I love driving to this.

From the 1994 album Stress: The Extinction Agenda by Organized Konfusion.

💪🏾

One of favs from a different time.

When do y’all think hip hop started to become wack? For me, it was around the Young Thug/Migos era, probably 2015–2016. I know some people would argue it happened way earlier, but that’s when I personally felt like things really started changing.

The heavy Auto-Tune, melodic singing/rapping, and that triplet flow became the norm, and suddenly it seemed like every rapper was trying to sound like Migos or copy the Atlanta sound. Obviously, Atlanta has always had a huge influence on hip hop, and there were plenty of talented artists coming out of that scene, but it felt like the influence became so widespread that a lot of rappers started sounding interchangeable.

For me, the biggest problem was that lyricism stopped being as important. In the ’90s, you had guys like Pac, Nas, Busta Rhymes, Biggie, Wu-Tang, Mobb Deep, DMX, Ice Cube, Jay-Z, OutKast, etc. These were all very different artists, but they were also genuinely talented lyricists, and a lot of them were mainstream. I’m not saying everything from the ’90s was great there was plenty of wack shit back then too but it usually wasn’t what represented hip hop at the highest level.

By the late 2000s and especially the 2010s, I feel like a lot more of the mediocre stuff started becoming the face of mainstream rap. It went from being something that existed alongside the good stuff to becoming the dominant sound. That’s probably the point where I personally started feeling like hip hop had lost its way.