©1991-2007
Student Publications,
All rights reserved.

Last modified:

Contact:
ktruitt@uh.edu

Life & Arts

As a disciple, Nas works the street

Beat Box

Zach Lee

Hip-hop isn't dead, but it's turning more and more into a gaudy street hooker desperate to turn one more trick. Nas is the perfect example. Recently, I took my first trip to Los Angeles, and I was amazed at the frequency of large-scale hip-hop advertisements. At first, I was impressed with the genre's visibility -- Snoop Dogg and even Chingy staring at me from billboards and city benches alike -- but then I saw a magnified cover of Nas's Street's Disciple on a billboard near Tower Records on Sunset Blvd. All that innocent optimism came crashing down.

Snoop Dogg never made any moves to be considered a hip-hop intellectual, and Chingy never made any moves to be considered anything but a desperate attempt to cash in on Nelly's success. Nas, however, has done many things over the course of his career to set himself apart from the crowd of emcees who whore themselves out to MTV and listeners who understand little of anything outside of club remixes. 

It's not just the billboard. Nas has committed a serious crime with Street's Disciple -- he has created an album intended to sell. Wanting to actually sell records is fine, but treating listeners like children who cajole their parents into buying them any album that comes with an extra DVD -- or, in Nas' case, a poster -- is anything but respecting the fan base -- or the art. 

The double album itself is a testament to Nas' lack of respect. If he thinks enough of himself to label himself the Street's Disciple, he might want to respect those streets enough to make a truly outstanding single album instead of allowing his focus to be dissipated over two albums. Regardless of the quality of a double album, the same time and effort spent on a single album would result in a far superior contribution.

While hip-hop's mainstream popularity means that the average fan today has more money than the average fan 10 years ago, emcees exploit that fact at the expense of both listeners and the music that pays their bills. If Nas is aiming to maximize profits, he shouldn't pretend he's not. 

Chingy seems to be getting along just fine by making music a third grader with a rhyming dictionary could top, and none of his listeners look to him as a savior of hip-hop, but if they do, it's just another example of too many people breathing our air. He makes money by making albums designed to make money, not to show off fancy wordplay or push musical boundaries. Nas has done both of those things, but seeing him push his album like a bad crack rock is disappointing when he's clearly skilled enough to let his music speak for itself.

When it comes to hip-hop prostitution, I thought Nas was at least an expensive call girl, but it turns out he's walking around Montrose in a miniskirt and riding with any man with $20 and a pickup truck.

 Send comments to dcshobiz@mail.uh.edu