And we found out that he always wanted to make country music to begin with. When this 2013 video of Post covering Bob Dylan surfaced, it garnered a spectrum of reactions. Some thought it was dope and showed his versatility. While others thought it proved that he was never “Hip-Hop” to begin with and was only using the genre to get popular quickly. After all, unlike other genres, Hip-Hop doesn’t always require real skill, sometimes all it takes is a catchy tune and you’re accepted.
So when XXL editor-in-chief Vanessa Satten revealed that Post Malone was absent from the 2016 XXL Freshman Cover because she was told that “he wasn’t playing attention to hip hop so much. He was going in more of a rock/pop/country direction,” should we have been surprised?
What ever trick Malone just pulled must have worked. He was recruited to open for Justin Bieber’s Purpose tour and the “rapper” who just released his first official mixtape this past May is already moving on to country and rock music. It took rapper Lil Wayne over 15 years and a couple platinum plaques to even consider making rock music and be taken halfway seriously.
Do you think Post Malone used Hip-Hop to get popular and do the music he really wants to do? Or do we live in a time where artists can be, and should be free to genre hop, even if it does look a little suspect?
