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How can you be all for Kendrick Lamar’s lyrical and competitive approach to his verse on “Control” and the excitement that came with it, but then go right back to writing about more watered down, passionless mediocre music? It’s beyond me. This is why “Hip-Hop” vs. “Rap” rears its head yet again. Fans/listeners, artists/participants and journalists/writers/bloggers alike all have different music backgrounds or frames of reference that shape how we all individually process the music we hear and how we view or interpret it.

If you were born in the mid to late 60’s or early to mid 70’s then you have a much broader palette of Hip-Hop music to draw from. For example, you actually remember the Golden Eras (1986-89 & 1992-96) and the subsequent fallout post the signing of the Telecommunications Act Of 1996 that led to the split between the major label/mainstream Rap industry and the indie/underground Hip-Hop industry sometime in 1997. Whereas they were once two sides of the same coin they’ve become two separate and unequal entities that rarely (but sometimes) have to share space. It’s a frustrating state of affairs I refer to as Hip-Hop Apartheid or Rap Jim Crow.

You may have been born later and your childhood could be full of fond memories of No Limit Records, Cash Money Records, Timbaland, The Neptunes, Swizz Beatz and Mannie Fresh dominating the airwaves. You probably didn’t hear Enter The  Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) until 1999. Your introduction to Nas could’ve been I Am or Nastradamus and since you weren’t around to hear Illmatic when it was first released in 1994 you have no idea that it wasn’t some of Nas’ best work.

Moreover, there was nothing wrong with Rap music at all to you because it was always this way. Rawkus, Solesides and Fondle ‘Em would go undiscovered until later after Solesides became Quannum Projects and Rawkus and Fondle ‘Em both folded and birthed Def Jux. That’s assuming you ever discovered them at all…

We have those that listen to Rap and even write about it who missed J Dilla’s entire career. This is only an issue if said person didn’t go back to research or listen to Rap/Hip-Hop of every era, region, style and aesthetic. This becomes especially problematic when we ask those who don’t have a wide breadth of knowledge to provide commentary on Rap music or compose lists as they’re doomed to be inaccurate or contain embarrassing and glaring omissions. If these are the people that run most of the popular Rap websites, are considered the tastemakers or comprise the majority of the listening audience then there’s no surprise that Kendrick Lamar’s “Control” verse had that impact it did on people.

Those of us that are purveyors of indie/underground Hip-Hop are pretty cynical towards the possibility of anything actually changing in the mainstream Rap world because of one really good rap verse. If those that cover the mainstream Rap world have been maintaining the status quo for this long than it’ll take much more than a verse from an unreleased song to finally change things. When it’s all said and done, some mediocre rapper is going to drop some lackluster album that all of these same mainstream Rap sites will promote as they continue to ignore the MCs that spit verses comparable to the same exact one they all flipped over less than a week ago.

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