Music

TRENDSPOTTING: Is there room for rap’s middle age?

by Richard Trapunski

“Rap is a young man’s game,” – Jay-Z.

That quote, spoken by the then-34 year-old rapper at the onset of his short-lived “retirement,” seemed to make sense at the time, and in many ways still does. A genre obsessed with youthful bravado and ambition, hip hop often seems like a game more fit for twenty-somethings than forty-somethings. If even that.

Today’s hottest rappers are the ones with the newest mixtapes, running full hype cycles before they release their first official album. July’s AUX Magazine cover story highlighted the new under-22 “viral generation” burning up the blogs, some before they graduate high school. With artists like Kitty Pryde, Azealia Banks and Chief Keef dominating the online buzz bin, suddenly rappers like the 25-year old Drake or even the 23-year old A$AP Rocky, seem like grizzled veterans.

So what’s an aging rap superstar to do? Well, you could either take Jay-Z’s abandoned approach and retire, you can take Common’s approach and desperately pick a fight with a younger, more popular rapper, or you can come up with a new way to stay relevant. This question gets ever more pertinent as many of the bright stars from hip hop’s late-‘80s/early-90’s “golden age” start to reach their forties, and as far as staying relevant goes… they don’t always have the best track record.

Take the latest from Public Enemy. Once one of the most vital, urgent acts in music, they now seem like a throwback to the Reagan years. The title of their latest album, Most of My Heroes Still Don’t Appear on No Stamp, while an obvious declaration that the socio-political climate hasn’t gotten much better, is an ultra-evident allusion to their best known song, “Fight The Power,” which came out 23 years ago.

And they’re not alone in clinging to their biggest success. Everyone from Fat Joe to Mobb Deep to Ghostface, Raekwon, and, well, just about everyone in Wu Tang, have put out “sequels” to their most classic albums. And while a few nearly stand up to the originals, most just serve to remind listeners that their greatest achievements are long behind them.

So is there room for rap’s middle age? Listening to the latest from Nas, I would argue that, yes, there is. Nas has often been criticized, most often unfairly, for not living up to the standard set by his 1994 debut, Illmatic. It can’t be easy always being measured against an album he put out when you were 21, especially when that album is one of the greatest hip hop records of all time. But many, including his own 2001 sequel, Stillmatic, have seemed to aim for that bar, while simultaneously aiming for the pop charts.

On his tenth studio album, Life Is Good, Nas uses his legacy as thematic fodder, creating a rich lyrical portrait of a man simultaneously satisfied and conflicted with his rags-to-riches success story. With songs about divorce, fame, parenting and hypocrisy, it’s a rare achievement: a rap album that successfully owns up to middle age instead of clinging to youth.

The album, playfully dedicated to “my trapped in the ‘90s niggas,” sets the bar with “No Introduction,” a track that starts with a typical pick-up brag: “I’m pushing forty/she’s only 21” before pulling the rug out – “Don’t applaud me/I’m exhausted, G.” Elsewhere he acknowledges the silliness of clinging to his hood upbringing – “I been rich longer than I been broke, I confess” – and ruminates on the double-standard of over-parenting his daughter, who famously Instagrammed a bejeweled box of condoms, when he spent his own teen years hustling.

Another 40 year-old rapper, Snopp Dogg has taken a different approach… and given up rap altogether. Changing his name to Snoop Lion and declaring himself “the reincarnation of Bob Marley,” the weed-enthusiast has decided he’s tired of being “Uncle Snoop” in rap, hooked up with Major Lazer, and taken up a new genre: reggae.

This may seem like the latest in a series of why-the-hell-not left turns like releasing vocodered slow jams, jamming with Willie Nelson, directing porn and chilling with Elmo on Sesame Street, but apparently the former Dogg is taking this very seriously. Part of a “spiritual awakening” that took him to Jamaica (a transformation documented in the TIFF-premiering documentary, Reincarnated), Snoop plans to use his new alter-ego to perform “for kids and grandkids.” It’s certainly hard to imagine the ‘90s version of Snoop Doggy Dog, “Mr. 187 on an undercover cop” singing a song called “No Guns Allowed.”

Turning 40 can change a man.