Hip Hop Music continues to rules the music chartsWritten by Syd Johnson
Hip hop music is dominating online and offline music charts. Hip hop music fans experience an “it’s about time” moment every time they turn on MTV, VH1 or any local radio station that doesn’t specialize in country music. Even urban channels that used to play only mid tempo rock music have diversified their rotations to include more hip hop music.Why is hip hop suddenly everywhere? Suburban Kids! They latched on beats, nouveau riche lifestyle full of machismo and bling, and they latched on to party. Hip hop might have started out as a companion to rap music, but today, two musical genres are a world apart. Hip hop is funky, full of energy, dynamic, catchy, male, female, American, European, Asian and Indian all at same time. Modern hip hop is so dance friendly that frankly no cares about lyrics anymore. I can name a bunch of up and comers in field including Lloyd Banks, Ciara (or anyone else out of Missy/Timbaland factory) and Chingy. Then, let’s not forget 3 million people that make up G-Unit and D12. That’s pretty cool. Now, can I name one verse of any song, by any of these artists? Of course not! These people are selling hip hop music for club. If I hear even three seconds of a song from any one of them, I’m on dance floor. Still, I can’t come up with two solid lines to any of their songs. Why?
| | Modern Country Music Lyrics still retain the art of storytellingWritten by Syd Johnson
Country music lyrics are blasting on urban music stations as younger American trying to escape emergence of bad pop and even awful pop music turn to this stable genre. Country music is currently gaining on rock as second most popular music format on American radio stations. It is right behind hip hop in terms of people’s ability to identify a feel, a demographic, and a sense of rebellion when they hear lyrics on many songs.If you look back into early to mid 90’s it seemed that country music was on decline. In fact, if you look at some of popular hits from Shania Twain and even “I will always love you” by Whitney Houston, country music lyrics could only be heard by crossover pop artists. I’m sure that many in industry thought this would be end of great commercial successes for modern country artists. Fortunately, Nashville establishment held on to their traditions and developed a new set of country artists that would appeal to young urban listeners. So why didn’t they stray and turn country music into a subgenre of crappy pop? The answer lies in lessons of 1980’s. Country music went through a moment as “it music” during early to mid 1980’s with detrimental results. There were more stars, doing more tours and making more money than ever before, but most popular country music lyrics at time did not reflect geographic sensibilities of south.
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