Opinion: Beats, Rhymes and Shite

What the fuck happened to mainstream hip-hop? Why have all the artists I admire, almost without exception, become hollow, money-obsessed, misogynistic shills fixated on celebrity culture? Why are all the new rappers fevered egos with no regard or passion for lyrics? 2 Chainz – I mean seriously, come on. Fucking Nae Chainz, mate. Kendrick Lamar? Kendrick Lamer, more like. Mac Miller? Try Wack Miller. Give me. A fucking. Break. The 90s, where underground rap began to bubble up into the mainstream with the likes of Wu-Tang Clan and the Queensbridge crew – Mobb Deep, Nas and others – seem awfully distant.

I'm tempted to blame Eminem. It was his decision to foist 50 Cent on the world. Nothing ever measured up to his debut album. His latter-period lyrics showcased a solipsistic style of storytelling that would come to dominate the culture at large. Slim Shady was reduced to a whingeing shade of his former self, bitching constantly about the pressures of fame, and addiction. New track Rap God promises much, in terms of razor-sharp, Ritalin-chomping speed-rap. But it's paired with a lazy trap-lite beat, and the next single features Rihanna. You broke my heart, Marshall. You broke my fucking heart.

Blame P-Diddy. His shameless cash-ins on the legacy of the superlatively talented The Notorious B.I.G. ushered in the era of 'bling'-obsessed hip-hop, and made it the norm to nick a whole damn chorus of some shite 80s pop song rather than actually focusing on samplecraft. He re-emphasised the street economics of hip-hop as a corporate endgame. Lots of people got rich, not least Jay-Z. And they rapped about being rich. A lot. 

Blame Kanye West, who in recent years has taken the money-fetishising greed of hip-hop to its logical conclusion. He is a self-proclaimed God, a man who shakes hands with a fake Jesus as part of his show; who believes 300 was about Roman history and doesn't care that he's wrong. Who wants you to hurry up with his damn croissants, because he is important, and married to a Kardashian. The man is a hate figure in my household. I have a dartboard with his stupid face on it.

What happened to hip-hop that was about something? It's 20 years since Ice Cube's seminal Lethal Injection, a record which was a direct response to the beating of Rodney King and the subsequent LA riots. Where's Cube's 20-year anniversary box set? Perhaps he's too busy making family-friendly movies to even give a shit.. More likely though, he's smart enough to realise that in the current climate, it wouldn't sell. 

And yet... Perhaps the hip-hop super-ego's days are numbered. Increasingly, fans are turning away from the inflated personas of Kanye, Jay-Z and their ilk, despite the willingness of Pitchfork and other trend-setters to embrace bloated, cod-experimental, lyrically bankrupt turds like Yeezus and Magna Carta Holy Grail.

There has been a resurgence, from the underground rap community, of brain-bending, tongue-twisting battle rhymes of the kind Eminem used to write – see Run The Jewels, the collaboration between Killer Mike and Company Flow / Def Jux founder El-P, which gets a physical release on Big Dada this month, as evidence of this trend. The apocalyptic doom-rap futurism of Death Grips no longer seems like a lonely peak in an arid desert, although few if any rap artists out there can touch Exmilitary, The Money Store and No Love Deep Web for content, impact and intensity. 

Battle lines are being drawn. It's time to end the hegemony of rap that concerns itself with nothing. Lyrically, it's time to embrace the radical tradition once more. We're getting there. Lakutis, Heems and Kool A.D. of Das Racist display more incisive wit than Eminem can muster these days. Action Bronson and Mr Muthafuckin eXquire do hood rap better than it's been done in years. Tyler, to the kids who follow him, is like a God – and in a much more real sense than Kanye's nauseating self-deification. 

It's a start.