In regards to people being afraid of change, I really don't think that's the case. The thing about the sampled beats of the 90's was that it was rugged, inherently innovative, and it was all about subverting the familiar in order to make something new. In my interpretation, this is the essence of hiphop. The philosophy was sort of a "by any means necessary" approach to making music. People used existing things in unintended ways to make an end product...and personally I think that's where the magic always was. When hiphop developed from djing, dj's were using recordings in ways that the original creator never intended...and that's what captured people's imaginations.

If you take a look at the attitudes that new school producers etc. are bringing to the table, that philosophy of subverting something to create something new isn't there. You just fire up your synth, make a melody using a sawtooth sound, use a few octives, and an 808 and *voila* you have a commercially and club-worthy banger. Granted coming up with melodies, etc. requires creativity, but loading up a vst preset is different than evaluating something that already exists, disassembling it, and building something new...for me the later just feels more interesting.

Personally, I think that there are ways of using synth sounds, processing them and flipping them with the old school techniques that are interesting and are progressive. New school techniques can be used to interesting effect. However, the lack of the "by any means necessary" philosophy is what is alienating many of the old heads. Some people may dig styles like the dirty south, bay area sounds, but for me, they seem a bit redundant, predictable, and assembly line.

This is just my opinion on this, I'd be interested to see what other cats think.

^ While I agree with what you're saying, these days it's not just people doing things the 'commercial' way.. there are people doin it all sorts of ways, commercial stuff is just what everyone hears.

cartesia,

you do have a point. generally the other ways of doing things have been assimilated on one level or another into the sample-based scene. What do you all see as the changes that the "golden age" heads are avoiding?

i just love music...not just hip hop...i don't care what anyone thinks. i love making anything from just sampled loops to electronic type shit to video games just anything i think sounds cool...its the funnest shit ever because its limitless unless you limit yourself. i love it all for the most part. good topic of conversation though.

i think hip hop is changing as we speak...were starting to see almost a new side to it, for instance like kid cudi. hes bringing in mgmt and doing alot of shit people are not doing. he strays from autotune and he speaks about his emotions instead "DJ KHALED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! shit" and i dono i guess its on who you look at. i think alot of people are so closed off to the idea that were in the 2000's and not the 1990's. i have no room to talk just an opinion. i mean if you look at it this way. people dont like thing unless there classic. would anyone here take a brand new bottle of wine. or one thats aged...? ya know? i also think its maturity level in the audience there approaching from the myspace gangsters the fifteen year old girls. everything as a whole has made hip hop what it is right now. and i think we cant knock on it right now becuase its gonna change again. i mean there serving an audience to what they think will like it. not what everyone will like. if i made sense cool. if not then im a fucking retard. but for real be patient.

I'll take the 2buck chuck any day man. Good music is good music. We learn from the past, we grow and we evolve. Music is the same. The classics are well, classic, but somebody has to piss people off and do something new. Obviously there's money to be made in this world and suckers will still buy cheap ass shit. Put some soul and heart into what you do and forget what others have to say. In this digital age people get all butthurt about comments, so if you can't take the heat get your ass out the kitchen and back to your bedroom.

Make music, make noise and have fun. That's why we are here and not on the corner trying to pimp our beats.

+1

compare hip hop to other genres of music and its JUST about to have "been around" timewise, like theres maybe 4-5 main subgenres that fall under its umbrella, look other styles like rock or country went like 30-50 years before they really broke off into like totally different worlds and have tons of genres under their umbrella, like compare chuck berry rock to slayer rock or like hank williams to the dixie chicks haha. what i thinks goin on here is we're at the moment where hip hop as a whole is about to start going into more defined subgenres that eventually become genres themselves and thats exciting for anyone involved i think.