frustrated pioneers

rapper nas has been receiving a lot of backlash for his new song “hip hop is dead” but i don’t think his nay sayers are listening closely to the lyrics. he doesn’t appear to be saying the genre itself is dead, i think he’s proposing a sort of hypothetical story that asks, what if hip hop was dead?

a lot of nas’ hip hop progeny are taking the phrase personally. but i don’t think they should. i think nas has come to a crossroads in his relationship with an art he calls his first wife. i don’t think he’s on a hate campaign against the younger rappers following in his footsteps.

this situation reminds me of prince’s reaction to lenny kravitz’s song “rock and roll is dead.” the tension was flipped in that case, because the father was reacting to a proclamation made by the progeny. the song appeared on kravitz’s circus--a melancholic album that disappointed those who were expecting an “are you gonna go my way” part two. the album displayed kravitz’s cynicism toward many things, including the death of the genre he’d been credited for breathing new life into.

for him to say “rock and roll is dead” obviously shook something in prince, who responded with “rock and roll is alive (and it lives in minneapolis).” it was the b-side to the “gold” single that didn’t receive much attention. part of that may have been because it was released in 1995, when a lot of people dismissed prince as a cuckoo who’d changed his name to a symbol.

in “rock and roll is alive” prince sings, “some people say it’s dying, but we don’t wanna play that game.” i guess “some people” indirectly meant lenny. “that game,” possibly referred to the guessing game of whether prince was still relevant at that time. perhaps prince didn’t want to play “that game” because, in this instance, he was rock and roll and he was still alive (in minneapolis). for lenny to suggest rock and roll is dead was to suggest prince’s days of contributing to it were over and prince was saying “hey, i’m still here making great music--screw the name change and listen to what i’m doing musically.”

so, as nas articulates his frustration with a genre he’s helped cultivate, prince has already made his statement about a genre he helped reinvent--and moved on. prince didn’t compare himself to those who came after him in the process, and he didn’t even look to them for inspiration. he looked to his own body of work at that point in 1995 (and still does) for inspiration to keep building. maybe nas should take note.