Old Rappers Vs Young Rappers

Jay-Z

Budden’s track “Talk 2 Em” brings up a point many younger rhymers have been feeling for a while and that is when are these old ass rappers going to roll over and die. In the 80s and 90s, the older rappers just fizzled out which allowed the younger generation to shine with the hits. This has always been the case, in anything, it’s called evolution. Old things die out and new things take over, and the cycle continues again and again.

I can understand Budden’s argument from the point of view that he is saying, while the older rapper’s project is getting more media attention it is taking away from younger dudes projects. Simply put, there’s only so many videos BET and MTV can play, if its all stuff from the “older rappers” than where does this leave room for the younger rappers to get play and blossom into superstars.

However, I think Budden’s argument fails to take into account that if you want to have the top spot in anything you have to go out and take it. The older rappers will continue to garner all the attention, eat up all the budgets, and run the game until the younger generation starts making hits and the older rappers stop making hits. Simple as that. Jordan is still the greatest ball player that ever lived, even if Iverson crossed ’em, it doesn’t matter if the younger generation doesn’t remember [sidebar: That’s still a sick line]. Is Martin Luther King’s message no longer meaningful now that Al Sharpton has taken over. Hell nah.

Budden’s thinks he is right in a way, because the hip hop media gives rappers like Jigga so much coverage. If the man so much as sneezes all these hip hop sites are so quick to point out how much mucus came out the man’s nose, how Beyonce felt about it and post pictures of Hov wiping his nose with a chinchilla towel. But the reason these hip hop sites do that is because it attracts more viewers (Don’t lie the very fact I put a Jay picture with this post, made you read this far). The Jay-Z brand still stands for quality in terms of East Coast rap and as long as that is the case the younger generation of Eastern seaboard rappers are going to have to make hits in order to earn their spot (See Jim Jones, Kanye West, Fifty Cent).

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