Today’s Hip Hop is nothing more than originality regurgitated. I say this because redundancy plagues us.

The content of popular hip hop is regressive to the point that the underlying message of our culture becomes lost in Soundscan and three comma sales, pushed by greedy record executives and A&Rs whose only interest is to sell.

The majority of Hip Hop being played, bought and sold constantly, expresses and enforces stereotypes of our music, us, and expresses lies about the notion of “real.”

Hip Hop is the biggest cultural movement of our generation, and the farther it moves, the more it loses its way along the path of its original goal:expression of raw truth.

Hip Hop had a raw and righteous, innovative and restless spirit, but now it’s nothing more than a manufactured product sold by BET and MTV.

Hip Hop is our voice and were losing because our views as a culture are not being expressed. There is diversity within our culture, within hip hop, but no one seems to realize that. And if these views are not expressing themselves through the vehicle that they need to be expressed in, then our cultural identity, the very essence of our cultural movement, will simply be lost.

An African proverb states, “I am because we are, and because we are, therefore I am.”

Can you answer who we are in today’s Hip Hop? Are we innovators? 50 Cent, Young Buck, Trillville are some of the hottest selling rappers in the game right now, but how are they original?

Do they spit anything new, intelligent, or ground breaking? No.

Everything they say has been said before, and will be said over and over again until greedy record execs can’t make a dime of these modern day sellouts. If these artists, and artists who imitate them, are the current gauge of Hip Hop maturity, than have we really grown?

As a genre of music, Hip Hop is young, so why are we receding at such a young age? All it should do is be growing. And we know it isn’t because we continue to buy into the formulas that are force-fed to us through pop-culture engineers. They tell us what is “real.”

Another African proverb states that no matter how big or how tall your house is it has to be built on something. What we consider as original, old school hip hop was strong, angry, happy, and simply exuberant. It was a blueprint, a foundation that led the way for rapper like Nas, Jay-Z, 2 Pac, Jadakiss, The Notorious B.I.G., Method Man, Redman, Common, Kanye West, T.I., and countless others.

Do we really need to add to that foundation with Bone Crusher, or other Rin and Tin characters? Do they were the proud flag of Hip Hop? Hell no. They were the proud flag of the dollar sign, and that is the symbol of capitalism, not Hip Hop.

Hip Hop is raw truth through its expression which is why realness is a constant Hip Hop theme. Mainstream Hip Hop however is not real, and as a result it doesn’t have a solid sense of self so consequently it cannot grow, and we’ll be stuck hearing the same beats that sound like they were put together on Casio keyboard bought from Toys R’ Us for $10.

We’ll be stuck hearing the same old “Shoot ’em up in the club” lyrics for a long, long time if we don’t stop buying this garbage.

Hip Hop doesn’t know who it is, it doesn’t have a solid sense of self, and because of that, it, along with us, is lost. One Love.