As you can see, I am a big fan of Hip-Hop, but over the past 10 years the majority of Hip-Hop exposed to masses has been trash. I just came across this Video where Killer Mike is being questioned about why Hip-Hop has fallen so far. The angle and reasoning behind his explanation is nothing less than Genius…enjoy.  

Common and Kanye West in Los Angeles providing a quick hip-hop show @ DJ Reflex’s Birthday party. This room has so much energy in the air that you can cut it with a butter knife.

Last week in the New York Times I notice that Jay-Z just recently agreed to a 150 million dollar deal with Live Aid, a deal that will possible have him touring for the next ten years. This is the future of the music industry and possibly the only way an artist will be able to make a decent living. Nobody buys whole albums anymore, so what does the artist have to do to earn a buck? Provide a great show period. I mean who really cares about a whole album nowadays? iTunes is the king of downloads and nobody downloads a whole album; they download just a few tracks and they are done. Now as an artist you have to sell the album on stage to get the money you initially wanted from your album sales. Of course this is nothing new for an artist to go on tour, but now it is a necessity to stay afloat in this industry. You have an artist like Snoop Dogg whose album has been out for six weeks and has yet to reach the gold status and Snoop is the most identified hip hop artist in the world; I mean that has got to be frightening for other artist and VP’s. Snoop has not been on a 15 plus US city tour since “The up in smoke tour” in 2000, but I’m willing to bet that you’ll  probably see him this summer at venue nearest you.