be about breaking apart songs and making them sound your own).
Anyway, more recently I have been overlooking the genre and opting for the other types of music. Till I decided to try out a British rapper called Ty. I’ve had “Upwards” for a while and quite liked it. I saw him perform at a festival and was hooked. Intelligent, funny, even self-deprecating sometimes. I’d highly recommend listening, then listening again. It grows on you. A sign of a mature artist that.
In fact, here’s a video for you, good ‘ol YouTube:
