How do you solve a problem like Hip Hop?

"If every thing's commercial, where the fuck's the show at?"

Joe Buddens from "Who Killed Hip Hop?"

"The game got cheaper, rappers is more commercially successful now but the heart's a lot weaker"

Jadakiss from "Letter to BIG"

I have a wide range of music that I love. From AC⚡DC (the original gangsters of Rock) and Led Zeppelin to Nirvana and Pearl Jam to Pantera and Megadeth to Green Day. But Hip Hop is dearest to my heart.

Take a listen to 96.5 FM or 98.9 or 100.3 or 103.9 (the so-called Hip Hop and R&B stations here in Philly) and you'll notice something, You'll notice how few songs they actually play (maybe 30 different songs all day!). You'll also notice how few of those 30 songs are actually Rap songs.

Just to clarify, Hip Hop is a culture, Rap is the music of this culture. While it's fine to call Rap music Hip Hop, saying they are different genres is ridiculous and outright incorrect. I don't care what anyone says, it's just not true.

Back to the problem at hand. What we're hearing on the radio and seeing in the videos is not Rap! If you sing the whole song, then you're not a rapper! Yeah, I'm looking at you Lil Wayne. I'm looking at you Kanye. At least T-Pain knows he's a singer.

Speaking of those guys, Autotune (or as Joe Buddens calls it "that funny voice shit") was meant to be a tool to correct the pitch of a singer when they made a minor mistake. While I'm all for doing something new and different, when everyone is doing it, it's no longer new or different. It's fucking annoying. And not creative. And repetitive. And nauseating. And again to be as clear as I can: You guys are sweating an effect that Cher brought out! She wasn't the first to use Autotune but her song "Do you Believe?" was the first to purposely crank the settings for that robotic sound. How gay is that?

"808" is short for TS-808. The TS-808 was a hardware drum synth, and has moved into the digital world as every Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) worth it's salt has a digital version of this piece. The drum sounds aren't great, I'd even say they suck. But it's a synth, so you can change the sounds in almost innumerable ways. Why on earth is everyone using the default sounds in almost every song? The default bass drum sound is so high pitched and short it's almost a snare. Honestly, I have snare drum sounds pitched deeper than the standard 808 kick! Bass sounds should thump not pop. Snares should pop. It takes all the depth of the song away if there's not any low frequencies to balance the spectrum.

The music industry is wondering why record sales are dropping. The radio is jamming us full of the same songs so we barely even know what else is out there. We get trained to not like the music that doesn't follow the formula. Why is there more Hook in a song and less Verse? Does anyone want to think about what a rapper is saying or do they just wanna dance to a stupefied chorus?

If the labels sign artists who break the mold, and actually promote them, and the radio would get some balls and play those artists, we could have a whole new feeling in the industry. And sales would start rising again.

Really, I don't care what it is your rapping about. I just want you to do it with some skill, some complex rhyme schemes, clever comparison, to the rhythm, differently than the last guy, and find a way to get it into my hands. Until then I won't be buying your albums. I'll be going to mixtapetorrent.com and downloading, freely and legally, music from artists who want to actually Rap. Then I'll go to www.LogikBombsRadio.com and listen to free streaming Hip Hop and R&B, with no commercials and all kinds of artists, from unsigned to commercial, with one common thread: Talent. Because if you have to follow the industry's formula to brainwash the masses into thinking you're good, then you aren't really, are you?