The state of pop culture has shifted a lot over the decades. The idea of the “rock star” had pretty much faded with the death of Kurt Cobain and the grunge era. Eventually, the battle for cultural supremacy was the pop stars and boy bands versus hip-hop. Through a war of attrition, hip-hop outlasted and became the face of pop culture. Nowadays, it’s hard to quite define pop culture at all outside of memes and internet wormholes.
By 2015, though, Vince Staples saw that hip-hop was the defining cultural export. As a result, he said our old ideas of what a rockstar looks like had changed significantly. “Rap is the genre. Rap is culture. Hip-hop culture is popular culture; it is American culture. Tell me who the rock star is right now?” he questioned in a 2015 interview.
The interviewer suggested that Taylor Swift was a rock star. But Vince Staples countered by defining her in pop terms and noting how she also embodied hip-hop aesthetics. Ultimately, rock stars have more of an edge that can exist in modern cultural standards. They defined what was cool. By those parameters, what else could define modern culture but hip-hop?
Vince Staples Says Rappers Are the New Rockstars
“Who is Axl Rose? Who is Gene Simmons? Those people are dead. The closest thing we have to rock stars are actual rappers now. That is the replacement. The rockstars are A$AP Rocky, are Travis Scott, are Kanye West, are Tyler, the Creator. Those are the rockstars. Gucci Mane,” Vince Staples said.
“And popular culture is that. You don’t see people walking around dressing like Jack White. That’s not real. So hip-hop is a popular, dominant culture. But the fact that hip-hop belongs to urban and typically Black people, [it’s] why we can’t just say that hip-hop is the popular culture. But it is. There’s no way around it,” Vince Staples continued.
The interviewer still wasn’t buying it. They argued that if they aren’t at the top of popular charts, it can’t truly count. But Staples broke it down even further, down to the musical anatomy tracing back to hip-hop in some way. “They play rap on the radio … Talk about the structure of the production, the way that it’s made. You talk about the aesthetic of these artists — they’re not making traditional pop and R&B music. Listen to the Weeknd’s hook structure on ‘Often.’ Listen to the drums on ‘The Hills’. This is hip-hop,” Vince Staples concluded.
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