Comparison Essay: Old Rap Vs. New School Rap

T This new rap era has turned into something great. You have fantastic artists like Kendrick Lamar, 21 Savage, Joey Bada$$, Big K.R.I.T., A$AP Rocky, J. Cole, Tyler The Creator, JID, and Kanye West just to name a few. All of these artists have tracks that include meaningful lyrics, great production, and fantastic flows. However, it seems many people ignore these qualities and criticize this newer era by cherry-picking terrible artists or lyrics and labeling them unnecessarily explicit, unoriginal, and while having no meaning. Despite artists from the older era having those exact qualities, many people still hold the opinion that old rap is better than what’s out now. Fortunately, rap hasn’t devolved into mediocrity so this is simply not true.

“In contrast to old school rap, most of the new school rap of this decade involves lyrics that contradict each other or are just plain inaudible. Many songs involve mumble rap, a style of rapping that is really simple and includes inaudible words. Mumble rap started gaining popularity on Soundcloud, an online audio distribution platform. Through Soundcloud, many rappers, such as Lil Uzi Vert and Lil Pump, have risen to fame, primarily by releasing mumble rap. Songs such as ‘New Patek’ by Lil Uzi Vert and ‘Gucci Gang’ by Lil Pump involve a constant repetition of lyrics, as well as parts of the song that we are unable to understand what they are saying” (Avila). This statement is just plain ignorant. Yes, those artists tend to mumble rap and have terrible lyrics, but why did she choose those artists? As stated before, artists like Lil Pump and Smokepurpp are terrible and aren’t the future of this generation. Earlier in the article, Avila was raving about how old-school rap is so great and was bringing up the greats of that generation, “1990s-based artists like Andre 3000, Mos Def, Eminem, Notorious B.I.G, and Tupac are just a few to name when it comes to listing the most popular characters in rap. Artists like these wouldn’t just rhyme to the beat but also tell vivid stories through their music. Take Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’ for example, the first rap song to win an Academy Award for Best Original Song” (Avila). So how does she expect Lil Uzi and Lil Pump to stand a chance against artists like Eminem and Biggie? She could have chosen different artists who are great like Kendrick or Tyler, The Creator, both of which have songs and whole albums that tell stories. Another point she brought up was that Old-school rappers hate new-school rap, she even stated that modern rapper, Logic, also dislikes new-school rap lyrics, “Logic, a popular modern