I’ve noticed that in recent years the aesthetic of what an emcee is supposed to be like and sound like has changed drastically from what it’s been in the past. So much so that emcees and rappers from bygone eras still in the game look at the rappers out now in disgust and sometimes even disbelief. Even older fans aren’t immune. They just don’t understand what the new breed of emcee’s allure is.

When Sean Price recently made an appearance on PNC Radio’s Combat Jack Show he was asked the meaning behind his now infamous line “I don’t Wale them new n*ggas”. Sean stated matter of factly that it wasn’t even a diss, merely a truthful statement “These new rappers? I just don’t do what they do”.

He also went on to explain why he avoided Twitter and offered that Rakim wouldn’t have been on Twitter back in the days “talkin’ about “I’m studying 120 right now”. That’s when the idea for this blog first hit me.

Think about the popular rappers right now like Drake, Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, Kid Cudi, B.o.B, etc. Now think about some other cats with devoted underground followings like Joe Budden and Jay Electronica. What do they all have in common? They pretty much put it all out there for their fans and make emotionally charged, personal music.

When I was coming up, emcees and rappers for the most part portrayed themselves as superheroes. They were all powerful masters of ceremony. Think back to how fans perceived the Cold Crush Brothers, Fantastic 5, Funky Four Plus One, Crash Crew, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Treacherous Three, Fearless 4 on down to Run DMC, LL Cool J, Kurtis Blow and the like.

When I first saw “Wild Style” it was the greatest thing ever recorded on film in my opinion. These gods were recorded doing their things on celluloid so we mere mortals could finally see what they looked like. Can you grasp that concept? We barely had album covers back in 1982 & 1983 so to actually SEE Grandmaster Caz and Grandmaster Flash in action blew my mind alone.

When I saw Run get slapped by Sheila E in “Krush Groove” I was completely in shock. It was as if someone kicked the Pope in the balls. I couldn’t even fathom something like that ever happening to DJ Run. He wasn’t a regular human to us. He was in Run DMC. The Kings From Queens.

This was partly due to the fact that we had limited media access to these acts which helped them attain a larger than life image to fans back in the early to mid 80’s. I remember not seeing a good quality picture of Doug E. Fresh until I saw a flier with his face on it back in 1985 for God’s sake. He’d been making records for years by then and even been in movies.

“Right On!” & “Black Beat” were not equipped to cover Hip Hop music or the culture seriously. Mainstream publications only mentioned it in passing. If you didn’t have access to The Village Voice or similar NYC publications then most of your Hip Hop news was third or fourth hand at best.

It wasn’t until “The Source” & “Rap Pages” began publishing that we even got an idea of what was up with our Hip Hop icons & Rap idols.

Slick Rick was large. He had the furs, eyepatch, mad dookie ropes & the rings. Big Daddy Kane always had the fresh outfits. Eric B. & Rakim were no joke. Ultramagnetic MC’s were from another universe entirely.

Stetsasonic was the ultimate Hip Hop band complete with matching outfits. Public Enemy were the prophets of rage. They all were revered like Blaxploitation film heroes. They each deserved their own Marvel comics title. They were untouchable. They were our heroes. We don’t remember them being anything less than the images they portrayed.

If you grew up with this aesthetic in your mind for what an emcee or rapper is supposed to be then you’ll find an emcee like Drake to be a disappointment. He gets too personal and offers far too much about his own life. He raps about how he’s disappointing his mother and how he feels trapped by fame. Oldheads feel the urge to scream “Man the fuck up!” at their own iPods during a Drake song.

Even a skilled cat like Joe Budden who makes what he calls “mood music” gets extremely personal in his music. He discusses his past addiction. His relationship with his family and his son. Joe Budden openly discusses his failed relationships and even his current ones online.

He even records his life and UStreams often for his fans. Oldheads could do without all the access even though it makes his fans anticipate “Mood Music 4” even more. Leave something to the imagination, dammit!

The bottom line is that the paradigm has shifted due to media availability and changes in technology over the past 13 years so the new breed of fan actually become emotionally invested in these artists.

They feel as if they’re watching the underdog come up. This is the same dynamic that made fans connect to the Notorious B.I.G. and Jay-Z back in the days. Listen to “Ready To Die” and “Reasonable Doubt” sometime soon and tell me that you can come away listening to those albums without feeling emotionally invested in either cat. It’s damn near impossible not to.

Back then, fans thought they were watching the ascension of the former hustler make good the legitimate way in the music industry. Their back stories made you root for them. This also worked with Tupac Shakur. The thing is that you had to work to get details about these emcees individual upbringings. They were each compelling subjects for Hip Hop journalists.

Even when they went through things and shared their low points with the public through their music or the media they never seemed completely vulnerable. They always dealt from a position of power. Even to this day there are a great amount of things about or favorite older emcees lives and careers we know nothing about. We can’t necessarily saw that about this generation of emcees. Everything is out in the open and laid bare.

Back in the days, when an artist had issues with their group members or labels you found out about it later. There was a delay in news, even then you weren’t privy to their exact words and/or actions during the dispute. Nowadays, with the internet and the hundreds of blogs, video sites, Facebook & Twitter you can see it all unfold in real time. There’s no more mystery. No more mystique.

Being that I (and most fans from my same generation) grew up seeing rappers as superheroes and mysterious beings beyond our understanding there’s no mystery why the subsequent generations of rappers and emcees would become increasingly more and more human as time passed.

The problem is that the lines have almost completely blurred between emcees themselves and the person downloading their mixtapes.

Take into account a rapper like Charles Hamilton. He was so open about his life and shared so much in his music and online via his blog that he attained a cult like following of fans in a short time. He often made himself so vulnerable to the public that it was unnerving. Oldhead fans hated his whole persona with a passion.

He dropped a full mixtape of free music every month and he was always around. The old adage “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” meant nothing to him. Ultimately, overexposure and him making one too many mistakes in the public eye led to him losing his deal with Interscope and made him a pariah. At least then he finally disappeared for a while.

Traditional gender roles seem to have shifted in recent years (what some refer to as the “pussification of the modern man”) resulting in men that wear tight clothing, are immaculately groomed and willingly discuss their feelings without prodding.

Those of us that grew up playing on playgrounds made of concrete rather than soft foam aren’t feeling this new breed of emcee at all. We want less Travie McCoy and more Ghostface Killah. Butch it up, homie!

The hipster aspect is completely lost on older Rap fans who also don’t understand the allure of many of the so called popular “blog rappers” such as Wale. He lost even more points when he failed to respond to Kid Cudi after his comments in the latest issue of Complex.

Any rapper or emcee worth their salt surely would’ve done something by now. A diss track. Physical violence. Something. Short of a few terse twitter comments and a few soundbites Wale has done nothing. That’s completely unacceptable for the older generation of Hip Hop fans.

Back when DMX would often cry on stage while doing his prayers in the late 90’s and early 00’s few clowned him for it. Then fans felt emotionally invested in DMX but even when he was often in a vulnerable state, he was still highly regarded in the Hip Hop world the same as Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, Redman, Raekwon and Scarface.

Rappers that fans have emotionally invested themselves into in the past decade mostly due to their back stories include Eminem, Beanie Sigel, T.I., Joe Budden, Kanye West, 50 Cent, Young Jeezy, Maino and Drake.

Their back stories range from having adverse childhoods, being former drug dealers and recently getting out of jail to surviving shootings or car accidents. Either way, music fans bought into their stories and their music.

When these artists got personal whether it was in their music or in investigative magazine articles fans ate it up. Jay-Z’s been around since 1988 and fans are looking forward to the “Decoded” book because there’s still so much about his life that we don’t know even though he’s been hot for the past 14 summers. Will we be able to say that about B.o.B in 2025? I doubt it.

Now that things like Ustream, YouTube, Blogger, Wordpress & Tumblr have blurred the lines between artist and fans there is little need for investigative articles about our “mysterious” new young artists because they talk to the fans directly from jump.

It’s not the same as if a legend or vet like Tragedy Khadafi who has longevity and has put 25 years into the game spoke directly to their fans. He actually has an aura and something of substance to give fans vs. a new artist.

Look at Lady Gaga. That chick is so weird that even though we know her full government name, who her parents and siblings were plus the full timeline of how she broke into the industry she’s still an enigma.

She holds back just enough but gives just enough to the new fan of the Internet Age that she can entertain them and still actually sell records. She may be the era’s exception, though.

My boy ST/MiC is a producer, audio engineer and an emcee. He specializes in remixes and is a Bruce Lee fan (as am I). He has always been attracted to beats or production and songs with what he terms “emotional content”. For him it’s all about if that beat, those bars or that song can elicit an emotional reaction from him. If it can, he’ll buy it.

Bruce Lee always stressed that it was more important to fight with emotion or rather emotional content than anger because all anger does is cloud your judgement. By infusing emotional content into your attacks it suggested that you were the one in control. Bruce Lee was a smart muhfucka, huh?

I’m the same way, the big difference is what kind of music elicits an emotional reaction in me versus what would instead repulse me. Let’s discuss Kanye West’s “808’s & Heartbreak” and Kid Cudi’s “Man In The Moon” for a minute, shall we?

I reviewed Kanye West’s deeply personal, Electro tinged and AutoTune heavy “808’s & Heartbreak” a while back. While I gave it a positive review, I felt that I was hearing music of a nature so personal that I almost shouldn’t be hearing it.

Not only that, but the aesthetic of the beats & music on this album just weren’t my thing. I haven’t listened to “808’s” since I reviewed it and I don’t plan to any time in the near future.

On the other side, Kid Cudi’s “Man In The Moon” fared slightly better with me. The album still felt too emo and personal for my tastes but in order to give a fair listen I decided to regard it like a Pop/Soul LP in the vein of Kenna rather than a Rap/Hip Hop album. In that case, it was a damn good album.

I also haven’t played “Man In The Moon” since I reviewed it last year opting instead to play albums in the vein of Roc Marciano’s “Marcberg” or Danny Brown’s “The Hybrid”. Much like most older Rap fans I’m just not a fan of giving everything about yourself away. Especially things that might make you look like a sucker. The kind of shit we just didn’t do or tolerate back in the days just seems to be regular practice now.

Since the distance between the fan and the artist has gotten closer as the years pass and artists become more and more human it’s tough to make the average cynic fan a believer.

In this world, Rick Ross turned out to be a complete liar. Lupe Fiasco has regular bitch fits when his songs leak to blogs and his record label doesn’t do what he wants them to and “blog rappers” get beat up/robbed on camera & it ends up on World Star Hip Hop the next day.

The only thing left is if you can move the crowd. Not necessarily physically, but emotionally. Since the age of boom bap rap on the mainstream is dead it’s time to tighten up your pants, rock some shiny ass Supras, cop a smedium hoody with glitter on it and get emo. If you can carry a tune then you better sing your hooks. Look at how their branding Diggy Simmons over @ Atlantic now, for God’s sake!

Older Hip Hop fans just lament the old Hip Hop aesthetic of being larger than life or invincible. LL Cool J gave off the same air and he made songs like “I Want You”, “I Need Love”, “One Shot At Love” and “Two Different Worlds”.

Even when LL got dissed relentlessly by the Hip Hop world at large (it happened often) and was depressed about it (it also happened often), his sulking and moping was done in private. Later on, he appeared on the scene with a new hot song and he was that same monster again.

Nowadays, cats will pull out a flipcam and record their own vulnerable times and personal breakdowns then upload it for the entire world to see. In a world where younger fans have grown up with reality TV these events can be spun into buzz or something positive. Meanwhile, all it does is turn the stomachs of older rap fans that grew up in an era where shit like that would’ve gotten you clowned out of the game entirely.

Now we have Kanye West about to drop what many thought (per DJ Premier) was a boom bap Hip Hop album. After several GOOD Friday leaks and the announcement that the LP will be titled “My Beautiful Dark & Twisted Fantasy” those same fans have given up all hope of that being true. Had Kanye West never dropped “808’s” as his last album this wouldn’t even be an issue.

I remember the “Graduation” album and the lead singles “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” and “Stronger”. Those songs weren’t too divergent from the themes or the sonic aesthetic of “Power” at all. It’s all about timing, however. We are currently entrenched in an era of emo rap and rappers simply that give too much of themselves and there seems to be no end in sight.

Things won’t ever go back to the way they used to be so forget about it. We are dealing with a new breed of fan today. We’re dealing with different industry dynamics. Fans interact with artists and vice versa in real time. Media oversaturation and technological advancements have removed most of the mystery and distance artists and fans enjoyed in the past.

Gossip and celebrity news both on television and the internet in tandem with the wide proliferation of reality television has shaped how the post Telecommunications Act fan views their favorite artists as well as what they expect from them in terms of image. They’ll simply let more slide because it’s not a leap for them like it is for the older fan.

Take into account that an 18 to 25 year old Hip Hop fan today was born between 1985 and 1992. The Telecommunications Act passed in 1996 (it took until 1997 for the by products to begin to take effect) and there is a new generation of urban music every 3 to 5 years. Stay with me on this.

The average ages that someone first develops their taste in music or becomes aware of it personally are the ages of 9 and 13. If you were born in 1985 that would land you between 1994 and 1998, fully entrenched in the post Telecommunications Act era of music, radio and television networks as well as the reality television era. 

To them, the change hasn’t been as drastic to start and seems pretty organic. It’s the same for their younger siblings who are also part of the same demographic. To us fans that remember what it was like before, the world has turned upside down.

One thing remains the same. Fans respond to whatever music speaks to them and sparks an emotional response. Difference being was the overall aesthetic of the artist and the music of the individual era. We lose our minds when the “Scenario” remix comes on. They lose their minds when “Black & Yellow” comes on.

Hopefully, someone from this Rap generation will have a completely different take on it ten years from now in retrospect. I look forward to reading it.

One.