Too Old for Hip-Hop

At 33, I’m getting to that point where I don’t “get” the popular hip-hop artists that kids listen to these days. The artists of my youth are either dead or bearing down on middle age, some handling it better than others. Since hip-hop is my love and I’ve just published my second book on its history and culture, I try my best to understand who’s hot these days without pretending to like whoever is blasting out of the subwoofers of a Honda Civic shrouded in tinted windows.

A few of these I actually do understand. While I didn’t think his album was as breathtaking as everyone else did, Kendrick Lamar’s talent and originality is clear and unquestioned. Joey Badass has a terrible name, but I actually enjoy his music, probably because it sounds like it could have been released in ’95. Jay Electronica has been impressive on the handful of songs he’s actually released, but his album remains a mystery, a next generation version of Detox. Her pop songs annoy me, but Nicki Minaj can outrap almost anyone on the planet and she may go down as the greatest female MC to ever do it when it’s all said and done. Meek Mill’s voice is the rap equivalent of a hyena, but like his mentor Rick Ross, he knows how to pick beats and guest artists. Plus, he’s from Philly (my former office was located around the corner from where he grew up), so I feel a certain provincial duty to listen to his screeching while driving around North Philly.

While some are completely lost on me — I’ve listened to Wiz Khalifa and Mac Miller over and over, but I just don’t get them and I’ll never forgive A$AP Rocky for stealing Aesop Rock’s name (even if Aesop himself is unconcerned) — none are as puzzling to me as Drake.

He’s the biggest artist in the game and has a loyal legion of fans and admirers but, try as I might, I am not one of them. I know his music because it’s what everyone talks about and I’ve listened to it as research when writing about him, but I just can’t bring myself to play his music for sheer enjoyment. It’s not that I only listen to hip-hop that has grandiose characters and stories or that I’m not sensitive, because both are false. Rather, I just don’t like it.

This is quizzical to me because I fully recognize his talent. Technically, Drake is a terrific MC. He has almost all the tools that one could want in a rapper, plus a decent (though not amazing) singing voice. And that’s where my interest begins to wane. When he’s straight spitting (as he did on the Kanye West-Lil Wayne-Eminem posse cut “Forever” or on the Rick Ross track “Stay Schemin’”), I’m cool with him. I’m not ready to proclaim him next in line behind Jay-Z and Nas, but I can listen to it without wanting to cut my own ears off. It’s when he starts singing that I check out. It’s just a personal preference, but I’ve never been a fan of R&B.

When the concept of a rapper supplying a verse or two to a pop or R&B song, it created a dilemma for me. Did I want to sit through two minutes of harmonizing for forty seconds of rhymes? In some cases, it was easy. The Notorious B.I.G.’s feature on Total’s “Can’t You See” kicked off the song, so I could move on as soon as his verse was over. In other cases, it wasn’t as easy. When the rap came at the three-quarter mark, as it did with Nas on Mary J. Blige’s “Love Is All We Need,” I would have trouble sticking with it long enough to hear the verse. This isn’t an indictment on Mary J. Blige or Total (or Drake), but rather on my patience and narrow minded listening tastes.

It is, however, an indictment on Drake’s position as the biggest rap star in the world. I don’t think of him that way. Even if it were a 50/50 split between singing and rhyming, he would still only be half of a rap star, but to me, he’s far more of a singer than a rapper. I’m probably biased, but I see it as a 75/25 singing to rapping split.

I know that music — both creating it and enjoying it — is a young person’s game, especially with pop and hip-hop, and the fact that I differentiate between the two shows my age. Ever since Ja Rule and 50 Cent (and, in some small ways, Snoop Doggy Dogg) blurred the lines between rapping and singing, the two have been intertwined. Drake’s only competition for current hip-hop supremacy, the aforementioned Kendrick Lamar, also incorporates vast amounts of harmonizing in his songs, using it as a bridge before and after verses just as Lauryn Hill did on multiple Fugees songs.

This is hip-hop today. Just as Sugarhill Gang and Melle Mel gave way to Rakim and KRS-One who gave way to B.I.G. and ‘Pac and Nas and Jigga, a new breed of artist has come to the forefront and continued to advance the culture. The simple fact that it’s not what I prefer because it’s not what I was raised on is proof that I’m no longer in the music’s core demographic. In rap years, I may as well have a cane and a hearing aid, one that plays only albums released between 1992 and 1997.

Time waits for no man and neither does hip-hop. Once my generation embraces this fact, the happier we’ll all be. Who knows, maybe middle age will finally bring about an appreciation for mellow slow jams and emotional R&B within me.

Somehow I doubt it.