OPINION PIECE | KEEPING HIP-HOP REAL, KEEPING HIP-HOP STILL

From mumble rap to emo rap, hip-hop has nev­er stopped rein­vent­ing itself. So why does a cul­ture built on break­ing rules keep arguing about who is allowed to break them?

Hip-hop has been dying for approx­im­ately as long as people have been old enough to com­plain about it. Every gen­er­a­tion seems to inher­it a cul­ture in its final days, usu­ally because the latest crop of young rap­pers have com­mit­ted the unfor­giv­able crime of not sound­ing like the people who came before them. The beats are wrong, the lyr­ics are weak, nobody respects the cul­ture, and some­body really ought to remind these chil­dren what a prop­er MC sounds like. Some­where, inev­it­ably, a man with an extens­ive vinyl col­lec­tion is pre­par­ing to explain why everything went down­hill after 1996.

For much of the 2010s, the pre­ferred evid­ence of hip-hop’s immin­ent demise was some­thing called mumble rap. It was a won­der­fully eco­nom­ic­al insult, cap­able of dis­miss­ing an entire music­al approach without requir­ing its user to engage with much of the music. The rap­per wasn’t enun­ci­at­ing prop­erly, the lyr­ics were appar­ently incom­pre­hens­ible, and the beat seemed to be doing most of the heavy lift­ing. Case closed. No need to con­sider cadence, melody, atmo­sphere, vocal tex­ture or the pos­sib­il­ity that the artist might be attempt­ing some­thing oth­er than a demon­stra­tion of their abil­ity to con­struct multi­syl­lab­ic rhyme schemes. The defend­ant was guilty of not being Nas, and the pro­sec­u­tion rested.

Some of the cri­ti­cism, of course, was jus­ti­fied. There were deriv­at­ive records, inter­change­able vocal deliv­er­ies and artists whose cre­at­ive ambi­tions appeared to extend no fur­ther than dis­cov­er­ing which syl­lables soun­ded best through Auto-Tune. And hip-hop’s emphas­is on lyr­ic­al abil­ity is hardly an embar­rass­ing tra­di­tion that needs quietly retiring.

The intric­ate storytelling of Nas, the verbal acro­bat­ics of Black Thought or the pre­ci­sion of Rakim rep­res­ent extraordin­ary artist­ic achievements.

A great verse can reveal a char­ac­ter, con­struct an entire world or turn lan­guage inside out in ways that a catchy chor­us simply can­not. The prob­lem begins when those achieve­ments become the only accept­able defin­i­tion of music­al excellence.

Hip-Hop Has Always Had Its Weirdos

Con­sider how com­fort­ably oth­er genres accom­mod­ate wildly dif­fer­ent approaches. Pop has synth-pop, art pop and hyper­pop; rock has punk, pro­gress­ive rock and post-rock; soul has psy­che­del­ic soul and neo-soul. Nobody expects a punk sing­er to pos­sess the tech­nic­al abil­it­ies of an opera per­former, or a gui­tar­ist in a three-chord gar­age band to demon­strate the vir­tu­os­ity of Steve Vai. The dif­fer­ences are part of the appeal. Hip-hop has plenty of sub­genres of its own, from jazz rap and gang­sta rap to trap, cloud rap and emo rap, but the arrival of a new sound can still pro­voke an argu­ment about wheth­er it deserves to be called hip-hop at all.

Which is rather pecu­li­ar for a cul­ture built on tak­ing exist­ing music apart and put­ting it back togeth­er in ways nobody had pre­vi­ously imagined.

Hip-hop’s his­tory is full of artists who have stretched its con­ven­tions. Missy Elli­ott and Tim­ba­l­and made records that soun­ded as though they had arrived from a par­tic­u­larly mis­chiev­ous future. Out­Kast brought South­ern funk, psy­che­delia and the­at­ric­al­ity into the main­stream, while Speech Debelle’s Speech Ther­apy found space for acous­tic instru­ment­a­tion and intro­spect­ive song­writ­ing. Even earli­er, Biz Markie demon­strated that a tech­nic­ally imper­fect singing voice could be a mag­ni­fi­cent artist­ic asset. His per­form­ance on Just a Friend would prob­ably have hor­ri­fied a con­ven­tion­al vocal coach, which is pre­cisely why repla­cing it with a tech­nic­ally flaw­less sing­er would have been an act of cul­tur­al vandalism.

Then there was Ol’ Dirty Bas­tard, whose glor­i­ously unruly deliv­ery some­times soun­ded like a man attempt­ing to escape from a mov­ing vehicle while con­tinu­ing to rap. His tim­ing, phras­ing and vocal per­son­al­ity were all unmis­tak­ably his own. He was cap­able of mak­ing a record com­pel­ling through sheer char­ac­ter, even when con­ven­tion­al lyr­ic­al pre­ci­sion was not the prin­cip­al attrac­tion. Nobody needed ODB to sound like Rakim. We under­stood that he was offer­ing some­thing else, and hip-hop was rich­er for it.

The artists later bundled togeth­er under the descrip­tion mumble rap were hardly identic­al to ODB or Biz Markie, but the prin­ciple was famil­i­ar. An uncon­ven­tion­al voice could be an artist­ic choice rather than evid­ence of incom­pet­ence. What changed was the tech­no­logy, the pro­duc­tion aes­thet­ic and the speed at which a new sound could travel. Auto-Tune, atmo­spher­ic trap pro­duc­tion and inter­net plat­forms gave young artists oppor­tun­it­ies to exper­i­ment with melody, cadence and vocal tex­ture, often without wait­ing for a record label to decide wheth­er their music fit­ted an estab­lished category.

The term mumble rap, mean­while, became a con­veni­ent way of dis­cuss­ing everything from trap to emo rap without hav­ing to dis­tin­guish between them. A remark­able achieve­ment in lin­guist­ic effi­ciency, if not music­al criticism.

When Snoop Became the Establishment

Snoop Dogg was among the vet­er­an artists pre­pared to voice his dis­sat­is­fac­tion. In 2014, dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with 50 Cent and G‑Unit, he cri­ti­cised the grow­ing tend­ency for rap­pers to sound alike, point­ing towards the styles asso­ci­ated with Future and Migos. He and 50 Cent even mim­icked the vocal deliv­er­ies they were dis­cuss­ing, redu­cing the new generation’s cadences to a series of exag­ger­ated sounds. The per­form­ance was funny, if not par­tic­u­larly char­it­able, and the under­ly­ing cri­ti­cism had mer­it. Hip-hop has always val­ued ori­gin­al­ity, and the moment a par­tic­u­lar sound becomes com­mer­cially suc­cess­ful, a queue of imit­at­ors tends to form behind it.

A dec­ade later, dur­ing the 2024 con­front­a­tion between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, Snoop praised the renewed emphas­is on lyr­i­cism and song­writ­ing, sug­gest­ing that the battle had “made you rap again”. Artists, he argued, could no longer “mumble your way and gim­mick your way to a song”. It was an inter­est­ing obser­va­tion from someone whose own lan­guid, con­ver­sa­tion­al deliv­ery helped redefine what a rap­per could sound like. Snoop was right to cel­eb­rate lyr­ic­al com­pet­i­tion, and the Drake–Kendrick battle demon­strated that verbal dex­ter­ity remains one of hip-hop’s great attrac­tions. But its pop­ular­ity did not prove that melody, atmo­sphere or uncon­ven­tion­al vocal deliv­ery had been keep­ing the cul­ture from being itself.

Future and Young Thug, two artists fre­quently caught in the mumble rap con­ver­sa­tion, illus­trate the dis­tinc­tion. Their voices often func­tion as music­al instru­ments in their own right. Cadence, inflec­tion, repe­ti­tion and melod­ic shape become as import­ant as the lit­er­al mean­ing of the words. Future can make a phrase sound exhausted, men­acing or intox­ic­ated, while Young Thug’s elast­ic deliv­ery some­times treats lan­guage as a col­lec­tion of sounds to be stretched and rearranged. You might find the res­ults hyp­not­ic or utterly unbear­able. Either reac­tion is per­fectly respect­able. But to dis­miss the approach as failed enun­ci­ation is rather like com­plain­ing that a sax­o­phon­ist has neg­lected to provide the lyrics.

The Kids Are Alright (Even When We Don’t Like Their Music)

Juice WRLD presents an even more awk­ward prob­lem for the argu­ment that melod­ic rap­pers simply lack tech­nic­al abil­ity. His exten­ded free­style per­form­ances demon­strated an impress­ive instinct for rhythm, word­play and impro­visa­tion, with some last­ing more than an hour. Yet his most recog­nis­able record­ings fre­quently placed melody and emo­tion­al imme­di­acy ahead of lyr­ic­al com­plex­ity. On Lucid Dreams, the famil­i­ar gui­tar fig­ure from Sting’s Shape of My Heart becomes the found­a­tion of a song about heart­break and romantic obses­sion. All Girls Are the Same sim­il­arly moves between rap­ping and singing, its repet­it­ive phras­ing cap­tur­ing the cir­cu­lar think­ing of some­body unable to escape their own emo­tion­al griev­ances. The writ­ing could be simplist­ic, some­times pos­sess­ive and occa­sion­ally rather tire­some, but the music­al inten­tion was clear. Juice was using the skills avail­able to him in pur­suit of a par­tic­u­lar feel­ing, not attempt­ing to win a free­style competition.

There is a rather deli­cious foot­note to Lucid Dreams. Its cent­ral gui­tar melody is an inter­pol­a­tion of Sting’s Shape of My Heart, a com­pos­i­tion Nas had already drawn upon for The Mes­sage in 1996. Yes, Nas. The very rap­per whose lyr­ic­al stand­ards are so fre­quently invoked as evid­ence of everything the young­er gen­er­a­tion sup­posedly lacks. Two artists, sep­ar­ated by gen­er­a­tions and rad­ic­ally dif­fer­ent approaches to their craft, find­ing inspir­a­tion in the same piece of music. Sting, for his part, was delighted with Juice’s inter­pret­a­tion, later describ­ing it as his favour­ite rework­ing of the song. Per­haps the most inter­est­ing ques­tion was nev­er which rap­per had used the melody cor­rectly, but how two entirely dif­fer­ent artists had heard such dif­fer­ent pos­sib­il­it­ies with­in it.

Do I like Juice WRLD’s music­al out­put? No. Would I vol­un­tar­ily sit down and listen to it? Also no. But here’s the thing: he didn’t make it for me. And I sus­pect the mil­lions of people who found some­thing mean­ing­ful in his music would be entirely untroubled to learn that a middle-aged hip-hop enthu­si­ast would rather put on a Jean Grae record. Their con­nec­tion to his work doesn’t require my approv­al, any more than my admir­a­tion for a beau­ti­fully con­struc­ted verse obliges them to share it.

XXXTenta­cion pushed the bound­ar­ies fur­ther still, mov­ing between abras­ive, dis­tor­ted rap, acous­tic bal­ladry, altern­at­ive R&B and grunge-influ­enced sounds with little appar­ent con­cern for wheth­er the trans­itions would sat­is­fy con­ven­tion­al genre expect­a­tions. The aggress­ive energy of Look at Me! exis­ted along­side the sparse, intro­spect­ive atmo­sphere of his 2017 album 17, whose brief com­pos­i­tions and exposed vocals seemed almost determ­ined to reject the pol­ish asso­ci­ated with main­stream hip-hop. It was an uneven record, some­times lyr­ic­ally lim­ited and occa­sion­ally so raw that its unfin­ished qual­ity became dif­fi­cult to sep­ar­ate from its inten­ded aes­thet­ic. Yet that fra­gil­ity was cent­ral to the exper­i­ence it offered.

On Jocelyn Flores, a song respond­ing to the death by sui­cide of a young woman he knew, XXXTenta­cion raps over a mourn­ful pro­duc­tion built around a Shiloh Dyn­asty vocal sample. The res­ult is intim­ate and unset­tling, its emo­tion­al weight car­ried as much by the atmo­sphere as by the words them­selves. Yet the story behind the record­ing is more com­plic­ated than the music alone sug­gests: Flores’s fam­ily reportedly learned of the song only after its release. It is a remind­er that artist­ic expres­sion can be deeply per­son­al to its cre­at­or while affect­ing people whose exper­i­ences are not theirs to con­trol. Every­body Dies in Their Night­mares sim­il­arly uses repe­ti­tion and sub­dued deliv­ery to con­vey emo­tion­al claus­tro­pho­bia, demon­strat­ing how mood and vul­ner­ab­il­ity can carry as much weight as verbal construction.

None of this requires us to roman­ti­cise XXXTenta­cion or over­look the ser­i­ous alleg­a­tions of viol­ence asso­ci­ated with his life. Nor should suf­fer­ing be treated as a qual­i­fic­a­tion for artist­ic great­ness. The myth­o­logy of the tor­tured artist has excused enough dread­ful beha­viour over the years without requir­ing anoth­er enthu­si­ast­ic con­tri­bu­tion from music journ­al­ism. His work can be examined crit­ic­ally while his actions remain sub­ject to scru­tiny. The same prin­ciple applies to Juice WRLD, whose emo­tion­al open­ness could be com­pel­ling without mak­ing every lyr­ic insight­ful or every romantic griev­ance sympathetic.

Neither artist inven­ted vul­ner­ab­il­ity in hip-hop. The genre had been explor­ing per­son­al pain, insec­ur­ity and men­tal health long before the Sound­Cloud gen­er­a­tion arrived, and it would be an extraordin­ary dis­ser­vice to that his­tory to pre­tend oth­er­wise. What changed was the com­bin­a­tion of influ­ences and the way young­er audi­ences embraced music that moved freely between rap, emo, altern­at­ive rock and pop. A per­former could be an MC, a sing­er and some­thing resem­bling a punk front­man with­in the same three-minute record­ing, much to the appar­ent dis­tress of any­one still wait­ing for a six­teen-bar verse.

When Your Favour­ite Records Become Ancient History

There is also some­thing rather touch­ing about the way these argu­ments expose our rela­tion­ship with the music of our youth. The records we dis­cov­er as teen­agers rarely arrive alone. They come accom­pan­ied by friend­ships, first loves, dis­astrous fash­ion decisions and the exhil­ar­at­ing dis­cov­ery that the world con­tains people who feel exactly as we do. Music becomes entangled with our sense of iden­tity, and when a young­er gen­er­a­tion dis­misses the sounds we grew up with, it can feel uncom­fort­ably close to being told that we ourselves are becom­ing obsol­ete. Nat­ur­ally, we respond with matur­ity and per­spect­ive by announ­cing that everything released since our twenty-fifth birth­day has been rubbish.

The irony is that young­er artists are often doing pre­cisely what their pre­de­cessors once did: reject­ing the expect­a­tions of an older gen­er­a­tion and cre­at­ing some­thing that feels like their own. That doesn’t mean every new devel­op­ment deserves applause, or that cri­ti­cism from older listen­ers is auto­mat­ic­ally inval­id. Exper­i­ence can sharpen judge­ment as read­ily as it can harden pre­ju­dice. But there is a dif­fer­ence between recog­nising that a par­tic­u­lar music­al style leaves us cold and con­clud­ing that the cul­ture has lost its way because it no longer sounds like our form­at­ive years.

The Pecu­li­ar Alchemy of Music

There is a pecu­li­ar alchemy between artist and listen­er that no amount of tech­nic­al ana­lys­is can entirely explain. We can exam­ine rhyme schemes, breath con­trol, ori­gin­al­ity and pro­duc­tion, and we abso­lutely should. Oth­er­wise, music cri­ti­cism becomes little more than announ­cing wheth­er a record made us feel nice. But the emo­tion­al impact of a song is a more elu­sive business.

A musi­cian sends some­thing into the world car­ry­ing their own inten­tions and exper­i­ences. The listen­er receives it through an entirely dif­fer­ent col­lec­tion of memor­ies, expect­a­tions and private asso­ci­ations. Some­where between those two worlds, some­thing hap­pens that neither party can fully con­trol. A tech­nic­ally bril­liant verse might leave one per­son cold while a com­par­at­ively simple melody gives anoth­er the lan­guage for an emo­tion they have struggled to artic­u­late. One hears a hyp­not­ic vocal per­form­ance; anoth­er hears some­body who des­per­ately needs to clear their throat.

That doesn’t mean every opin­ion is equally informed or that poor crafts­man­ship should escape cri­ti­cism. It simply means that our per­son­al response, how­ever pas­sion­ately held, isn’t a uni­ver­sal ver­dict. Some­times a record hasn’t failed. Some­times it just hasn’t found its audi­ence in us.

Keep­ing the Cul­ture Alive, Not Pre­served in Amber

There is, of course, a deep­er reas­on why these argu­ments become par­tic­u­larly heated in hip-hop. Authen­ti­city has nev­er been a purely aes­thet­ic con­cern. The cul­ture emerged from spe­cif­ic Black Amer­ic­an com­munit­ies, and its found­a­tions in DJing, MCing, dance, graf­fiti, com­pet­i­tion and com­munity expres­sion are insep­ar­able from its sig­ni­fic­ance. In an industry with a long his­tory of com­mer­cial­ising Black cre­ativ­ity while mar­gin­al­ising its ori­gin­at­ors, the desire to pro­tect hip-hop’s iden­tity is under­stand­able and often neces­sary. Its emphas­is on lyr­ic­al abil­ity, ori­gin­al­ity and cul­tur­al know­ledge deserves respect.

But pro­tect­ing a cul­ture from exploit­a­tion and pro­tect­ing it from change are two very dif­fer­ent ambi­tions. Hip-hop’s found­a­tions were nev­er a prom­ise that the music would remain unchanged indef­in­itely. Its his­tory is full of artists whose innov­a­tions ini­tially unsettled estab­lished expect­a­tions before becom­ing part of the accep­ted tra­di­tion. The dif­fi­culty begins when the val­ues that once defen­ded a cul­ture become a check­list that every new artist must sat­is­fy, regard­less of what they are attempt­ing to create.

Per­haps we have also con­fused the abil­ity to rap with the abil­ity to make a great rap record. The two are related, cer­tainly, but they are not inter­change­able. Some extraordin­ary lyr­i­cists have made rather ordin­ary albums, while artists with com­par­at­ively mod­est tech­nic­al abil­it­ies have pro­duced records that are son­ic­ally invent­ive, emo­tion­ally affect­ing or simply irres­ist­ible. Nobody expects every great sing­er to pos­sess Whit­ney Houston’s vocal range, or every gui­tar­ist to demon­strate the tech­nic­al pro­fi­ciency of Steve Vai. Some­times restraint, eccent­ri­city or imper­fec­tion is pre­cisely what makes a per­former compelling.

Hip-hop has spent dec­ades ask­ing wheth­er some­body can rap. Per­haps we should occa­sion­ally remem­ber to ask wheth­er they’ve made a record worth listen­ing to.

There will always be bad records, just as there will always be listen­ers con­vinced that the best music was released when they were young enough to stay out all night without need­ing two days to recov­er. Great lyr­i­cism deserves cel­eb­rat­ing, and the tra­di­tions that made hip-hop cul­tur­ally sig­ni­fic­ant deserve pro­tect­ing. But neither requires us to dis­miss every artist whose ambi­tions extend bey­ond the famil­i­ar rules.

After all, a cul­ture that began by tak­ing frag­ments of exist­ing music and cre­at­ing some­thing entirely new should be the last place where exper­i­ment­a­tion requires permission.