bigge smalls = everyone who started rapping after he dropped ready to die ill give you that
this is probably more accurate than my original statement to be honest. soon as his era died (90s rap) it all went to hell fast. to me mainstream rap is the WORST these days. I remember a time when i liked most of the rap that was mainstream. now i seem to only listen to underground stuff (for the most part). I cant get into guys like 50 cent, lil wayne, gucci, waka, etc. this current style seems watered down and i swear lil wayne is to rap what half of the 90s teen "pop stars" were...someone who the labels marketed as an "image" or "brand" rather than a good music recording artist/songwriter.
I guarantee you there are mainstream rappers TODAY who don't write their own lines/songs. its a fact and with some genres i can see that happening (ie. teen pop stars etc) but i can't accept that when its rap which is supposed to come from you. thats what makes rap so amazing to me...is that someone can spit out the facts of life of the top of their head while simultaneously thinking of the next line AND making it all fit together in a way that pleases your ears. If you're using other ppl's ideas then what are you?
Idk excuse my rant but i could knock current mainstream rap forever. People often are amazed that i can't name even one single song by some of today's biggest rappers but its because i could listen to the samples of their albums on amazon.com or whatever and by the time ive heard 30secs of each song i can already dismiss them as being good.
when it comes to rap it doesn't take more than a few bars to know if you're feeling it at all.
my other beef is that today's mainstream rappers do WAYYY too many features to the point that sometimes they seem like a guest artist on their own record/mixtape. dont get me wrong some of my fav songs ever were features but now its ridiculous. in the past they still did collabs but you know who's album u were buying. now you listen to 15 tracks from one artist but they only spit 1 verse on each track!
idk if today's rappers are just lazy or seriously have no talent but it needs to change. of course i think ive been spoiled by greatness of the past and underground and now nothing can come close to comparing. hopefully in the next few years im thinking a new group of mainstream artists is better than this current group. if whats next to come is worse then im just gonna either get stuck in the past era or find another genre of music to listen to. lol