It's funny...last week I was having an in-depth convo about the state of the game with another hip-hop head and eventually we started talking about Budden and how he is really one of the only dudes who still hold down that old school mentality and style without sounding dated or like one of those cats who miss the 90's so much that they are stuck in the decade. We also touched onto how we used to have to wait months, and sometimes even a year to hear new music from our favorite artists...and when we did finally hear something new...we would treasure it...listening to the radio religiously in hopes of catching it play, slamming the red record button to tape it, then looping it for hours on the walkman to memorize all the words. That was when hip-hop was all about quality...not quantity. Artists were judged based on the amount of skills they had and not their level of swagger or the fact that they put out enough tracks last month to fill up an 8 gig iPod.
I mean Budden and The Clipse developed a whole legion of hardcore, devoted fans just because they were stuck in a situation where they couldn't release music frequently and forced their fans back into that old school mindset where they had to hold onto those few tracks for dear life 'til something new dropped months later. On the flipside though, take a dude like Crooked I...an emcee who was trying to make it in the game for almost a decade and suddenly decides to start releasing a new track every week for a full year...and suddenly he's gained a gazillion fans just by repeatedly putting himself out there so people couldn't deny his presence and skills... and although I'm ecstatic that Crook has finally gotten his much deserved props in the game, I can't help but be disgusted at the way it had to happen...I mean shit, even Urkel fucked Laura eventually! It's just troubling that we as fans have all become so disconnected that it seems like everything but the music itself factors into whether or not the song or artist is successful. And since we are obviously the target audience, the industry has no other choice but to follow our behaviors and feed us what we want. And I know I sound a lot more like Ice-T than Soulja Boy right now, and I am not helping the cause by hosting a daily blog that gives y'all that daily fix of music to keep your 4 minute attention spans stimulated but the truth is still a tough pill to swallow and I wish more focus could be put back onto the music.
So your probably asking yourself...has JV finally gone nuts? Nah...I'm cool. I'm just going off because Joey just released one of the realest tracks I've heard in a long time. It's 5+ minutes of harsh truths and it's labeled as part one...so I can only imagine what to expect in the next installment. Do yourselves a favor and check this out and take a second to reflect on the state of affairs and what this hip-hop music means to you...
Joe Budden - Who (Part One)
**Bonus**
Joe Budden - Addiction
