Focal Point

Being the center of attention has its advantages. It provides a functional protection from secretive people and it patents your ideas as fast as you create them. 

The problem is right now, power is everything. Hip hop is being weighed by its effect on the culture. 

The positive side of making culture appeal is fine. The problem is every positive reason to love the culture is twisted to augment social filters. And because no one is visible to be accountable, the artists are taking blame for everything.

Technology and Music Interest

Technology has given a voice to countless artists. However, it has drastically weakened the impact of that music on their audiences. How do you measure music's importance beyond it's problem solving efficiency? 

Concerts send a strong message and defy politics if only for a few minutes. Artists give hope for relationships that are organic and emotionally satisfying. Songs that are imperfectly targeted can reach people that are overlooked by everything else. Music is important and technology is vital to sharing it well.

Algorithm Irony

People seem so critical of thug culture, and yet they feel perfectly fine pushing the most aggressive and negative artists in rap. Now it's important to showcase the culture in its entirety, but what you glorify with success will be what people will imitate. We all have dreams.

Criteria

The standards are so much higher for white rappers than black rappers. The standards are so much higher for younger rappers. The standards are so high, and yet allow such average content to be accepted and even celebrated.

Default

Society claims to be afraid or boldly unafraid whenever it's convenient for hate. Society is bitter about universal problems, but warp those problems to target convenient targets. RapIndie is very inviting and friendly, but all we can do for bitterness is display artists with the same bitterness you have for the same problems.

Uniformity

If you don't want to exactly adhere to a pattern, then why not keep people that lighten your pressure to adhere to a pattern?

Back to Elitism

Being anti quality-control only works with noble intentions. All or nothing inclusivity is not resulting in "all". Empowering simplicity: good. Empowering poverty: good. Empowering mediocrity: not working.

Aggression

Hip hop culture has traditionally been a voice for people in poverty. Poverty usually increases crime. Although RapIndie's vision is an innovative rewrite of what it means to be a rapper, tolerance for the norms of hip hop culture is something we expect from our audience. It's ok to prefer the best of hip hop (we do), but we would like to ask for a little understanding for the worst of it.

Maybe Less IS More...

Quality is usually important. It's impactful, infectious, and evokes attachment. However, intentional lack of quality may be doing more good than simply making the world less critical.

1. In a world of digital art, real artists are often more inspired to try new seemingly easy things.

2. Are curator standards different than the casual audiences? Maybe people are satisfied.

3. Artists that blend in are more accepted and unified.

Unity

A while back, some people got together and over-powered exclusion. 

One of the biggest issues was that mob-mentality appropriation was inescapable in every community. Is the refusal to shout out "RapIndie" culture shock? Passive aggression?

The hip hop football team needs every position. Someone needed to showcase the potential of the culture, someone needed to use that potential to create a community, and someone needs to share/translate that community to every audience.