How Hip-Hop Is Becoming the Oldies

Radio? Who listens to the radio anymore? Talk about old-tech.

So does it make me Nostrodamus if I said the same things to Ice-T at a show in Tijuana in the mid 90's?

Come on NYT. You missed the perfect co-branding opportunity to turn this article into a Spotify playlist for me to subscribe to. I guess I'll have to do it myself.

As for all of the off-my-lawn'ers who can't get down with hip hop, whatever. You're old.

(As am I considering some of my favorite songs are now considered oldies!)

Thanks to the NYT for backstory on this radio trend that has hit Minneapolis recently too. This married, white, 30-something female rather enjoys driving her Subaru Forrester with the cool summer breeze rushing in and "California Love" rushing out through the moon roof. I remember that song, and others, as the sound track to high school and college in the 90s. So what's wrong with a little nostalgia and dancing in our cars?

As with any genre, there's good and bad hip-hop. Open your minds and listen. I'm 56 and grew up on other music. About 50% of the songs in any genre probably stink; we're willing to forgive the ones in our sentimental soft spot (for me, 1970's rock), but the ones in other genres not so much, so the bad hip-hop songs do sound horrible to me.

I'll look for a local hip-hop classics station - most of the dreck will have been filtered out, I hope.

I could probably listen to some hip-hop, particularly if the lyrics were clever, but to me it sounds like so much angry shouting with too much emphasis on the bass. Others have different tastes, however, and they are going to listen to whatever makes them happy, but I hope everyone will remember to take care not to inflict our own favorite sounds on the ears of unwilling listeners. Earbuds with active noise-cancelling technology (to ensure that the listener doesn't have to turn up the volume so much as to damage his or her own hearing) are one of the greatest inventions of all time, in my opinion!

Class hip-hop? Man, do I feel old!

Well, nobody every went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

I have heard what WRWM in Indianapolis calls "Future Throwbacks" on the online stream.

These are songs from the last 5 to 10 years, and include those by Drake (Take Care), which is referred to in the discussion about the classic hip hop format as a multi-racial guy from Toronto, Canada who did not struggle, Lil Wayne (Lollipop), T-Pain (Bartender) and Macklemore (Thrift Shop).

My guess is that this is what is competitive in the Indianapolis radio market, against Radio One's WHHH and WNOW.

The Classic Hip Hop format is quite obviously not designed to be kid friendly, like Aretha Franklin's Respect and disco songs (Jammin' Oldies), or for those expecting to hear Boogie Down Productions and Gang Starr.

It is rather strange hearing Dropkick Murphys on a station that plays Throwbacks outside Boston, during a commercial break, that would indicate that the format is aimed at the general market.

The song in question was heard on a Boston area radio station taken over by then Clear Channel.

Clearly most people in this comment section are over the age of 40 (including me). They've closed their ears to what no longer resonates with their youth anymore, or their ability to have a good time, using the standard comments about how hip hop was at its peak in the 90s, that all the rap about money, cars and bravado is what ruined rap after the 90s. Guess what? The Blues, the forefather of rap, all the way back since its birth, was discussing all those topics, too, although moreso in metaphor to avoid detection by the authorities or by their religious overseers. But because its been assimilated into mainstream intellectual culture, people refuse to acknowledge it as being the same thing. There is a lot of really relevant cultural cues in the music and lyrics of contemporary hip hop and if you were to remember correctly, hip hop began as a competitive art form, just like break dancing did, in which one was supposed to demonstrate their exceptional traits through their lyrics and their ability to exhibit them to their adversaries.

And just like any other artform, there's great stuff and there's not so great stuff. Even Picasso had his B game.

open your ears!

As an early writer on Hip-hop (Spectacular Vernaculars, 1995) and radio DJ in the early 90's, this development doesn't surprise me. The new Nielsens are doing for radio what SoundScan did for retailers back then: replacing estimates and phony numbers with actual stats on listeners' preferences. Back in the day, the big-market stations would give some homeless folks a few bucks to fill out Arbitron ratings books, and hey, you were #1 -- on paper. Now, with the actual ears of actual listeners in charge, the good stuff is going to rise to the top -- and let's face it, the 'golden age' of Hip-hop (we could argue, but let's say 1988 to 1995) puts anything being released today to shame.

I remember having to collect my jaw from off the floor a fews years ago when not a single student in my history of Hip-hop class had ever heard of A Tribe Called Quest. No more.

"Ever since the earliest days of rock ’n’ roll, time has corroded yesterday’s musical radicalism into today’s pabulum. "

Sometimes, but in this case as in many others, it's not so much time as capitalism. Corporate search for profits.

I recall listening in the 1970s to a hip-hop song ("Rappers' Delight") on a Top 40 AM radio station in Houston and thinking, "This new novelty style will likely be popular for 12 months, maybe even 18 months before people move on to the next fad."

I love 90's hip hop and r&b. Missy Elliot's Supa Dupa Fly is a fantastic album. Erykah Badu's Mama's Gun is a classic. I remember setting my alarm to wake up in the middle of the night to watch hip hop videos when I was a teenager (the only time they were on.)
If you don't get the appeal of contemporary R&B, listen to Mary J. Blige:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN3yMjnyXyU&sns=em
If you don't understand that rap (at its highest form) is the poetry of the streets, check The Wu-Tang Clan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twa-Q6HRwH8&sns=em

[[In 1993, it began as Ecstasy (WXTZ), an independently owned easy-listening station. It switched to a solid-gold soul format in 1996, then to smooth jazz the next year. It switched again in 1997, to country, and that year it was acquired by a conglomerate called Susquehanna Radio. Susquehanna moved its country station (104.5 the Bear, WGRL) down the dial to occupy the 93.9 frequency, before switching it to ’80s hits in 2001, and from that to contemporary Christian in 2004.]]

That sounds like a slow descent into hell. I hate every one of those genres with a passion.

I think I'll just stick with iTunes radio, thank you very much. I started typing in the name of a Brazilian singer, the app figured out where I was going and created a "station" around her.

This article had caught my eye immediately. I am only 16 years old but i have seen many changes, some things I really do wish had not changed. This article reminded me of that. Music had been the one to change most of all throughout the years I've been here, now adding on from a millennia prior? I had always thought of how strange it would be to think that these things I had grown into, are now being grown out of. How strange to think that the Beatles or Elvis aren't the part of the oldies, they're more prehistoric in this time. I am still offend that my sister does not know of the Beatles... future generations won't be told about how Jackson was the king of pop...more about how Kanye is a "lyrical genius" so to say in this generation I suppose. But just as the radio stations are adapting, the older generations should too. I did complain a bit about how everything is changing but it is something we need to accept and I'm glad that this was written about because it reminds us all that things are changing, for better or for worse, but at we have to adapt.

Thank goodness Taylor Swift has shown the world there is more out there then ghetto songs about aspiring to be rich and having a nice car. To me it's just the same thing the Sugar Hill Gang did in 1980 with Rappers Delight. And that was overplayed back then! The entire genre is just too bogged down in dark subjects drugs money sex. Rap is like a sung version of 60 Shades of Gray; describing situations that 98% of Americans are not part of. I love it when rich rap stars send their kids to NYC private schools so they are not part of what rap is about. But then I am the lucky one, we don't have any rap stations here in Maine.

How can this article possibly fail to mention the venerable KDAY, classic hip hop mainstay and possibly the finest radio station in Los Angeles?

Hip-hop got old by the late 90s when every song started to be about how much money the artist makes, how many women he scores, and how much better and more famous he is than other rappers. Once it lost the anger and soul, it went the way of doo wop--period genre, appealing to those who enjoyed it when it emerged, and any hanger-on who liked the later watered-down version because it was still the style, and no one else.

Cheers for the tip. Streaming in Aust now.

Please, young people: Isn't it about time to invent some new music? It's been decades!

One reason hip hop is becoming the oldies is that it's the only music that hasn't changed a bit in the last 30 years. Even country has developed somewhat.

Every genre has its heyday. Almost nothing from the last ten years of rap will survive.

Since there is no melody, no riff that would grab you in an elevator, no notes that allow a flood of memories, I don't see how rap could become nostalgia.

Who listens to the radio-radio anymore?

HIP HOP OLDIES Well if young kids listened to hip hop at a deafening level, they will be pretty much deaf by the time they want to listen to Hip Hop on a Golden Oldies radio program. If radio's still around that is. One of the benefits of having softer, more mellow music among the oldies is that it's more comfortable for people to listen to with hearing aids. Loud music just makes a lot of hearing aids squeal in protest. That distorts the sound completely, making it unrecognizable. So, if you really want to Hip and Hop to the Oldies, softer is better.

I hope a station like this comes to my neighborhood! I had that Geto Boys song mentioned, and others, on cassette tapes (actual singles, plus the ones I'd make directly recording off the radio, dutifully labelled in laughable little-kid handwriting). Where they are crumbling and where I can play them now I don't know. I guess I'm getting old. I don't mind being one of those laughable old ladies. I already love oldies from plenty other eras, makes sense my youth eventually joins the ranks. I like to think that the best songs live on; the lamer ones the DJ seemed paid to play over and over have less incentive to be remembered now.

prior to the 2000's, popular rap was being produced by people who grew up listening to their parent's music (parliament/funkadekic, Isaac hayes, the Isley brothers) and incorporated that into the samples. The Chronic, Dre's debut, is chock-full of parliament samples. Ice Cube's albums are production masterpieces in this regard (and you'd be shocked to hear what the star of Are We There Yet used to say).

This gave the music a sense of creativity that was drawn from an authentic historical musical identity. It was a new and fresh style of music mixed with an authentic representation of both idealized and actual representations of life as a urban black male.

fast forward to now. Good rap is still produced, but the popular jams lack a real sense of purpose. Like country music, there was outlaw biker music (David Allen Coe), but the new stuff is detached from the underlying environment that made that music great. It becomes a farcical reprsentation of what once was.

Same goes for punk rock, or rock and roll. It's more a natural evolution of a genre than it is anything unique to rap.

God, I'm getting old.

I've been listening to the old-school hip hop station in Denver nonstop since I discovered it a few months ago. I can't believe it took the big radio conglomerates this long to realize how popular this format would be.

This will kill the diversity and creativity in hip-hop the same way oldies stations did in rock music.

Earlier this year, while "de-cluttering," I watched about 40 hours of 90s rap/hip hop videos. They aren't much different from the music now. I suppose the music brings back the good times, while the bad times are gratefully forgotten.

The future of popular music is worrisome....

Oh yeah, all them 35 - 44 year old white ladies groovin' to Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back".

Steato-py-gous!

I think ZAKK is the BEST "DJ" I have ever listened to. He is a trip

Is there that much difference between "Me So Horny" and any Maroon 5 song?

Rap music seems to me music to be blared from the car while driving or listened to and danced to at a club where you can feel every beat. Listening to it at home doesn't have the same appeal.

When I listen to disco (on the oldies station!), I sometimes fire up my rotating disco ball (with lights) and dance the hours away. I have no idea what the equivalent complement is for rap music.