I am thoroughly confused by the present day as a whole. Why lie? The lines have completely blurred and I have trouble determining reality from parody in today’s music and entertainment industries. Things that people use to joke about as extremes are often happening and being passed off on us as our regular entertainment. Is this an alternate reality? Are we through the looking glass? Has everyone gone crazy? What exactly is really going on?

If you spend enough time on World Star Hip Hop or even a Viacom network like MTV Jams (since MTV & VH1 don’t actually play videos anymore) you’ll come across videos and artists that look and sound like something that was cooked up by a comedy troupe or an ensemble that specializes in urban satire or parodies. Once the video is done you realize that this is a real artist. That was a real song. That was a real video and said artist is signed to a real label. The joke’s on you. The joke’s on all of us. I’m not laughing.

The purpose of parody and satire is to take the current state of affairs then to take them to an extreme in order to show the overall absurdity of the times. The sad truth is that the current stable of artists that pervade the music industry have left us with no extremes to go to. I often make shit up on Twitter just to find out later that the scenario I cooked up as a joke has actually manifested itself in real life. This is extremely disturbing to me.

The dumbing down of America has pervaded every single aspect of our lives even if we haven’t noticed it. It’s completely ravaged the overall quality of our media. The byproducts include the slow death of print and television journalism in favor of tabloid journalism and celebrity news. Original scripted programming has often been scrapped in favor of cheaper to produce reality television shows so the quality of the entire field as a whole has also dropped. This all won’t end well.

It’s also resulted in the eventual removal of most artists with overwhelming talent, originality or any real substance from the music industry. When’s the last time anyone signed a Public Enemy or even a Dead Prez? Marketability has trumped talent and substance. Is there any coincidence that during this same post Telecommunications Act period it’s also been discovered that America also has a health & weight problem in addition to an education crisis? I don’t think so. Everything is everything.

I’ll watch an episode of “The Boondocks” and laugh my ass off at the over the top, super ignorant antics of Thugnificent and the Lethal Interjection Crew or Gangstalicious. I’ll then see someone in Hip Hop do something even MORE ignorant in real life right afterwards. I remember when people used to do parody Rap songs and make them purposely derivative or overly ignorant to prove a point. Nowadays, this is exactly the same kind of shit that gets burn on the radio. These are the kinds of cats that make MTV “hottest” lists. This is what gets played at the club.

It would be different if there were any alternatives to these artists at the mainstream level but there aren’t. Gucci Mane gets right out of jail and releases his album. Lil’ Boosie releases his album from jail. T.I. gets out of jail just in time for his film “Takers” to come out and hit #1 in theaters before he gets arrested and goes back to jail so his album “King Uncaged” has to be pushed back and the title needs to be changed to “No Mercy” instead.

Lil’ Wayne releases “I Am Not A Human Being” from jail and when he’s finally released from prison people rejoice as if he was Nelson Mandela. These aren’t “The Boondocks” episodes. This all actually happened in real life. Between Shyne converting to Judaism and getting out of jail then getting deported to Belize where L.A. Reid flew to sign him for a gang of dough just to have his music be terrible is enough to make my head explode.

I have given up being surprised at the ridiculous or ignorant things that happen in the music industry. I only get angry and/or frustrated now. I get angry that things have been allowed to get to this point in the first place. I get frustrated that no one seems to be as appalled as I am at the state of the current Rap industry. I’m in awe that these record executives can sleep at night. I’m surprised that no one in the Hip Hop media has completely snapped yet. Don’t they know there’s something wrong with all this shit?

Antoine Dodson performed at the BET Hip Hop Awards recently. That never should’ve happened. It never should’ve been signed off on. He simply shouldn’t have been there. BET has meaningless slogans like “Music Matters”. BULLSHIT. If the music truly mattered to them, they’d play and air better music on the network and they wouldn’t disgrace the art of Hip Hop by allowing things like that to occur in the first damn place. I thought that was common sense? Guess not, huh?

Atlantic Records (the same label that didn’t release Saigon’s “The Greatest Story Never Told” and refused to release Lupe Fiasco’s “L.A.S.E.R.S” until he initiated a campaign that forced the label to give him an actual release date) went out and signed the mentally challenged rapper 50 Tyson to a record deal. When the news first broke I thought it was a Twitter joke. Once I discovered that it was actually true I damn near had an aneurysm.

Two singles were released to promote Lil’ Wayne’s new album “I Am Not A Human Being”. The first announced leak from the album was a song featuring Drake called “Gonorrhea”. I thought this was a joke at first, that was until I checked my e-mail and saw no less than 5 links to the aforementioned song. When I heard the song I just sighed to myself knowing that this generation of Rap fans is being shortchanged in every single way imaginable.

We’re at the point now where the current music listening and buying audience under the age of 25 isn’t even aware that there’s anything currently wrong with the music industry or the overall quality of music. Most of the great artists and producers that we came up with are completely irrelevant to them. They don’t realize that the music they’re currently listening to has been diluted, watered down and A&R’d to ensure it does well at radio or gets spins in the club without any thought being put into whether or not the music itself is actually any GOOD or not.

It’s almost as if there are no standards anymore. You’d think there were no adults with common sense or self awareness left in the music industry. I’m convinced there’s absolutely no one to say “No”. You’d think that no one in the industry had any clue what quality material that would stand the test of time even sounds like anymore. The evidence is everywhere. Either everyone is inept and stupid or they know better and they’re purposely allowing these things to happen.

It’s sobering and discouraging to flip through one of the few remaining Rap magazines and see Roscoe Dash or Cali Swag District getting ink instead someone with better material. It’s almost as if you’re in an alternate reality where wackness is the new dope and vice versa. Soulja Boy and other artists of his ilk often say that they aren’t trying to be lyrical and people (including music journalists) go along with that and don’t call him on it. WHAT? Hold up a minute…

What you’re telling me is that you’re a Hip Hop journalist co-signing someone speaking against lyrical excellence or having compelling lyrical content? If you do that then you’re part of the problem for accepting the low standards in music as well as the overall low quality of it. Every time a list of the “hottest” emcees or rappers is aired on MTV or BET or a list is written in a Hip Hop publication if the main criterion isn’t talent and the overall quality of the artist’s material then it’s instantly BULLSHIT.

I have trouble understanding how you can assemble a group of Hip Hop journalists that spend all their time discussing classic material and writing books about timeless Hip Hop sit around a table discussing insignificant minutiae about mediocre rappers that no one will care about in three to five years. Isn’t that obvious to anyone but me? Are they really calling Waka Flocka Flame “hot” with straight faces? Have they even HEARD Hip Hop before? Is this the third level of an inception?

If the quality of the music you’re reporting on is mediocre then any show you produce reporting or chronicling it will also be mediocre by default. It’s mathematics, God. If BDS spins, video spins and sales are the lone criteria for determining who’s “hot” when 75% of the greatest or most influential artists in history never moved a significant amount of units but inspired people to write books about them and pick up mic, decks and beat machines then doesn’t that mean these lists are all really inconsequential and backwards?

In closing, there’s one thing I use to keep me sane during this odd era where being good at what you do gets frowned upon but being wack, unoriginal, non lyrical and lacking any lyrical content or depth of any kind gets you accolades, praise and radio play. I ask myself if whatever artist I’m listening to’s music will be worth owning 5 years from now. If so, I rock with it. If not, I dispose of it. That’s why it’s called disposable music, after all. I write about that music that inspires me in light of the bullshit that pervades the marketplace today.

 If a new “Book Of Rap Lists” was made today, 85% of the rappers and emcees in the game today at the major label level wouldn’t even be worthy of getting mentioned in it. That being the case then why are they who everyone is focusing on? If the industry was actually about quality again then we wouldn’t be where we are today, wondering whether or not that new bullshit we heard about was actually a real song or not until we get links to the CDQ version in our Gmail inboxes.

One.