50 years of Hip Hop- How Come?

Lot to unpack.

In this day of instant music availability no one has to mow lawns and save up to agonize over which album to buy.

The Temptations "Ball of Confusion", 1970, sure sounds like hip-hop to me.

Every time I think "new" music is a total dead end something I've never heard before comes along to re-awaken that manic pop thrill.

Hip-Hop/ Rap didn't sound good in the big arenas; couldn't make out the rapid-fire diction, but the energy and commitment was undeniable.

The way to get noticed and $$ell something is by offering something new....so that's going to always happen, and followers will call it their own...not their parents, not the "in crowd", nor the establishment.

My streaming service (YT Music) is set to auto-play and I pick one song I feel like hearing, cue it up, and the algorithm gods do the rest......literally hours go by and I (almost) never even think of skipping a song. 

Hard to argue against the notion that entertainment = money, but at some point you've just gotta lay your burden down and get out of your seat.

For me, there are two kinds of music.

The kind I like, and the kind I don't like.

Are you just getting old?  Yes.

@tomcarr 

"For me, there are two kinds of music.

The kind I like, and the kind I don't like".

Honest answer!  👍

We can debate the relative objective merits of various musical styles all day long but in the end we like what we like. 

For example, the fact that Classical music is more melodically and harmonically sophisticated than Rock doesn't change the fact that I find it wholly unengaging rhythmically. Everyone else in my family prefers Classical. I can appreciate its qualities but in the end, it simply doesn't draw me in. Who can say why such preferences arise?  I have no idea. I like what I like.

In the mid seventies I began to explore Jazz and ever since, it's comprised more than 50% of my listening. Since then, I haven't experienced any comparable shifts in taste. At this point, I recognize my tastes are very deeply ingrained. Call it good or bad-- it is what it is. I like what I like.