Editor’s Note 012

What up Hip Hop? Okay, can we please stop saying that hip hop is not dead? I’m so tired of hearing people say real hip hop and getting really irrate and yelling into the mic, “hip hop isn’t dead.” We know! People are taking Nas’s statement a little to far. Nas knows hip hop isn’t dead but he’s simply acknowledging the fact that hip hop isn’t on point and balanced and the arms of hip hop have allowed this art to be turned into a commidity which will ultimately dilute the why this expression was created.

Yes, there are a million other factors that I could go into about hip hop and the current pros and cons of why hip hop is the way it is. If you are a hip hop head great, we don’t need to shout to the world for people to realize that it’s alive and moving, where it’s moving is another conversation for another issue.

Scheme had the opportunity to cover the 2007 Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival and it was comprised of a diverse showcase of artists from Large Professor, Ghostface all the way down to Blitz the Amassador and although some shouted at the top of they’re lungs that hip hop is not dead the music easily spoke for itself.

In the future I ask that all hip hop artists, producers, beatmakers, emcees, poets and fans just let your work speak for itself, the reality is right now hip hop already speaks loud an clear, the question is if hip hop could stand on its own with no one to explain anything to someone who runs into it for the first time, what do you think that person would say about hip hop?

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