Sorry Ms. Jackson, they are for real

BY JOSH DRIMMER

It is likely that hip-hop music will forever have the same fuzzy, somewhat superficial split of underground vs. mainstream that all music has. For that matter, hip-hop's little civil war between bling-blingers and backpackers, MTV and the Internet, DMX and Mos Def, isn't necessarily a bad thing. Myself, when Puff Daddy turns old number-one songs into barely changed number-one songs, when Jay-Z claims money ain't a thing even though I can't afford his record, and when Mystikal and DMX...well, shout too damn much, I tend to go for what happens not to be popular. Many of my favorite rap records—Organized Konfusion, Ultramagnetic MCs' Critical Beatdown—never went gold or platinum, and unless Puffy releases one of these albums claiming it as his own, they never will. As long as the best records make the least money, hardcore fans will continue to claim to be hardcore—under the misguided belief that what's unknown is always best. But what happens when formerly "underground" acts actually start to make money? Are they really no longer good?

Backpackers, face it: even though hip-hop in 2001 still belongs to DMX, Nelly, Juvenile, and a whole slew of similarly uncreative groups, the fact remains that many "underground" favorites are going pop even as they rock, rock, y'all. The Roots' Things Fall Apart went platinum largely on the strength of what drummer ?uestlove himself called a "pop tune," the melancholy yet catchy "You Got Me." Outkast has yet to release an album that has failed to go platinum, and Stankonia is amazingly near triple platinum now, while "Ms. Jackson" is on KC 101's main rotation. Even a fairly unknown emcee like Common can have a hit single—and out of a deep love song, no less (whether or not you know it, you've heard "The Light"). Regardless of how cynical you really are, it's ludicrous to say that any of these artists have "sold out." They've just happened to hit the rest of the country—if only briefly—over the head with their talent.

Even when it is just a cover song, a hit hip-hop single isn't necessarily a soulless, commercial move. The difference between quality and commerce lies in execution. The wrong way of doing it just recycles the past: Will Smith stole three great songs at once on "Wild Wild West" (Stevie Wonder's "I Wish," Kool Moe Dee's "Wild Wild West," and "The Humpty Dance," if you're keeping score), a disc which was essentially no more than an advertisement for a horrible movie.

The right way succeeds in making what was old somehow new again. In 1997, a fairly underground group out of New Jersey released the follow-up to its first album, Blunted On Reality, which I kinda dug. I was soon surprised to find it on the front racks at Sam Goody. The group? The Fugees. The reason it hit No. 1? The wildly successful song that had yet to hit my radio station, a cover of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly." And if you've ever listened to the now-cheesy original version of that song, you will pick Lauryn Hill over Roberta without hesitation. The rest of The Score, by the way, may have been the best rap album of 1997. Without that record, one of the members of the group not named Lauryn, Wyclef Jean, probably wouldn't have had the chance to release his first solo record, the creative, trilingual The Carnival.

Yes, the unexpected success of your favorite groups may be somewhat annoying; for example, let's just say I don't need to listen to Stankonia at home anymore because I hear it three times a week at the Herald office. But bear in mind that success brings more material from your favorites too—not only are The Roots coming out with another album in 2001, lead emcee Black Thought also has a solo record on the way.

If non-backpackers bother to stick beside some of the currently popular, yet talented, rap groups, perhaps acts such as The Roots will have the opportunity to become hip-hop's answer to the Beatles, forcing other rap groups to innovate just to stay alive commercially, and thereby making the music scene better as a whole.

Or maybe your mom will just one day ask you who Talib Kweli is.

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