Nicole be Thinking...

The majority of the artists I love these days exist in some open, genre-less space between R&B and Rap. Naturally, as I prepared to write about music, I listened to music. I began to notice that there was a lot of great stuff that I was skipping in my pursuit of "hip hop." Of course… My mind working the way it does, I began to wonder if hip hop could be considered "black music" and weather a black artist has to make "black music." Creativity in hip hop has steadily progressed with times, but the people's perception of what can be considered hip hop has largely remained the same. Most people expect men bragging about music and talking about women. These days, we want something we can dance to. Most don't want anything that may sound different or... "too artistic" or… something that may challenge the norm. Interestingly, much of what I love about hip hop (the attitude, the storytelling, the percussion) is found in what may be consi...

At some point in the conversation that inspired this week of music posts, my mother told me Kanye West isn't a rapper. She doesn't dislike him… (She did one of my numbers…) "I don't not like him. He's just not hip hop." I was shocked at first. Then I thought it through. As I was going through my music to prove Kanye's "hip-hop-ness" to her, I went to Jay-Z songs first. Clearly I still think of Kanye the Producer, first. As I started going through his music, I realized that Kanye the Rapper is pretty solid, too. It all got me thinking about what she said about him not being hip hop. Where does he fit in hip hop? For many of us, Kanye was just another producer when he almost died in a car crash in 2002. The release of his first single, "Through the Wire," in 2003 was like an awakening. The album that followed, College Dropout , went double platinum within 4 months of its release, which is stellar for a debut. The combination of Kanye...

I have had a hate-hate relationship with Puff Daddy for years now. Anyone who knows me -- or has taken any amount of time to talk about music with me -- knows that I believe that everything that's wrong with music today is Puff Daddy's fault. It's like my own version of "Six Degrees of Separation." Look: Do you remember what female emcees were like before Puff Daddy came along? Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, Roxanne Shante, etc. Salt-n-Pepa were as raunchy as it got. But then… Puff Daddy saw how much money he made when he introduced "hardcore" R&B singers like Mary J. Blige, so he decided to flip it, mind fuck us, if you will, and give us an uber sexualized "hardcore" female rapper. And voila… Lil Kim. What happens to female emcees after that? Foxy Brown, Eve, and eventually Nikki Minaj happens. Puff Daddy also made it cool to rap about excess and money. Mo' money, mo' problems, right? Had he not made that shift in the paradigm w...

Do you remember when Kenan Thompson joined the cast of Saturday Night Live ? It was weird. Not because Kenan's not really that funny… But because he was the first SNL cast member born after the show's premiere in 1975. It left some wondering how someone who didn’t witness the greatness of something could contribute to that greatness. That's an essential question of hip hop today. Ponder this…. Rakim and Jay-Z were about 10 when "Rapper's Delight" hit the top of the charts in 1979. When he was barely 20, Rakim released Paid in Full . Soulja Boy was 6 when Reasonable Doubt was released. And what did he give the world? "Crank That." What's worse… Soulja Boy had the nerve to "beef" with Ice T, to whom he owes much respect. Soulja Boy’s quest to legitimize his rap career has him doing somersaults on the toes of his forefathers. There appears to be a tremendous generation gap between older hip hop heads and the people enjoying the music t...