When I was in junior high, my friends and I made a few DIY hip-hop gems. Using beats from my shitty casio, we would freestyle about corn, our dorky science teacher, and your mom. Evidently we coulda slapped an ugly ass label on that and distributed it as DIY hip hop GOLD. In my brief time as a reviewer, I’ve already come across a lot of self-produced stuff that isn’t much better than what me and my friends were doing. A keyboard, some protocols, some lines about being a “Ridah” and you are good to go. Most of the shittiest stuff is of the gangsta genre, with these melodramatic synthesized strings over snap beats while some emcee tries desperately to sound hard. In general, the lyrical finesse and wordplay that marks good hip-hop is replace by a more streamlined, no-frills approach, so that it is very clear to the listener that the emcee kills people, deals drugs, and has no love for hos.
The real tragedy is that all this stuff uses up valuable natural resources, and just adds to the toxic landfill in the world. I can’t wait for digital files to kill cds and relieve mother nature from having to supply resources for this crap.
Of course, there is good stuff as well, like Citizens of Sleep, who are based out of Ohio. They actually can rhyme, have good beats, and you can download a lot of their stuff free at www.barakanoel.com.
In the meantime, maybe I should dust off my casio and try and make some minor-league goal by rapping about how I’m a hustla who is getting’ on his grind every day, and wouldn’t hesitate to cap any fool, although I miss my fallen soldierz. Peace!
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