Bogus Trend Story of the Year: Hip-Hop Is Dead

Is Jay-Z wearing black for his own funeral?

It’s everyone’s favorite time of the year to make lists – and in addition to listing what gifts we’d like to receive, we all begin that exercise in self importance: year-end, best-of lists. This year, many music critics are embracing the theme of the moment: Hip-hop is dead!

The fuse was lit by this Sasha Frere-Jones New Yorker piece, in which he declares that Jay-Z’s latest album, “The Blueprint 3″ proves that the genre has aged out. Sort of. “The Blueprint 3″ was one of the most successful albums of the year – and launched Jay-Z past Elvis as the artist with the most No. 1 albums of all time. So when Frere-Jones says “dead,” he actually means that hip-hop “is no longer the avant-garde, or even the timekeeper, for pop music.” But even by that standard, he seems to disagree with himself, admitting that “Jay-Z is too smart to be boring.”

And after declaring hip-hop dead, Frere-Jones includes another caveat. 2009 marked the end of hip-hop, except Raekwon’s album was really good!

Slate’s Jonah Weiner agrees. Pointing to the Frere-Jones piece, he too agrees that hip-hop has become stagnant. Except Raekwon’s album was really good! Oh, and Wale, Pill, Freddie Gibbs, Fred the Godson, and Lil’ Wayne’s ‘No Ceilings’ mixtape. But other than that, hip-hop is totally dead, y’all.

Not to be outdone, Simon Reynolds similarly turned up his nose at the “pedestrian familiarity” of today’s hip-hop beats. He too thinks “rap has slipped hugely from where it was when this decade began” … except “808s and Heartbreak” was really good!

All these death pronouncements prove is that these critics who make mind-bogglingly obvious observations like “Jay-Z is getting older!” are doing the same thing. Because hip-hop is still a relative newcomer, I suppose that makes it eligible to go the way of disco. But seeing as it’s been a commercially viable force for 30 years now, I’m guessing it won’t. So let’s all move on to the next fake trend.