I guess it was okay.

---

At the mainstream and slightly sub-mainstream levels you had big records -- and in some instances, multiple projects -- from Drake, Future, Kendrick, Meek Mill, Wale, Logic, Jeezy, Rick Ross, Earl Sweatshirt, Tyler, Mac Miller. Shit, even Kid Cudi dropped an album. Pusha T drops tomorrow. I'm sure I'm missing a million other records (Tyga? Fetty Wap? Lil' Dicky?). So much stuff drops these days that it's hard to keep up.

---

But what I liked most about hip-hop this year, as in recent years, was that if you wanted to hear some type of music, by and large it was available to you. You might have had to dig around a little online, but you'd eventually get to it. Years ago, shit, it was very difficult to find music that wasn't physically available within some reasonable distance from where you lived. That's why things like underground radio were very important; even that, you were lucky if you could find a signal. To hear good shit, it took real effort.

---

By and large I think most arguments about hip-hop these days are either circular or irrelevant. In fact, other than the seemingly small debate about whether Drake should be penalized -- by who, exactly, I don't know -- for using a ghostwriter, there wasn't anything in hip-hop culture this year worth discussing for more than maybe five minutes, or however long it takes for Twitter to move on to the next Donald Trump tweet.

---

That's actually a good thing. For so long, hip-hop was about everything but the music. You know, even thinking back just a few years -- something like the Drake/Meek Mill thing would have spilled over into a thousand ancillary pieces (think: Game and 50 Cent). Now, at least publicly, it seemed like both guys really tried to just keep it as a musical thing. I can't recall either of them answering a single question about it from the press. They refused to make it a spectacle.

---

So yeah, again, I guess hip-hop in 2015 was okay.

View more

Well the bottom line is this -- these days the attention of people if fractured into a million different pieces. I think it's fair to say it's much easier to attract a niche audience than it is to build a mass one. Because what is mass really anyway nowadays? Hard to define. Arguably doesn't even exist.

---

You have to give credit to artists -- and I don't just mean musicians, but all creative people -- who can still talk to huge groups of people through their work. Because those huge groups are harder to reach than ever.

---

So I think someone like Pitbull, a Latin rapper from Miami who kinda got shafted by the hip-hop community -- remember, he was around for 10 years in hip-hop before he went mainstream -- deserves a little credit. This is a guy who so very obviously wanted to be something in rap, and the industry really wouldn't give him the time of day.

---

Then he goes and gets a bigger audience doing something else. How can you not appreciate that?

View more

Define corny. I don't even know what that means. What's corny to you may be amazing to someone else.

---

In my heart of hearts I have extremely high standards. So high that I think practically everything that isn't a jazz fusion library record from 1974 sucks.

---

But mostly I've found that it's best to judge art by its intention.

---

What I mean is that I can't get mad that Pitbull doesn't make art rap, and say he sucks because he's not doing what I think he should be doing.

---

What I can do is acknowledge what he intends to do, which is make pop rap, then judge him based on the quality of that, whether he succeeds at it, so on and so forth.

---

Ultimately, I think there is a place for high art just as there is for low brow stuff. But if I'm going to mess with the low, I want the lowest of the low. Or what you might call 'corny.'

View more

Only slightly :-)

---

Ehh, I didn't go to SXSW this year (or last year, really) because nobody would pay for me to go, and it wasn't like in previous years when I had an artist performing and there was a real reason for me to pay my own way.

---

It's an expensive trip and most people who are there professionally have the bill picked up by whoever they work for. That's pretty dope, IMO. But frankly, if that wasn't the case, at least 80% of the industry and media people wouldn't be caught dead within 500 miles of Austin.

---

For whatever it's worth, I think SXSW is a great event and bitching about corporate brands being involved is some elitist bullshit coming from people who don't know anything about what it means to fend for themselves in the the jungle that is the new music + media economy.

---

No serious musician working today thinks brand sponsorship is bad. Record labels are broke and people don't pay for anything. There is no other way to make money.

---

If you think that a brand wanting to be involved in music is bad -- when there is no other way for creatives to really make money -- you should reassess your life.

View more