Visions From the Throne: Hip-Hop's Future

There have been many questions on the fabric of today’s hip hop scene and weather it resembles the hip hop era of the past. I think it’s very important to consider that today’s era of hip hop is saturated in what the world is going through with technology. Technology has gave every person with a Wi-Fi connection the means to simply get online and download what they want, so the importance of making good rap songs is getting lost because gone are the days where we have to go to the store and look through a selection of artist names to pick out their latest hit CD.

The options are endless now because people can upload absolutely anything to the web. The need of record labels controlling artists’ music is becoming less because all the artist needs is an internet following, the will to go out and produce show concerts, and make mixtapes/albums. Take a look at Chance the Rapper for instance here is a guy that got suspended for 10 days in high school and made a mixtape out of it. He published it online and marketed himself in his community, and was able to achieve a small following. After performing as much as he can he started making money off of it, stablish respect with other professional artist, and then release a second mixtape with much more fanfare because he used the money he earned to buy more equipment so he wouldn’t have to pay to go to the professional studios. Look where it got him, the Grammy's. The only questions is how will the rest of hip hop respond, and will other artist follow suit? I can just imagine the control Hip Hop can get back if they do decide to go this route. I think the whole industry will have to rethink how to do business. Which is something they should've done a long time ago.