Is Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em Really Causing the End of Hip Hop?

Soulja Boy Tell ‘em, depending on who you ask, is killing Hip-hop! Is he though? Is he really? I think we need to sit down with a nice big cup of coffee and think about that.

First of all, I want to say that I completely understand when people claim that Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em lacks any sort of a message in what he raps. Although ultimately these days, I think there are a lot of high profile artists putting out albums that don’t “say” all that much either.

Honestly, I think one thing that slips by quite a few people is that he’s 18 years old. Doggy Style was released when snoop was 21. Three years might not sound like a lot, but in Souljaboys case, it’s the difference between being allowed to drink in a lot of states or not. Or it’s the difference between that awkward “can’t quite manage to grow a proper beard” stage and being able to. When you consider that he’s still relatively young and therefore has a lot to learn, I personally can be a little more forgiving towards him.

How is he killing hip-hop specifically though? What’s he doing? Putting out music with no real message? Well that’s not a new concept by any stretch of the imagination. I wonder if it’s more down to him writing for the “mainstream” market. Pop music is what it is, and in many genres you see it happen to bands and artists. When you sign a professional contract with any label, or you put your own records out, the ultimate goal is to pay the bills, and therefore you’re already on that slope. Hip-hop, as a music genre, is more commercially minded than most. The people at the top, the revered elites of hip-hop, tend to be the ones that sell the most records. How then, can writing a catchy pop song that will sell be necessarily a bad thing?

Graduation was an album written to make lots of money. The Chronic was an album written to make lots of money. That’s the nature of this game, and you’d probably have to go back to NWA or Public Enemy (in the really early days) to find artists that made music for more political ends than to pay the bills. Even then, they didn’t exactly starve to death in the process of making a statement.

So what does that leave? People criticising his lyrics, saying he can’t rhyme, he’s got no talent and so on. Well, those are pretty subjective topics, but he’s certainly not the first person to succeed despite not being the most gifted person. The talk of producing the entire album in the demo version of FL studio is what bothered me most. Frankly I believe if you’re going to put out a decent album you ought to at least give yourself a chance to be creative and play with new sounds. Imagine how boring music today would be if everyone stuck to that Beatles 60’s style guitar. New shiny toys are good.

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