Quality vs. Quantity in Hip-Hop Music

Despite a couple delays in sentencing, Lil’ Wayne is destined for jail time. With this inevitability, Lil’ Wayne has been cramming in as much music production as possible. A plethora of songs and videos have been made within a tiny span of time. He’s definitely putting in a lot of work, but is it necessary? Or better yet, is it smart?

It was highly publicized that Wayne would be shooting seven videos in one night. And who knows how many songs he has recorded for the time he is away. Expected jail time is one year, so it’s no surprise someone who would be disappearing for a year, would want to pump out as much material as possible so people wouldn’t forget them. However, Wayne is one of the most popular juggernauts in all of music. Even if there was no music of his to leak while he’s gone, people are not going to forget him.

What Wayne should have done is not rush through the music-making process at all. He could have used prison as a great way to explore creativity and as a time for self-reflection. One could even argue that more hype would have surrounded Tha Carter IV if he did in fact wait until after prison to begin work on it. But, I can’t blame him. Artists like Wayne who pump out music as quickly as possible are the result of the listener. For every good song Wayne has, he has three horrible ones. And the listener could be to blame for this.

“Drop albums non-stop once a year for my fans’ sake” – Ludacris

Ludacris managed to throw down one of the truest statements ever in his song, Number One Spot. Ludacris was easily a fan favorite in the first half of the previous decade as he was dropping an album once a year. Between 2000 and 2006, Ludacris dropped an album every year. He had four solo albums and two collaborative albums. Ludacris eyed that number one spot because he knew what the fans wanted and needed: the constant dropping of music. Ludacris now drops albums every couple years, and has seen a decline in popularity because of it.

Most hip-hop fans now appear to be impatient and needy. We’ve seen a rise in mixtape popularity due to this. A rapper’s career now lives and dies with how much music they are able to release. Even sometimes that’s not even enough. As fans grow weary as they wait for an album, they’ll need a couple CDQ album leaks to tide them over and keep their interest. This problem is not only affecting rappers, but the blogs as well.

Hip-hop blogs, such as 2dopeboyz, almost seem to throw anything and everything on their sites. Do hip-hop fans really need 10 B.o.B interviews a day? There’s no possible way everyone’s favorite two dope boyz listen to and watch everything they post. They even admit to it sometimes on the post. What makes it worst is that the good things they actually do post becomes buried so quickly. The idea of a good blog has simply become a copy-and-paste world where you don’t even have to listen to the product you are promoting. The listener needs a never-ending supply of music, so the more you post, the more popular you are.

The best commentary to deal with issue is on the new Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach. It’s been a whole five years since Damon Albarn and his cartoon band’s last album, Demon Days. During the span, Albarn did spend some time on other projects, but also spent a considerable amount of time crafting the third Gorillaz album. Now, one can argue how Albarn has been heavily involved in the evolution of hip-hop music, despite not being a hip-hop artist himself.

The song, Superfast Jellyfish, is the perfect atonement to the problem that is lack of quality in hip-hop and music in general. The song plays out as a catchy jingle for an instant breakfast. Like we’ve always been told, breakfast is the most important and essential meal of the day, much like how music is important and essential for the majority of us. As much as we believe that the idea of an instant meal is the most beneficial for us in today’s fast-paced society, it’s just not as good as a well-thought out and planned breakfast. Even the name of the album can play into the theory of hurried music being played off as quality. A beach is a paradise, however a plastic beach is just fake and a letdown of what could have been.

Sure, one could bring up the fact that the Beatles were releasing an album or two every year back in the 1960s. What you have to keep in mind is a lot of what they were putting out were covers, and a lot of the songs were just around two minutes in length. And just like any band that produces a lot of songs, they have a lot of throwaway songs. Imagine how a couple of their albums could have been even stronger if they were merged together with selected tracks. And, keep in mind their most notorious albums do have at least year apart from one another.

Quantity versus quality will forever be a battle in the music industry. With the moving-in-light-speed society we have today it seems we may be forever doomed in an overabundance of music released while we pretend what we’re hearing is actually good. Hip hop has become a plastic beach.

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You can contact Brad at brad@theurbanian.com or follow him on Twitter

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2. The Good & The Bad Behind Collaborations
3. No Such Thing as a Perfect Album
4. Mos Def Appearing on the Next Gorillaz Album is the Greatest News Ever
5. The Death and Resurrection of Hip-Hop Music

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 6th, 2010 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Features, Music and tagged with 2dopeboyz, Damon Albarn, Gorillaz, hip-hop, Lil Wayne, Ludacris, Music, plastic beach, quality control, The Beatles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.