A particular trend in hip hop has been rearing is (ugly) head.  Forgive me if I’m wrong but I always thought that artists/rappers got love/fame/respect because of their art.  Even if it was one song, I figured people liked that song because of the actual song.  Well, I’m starting to see a trend in rap where rappers/artists are staying relevant due to everything BUT their art.  Because of the way the internet and blog world works nowadays, new content is added every single day.  An artist with a new song or ablum, can’t even stay on the front page of a website for an entire 24 hours.  I’m not sure if the goal of blogs/site is to post as much material as possible to compete with one another or if people have that short of an attention span but it is forcing artists to put new material out damn near every day.  Whether it is the making of the making of the song that they are going to release the following day or a video with an artist making mac and cheese at their house while watching reruns of Nickelodeon, artists are staying relevant without focusing on music.  I think with the popularity of reality tv, artists think their lives should now be constantly filmed and put on display.  What is even weirder to me is that blogs and websites are posting these videos.  I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t give a fuck what such and such eats for breakfast on Monday and how they feel about the Joe Budden and Raekwon beef.  All of the mystique that used to surround certain artists and the secrets to creating music is being devalued by offereing the internet world an “all access” pass into these artists life.  I guess it is the same for me with having a blog where I post my daily thoughts and reviews of songs, so maybe I am part of the problem.  It it just crazy that artists can’t just drop one or two singles on the net, let them grow organically, then drop the album and people bump it for months/years until they hear from them again.  Artists are now dropping pre album mixtape mixtapes and pre album mixtapes before their albums to build the buzz.  Then videos of themselves talking about their mixtapes, then videos for their album, then another mixtape after their album called the post album mixtape.  Did I miss something here?  All these blogs are cosigning albums and sponsoring mixtapes, then post that shit on the front page for one day and then the promotion is over.  What happened to working an album or working a song?  I remember watching an interview with Jermaine Dupri about the Kris Kross Jump record and how they had to beg people to listen and play the record for several months.  That record ending up being pretty damn big.  I’m not sure when this happened but it seems like all the fans, blogs, sites, critics and artists have decided that an artist’s art is not as important as a constant barrage of material regardless of what it is.  Honestly, I am tired of seeing videos of performances recorded from someones camera phone.  I read an interview from the emcee, Cage yesterday, where he seemed very upset about bloggers, critics and “journalists” approach to hip hop.  With the accessibility to information and the ease of setting of a blog or a website, the average fan(like myself) now has a platform to speak and be heard, which allows whoever to say whatever and be read and believed by anyone who considers that site as credible.  It is not the information being divulged by the pseudo-journalists, it is the asthetics of the website/blog, the amount of posts and the traffic.  I guess an argument could be made that quality equals traffic but we all know that is not the case.  Just like radio spins or viewership does not equal quality.  There are various factors in play which make it impossible to point the finger at a particular person, group of people or media outlet but the results are undeniable.  Artists nowadays are staying relevant via twitter updates, personal commentary on General Mill’s new cereal and whatever the fuck else artists, blogs and websites deem worthy of attention.  Prime example, Joe Budden.  I think Budden is a very talented emcee with a dope album and dope mixtapes under his belt.  HOWEVER, he is more known recently for his comments regarding other rappers and his girlfriend’s ass rather than his music.  I guess it is a free way of staying in the public eye but it has NOTHING to do with his art.  Budden is definitely not the problem because I feel like dude actually cares about being an emcee and quality music but he is a prime example.  Rappers now have one mixtape, maybe a music video, 12 freestyles on some random ass radio show and countless videos of themselves doing dumb shit which ulimately translates to 50,000 myspace plays and a record deal.  Maybe I’m getting old because I’m starting to feel like “the oldest twenty-five year old I know.”  Please share your thoughts an opinions.  I know I kind of breezed over Twitter but I will save that for a different post.  Please let me know if I am just a disgruntled fan/rapper.  How do you feel about the way rappers go about promoting themsevlves?  I guess from a marketing standpoint it makes beautiful sense but I’m not even sure what rappers are marketing any more.  It seems like the focus has landed on everything BUT their actual “job.”  Maybe I’m bugging out.  Tribe said it best…….

“phoney rappers who do not write/ phoney rappers who do not excite/ phone rappers you know their type”