Curren$y: Internet Age Hip-Hop

From 2008-2011, Curren$y has released 16 albums or mixtapes. This is an almost impossible number to understand. Bands like Guns and Roses delay the release of a single album for decades (Chinese Democracy) and Dr. Dre has been working on the third album of his career, Detox, for about ten years now. This is not to mention countless other guest verses and other songs he has released unconnected to full projects. Most musicians don't even come close to putting out this much material during the course of their entire career. Like A$AP Rocky, Curren$y has a found a way to have a very profitable and successful career as an internet rapper (and they also both have dollar signs unfortunately incorporated into their stage names).

In the 90's and the early 2000's, the way to make it in rap music was to get a deal with a big label and they would promote your album and you could see the money flow in, but the hard part of the equation was getting signed, not making a great album. After bouncing around from label to label while waiting for his album to be released, Curren$y tried a different route, he just struck out on his own, independent of a label. He released seven free albums in seven months, and grew an online following. I am usually critical of the internet and the disconnect that it can bring, basic values and integrity can be kept at bay by a cloud of anonymity, but Curren$y defied my negative preconceptions. By working incredibly hard ("There is not an adjective to describe how I work/Hard is not enough, brother I'm tougher"), and focusing on the quality craftsmanship instead of major label promotion campaigns, Curren$y has made a career for himself by bringing old-fashioned values into the 21st century.

I think this video makes me sad.

Before I begin this post, you should all watch this video.

Okay, now while the baby was cute I guess, and the video might have been somewhat entertaining and funny, overall, I could not help but feel sad after watching it. The video depicts a little kid (maybe a year old) playing with an iPad, she is not doing to much on it, but she is engaged and having fun moving things around on the screen. Then she is given a magazine by her parents. She tries to move around the pictures, and after her finger fails to make the screen move, she pokes her own leg to make sure her finger still "works." Like it said, it's pretty funny but it's also profoundly sad. In my Media Theory class, we've brought up the idea that younger generations require constant entertainment, this is obvious, if this girl can't find a magazine interesting, I doubt she will be able to stomach a book without pictures when she's older. I fear that we're getting to a point where our education needs sound effects for us to care about it.

Will Rappers be Rich Again?

A$AP Rocky, a young rapper from Harlem, New York just signed a record deal for over three million dollars, this is the biggest signing in hip-hop since 50 Cent, which is really significant as most major labels find themselves in unrelenting downward financial spirals. What's even more unique about this, is that A$AP Rocky came to popularity not through co-signs, but trough viral internet success. The only co-signs he's received are from colleagues like spaceghostpurp and Clams Casino, who are not even close to being household names. Drake rose rapidly to riches, but that was largely due to the support of Lil Wayne, a rapper who first broke into Hip-Hop when it was still a highly popular profession. The internet changed all of that, now everyone expects a constant outpouring of free material (interestingly enough, Lil Wayne was one of the first artists to oblige, releasing multiple albums full of songs every year in his creative heyday). A$AP scored his deal largely because of his youtube videos, and now in addition to his record deal, he is he on tour with Drake and fellow internet sensation Kendrick Lamar. Hip-Hop is appears, is beginning to discover how to make a fortune off of the internet. Something many corporations have been trying, and failing to do for years now.

I Don't Understand Lil B

There are very few things that I consider myself respectably well-versed in. Really it's probably about three things: Detroit Tigers baseball, sitcoms, and hip-hop. But as much as I love hip-hop there is something that I don't understand on any level, and that thing is the popularity of the rapper Lil B. His music is unfathomably weird, and not in some avant garde way, no I understand and at times really dig avant garde hip-hop (Shabazz Palaces, DOOM, J Dilla, etc.), but this is Dadist if anything, and I hate Dadism. He yells the word "SWAG" after almost every sentence, makes songs about  how he looks like Miley Cyrus, or Jesus, or how he's the "based god." And the internet loves him. But how does these relate to the study of Media Theory? Well Lil B is the perfect case study for the awful trend of internet "irony." This sense of meta humor, and pretending to enjoy things because they are so ridiculous has gone too far, and Lil B is proof of this. I don't know if people really like him, or they just thing that he's ridiculous so they listen to his music for a laugh. I honestly don't know, and I don't know if the people who "enjoy" his music either. This same trend has come to movies recently as well. Is the latest Jason Statham vehicle a parody of action movies, or is it really just that bad, and why do people not seem to care? At the start of every song or movie, people should be required by law to state if this work was intended to be a serious effort, I should never not know if something is parody or reality. And I blame this all on the cynicism of some corners of the internet.