Esch: His son grows up to become the biggest Nas stan out there.
and it would be cool that my kid likes hip hop even though it's going to die as a genre inside the decade
OH GOD I HOPE SO.
Why? Killing a genre off cause it's popular is pretty fucking stupid.
You don't understand. Music has been a part of the black american experience going back to the slave days. Music is very big in our culture. Currently, rap has held a monopoly on black american culture to the point of homogeneity. More than that, in its current incarnation, it doesn't serve as a means to express the black experience. If you are black and over 30 and want music to represent your life, lol, you're fucked as far as the mains stream is concerned. It has killed r&b in the traditional sense, the de-facto means of black artistic expression for nearly 50 years. 20 years ago, there were much more types of ways to have this experience represented. To you, it's just music. That's why it's taken hold to so many non-blacks. To me, it's a part of a larger culture, and my culture is not being represented by one genre being the only game in town as it carries the coattails of a genre way past its prime that has betrayed its own initial ideals.
With the death of rap, hopefully black people can rise up and have music that speaks for us again. Until then, staying underground is a necessity.
