Wednesday, November 29, 2006

First "Adult" Hip-Hop Album?

I was reading a review in Time Magazine of Jay-Z's Kingdom Come. And it essentially said that it might be the first "adult" hip-hop album. And the might was not whether there had been one before, but whether it in fact was adult. And I found this profoundly insulting. Apparently the reviewer doesn't listen to much in the way of hip-hop, because I can't imagine someone listening to Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Common, Tribe Called Quest, Lupe Fiasco or a variety of other artists and concluding that they produce albums that aren't adult. I won't go too far in what I think is underlying the argument that hip-hop is inherently immature, but I think it's bullshit. And Jay-Z's new album isn't that mature anyway.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What do they mean by "adult"?

9:01 PM  
Blogger Todd Martin said...

I think the meaning was essentially mature, but it wasn't completely spelled out. The idea to me was *maybe* the first hip-hop album to deal with mature themes rather than stunted development, which to me is like watching the latest Jerry Bruckheimer film and saying it may be the first adult action film. Not that Jay-Z is as bad as Bruckheimer, but he's hardly representative of the most mature of the genre.

10:01 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think the reviewer was calling it "adult" in the sense that it's "boring."

10:38 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home