5 Ways Mainstream Culture Has Contributed to the Struggle of Hip-Hop Legends

Lack of Radio Play While many radio stations have been dedicated to classic rock and country stations frequently keep older songs in rotation, hip-hop stars from the '80s and '90s struggle to find a musical platform today. Classic hip-hop stations have only recently started to emerge, but years without a mainstream platform for classic rap has already left some of the genre’s greats buried in the music industry's distant memory. “In The History of the Eagles, singer Glenn Frey said that classic rock radio was the reason why a generation too young to remember 'Hotel California' firsthand became fans of the Eagles’ music in the ‘80s and ‘90s,” The Daily Beast’s Stereo Williams explained. Hip-hop stars from the same era aren’t provided the same luxury. Obsession With Streaming The latest Nielsen data confirmed that when it comes to hip-hop, fewer consumers are making their way into stores and more are turning to online streaming services like Pandora or Spotify. The problem is, however, album sales contribute more money to the artists' pockets than the digital services. According to Nielsen, streaming for hip-hop music saw a dramatic increase in 2014 while hip-hop album sales plummeted by nearly 30 percent. Lack of a World Stage Nothing drives this point better than the social media aftermath of Missy Elliott joining singer Katy Perry for her Super Bowl performance in February. Not only did the female hip-hop star’s sales see a nearly 1,000 percent increase, according to Billboard, but it was the first time many young white people were exposed to her music. Elliott herself took to social media to laugh at all the tweets from young viewers who assumed she was a new artist rather than recognizing her as one of hip-hop’s most legendary female rappers. It is far less common for legendary hip-hop stars to be given the opportunity to perform on a major stage, and, therefore, new listeners are rarely exposed to their music. Less Exposure in Popular Publications While many consumers see print magazines and TV ads as insignificant forms of exposure, such mediums have been proven extremely effective when it comes to keeping artists from slipping into the dark, eerie and often bankrupt abyss of irrelevancy. “Artists, songs, albums and eras are left in the dustbins of history without a place for them to be continually connected to our consciousness — no popular radio stations, no music TV shows, no major magazine covers,” Williams explains. “Maybe all of those platforms are ‘old media,’ but they still seem to do quite a bit to keep pop icons on our minds. Because Public Enemy is somewhere right now playing a theater and kicking ass, while Rush is reaping millions to such in an arena. And no one should be happy about that.” Cultural Appropriation When hip-hop icon Q-Tip released a chain of tweets aimed at Iggy Azalea to help teach her about the history of hip-hop, it reminded the social media universe of how many times white rappers emerge on the scene with no knowledge of the genre’s roots. The same goes for many mainstream listeners. An article published by Complex once explained how most white hip-hop listeners are only looking for the commercialized aspect of hip-hop and not interested in learning about or embracing its roots. “Yet from inception to present day, rap is an artform that’s primarily fluent in black culture, marginalized perspectives, the accents and vernacular of the oppressed,” the article reads. “Still, it’s an irrepressible fact of modern commerce that white kids, insufferable or not, are helping Pusha T, Bun B, and Juicy J pay various car notes.”

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