Musically, hip-hop was in a beautiful, incredibly varied space 20 years ago. The South had cemented its legitimacy and held the crown for the region that was on top. But everywhere from Chicago to Los Angeles to the Mecca in New York were all thriving at once. Moreover, hip-hop and R&B were largely thriving within popular spaces. However, Nas felt quite the opposite. In fact, it was so bad that he declared hip-hop as dead back on his 2006 album.<\/p>\n
But why did he feel that way? If the genre and culture were raking in the dough, what was the problem? It\u2019s actually the fact that it was so infected with commercialism that he argued it had lost its way. In a 2006 interview<\/a> with Pitchfork, he talked about how a lot of dirty games were being played in the pursuit of the dollar. <\/p>\n \u201cSome people say it\u2019s bold, some people say I\u2019m saying what they wanna say. Some people don\u2019t agree, some people are outraged\u2014 some people want to see what the album is about,\u201d Nas said of the album title. \u201cTo me, hip-hop\u2019s been dead for years. We all should know that, come on. With that being said, then, the object of the game now is to make money off of exploiting it. That\u2019s what it\u2019s all about, get this money. That\u2019s basically what I\u2019m saying.\u201d<\/p>\n Nas Said Hip-Hop Was Dead Because of How People Exploited It for Money<\/p>\n The interviewer suggested that this was a conflicting perspective. Isn\u2019t the Illmatic legend participating in the same game as everyone else? Isn\u2019t everyone trying to make a lot of money from the culture? But Nas made a crucial distinction. \u201cIt\u2019s not just a business for rappers, it\u2019s a business for record companies. It\u2019s happening for every form of music, It\u2019s not just hip-hop,\u201d he clarified. \u201cMostly every form of American music is dead. It\u2019s been dead. R&B isn\u2019t really good.\u201d<\/p>\n Nas highlighted a few great R&B artists working back in 2006 to stress that music is not devoid of talent. But because it\u2019s so money-hungry first, sometimes the creativity can take a backseat to a paycheck.<\/p>\n \u201cBut for the most part the music world\u2019s changing and change is good. You have to make adjustments if you want to survive in that world. You start to thinking about creative moments, bliss. When everything was all good,\u201d he explained. \u201cYou realize that in comparison to the way hip-hop started off, where we should be at right now is not there. Not to say everybody\u2019s wack. Or Nas is wack. But I\u2019m trying to provoke thought for the next up-and-coming MCs to do something different.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked if he could pinpoint when it all changed, it all traced back to the deaths of Tupac<\/a> and Biggie<\/a> for Nas. He firmly believed the artistry would\u2019ve meant more had they lived. But even then, he argued that they would\u2019ve fallen into the same trappings artists faced in 2006. \u201cWith rap music, because it\u2019s all so on the street, you get treated like a street cat,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2018All right, you\u2019ve been eatin\u2019 enough, you\u2019re fat, get out of the way now and let somebody else come by.\u2019 They would never have felt the love they get now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Musically, hip-hop was in a beautiful, incredibly varied space 20 years ago. The South had cemented its legitimacy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,744,85,46,409,7172,45266],"class_list":{"0":"post-389566","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-hip-hop","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-nas","14":"tag-noisey"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}