I'm not that big on hip hop, but both 2pac shakur and notorious big had a tremandous on the hip hop sound of today and the 1990's, therefor huge popular cultural icons. If none of them would have been killed and instead kept making music til this day, in what ways would the evolution of the hip hop community differ?
2pac and Biggie survives to ths day
- Thread starter Evil_evol
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Or they'd both end up being overshadowed by Eminem, just like Snoop Dogg and a host of others. Rap became really, really popular when Eminem came in; that gave the millions of white kids who enjoyed listening to rap but didn't want to be labeled "wiggers" a figure to rally around (and rally they did).
Knight Of Armenia said:
Does anybody think that if 2pac survived and Eminem didn't exist for some reason, hip hop would still dominate that area of music?
Well, if, for whatever reason, Eminem didn't surface... Rap would eventually become a black-only thing, much like jazz and blues (not saying there are no other races involved in this, but it is heavily involved in the black community).
Just like rock and roll, the style needs a white performer to bring it to the attention of the white majority (again, racist or not, its the truth). Eminem is just the Elvis Presley of rap; unless he or an analogue come along, rap is no where near the popularity of OTL.
Just like rock and roll, the style needs a white performer to bring it to the attention of the white majority (again, racist or not, its the truth). Eminem is just the Elvis Presley of rap; unless he or an analogue come along, rap is no where near the popularity of OTL.
Knight Of Armenia said:
Rap wouldn't enter into the white mainstream without Shady. Interestingly enough, Eminem has likened himself to Elvis Presley in "Without Me".
NapoleonXIV
Banned
Tupac and Biggie would both be retired or have moved on to the big screen by now. While popular and influential neither had a unique enough sound to merit re-invention after it was played out. IMHO rap has produced nothing but performers, having yet to produce an artist who transcends his medium
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Knight Of Armenia said:
Jonny Lang in blues and Kenny G in Jazz (sort of...). They aren't "black-only" genres. And rap had white preformers long before Eminem. Everyone seems to forget Vanilla Ice, though he was trying to act like "white chocolate" and his "music" was an anal rape of the medium. Eminem was simply the first white rap preformer with a prominent street background and real breakthrough talent, as opposed to a knot of lower-visibility white preformers before him.
Granted, some black preformers see him as an outsider, but then again, he is respected by preformers like 50 Cent.
Knight Of Armenia said:
That might have been true in 1985, but as I remember it, rap and hip-hop were plenty popular and mainstream by the early 90s. They just weren't the top genres overall. With the absence of Eminem, I think the only difference is that you might be able to knock down the dominance of both genres a couple of noches by 2000.