Before I get started, let me make this is a disclaimer: This is only my opinion and my opinion alone. I am about to unravel a belief that is decades old. Let’s get it.

In 2012, I posted this on Facebook:

“Ok, so I had a discussion today. It was the same conversation I had a 100 times. HIP-HOP is a culture; RAP is “Rhythm And Poetry”, and is just an element (or branch) of the tree called “hip-hop”. Hip-hop is NOT a style of rap. If there is someone rapping, it is hip-hop because RAP is apart of the culture called “hip-hop”. Just like any artistic expression, there is good and bad; however, whatever the rapper is talking about DOES NOT, WILL NOT, AND CAN NOT categorically be determined to be “hip-hop” or NOT “hip-hop”. You cannot separate the two. If someone draws with only pencils and not paint, NOT an artist? So stop saying one rapper is hip-hop but another rapper is not. It is ALL hip-hop no matter how much you despise a certain group, individual, or song, accept the good, the bad, and the ugly….or talent-less”.

I meant that. I said it with my chest. Then, thanks to the 2016 XXL Freshman Class, who, coincidentally, a writer from XXL called “the best class ever” (it was the worse), changed the landscape completely. Follow me..

Like bebop, the first kind of modern jazz, which split jazz into two opposing camps in the last half of the 1940s, the word is an onomatopoeic rendering of a staccato two-tone phrase distinctive in this type of music. That freshmen class was our “bebop”.

Those who know me, know my OCD goes beyond physical things, it also requires me to label things correctly. Because of the past few years, this new stuff made our stuff be referred to as “old school”, and the new stuff was said to be “for the kids”, and I get that as well. No one 40, 50 years old and up should sound like “Lil Yachty”. Like jazz and bebop, there is a line drawn.

The fact is, at least half of these new cats won’t and don’t even refer to themselves as “rappers”, even though technically, they are rapping. “Hip-Hop is how you live“. This style that we do, is a representation of the hip-hop culture….It’s what we do and how we live. It is the voice how we live; it is our expression of the culture. It’s….different.

The college professor and legendary member of World Class Wrecking Cru, Cli-N-Tel, said to me, “In my classes I always say that we have to make a distinction between Hip Hop culture and Rap music industry. The Rap music industry has a profit driven incentive.  Hip Hop culture is a lifestyle“. He’s right. In my humble opinion (because far be it from me to disagree or disregard jewels from my OGs), I feel if it is coming from the right space, the right mindset, while adding in the fact that it ISN’T a profitable route nowadays as far as style, cadence, and music/beat style, and is moreso “for the streets”… It aligns with that statement; to me, anyway.

If you wake up thinking about hip-hop, and think about it throughout the day, and that thought inspires a creation….one that comes from the love of the culture and is purely an expression of that, it’s not for the industry. It’s the reason Grandmaster Caz, Rakim, BDK, Dres from Black Sheep, and any and every other rapper from the 70s, 80s and 90s, still do it. It’s not to get rich, because they know that that is highly improbable. They do it for the love for the culture. Isn’t that “hip-hop”? It’s how they….we live.

Again, I know this is a perspective that has never been needed or warranted before, and I know that KRS made the phrase famous, “Rap is what you do, hip-hop is what and how you live”, but “pop-hop” was born after all that. Life is perpetuating a change.

You are more than welcome to disagree. I know my hard core heds, and hip-hop scholars may feel this has “touched a nerve” and will rebuke this. However, I’m hoping it at least gives them (and you)  different perspective to consider..#HipHop4Life