Hip Hop Mellow?

This article Hip-hop mellow is saying that hip hop is going "middle class". The writer has a very active imagination, and fills the page with a fantasy of this image of "clean cut" hip hop.

The acclaimed West and his chart-topping R&B protege John Legend - along with the likes of the Black Eyed Peas and rappers Common and Talib Kweli - are spearheading a new musical movement that shuns the misogyny, gunplay, bloody revenge fantasies and mindless conspicuous consumption of a previous generation of hip-hop record makers and breakers.

Well, I disagree. The acts that he is writing about have been doing what they have been doing for years, so what is he talking about? They are an alternative, but hardly a "new" musical movement.

"It's the return of the middle-class rapper," says Todd Boyd, a hip-hop theoretician, author and professor of critical studies at the USC School of Cinema and Television. "In the '80s, it wasn't so uncommon."

LOL. What the f are they talking about?

"Jay-Z was really one of the first to start going preppy," said Zena Burns, music editor of Teen People, which closely covers the ebbs and flows of the hip-hop scene. "Pretty much whatever he does, everyone follows. He's a very sharp dresser - he moved away from looking like you're going to work out every time you hit the stage. So Jay opened the door for West's [mainstream] image and look."

Jay-Z going preppy? Huh?

Funny how people try to make up stuff. Kinda like this article. As usual, the mainstream press gets it all wrong.