KRS-What?
September 30th, 2009 by Ben Westhoff in Music newsSince KRS-One lives in Atlanta these days (I believe), he’s fair game for this blog’s criticism. In any case, his recent comments about Def Jam deserve a dissection.
“Def Jam is the dopest label in hip-hop, in the culture of hip-hop,” he said. “There really would be no hip-hop as we know it today if it wasn’t for Def Jam. But you don’t get that respect without also being the label that single-handedly destroyed hip-hop.”
Not surprisingly, he goes on to blame that great hip-hop boogeyman of commercialization for ruining things, as if that’s something that can or should be controlled. (If hip-hop weren’t commercial he would be out of a job and — his worst nightmare — no one would be listening to him.)
He goes on to praise Jay-Z’s album, which is easily the most commercial, well-publicized disc of the year. He follows that up by plugging his new work with Buckshot, Survival Skills, and complaining that it’s not on the radio enough. Huh? He’s complaining that he’s not allowed to be as commercial as he would like to be?
My final problem is the “single-handedly destroyed hip-hop” part. If hip-hop is so dead, then why did he release an album called Hip Hop Lives two years ago?
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