Pinnacle Music

Among mainstream and obscure music critics who review rap music,^[1] there’s been a concerted effort of late to champion the same positions: that hip hop is not dead and that the ubiquitous influence of hip hop’s “golden era”^[2] is hindering the advancement of the music by marginalizing its young talent and new directions (The Ashcan’s Jef Catapang penned a nice overview of this tired meme). Pop music critic Jonah Weiner offers this inexcusably shallow caricature of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ assessment that the quality of rap has waned since the 90s: “[According to Coates,] Biggie died, sampling waned, lyrics got dumber, charisma trumped talent, the clock struck Y2K, the pumpkin turned into an Escalade.” Essentially, Weiner and other mainstream rap writers are accusing former fans like Coates^[3] of taking an approach to hip hop that mirrors Wynton Marsalis’ approach to jazz,^[4] as evidenced by the writers’ delightful pejoratives for former fans: “purists,” “nostalgists,” “revivalists,” “boom bap dinosaurs,” “true schoolers.”