ONE LAST LOOK AT 2005 IN MUSIC

who is hip-hop speaking for?
This morning, NPR ran a segment which I recorded two weeks ago on looking back on hip-hop in '05. The piece itself is actually an adaptation (and condensing) of an essay I wrote for the SF Bay Guardian which ran in early December.

A few small things to correct right off the bat:

1) When I recorded the piece, 50 Cent had been designated as the year's most successful artist in terms of album sales but in the last two weeks since, Mariah Carey's Emancipation of Mimi came back hard and ended up nudging out 50's CD.

2) I was watching the video for "Heard 'Em Say" again and I forgot: at the end, they're back on the streets, but it's not raining anymore. Minor point but hey, accuracy is accuracy.

3) For Houston-ites who want to point out otherwise, I'm aware that the original version of "Still Tippin" from '03 had Chamillionaire instead of Paul Wall and a totally different beat. But the version everyone knows...

As for my comments on crack music: First of all, Hua Hsu deserves much of the credit here: it was my conversations with him that got me thinking about this.

Second, the NPR piece was short by necessity and I elaborate things better and further in the SFBG essay. The thing is: I don't have a real problem with rappers rhyming about crack and hustlin'. Hell, you look at my Top 10 list and at least two of the year's worst offenders (Jeezy and Juelz) are both listed. However, I think the trend towards celebrating and valorizing crack is, to say the least, interesting, especially coming now. I really thought that after 2002 (where the Clipse and Scarface came with two big albums that were all about the hustle), we hit an apex and rappers would move on. Instead, now you have Juelz printing instructions on how to cook crack in his liner notes while Jeezy was genius with his snowman logo.

Maybe if Katrina didn't hit this year, I wouldn't have made such a big deal about it, but I continue to be struck at how talk of the trap game seems inverse to talk around the Gulf Coast disaster. Sure, a lot of rappers like Bun B and Lil Wayne make reference to both but there are far, far fewer folks - it seems to me - really pushing awareness (let alone criticism) around the disaster even though its implications, for what it means to be poor and/or Black, are so far-reaching and troubling.

Thankfully, you do have folks like David Banner or the Legendary K.O. in the mix, but what I've seen in 2005 - from artists - has been general apathy. I said the same thing in 2004; you would have thought Katrina would be a wake-up call. This is especially stark when you see how many rock and jazz musicians (and I'm talking mainstream artists) seem far more compelled to take interest and be involved affairs related to both the politics of the disaster as well as the reconstruction efforts. It's not like I'm asking for an either/or: why can't we have our crack and our critiques? Ok, wait, that didn't sound quite right...

--O.W.