Through The Telescope: Forgetting History?
Classic Hip Hop
Hip Hop has always been playing in my household, even in my youngest days I remember the classic ‘93 Till Infinity’ playing through-out my living room, or the classic ‘New York State of Mind’ track from Nas. However, I only thoroughly delved into Hip Hop (and its history) around 2004 (I’m still a youngin’). After I heard about KRS-One and the confrontation between him and Nelly I recall seeing mention of his ‘beef’ with Marley Marl and the Juice Crew; at this point I had no idea who the Juice Crew were, so I headed over to Google and searched with those tags in mind. Eventually, I came across a video in which KRS explained the ordeal and I slowly became fascinated with Hip Hop’s history. Essentially, from that point on I have been “studying” Hip Hop’s history and delving into classics that I either never heard as a child, or wanted to listen to for nostalgia sake; As it stands, I consider myself a “new-school” listener as I never grew up with the earliest Hip Hop music, but I felt that I owed it to this Art that I’ve fallen in love with, to understand it’s history. This is something that I feel a lot of new-school listeners disregard, and due to mainstreams ‘hot 100′ approach even more listeners have a lack of respect for it’s roots.
Before I get someone saying: “We don’t all have to know EVERY component to Hip Hop’s history like you do”, I want to concur. While I do not expect everyone to have a thorough knowledge base of its roots, I feel there should be some generalized regard towards them. There are several new-school listeners I know who have the mentality that “If it’s not on the billboards anymore, then it’s on my playlist’. Something I find to be completely ridiculous. I’ve also came across people who’ve had a more ‘hip-hop’ based sense of the culture, yet disregard the key figures (Tupac and Biggie only count to a degree).
Posted by LostMoniker on September 15th, 2008 :: Filed under Through The Telescope: Hip Hop and Society
Tags :: bdp, classic hip hop, emee, furious five, grandmaster flash, hip hop, jazzy jeff, juice crew, krs one, marley marl, original, real
