Hip-hop isn’t what it was ten years ago. Ten years ago it wasn’t what it was five years ago. What happened? Did the music decline or did it change? It’s easy to say it declined but the answers are always at the foundation. Rap started out as a way to express issues, the music was raw and untampered and thus the explosion. Along the way to riches the focus of the game changed from a musicians league to a hustler’s league, it sort of transformed. It also got soft over the years. If you’re not a groupie you’re classified as a hater, swag battles are self explanatorily (probably made this word up) homosexual, and the music caters to a much different crowd than it did at conception.

Rock and Pop albums from the two biggest stars, reality-star rappers, and battles unworthy of any commentary at all point to a new hip-hop. The game is top heavy with senior citizen rappers, and during their reign the voice of a generation was lost, Stringer is still speaking for Marlo’s generation and that’s not reality. The game is no longer an art form but a hustle. New artist hustle one song for ringtone downloads, and albums are starting to sound like compilations. The majority of the urban audience is greatly attracted to the material self-esteem music.

The youth today won’t even go out (not EVERYONE, BUT MOST) without a tight outfit, because they don’t feel confident without it. The old hip-hop IS dead. It will continue on, but the early fans will probraly move to other genre’s of music seeing how hip-hop lacks much to offer outside of party music, and with the current state of things it’s not hard to tell the party’s almost over.The old heads complaining will be replaced new youthful hip-hop fans who only know it as what it’s been the past couple of years. There wasn’t a decline but a change, hip-hop is a transformer and it’s already going through evolution.

Chances are real artist will become performers and the radio will turn into a full blown edition of halftime at the superbowl, and hip-hop will take the form of the WWE, where the entertainment is bigger than the substance. The game has changed, and although it probraly won’t ever compare to the early hip-hop, what you hear on the radio is hip-hop, it’s just the 2009 version.