Yes there is a difference that I completely acknowledge but at the end of the day as I have repeatedly one cannot deny that he is a major part of the hip-hop world CURRENTLY.

It appears that many of you are upset because you don’t like Soulja and are taking that bias and misunderstanding the purpose of the article but again we’ve all heard the age old adage:

ANY PRESS IS GOOD PRESS
“Everybody feel a way about K, but at least you feel something’!”- Kanye West

That’s a joke, kind of like I thought the poster might be joking as well in his Soulja Boy worshiping, which would have been funny. But he isn’t joking, which is also funny in a different way.

I think my favorite part of his response is his waxing poetic about the glory days of Bad Boy, including the great Puff Daddy. Now that guy was a real musician. Only the purest of musical talents could come up with such a poignant anthem as “I’ll Be Missing You.” Or any of his other catalog of remakes of classic songs.
(see, here again I am joking)

Look, the bottom line is that this isn’t actually a hard question. A person, having never heard either Rakim or Soulja Boy, if asked which of their songs required more TALENT to write, would probably laugh at you for asking the question, regardless of his generation. In other words, Rakim’s superiority to Soulja Boy AS A MUSICAL TALENT (as compared with a salesman, which you seem to view as the same thing), is objectively obvious.

As others have ably pointed out, there are other hip hop talents today for whom this might not be so easy a question. I for one think it’s a mistake to say that the best have come and gone. But Souljaboy? Really?

Your effort to defend your choice is admirable, but it’s not too late to say you were actually joking. It’d help your credibility as a “hip hop expert.”

P.S. Please correct me if I’m mistaken.

Dirk

It’s all opinion, and that’s the best part of Music-it’s all that you make of it.

Joe Tomlinson

But you’re right, we’re looking at it from totally different angles that can’t really be compared. Mainstream and Underground rap will always be different. It’s my fault for comparing them, really. I still don’t know if I agree Souljaboy is the voice of the new age, but then again you know the culture better than I. I live in suburbia, far from the culture of hip-hop, so I can only judge based on the music.

Heck, I’ll support both our points with one verse from Jay’s Moment of Clarity:

The music business hate me
Cause the industry ain’t make me
Hustlers and boosters embrace me
And the music i be makin
I dumb down for my audience
And double my dollars
They criticize me for it
Yet they all yell “Holla”
If skills sold
Truth be told
I’d probably be
Lyricly
Talib Kweli
Truthfully
I wanna rhyme like Common Sense
(But i did five Mil)
I ain’t been rhymin like Common since
When your sense got that much in common
And you been hustlin since
Your inception
Fuck perception
Go with what makes sense
Since
I know what i’m up against
We as rappers must decide what’s most impor-tant
And i can’t help the poor if i’m one of them
So i got rich and gave back
To me that’s the win, win
The next time you see the homie and his rims spin
Just know my mind is workin just like them
(The rims that is).

I would never consider Souljaboy the best rapper/MC out there, but as far as him making it himself and getting sales, good for him. He may sell more than a lot of other artists, but I’d never place my money on him in a freestyle battle against someone like Del Tha Funkee Homosapien. And I’d still never try to boast him as a technically good rapper. He is far from it. But I guess you’re right about the culture. He’s what people are listening to nowadays, along with Weezy. Sad but true. We are comparing too mostly separate categories: the technically skilled and the mainstream popular.

Lupe is great content wise but I wouldn’t even go as far as to place him as one of my top 10 artist of today. He doesn’t have both angles of what it takes to be successful in the industry. You have to be able to parlay your talent well in both the lyrical aspect and within the wave of what the mainstream hip-hop audience wants. And thats not to say he should ‘dumb it down’ but to achieve that he needs to find a way to make himself something people actually want to listen to. Also let me reiterate the fact that I listen to everyone and everything: so let me kick it to you like this. Lupe can’t even deny Soulja’s influence. On Enemy of the State(since foltzy wants to bring up mixtapes) the hardest song that Lupe laid verses to was on a SOULJABOY SONG! He went as far as to say in an MTV interview that “the south always has that heat before it up comes up north so I wanted to find the hardest song down there before it would made its way here”(i’m looking for the interview now). When artists take time to select beats to rap on for mixtapes they choose what is the hardest song out at the time……soulja…

P.S. Men Lie Women Lie Numbers Don’t, we can all argue we want this and that for hip hop or hip hop should be this but at the end of the day Lupe has never achieved anymore more that Gold(500,000 copies sold).

First, however, I feel I must address the first few comments that were posted: Music is given power through the memories YOU create behind it. The only reason that you all feel so strongly about the past state of hip-hop is because that is what you grew up hearing. Those songs were songs that you can remember rapping with your friends, listening to on your first date, or your first time………………kissing a girl to. One of my pet peeves is that people are so quick to say “well it used to be” BUT ITS NOT ANYMORE!

The current generation of hip hop youngsters does knows little of who artists of the Rakim age are, and more importantly DON’T CARE. Their attention span would not even permit them to listen to and appreciate it the way that generations of the past were able to. And this is not to their own discredit, it is to say that the music that they are exposed to reflects their world: the style of dress, the slang, the SWAG(even though I hate the world) of the time. The same way that I would not expect you older hip-hop cats to show up wearing clothes from the Fresh Prince era, why would you expect these kids to have to same taste in what they like from an artist? Simply put THINGS CHANGE…’GET OVER IT’(drake reference for ya).

The music that they are growing up on is what they will come to appreciate into adulthood, not for its “quality” as some of you put(which is as subjective of a word as you could find because the ear of one is not the ear of another) but because of the memories they will come to ascociate with the songs they are currently listening to.

Second, never did I make the argument that Souljaboy is my favorite artist, nor did I state that he is the best rapper alive. I happened to grow up during Reasonable Doubt/Vol. 2 times (and I hope you all crying for the old hip-hop actually know what i’m referring to). Therefore, I have been alive when Biggie Smallz was Biggie Smallz and not the Notorious BIG, I was a avid lover of the music when Bad Boy Records was the only thing played on the radio on ever station from Craig Mack to Mase to the Lox to Puff Daddy to Faith Evans to Black Rob to Carl Thomas (get your hip-hop thesaurus), I was alive and remember EXACTLY what I was doing when they announced the news that TuPac was dead. But because I lived through all this and still am emersed within the CULTURE of hip-hop not just the msuic, Jay-Z will always be the best rapper EVER TO DO IT(we’ll save that for the article after the next). BUT in an industry where you have to ‘sell your soul’(again grab your thesaurus if you don’t get the reference)to go platinum, I can’t comprehend how you can quickly pass judgement on a 19 year old kid you paved HIS OWN WAY into the music industry. He did it without major producers, without big artists pushing him, and all the while has still remained consistent with dropping hits. ‘MEN LIE WOMEN LIE NUMBERS DON’T'(hope you picked up on that one too). What were YOU doing at 16?……exactly

We all love Drake and claim he is the panacea for the lack of the lyrical ailment in recent hip-hop but where would he be without being backed by Wayne? There are plenty of extremely gifted emcees that just will never break out BECAUSE THAT IS NOT WHAT PEOPLE WANT TO HEAR RIGHT NOW. Yes I know and am aware of who Jay Electronica is, but J. Cole is just as great of an emcee(listen to The Warm Up) but lets be honest there have always been ‘great emcess’. B.o.B, Cory Gunz, Charles Hamiliton and Wiz Khalifa are just are creative and equally as lyrically impressive but only time will tell whether the hip-hop’s next wave will take us into a more lyrical trend. People just aren’t as concerned with the lyrical content of hip-hop as they once were. For this reason artists like Talib Kweli, Mos Def, and Common, who have put years upon years into the game will never be mainstream music

ALL THAT SAID… we are arguing from different places. To know hip-hop and to live hip-hop are two different things. I grew up in the middle of the two generations, The Biggie/Pac Era and now I live in the Soulja Era, so I can see where all of you are coming from BUT, it is remarkable how at the end of the day how much hate people have for this KID. Respect that he made himself, produces his own hits from the start to finish, and is own of let’s say 6 artists who can still actually sell records. He doesn’t have to be your favorite artists but you can’t deny his influence, the fact you all took time out of what should be productive days to write these elongated responses does nothing but illustrate the fact that:

WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT SOULJA IS HERE TO STAY AND IS LEADER OF THE NEW SCHOOL ….BOW!!

This is Hip-Hop’s New School:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMwi8vFXUpo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuX6QB-SUHA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLFPB_lqnuY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94xa0NBeN0g

R.I.P. Biggie Smallz

P.S. if you didn’t get the majority of the references your either out of date, don’t know the current state of things, or maybe even don’t know what you are talking about.

Mr. Kontroversy