Music is for everyone but difficulty allows the craft to be valued. Decades ago, hip hop was pioneering metaphors, flow-switches, jokes, and tongue twisters. Rap ability was the emphasis. Now, it's much more about heritage authenticity.
Heritage authenticity is often demanded by close-minded skeptics that believe in maintaining social norms, but the strange trade off is that those audiences seem to respond positively to traditions even when they aren't their own.
Although we believe that bad music is harmful in selling urban culture, it's refreshing that people have banded together to integrate poverty. Talent, education, and opportunity are great, but they aren't fairly dispersed and shouldn't be mandatory.
It seems that we've learned from the past and become numb to generational cliches due to experience-based wisdom, but there needs to be a balance between making life fair and making music that generates support.
Lil Uzi Vert is a rapper that emerged post-Odd Future simultaneously with Playboi Carti. They invented a rap style that performs like rock live but isn't so intellectual that it alienates hip hop lovers. This album is exactly where hip hop culture is in diction, aesthetic, mentality, and presentation. One critique would be the fact that this sounds like music that you have to already like hip hop to appreciate. He isn't pioneering new markets the way the cover would suggest. The features are nice and some of the songs are fantastic but from a complete song standpoint rather than a specific aspect. With all that said, this album is the best rap album of the year so far, good job Uzi.
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