WFNY Top 10 Cleveland Sports Stories of 2011: #3 The Cavs Win the Lottery and Draft Kyrie Irving
December 28, 2011Cavaliers Look To Bounce Back Against the Pistons
December 28, 2011If your name isn’t Kanye or Shawn and you didn’t release a much-anticipated album surrounding French-based dalliance and currency-based planking, it was certainly a touch-and-go year in the genre we call hip-hop. With the proliferation of Internet mixtapes by high-profile names of the game, Lil Wayne’s Sorry for the Wait and Wale’s 11.1.11 had just as much Internet buzz (and potentially higher quality tracks) as The Carter IV and Ambition, respectively. In addition, this ever-popular and ever-growing distribution channel of self-released gold provided us some new tracks from Big KRIT, B.O.B. and everyone’s favrorite ATL emcee-turned-actor Ludacris. Sadly, these were the highlights, and when highlights aren’t mainstream – despite the tendency to embrace the hipster-hop mentality of preferring the obscure – it’s not a good year for the industry as a whole.
Last year’s Freshman experienced sophomore slumps, some potentially beyond repair. This year’s class was largely underwhelming save for Kendrick Lamar and A$AP Rocky who also benefitted greatly from the underground/mixtape scene. And as much as I’ve grown to embrace Cleveland’s own Machine Gun Kelly (his debut album under Diddy’s label is set to drop in 2012), the whole frat-rap development is a bit startling.
Sure, Rick Ross had a few solid cameos – and, unfortunately a couple of seizures – and T.I. finally got out of the clink, but Billboard regulars like Lil Wayne underwhelmed, and the R&B-based Drake merely confused hip-hop purists with sing-song tracks of how rough it is to be rich; YMCMB, in totality, was carried this calendar year by the lone female in Nicki Minaj who was able to become a household name with Pink Friday despite an unorthodox style and insanely ridiculous threads. She also, for what it’s worth, was one of the more entertaining musical guests on SNL over the last 12 months.
Two of the better albums of 2011 that will unfortunately go largely unplayed due to a lack of commercial appeal in an era of ringtones and club favorites come in the form of The Roots’ gorgeously arranged concept album – yes, a hip-hop concept album chock full of heady lyrics and the Rootsian beats we’ve come to love – Undun¸ and Common’s rebound from ‘08’s Universal Mind Control with the 12-track, soulful The Dreamer, The Believer.
J. Cole’s debut album Cole World: The Sideline Story was met with plenty of (much-deserved) fanfare. It’s not every day where you have a magna cum laude college graduate rapping about paying down his student loans, rhyming lines with Sallie Mae, and now – in his newfound fame – “stressing about Rihannas.” More intellectual than the bulk of his peers, Cole used the mixtape channels to catipult his namesake via Friday Night Lights, but also managed to capitalize on his opportunity with World. As as admitted sucker for the piano, Cole’s use of the baby grand coupled with some jazz guitar play and aesthetically pleasing vocals will keep this one in my rotation for a while.
But when it comes to units and revenue, lyrical flow and all-around embrace, no two men did hip-hop in 2011 better than Kanye West and Jay-Z; judging by concert attendance and subsequent show discussion throughout the web, it sounds like 2011 did Yeezy and Hov just as well – Watch the Throne broke iTunes’ one-week sales record proving that people still buy good music. By and large, hip-hop concerts have always been a touchy move; a lot of the genre relies on production that can be lost when played through an arena and hype men are just plain annoying. But with the WTT tour, it’s been just as much about the men as it has been about the music, the light show, and the multiple same-night performances of their dub step du’jour, Nastrisks in Paris. Adding to Hov’s year, his Roc Nation is the label responsible for the abovementioned Cole. Now, that’sh Cray.
Sadly, it took two of the game’s biggest names joining together to give the year some tailwind heading into 2012. Thankfully, especially for all involved – whether posessing respect to Kanye and Jay or not, that tailwind is huge. It’ll take busts of epic proportions for the coming year – expectations of albums from Nas, Wu-Tang, a Lamar/Cole collab and Tyler, The Creator – to give back all of the goodwill provided by brothers West and Z.
Here’s to a 2012 that can take what Kanye and Jay provided and turn it into more of a collective effort, be they via collaboratives or not. For now, as the year ticks closer to an end and the 11 becomes a 12, I’ll gladly play the handful of outliers on loop.
— Scott Sargent
9 Comments
Thanks for sparing us another pretentious indie rock post…
tss, Sargent, whatsa matter, couldn’t be a general or sumpthin’ tss tss
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Probably time to drop the shtick, Chip.
tss, if I dropped the schitck, a dog would probably pick it up or sumpthin’ tss
R.E.D. album wasn’t Tuurrrrrible
I dig the new Drake, but I get where people have had enough of the “woe-is-my-millions” attitude. The Jay and Yeezy album was decent too. Good review.
Chip rules.
I’d love to write this “Rap”-up next year. Scott did quite an admirable job. Readers; if you haven’t started listening to Kendrick Lamar, you’re sleeping.
Bob – shoot me an email. We can collab like Cole and K dot.
Wow, you sure don’t hear any of the above when your rap playlist is firmly entrenched with production only by D.I.T.C., DJ Premier, Pete Rock, J. Dilla, Easy Mo Bee, Q-Tip/Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Beatminerz, Madlib, MF Doom, PB Wolf, (and so on and so on)… I guess I need a rap DeLorean to get back to 2012.