Okay so there are two sides to this coin. On one side, commercial music has alowed artists to distribute their music across nations and has alowed musicians to get paid rightiously for their hard work. It is the fuel behind music and without it there would probably be alot less good music out there to listen to. If you think about it, it pays for all the major artists, it gets the music heard, it inspires more musicians who create more music and we get a never ending, increasing cycle.

On the other side of this very same coin, we find that the same money that fuels the music has also corrupted it. It seems to me like all the big bosses of those record labels and radio stations and media outlets see are dollar signs when they hear music. I mean, I'm about my money but not more than I am about writing and recording quality music. We have reached a point (and have been here for a while) where music isn't made for the sake of making music, it is made for making money. Some seem to have forgotten what music really is. Some seem to believe that music serves one purpose and that purpose it to fatten wallets.

When you create songs and base lyrics and melody and style on what will get sold the most, as opposed to how you'd like it to sound, are you still being creative? When you base yourself on demographics instead of what feels right, are you still being true to what you set out to do? I don't think so.

Moving on to Hip Hop. All this booty shakin, gun cockin, bubble gum crap is, in my honest opinion, corny and lame. I mean, when it's used to tell a story or convey an emotion or feeling, fine. But when you string words together and repeat them over and over just cause it 'would be dope in a club', are we still even talking about music?

Hip Hop started out as a way to give youth in urban areas a way to speak out and get themselves heard. The music industry lets emcees speak their opinions louder than ever before but, with the price of their message being twisted and contorted into what people want to hear. I guess there are different ways of seeing it, different opinions on what Hip Hop should be, what it was and what it will be, all I know is the good music is underground and relatively unheard compared to the shiny packaged noise that comes out of the big labels. This isn't to say there are no fresh mainstream artists, just to say that they grow sparse.

 

 

 

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