Does hip-hop need adult contemporary categories? Yes, and others too.

I realize I’m old-school, especially with regards to hip-hop. I’m 45 and grew up on ’90s and 2000s hip-hop — all my favorite hip-hop albums were released between 1991 and 2001. Despite my love for music released within the ’90s and 2000s, I’m a complete fan of the present era of music. I feel young artists are doing super creative things with sound and their voices right away. Almost each day, after I browse curated playlists on various streaming services, I come across recent music that puts a smile on my face; the youngsters will likely be effective.

As with the evolution of anything, as something recent comes along, the older stuff gets pushed further and further out of the image. That’s to not say that the old guard isn’t creating, but that those versions of art that stick firmly and faithfully to the older way of doing things grow to be more area of interest than the universally praised way they once were.

This is the case with hip-hop. While I really like the present era, I also understand why many individuals my age don’t. Lyrics, once an indicator of the culture, aren’t the principal focus. Rappers sing almost as much, if no more, than they rap. Even the toughest rappers mostly sing songs, in a rap style, with pitch correction and vocal effects. Sure, some rap, nevertheless it’s more of a mixture of styles and sounds than… “rapping.” The sound of hip-hop has also modified drastically. Because music production is now so software-based, there are more producers in the combination, and to older ears, lots of songs sound… similar. You can download a music production app and make a full beat 10 minutes later. While this makes it more accessible to get into the art form, it also implies that anyone with a pc or phone (most individuals) can grow to be a producer. Some of the outcomes are amazing—some aren’t.

It also implies that hip-hop as a genre has a ton of music now, and all of it falls under the identical umbrella, even when the sound is so diverse that two artists who each do hip-hop could make music that exists in polar opposite sonic universes, but they each rap. For lots of us, there’s a transparent difference between The Lox and Migos. Or Kendrick Lamar and Lil Yachty. Or J. Cole and Kodak Black. It’s like they’re making completely different music, but they’re all making music now. Sure, some artists collaborate and discover a technique to make it work, but the reality is that some music just is not the identical, even when it’s all hip-hop.

So when ninth Wonder, the famous music producer, teacher, DJ and hip-hop historian tweeted that it was time for an “adult contemporary” category in hip-hop, echoed a thought and conversation lots of us have had who grew up on hip-hop, which felt like a very different era… and purpose.

ninth Wonder’s July tweet from 2024 got here on the heels of a joint album from rap legends Common and producer Pete Rock. The album is fun and speaks to a certain generation of rap fans. It features boom-bap and lyricism that those of us who grew up within the 90s will recognize. The album is built on the rhythms, rhymes, and formulas of life that were the essence of the culture. The album sounds good in 2024 when it was released, nevertheless it could have just as easily existed in previous eras. I feel that’s the purpose ninth Wonder was making. So many genres of music allow their music to be divided into categories that more accurately fit the sound or era by which something was created. I could not have the opportunity to define yacht rock, but I do know yacht rock is something after I hear it. Heavy metal, country, classical, etc. are all genres which have subgenres that allow art to exist within the space where it’s most understood, fairly than being dismissed as old or unpopular on the time.

Music

To me, it just is smart to permit for some diversity in how we categorize releases. It doesn’t take away from the culture, nevertheless it recognizes that hip-hop has been around long enough and has many various ways of existing. It’s not a division, it’s… an evolution. And even when we do not technically create subgenres of hip-hop for awards and stuff, they still exist; just because the older hip-hop fans amongst us complain in regards to the recent generation of artists and sounds, the younger guys aren’t desperate to revisit a sound that was already gone once they were born.

Now some people might want divisions in hip-hop to distinguish the music they love from the music they don’t, which isn’t great, nevertheless it’s human nature. But the reality is that 90s hip-hop was different from the 80s, and there was some trepidation in regards to the direction that artists from the early 90s were taking the music. There have all the time been conversations about labels and categories in hip-hop, from gangsta rap (which some looked as if it would welcome) to conscious rap (which many rappers avoided because they didn’t wish to be boxed right into a label that sometimes created not possible expectations). Trap rap and emo rap were the sounds of the day.

I do not know if we need to divide hip-hop into categories solely for awards purposes in order that rappers who would never hearken to one another or perform on the identical stages don’t compete for a similar awards, but I do not see anything incorrect with letting the music and sound run their course. The popularity of newer artists makes it harder for music that follows a more “traditional” sound to take up space. Maybe ninth Wonder thinks Common and Pete Rock’s The Auditorium Vol. 1 album must win every award it will probably, so we need categories so he can achieve this. I do not even know what awards that might be. Or possibly it’s only a call to place adult contemporary radio stations and the like on terrestrial radio that play Mobb Deep, Stalley, OutKast, Jean Grae, and The Fugees all day long?

It’s at the very least a fun thought exercise. Hip-hop has many tentacles, and I see nothing incorrect with acknowledging and acting in a way that celebrates all of them.