My main problem (and I am focusing on NG here because I've never frequented sites like Soundlick and all the other websites that supposedly promise fame and fortune in making beats) with the hip-hop scene is what it's become. Nowadays, anyone can do almost anything with a laptop and this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm not saying that everyone is terrible, but I'm also not saying they're good.
Sure, if you truly make music that is good (and this is different for everyone,) it will stand above the rest, the problem is that there is too much of "the rest." I do not know how many times I have listened to a generic synth-laden hip-hop beat that sounds like, well, about 12 other beats I listened to the other weak. Music aside, a seemingly big thing about hip-hop music today is production and a lot of tracks, even with fantastic ideas and hooks, suffer from stock-sounds and generic loops.
Garageband, Acid Pro, etc... While I love all these programs, they encourage users to just use the pre-made loops and that alone, adds to this "rest" I am talking about; all that music out there that clutters the other tracks.
I like hip-hop, and hip-hop is different from rap. When a track has lyrics, I'll be honest, I hardly ever listen to them. I usually treat the vocals as an extra instrument. I've been doing this all my life and it may not be the best way but it's what I know, and it's my love for instrumentals. Whether I'm popping in a new CD to listen to for the first time or it's a track I've been playing on a loop for the past two hours, I start by focusing on the beat (or what have you) and forget about the lyrics or their "meaning."
I love good lyrics and respect good em cees out there but I like to dabble in making beats myself and I genuinely believe that the instruments make about 80% of a song; sometimes more, (sometimes less.) The vocals, for me, are just another layer in the layout.
Give me a guy who can come up with his own drum sounds, drums that don't sound like the "Untitled Hip Hop Track #56" that your neighbor's son just posted on his myspace for the fifth time this week. Give me a guy who knows that "hip-hop," doesn't just mean MODERN or OL-SKOOL, or anything else. Hip-hop is whatever you want it to be. Give me a guy who can refrain from aspiring to become a multi-millionaire through "making beats" and give me that same guy who's just content with just pursuing it as a hobby. Give me that same guy who's not all about quantity but also about quality and dedicated to enhancing and bettering his passion, not cluttering it to make a name for himself as the "most posted tracks within a week" sort of producer.
Having said that, I guess we need some of those chip-chasers. Those who only do this for the dough and actually have no love for the art. Those who pay websites a monthly fee to rack numbers and statistics that honestly, at the end of the day, don't matter. Those who pay for bots to up-vote their songs. Those who like to vote zero on any other song that's not theirs; and yes, even people they may have collaborate with in the past...
And when I say "guy," it can definitely be a girl too. :)
