Ever since the end of hip-hop’s golden age, people have been concerned about the genre’s vitality. For a lot of people, hip-hop has been dead and resurrected numerous amounts of times. Even Nas made a whole album about it, probably one of the weaker mainstream efforts that year too. This sentiment still lasts today. What does Raekwon, one of the bastions of ‘real hip-hop,’ think about the state of the game?
Recently, the Chef spoke with Billboard about his latest album The Emperors New Clothes. As one of the all-time rappers and someone people understand as real, the publication asks if the genre is in a good place. Ultimately, he shrugs about it; Raekwon distinguishes hip-hop as a larger experience from rap. Anybody could theoretically rap but it means something entirely different in a cultural sense. Consequently, authenticity is all that matters when you enter the culture. This is precisely why he made his latest album.
Raekwon Says Hip-Hop “Is Not Being Represented Right”
“That title is a reality title to me,” he says of The Emperors New Clothes. “Today, everything is being followed by status quo. I’m a person that’s a big advocate of authenticity over popularity. Just because tomato is to-mato, that don’t mean that you can change the words up. I just think hip-hop is being — what’s the word I wanna say? — hip-hop is definitely being punctured right now by elements that really don’t hold onto the culture the way we know it to be.”
When Billboard asks Raekwon to expand on the idea, he notes that rap is more of a skill that can be acquired. But you aren’t hip-hop just because you’re capable of rapping. It’s a much deeper experience. “A lot of things are sounding alike. People are emulating each other, [doing] whatever makes sense according to their popularity, and you have these labels that are so much in power they could change the dynamics of what hip-hop really is, you know? Rap music is rap music, but hip-hop is something that to me always had its own flagship,” Raekwon explains.
Rap is something I feel like anybody can do. You can learn overnight to do it, but that doesn’t make you authentic. That just shows you have the talent and the ability to create something, but a lot of times things that everybody feel are hip-hop is not hip-hop, it’s rap. I just think it’s a separation gap here, Raekwon adds.
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