Rating:
  Review Date: January 15, 2007
  Website: Nas Website
  Label: Def Jam

Nas “Hip-Hop Is Dead” Album Review
Alright, alright … enough already fellas. If I have to listen to one more critic use Nas’ “Hip Hop is Dead” as some misguided reason to discuss the apparently failing current state of hip-hop based solely on dropping record sales for Top 40 charts, I’m just gonna start bumping country music or something. “Damn homie - if Nas says it, it gotta be true,” they say. “Yeah dogg – those Billboard sales are way down yo.” “Hip-Hop is dead dude.” Man, Nas is playing you fools by giving you a question that you couldn’t possibly answer. And in the process, he’s making you run around looking like some damn jabberjaws.

Hip-Hop Nihilists
While Nas obviously wanted to create dialogue with such a title, something that would undoubtedly lead to higher record sales, he is not proclaiming that hip-hop is literally dead, even if he wants you to think that he is. Instead, I think he is somewhat-sarcastically criticizing those who believe hip-hop is dead; those who think hip-hop no longer has a comprehensible meaning, definition, or truth; those who think it only exists in negative forms: I like to refer to these people as hip-hop nihilists.

God is dead
In the late 1800′s a prominent philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche created quite a stir by proclaiming “God is dead,” or that the idea of God was no longer specific or ordered enough to serve as a basis for any moral code or purpose. Nietzsche felt that this so-called death of God would lead to a breakdown of human values and morals, a re-evaluation of the foundations of religion, and the eventual widespread acceptance of the philosophical position of nihilism, which basically states that the world is without purpose or value. Around 100 years later, another prominent scholar and philosopher named Cornel West described this nihilism as the “lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and (most important) lovelessness.”

So maybe Nas is saying that hip-hop is without purpose or value; that it represents the meaninglessness that may be spreading throughout the youth of our uninspired country. Regardless of how far from the truth, or perhaps from my truth, this statement is, that position might make sense if your only knowledge of hip-hop is based on what you hear on the radio or see on TV.

My brother, for example, recently told me that he seldom listens to hip-hop anymore. “The stuff on the radio is just horrible,” he stated. I guess I haven’t listened to the radio in so long that I didn’t know. Likewise, my parents have a completely different perception of hip-hop than I do, with their perception revolving around the television’s bling-thug-gangster shit. And even I occasionally find myself shaking the old dome at the nihilistic attitudes present in mainstream hip-hop, which is more often than not characterized by lack of originality, respect, thought, or purpose.

Still, Nas is and always has been one of those artists that is original; is intelligent; does have purpose. He himself is one of seemingly countless examples that disprove the belief that “hip hop is dead.” Why would he proclaim the death of hip-hop, when his very career as an MC has proven the opposite? This question confused me; until I heard Nas state his philosophy on the album. Over an angelic chorus of “Live hip-hop live. Live hip-hop live. Give hip-hop give. Give hip-hop give. Stay hip-hop stay. Stay hip-hop stay. I pray hip-hop pray. I pray hip-hop stay,” Nas says:

So I say what I say. And I say what I say and I mean it. Y’all take it how you wanna take it. Cause if you asking, ‘why is hip-hop dead?’ there’s a pretty good chance you’re the reason why it died man. There’s a pretty good chance your lame ass, corny ass is the reason it died man. Cause you don’t give a fuck about it, you don’t know nothing about it. You want this paper, be a hustler? You a hustler, you ain’t a rapper? Get your paper, man. You know what I’m saying? But this rap shit is real. Bitch. This shit is real bitch.

This made me think about my man Nietzsche and his belief that “God is dead.” I once heard a religious cat battle it out with an atheist by using one simple and almost undeniable statement: “I believe, therefore I am,” meaning that his belief in God is what makes God exist. In believing, he said, people allow themselves to experience the mystery and selflessness associated with a relationship with God. And since that experience is very much real, that would have to make God real.

“You’re the reason it died man …”
In the similarly-fashioned words of Nas, “if you’re asking ‘why is hip-hop dead?’ then there’s a pretty good chance you’re the reason why it died man.” Maybe as hip-hop spreads from its urban roots to new communities and countries all over the world, it no longer contains some universal law or set of beliefs that binds all hip-hoppers. Maybe what we see in the videos is simply the beginning of the resulting moral crisis which will leave all of hip-hop, and those influenced by its imprint on American culture, nihilistic.

Or maybe the only thing preventing that is us. Perhaps just believing in hip-hop makes it exist. Perhaps just trying to make something positive out of it will therein make it positive. Perhaps by giving it life, we ensure that it will never die. If we believe, therefore we are.

So don’t make statements about the current condition of hip-hop based solely on Clear Channel playlists; based on MTV or BET’s videos; or based on who’s selling the Top 40 records in the nation, because that’s a small and over-exaggerated representation of hip-hop culture. If you’ve lost faith in this type of hip-hop, check out your local underground artists. Try out a couple independently-owned record stores. Read a different hip-hop magazine once in a while. And for God’s sake put a block on your cable motherfuckers! There are children present. But don’t tell us that hip-hop is dead, because if you think that is true, you obviously don’t know real hip-hop.