Some Disorganized Thoughts on Hip-Hop in 2K8

When I first started thinking about this post (a little late, sorry) I decided I was going to do a Top Ten overrated albums of the year list. It seemed like something that needed to happen when everybody is pulling out their best of the year lists, with albums I thought were mediocre to bad, but it occurs to me that there's no reason to take down albums that are probably just not for me (No Age) or have already been hated on thoroughly (Vampire Weekend, MGMT). I could reiterate how MGMT is nothing but face paint and goofy synths or how I'd rather listen to Ezra Koenig tell me the best place to buy boat shoes than his insipid lyrics about slamming a Benneton-clad hottie while listening to Peter Gabriel, but it accomplishes nothing (and is way too easy by now).

But what this train of thought led to was me thinking about hip-hop's status in 2008. My relationship to the past few years of hip-hop has been confused and hard to articulate, but what it boils down to is this: I really don't like most of it. This is much harder for me to admit than I'd like, considering the amount of time I spend reading Nah Right and downloading single after single of the supposed New Thing. But at the end of the day, the only hip-hop albums from this year that I've even liked are from Wale and Elzhi (though I anticipate the Q-Tip album joining them when I finally cop it), and I don't think either The Mixtape About Nothing or EuroPass are very good albums, they're just well executed joints by talented rappers. I didn't hear the Emc album or the Black Milk album--even Rising Down only got a few spins from me. When I think about this I cringe at myself, but it just comes down to a lack of interest after not getting excited about what I was hearing. I just couldn't muster the energy to turn off whatever else I was listening to, and slog through another mediocre mixtape in an attempt to find something I wanted to play again.

At the same time though, I've spent a lot of this year blasting through all my nineties classics while preparing for my radio show with Thursday, and I found a whole new level of love for albums like ATLiens, Liquid Swords, Internal Affairs, etc. So it's not like I lost interest in Hip-Hop as a genre, this was actually a year where I found myself loving it more than ever. But I still can't get into any of this new shit. It's just nowhere near as good. More than that though, there hasn't even been more than a few placeholder albums this year, albums that I can bring out as good examples of decent new hip-hop. Last year we had very good new albums by Jay-Z, Ghostface, Wu-Tang, El-P, Aesop Rock, and Kanye. What do have this year? What would you say fills these places in 2008? I guess Q-Tip and (maybe) GZA are fair bets, but other than that, what would usually go here have been disappointments across the board: Nas? Bun B?

Obviously, up until this point I have been omitting the biggest hip-hop album of the year, and the album that got me thinking about this whole post in the first place. So let's talk about Tha Carter III. In my opinion, this is the single most critically overrated album of the year, and possibly the past few. This is Wayne's best album, and while it certainly doesn't suck, I still get tongue-tied whenever I try to say the words "Lil' Wayne" and "good" in the same sentence. Because despite all the hype, and all the claims of Best Rapper Alive, Tha Carter III is still massively, massively flawed. Somehow critics have their mind erased every time a clever line pops up (there are a bunch), forgetting that the bulk of the album is made up of verses like this: "I told my girl when you fuck me, better fuck me good/'cause if another girl could she gon' fuck me good/No sitting at the table if bringing nothing to it/and I get straight to it like it's nothing to it." Seriously. Read that to yourself out loud and then tell me that Wayne is right when he says he belongs in the same league as Biggie.

And that's what kills me every time I bitch about Hip-Hop in 2008 and someone brings up Wayne. He's just not as good as he/Pitchfork/Spin etc. thinks he is--he's just apparently the best we can get these days as far as albums with budgets and producers with equipment (No offense to Best Kept Secret).

So that's my rant. I'm still looking forward to scouring the "top 25 hip-hop songs of 2008" lists that will surely pop up before long, and I'm sure I'll find some jams in there. I very well could be overlooking some amazing discs, and maybe I'm just too scared to commit to albums that don't have the endless acclaim that the Classics do, but I don't think so. I think that 2008 was just a drought. And that hopefully it won't last.

Proof of Hope: (There was going to be a song here, but Oh Word has pretty much got me covered here. Not saying I fuck with all of these guys, but that's mostly a taste thing-- it's all pretty solid).