I've always had an affinity towards hip-hop. I can't personally say I can relate, having never been affiliated with any gang. My parents even steered me towards the high school I graduated from because they wanted to keep me away from the "gangsta" life.
But even so I still enjoyed hip-hop. Tupac was the guy for me growing up, also I also enjoyed Ma$e, Puff Daddy (pre P. Diddy), Jay-Z, a little Notorious BIG, and Eminem. Lately I've been exploring some old school stuff, like Bone Thugz N Harmony, going through Jay-Z's discography in chronological order, some Warren G.
Like JM, I got into D'Angelo, and while I do enjoy the likes of Boyz II Men and Babyface, among others, D'Angelo combines the sweet tones of R&B with the grit of hip-hop and mixes some funk in there, and his latest album, "Black Messiah" has more of a rock flair to it.
There's always been sort of an earthiness to hip-hop, especially the stuff that came out when I was growing up. A lot of hip-hop now, sad to say, is mostly borne in the studio; my generation's hip-hop was borne out of the streets, and the studio was just a medium, a canvas onto which hip-hop artists could express themselves on. Hip-hop is modern day blues in the sense that it's the outcry of (mostly) oppressed people set to music.
Guys like Tupac, Nas, Notorious BIG, Eminem, Rakim, and Jay-Z have the same spirit of BB King, Buddy Guy, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Muddy Waters. They're all storytellers, all geniuses in their own way, wordsmiths, and all earthy. They were beloved within their own communities but misunderstood outside of them. But as the bluesmen have become more revered through the years, hopefully emcees will also garner the same appreciation as time goes on.
I guess my mission, at least for the time being, is to not just find a way to fuse blues and hip-hop, but really mine the riches of these two seemingly disparate yet similar genres of music and strike gold, discover something that may have been brushed on but never really experimented with.
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